Boing Boing

How birds get oxygen inside their eggs. File this great explainer under "questions previously unconsidered that have interesting answers." (more…)

Lawyer Viva Frei saw a pothole on a street closed off for a charity run, so he got permission to put his new 360-degree camera in and got a pretty neat shot. (more…)

Wonderful EFF supporters keep on coming up with great new entries for EFF's Catalog of Missing Devices, which lists fictional devices that should exist, but don't, because to achieve their legal, legitimate goals, the manufacturer would have to break some Digital Rights Management and risk retaliation under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.Now, EFF supporter Rico Robbins has sent us the "FanFlick Editor," a welcome addition to the Catalog, alongside of Dustin Rodriguez's excellent list of missing devices like the Software Scalpel and MovieMoxie; and Benjamin MacLean's Mashup Maker.If you have your own great ideas for additions, send them to me and maybe you'll see them on EFF's Deeplinks!Meet the FanFlick Editor. With this revolutionary video editor, you can directly rip your favorite movies from DVDs or Blu-rays or even digital copies from iTunes, Google Play, and any other service. Edit the film to your heart's content and then distribute the edit decision list (EDL) -- a file that contains instructions that other people can use to edit their own copies during playback while they watch, so they can experience your vision for the movies you both love (or even the ones you hate!).Used your own footage, graphics, or audio? No problem! FanFlick Editor keeps track of what you made and what you ripped, and packages up your other content with your FanFlick EDL. That way, you only distribute material whose copyright you control, or that is in the public domain, or that fair use permits. Sharing edit decision lists is fair use and thus legal -- that's how ClearPlay do business -- so we're free to provide you with a useful, flexible tool like FanFlick Editor.FanFlick Editor: an entry in the Catalog of Missing Devices from an EFF supporter [Cory Doctorow/EFF]

Musician Regaip "Rego" Alp Sen created this cool and comprehensive alchemist's guide to alcoholic beverages. Colors and sidebars denote pairing combinations. (more…)

I don't know about you, but back when I was working a nine-to-five gig that forced me to wear pants and show up on time, I had days at work where I wanted nothing more than to knock everything off my desk and set the office on fire. I'm betting it's a feeling that former U.S. Army Sergeant John T. Skipper can relate to.During a training exercise back in 2016, Sgt. Skipper, now a former member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, decided that he'd totally be into finding out what happens to a Humvee when its parachute straps are tampered with during a tactical airdrop from a C-130 Hercules.The answer: As this YouTube video captured by spectators on the ground illustrates, nothing good. However, the premise that a vehicle that reaches terminal velocity during a fall will be destroyed on impact with the ground can't be taken as gospel. An experiment has to be repeated, with the same result, for it to become a fact that you can rely on. So, apparently in the name of Science, Skipper cut the straps on not one, but three Humvees during the course of the exercise.This past week, Sgt. Skipper was court marshaled for his dabblings with gravity. As a result, he was convicted of three counts of destroying military property with a value of more than $500 and providing a false official statement. "More than $500" is an understatement. While you can buy a well-loved Humvee at auction for a few grand, these days, the ones still in service, or bought new, have an estimated worth of starting at around $70,000. For up-armored models, you can raise that purchase price to as much as $220,000 a pop.According to NPR, as a result of Skipper's airborne shenanigans, he was reduced in rank to Private and dismissed from the Army.

Over at Popular Science, Jim Shaw, proprietor of Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm, posted his recipe for Worm Tea, an organic liquid fertilizer and insecticide. The key ingredient is three pounds of castings, also known as worm shit. Shaw writes:Collect 2 to 3 pounds of castings (or buy them from us). Next, pack them in a porous cloth, such as a burlap bag or even a pillowcase, to make a jumbo tea bag. Then dunk the bag in 2 to 3 gallons of lukewarm water, and soak it overnight. Finally, squeeze the bag; you just brewed your own worm tea. Spray the Worm Tea on the plants or pour it at the stem. For best results, don't drink it."How to brew worm tea" (Popular Science)

Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, used Orwell's 1984 as a training manual for torture and degradation. Some Catholic nuns in Colombia apparently looked to psychopathic torturer Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid's Tale for child rearing lessons. (more…)

Pygmy marmosets are from South America. At 3.5 ounces, they are the world's smallest monkey (but not quite the world's smallest primate -- that honor goes to 2 ounce pygmy tarsier of central Sulawesi, Indonesia). Enjoy this video of pygmy marmosets enjoying some grapes, which look like beach balls in their hands.Image: Aardvark video screengrab

Child psychologists have observed an increasing trend in which teens cyberbully themselves, creating anonymous accounts in which they post vicious insults and slurs that seem to be directed to them by strangers. (more…)

Sean R. Heavey claims that Stranger Things used his storm cloud photo (top image) without permission in concept art (second image above) that eventually became a scene in the show. From https://petapixel.com/2018/05/07/photographer-stranger-things-used-my-storm-cloud-without-asking/:Heavey says he realized that the cloud that appears in the Stranger Things episode looked extremely similar to his but wasn’t the same one. A few weeks later, however, Heavey’s friend was watching the Beyond Stranger Things behind-the-scenes special (episode 3) on Netflix when he noticed the concept art that was used by the Stranger Things crew...After Heavey reached out to Netflix with his complaint, the company responded by saying that the cloud in his photo isn’t protected by copyright.“They are saying the only similarity that exists is the use of a similar cloud formation, that copyright law does not protect objects as they appear in nature, and that an artist can’t claim a monopoly over real-world public domain objects such as a cloud formation,” Heavey says. “The problem with that argument is that it’s not a similar cloud they use — it’s my cloud photo.”Heavey thinks the Netflix counsel didn't even look at his image comparisons before responding. He's now lawyered up and figuring out his next steps.

At IBM, portable storage devices like a USB, SD card, or flash drive are no longer welcome. As in banned, for security reasons. In the next few weeks IBM will be barring these items from the workplace worldwide. According to PC Mag:Instead of portable storage, IBM wants everyone using the cloud and more specifically, IBM's own File Sync and Share service, which it also offers to enterprise customers. That may work for IBM employees on campus, but what about those out in the field carrying out repairs and upgrades? Rather than having a patch on a USB stick, secure cloud access will need to be established instead."The possible financial and reputational damage from misplaced, lost or misused removable portable storage devices must be minimized," said Shamla Naidoo, IBM's global chief information security officer.It's hard to argue against that. USB sticks and SD cards are very easy to forget or lose, and whoever finds them will usually check what they contain. Removing them from the equation completely solves that problem, but the cloud access replacing it needs to be rock solid. It looks likely USB storage sticks will quickly be replaced with USB 4G LTE sticks.Image: pxhere

Spring has finally arrived, and JF1LMS is celebrating by releasing a hyperlapse of some great footage shot all winter in the Slovak village where he grew up, all shot manually in bitter cold. Crank it up to 4K. (more…)

Life gets busy; and, while some things are bound to fall through the cracks, celebrating your mom on Mother's Day shouldn't be one of them. The Bouqs Company and Teleflora are both running specials on Mother's Day bouquets and can deliver them straight to your mom's doorstep for a fraction of what you'd pay at the florist.The Bouqs Company lets you celebrate mom with their selection of beautiful, fresh flowers from eco-friendly and sustainable farms. With their Mother's Day Deal, you can get $50 worth of flowers for only $30, showing mom you care about her--and the planet she lives on--with a green bouquet that's also good for your wallet.Meanwhile, with Teleflora, you can pay $20 for a $40 credit and send mom a hand-arranged bouquet straight to her door. Teleflora offers beautiful, professionally arranged bouquets that are delivered by local florists located across the US and Canada, and they come in their own vases, so they're ready to be enjoyed the minute they reach her doorstep.Whether you opt for The Bouqs Company's eco-friendly blooms or Teleflora's ready-made bouquets, you can do Mother's Day right this year and save a pretty penny with these specials today.

Donning a rad vest made with googly eyes, Shitty Robots' inventor extraordinaire Simone Giertz (who recently announced she has a brain tumor) makes a solid case for creating "useless" things in a TED Talk (!) she gave in April. In this joyful, heartfelt talk featuring demos of her wonderfully wacky creations, Simone Giertz shares her craft: making useless robots. Her inventions -- designed to chop vegetables, cut hair, apply lipstick and more -- rarely (if ever) succeed, and that's the point. "The true beauty of making useless things [is] this acknowledgment that you don't always know what the best answer is," Giertz says. "It turns off that voice in your head that tells you that you know exactly how the world works. Maybe a toothbrush helmet isn't the answer, but at least you're asking the question."Bonus: In her behind-the-TED-Talk-scenes video, she shares how she made that googly eyes vest (because you do need to know):https://youtu.be/GEIvFfeSjuE

The Grenfell Towers fire was one of the most deadly fires in modern British history, killing at least 72 people, with no way to know how many more may have died. (more…)

One of the great joys of being involved with Make:, Maker Faire, and the maker movement over the years has been watching the creation, growth, and evolution of the Power Racing Series. For those who don't know, the Power Racing Series was started by Jim Burke (who was, for a time Make:'s lead designer) when he was at the Chicago hackerspace, Pumping Station: One. The first race was in 2009 and was all PS: One members. The second race, at the 2010 Detroit Maker Faire, was the start of the PRS and Maker Faire's partnership which continues today. Now, the US-spanning PRS circuit includes races at Maker Faires across the country.Basically, the Power Racing Series is teams of adult kiddie car hackers modifying Power Wheels (and other powered kid vehicles) and racing them in a LeMons-style race. The hacker teams can only spend up to $500 to modify and upgrade their car. It's all in good fun and basically an excuse to collaborate with other makers to try and push your tiny ride to the limit. And to have a crackin' good time in the process. Prizes are given out for things like the most Moxie Points, your ability to take risks, swerve into your weirdness, and pander to the crowd.There are 8 races taking place this season, starting at Maker Faire Bay Area this month (May 18-20) and ending at the Maker Faire Orlando in November (Nov 10-11). Check out this wonderful video that Jim Burke posted to his YouTube channel a few days ago to promote Season 9. Exciting! Great, goofy fun!https://youtu.be/9pErtFqmCW8

Feng Xiang is a prominent Chinese legal scholar with an appointment at Tsinghua University; in a new Washington Post editorial adapted from his recent speech at the Berggruen Institute’s China Center workshop on artificial intelligence in Beijing, he argues that capitalism is incompatible with AI. (more…)

Net Neutrality is extraordinarily, improbably popular with Americans: 87% of Americans have both heard of Net Neutrality and believe it should be protected; virtually the only opponents Net Neutrality has are telcoms lobbyists and politicians who've had money funneled their way through telcoms PACs and direct contributions. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMYSince Donald "Childish Gambino" Glover debuted his single "This Is America" on last week's Saturday Night Live, the song and its accompanying video have raced around the internet, sparking analyses and arguments. (more…)

Approximately 36 million people in the United States have high blood pressure and many could do with reducing their sodium intake. But how do you even monitor your intake accurately? Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a flexible sensor that goes in your mouth for real-time sensing of how much salt is in those french fries you're munching. It then sends the data to your phone to alert you of your sodium intake. From IEEE Spectrum:W. Hong Yeo, an assistant professor of micro and nano engineering who led the research team, says it would also be possible to stick the sensor directly to the tongue or the roof of the mouth, or to laminate it onto a tooth. The soft retainer they used in this experiment was just phase one. “For the first prototype device, we wanted to offer easy handling and cleaning capability via the integration with a soft retainer,” he said.Yeo says the biggest challenge was making the entire electronic device soft, flexible, and comfortable enough to wear in the mouth. So the team designed a chip that uses stretchable circuits mounted on an ultrathin porous membrane.

The tabloids can be rattlesnakes – provoke them at your peril.Newly-minted Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow finds that out this week to his chagrin, as the National Enquirer exposes his alleged “Sex-and-Drugs Shocker!” As this column exclusively revealed two weeks ago, Farrow is secretly investigating America’s supermarket tabloids with a view to exposing “how the sausage is made,” according to a source. In April the Enquirer branded Farrow a “hypocrite” for purportedly “covering for his pervert uncle,” a story I described as “a warning shot across his bow.”This week the Enquirer comes at Farrow with all cannons blazing. Only last month Farrow came out as gay – a public admission quite possibly driven by the knowledge that the Enquirer was about to out him – and now the magazine claims to have obtained “a chain of intimate text messages” which allegedly reveal that “Ronan got down and dirty with a Brazilian male model – admitting to using cocaine and describing his passion for having sex while high on pot and poppers!”The rag again brands Farrow “a huge hypocrite,” this time for allegedly “using his position of power and influence to promise a second Brazilian hunk professional favors . . . an echo of the charges he made against slimeball [Harvey] Weinstein in his groundbreaking reporting!” Setting aside the fact that Farrow’s sexuality is his own business, that he is entitled to hook up with whomsoever he pleases, and that his cocaine confession (if true) is that he tried it only twice “and hated it both times,” the allegation that he offered to help further a potential lover’s writing career by making introductions is far from the same as Weinstein raping and assaulting women and threatening to end their career if they refused to acquiesce. Expect to see Ronan Farrow’s private life, including that of his family and mother Mia Farrow, eviscerated by the tabloids in coming months as they try to scare him off. It may get ugly.Elsewhere, the tabloids continue to stretch journalistic standards of evidence and proof, never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Angelina Jolie’s son Maddox “Begs to Live With Brad!” reports the Enquirer, claiming that the ex-couple’s 16-year-old son “is through with living with his adoptive mom after she visited and prayed at the grave of Pol Pot – the murderous dictator who killed 3 million Cambodians.”Maddox, adopted from Cambodia, was in that country with his mother while she directed her film First They Killed My Father, a drama about the horrors of Pol Pot’s bloody regime. He is well aware of her loathing for the dictator. And Jolie’s visits to Pol Pot’s grave allegedly occurred before Maddox was even born, the Enquirer admits. The story unravels when the Enquirer source reveals it’s all based on assumption: “Maddox must have been livid when he’d learned what his mother had done!” Must he? “It has to be galling to Maddox,” says the unnamed source. Must it?Equally dubious is the Enquirer report that a “terror bomb” plot to attack Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s coming Royal wedding in England has been “foiled by Harry and Meghan stand-ins.” Absurd on the face of it, the report claims that a Special Air Service officer and his wife played the roles of Harry and Meghan during practice drills for possible terrorist attacks on their wedding day, and that “the massive operation effectively shut down any terrorist threat.” Seriously? British police and armed services know that the only way to prevent a terrorist threat is to clear the streets of all pedestrians, clear every building along the processional route of occupants, sweep every rooftop for snipers, and have bomb-sniffing dogs scour every inch of the route – and that’s not going to happen. Authorities train to react efficiently in the face of a terror attack, but they aren’t about to stop hundreds of thousands of people from cheering on the newlyweds, and the threat of a terrorist slipping in among them is a risk they try to minimize but can never fully escape.President John F. Kennedy could have told the Enquirer that much, if the paper’s latest cover story is accurate: “There Were 3 JFK Shooters!” screams the front page headline. “Stunning new forensic video analysis” supposedly proves that “4 bullets killed Prez!” We’ve seen these conspiracy theories repeatedly for the past 54 years, and the supposed enhancement of the famed Zapruder tape is still open to interpretation and argument. It’s an interesting theory, but that’s all it is; it proves nothing.Much the same could be said for the Globe report that pop icon "Prince Was Murdered!” The supposed evidence? “Newly discovered death scene photos . . . prove the Purple Rain legend was MURDERED!” Let me ask again: what is the evidence? “These photos prove the musician’s overdose death was staged, says private investigator.” The “newly discovered death photos” were actually released by the sheriff’s department, which had them all along. They were never lost, never "discovered.” And why might Prince’s body appear “staged,” laying sprawled on his back outside the elevator in his Paisley Park home in Minneapolis, his right arm draped across his waist?Perhaps it’s because Prince was found dead inside the elevator, as the Carver County Sheriff explained at the time of his death in 2016, and that deputies and paramedics attempted to revive him. Clearly he was dragged out of the elevator, where it would be harder for paramedics to attempt CPR in a confined space. Does the Globe mention Prince’s death inside the elevator, or the fact that paramedics moved him? Of course not. Why let the facts spoil a story? And the Globe, classy as ever, publishes the full death scene photos that almost every other news organization chose to blur, pixilate or black out.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Reese Witherspoon wore it best, that Jersey Shore reality TV star Jenni ‘JWoww’ Farley “can pound tequila and never get a hangover,” that TV’s S.W.A.T. actress Stephanie Sigman’s Free People tote is “full of my dog’s hair” along with lipstick and pepper spray, and that the stars are just like us: they hail taxis, drink smoothies, and make shopping lists. Shocking, as ever.Equally shocking is Us magazine’s cover story: "Inside Charlotte’s 3rd Birthday!" which exposes Prince William’s daughter’s deepest, darkest secrets: she had a birthday cake, her “favorite dinner and a lot of presents” as she celebrated her third year. Well, I never saw that coming.“The greatest gift of all, perhaps, arrived a week earlier when Kate gave birth to Prince Louis,” the mag continues. “Charlotte is really enjoying having a younger brother to play with,” says a source. Sure. Because we all know what fun a three-year-old can have playing games with a newborn baby that can’t walk, crawl or talk, and can only feed or cry. And that, seriously, is the extent of the cover story. Yes, Us adds that Charlotte is “definitely a girly girl” . . . “has a very active imagination” and “she’s always got her eye on something.” I’m sure her optometrist will be delighted to hear that. Great reporting, as ever.Onwards and downwards . . .

Dr Dre, seller of weighted headphones, has fought a three-year court battle to stop Pennsylvania gynecologist Draion Burch from using the moniker Dr Drai. This week, the US trademark office dismissed Dr Dre's case. Via BBC:Mr Burch had also argued that consumers would be unlikely to confuse the two names "because Dr Dre is not a medical doctor nor is he qualified to provide any type of medical services or sell products specifically in the medical or healthcare industry".He further testified that he did not seek to trade on Dr Dre's reputation because the association would be "a bad reflection on me as a doctor" - citing lyrics he characterised as misogynistic and homophobic.The gynaecologist is the author of books such as 20 Things You May Not Know About the Vagina and describes himself as one of America's top health experts.Dr Dre can currently be seen in the Netflix documentary The Defiant Ones, which charts his rise from the streets of Compton to the multi-millionaire executive in charge of Beats 1.

On May 1, 2017 Nino Perrotta, "Acting" Special Agent in Charge of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s personal security detail, wrote a memo to justify his boss's flagrantly wasteful travel habits. Perrotta wrote, “We have observed and increased awareness and at times lashing out from passengers which occurs while the Administrator is seated in coach with PSD [his personal security detail] not easily accessible to him due to uncontrolled full flights."Does the above sentence even make sense? I guess it's the best we can expect from a gentleman whose describes himself as "Acting" Special Agent in Charge. An Acting Special Agent in Charge might held to a higher standard than an "Acting" Special Agent in Charge, but who knows -- anything is possible in the Trump "administration.""Therefore," the "Acting" Special Agent in Charge continues, "we believe that the continued use of coach seats for the Administrator would endanger his life and therefore respectfully ask that he be placed in either business or first class accommodations.”You'd think Perrotta's request would include specific examples of "lashing out," but there is nothing of the kind in the 87-word memo. Apparently, "Acting" Special Agents in Charge don't need to provide examples. They simply "act" and things get approved.Eventually, examples of "threats" against Pruitt were released to the public.From The Washington Post:Documents released Monday to the Post, the New York Times and BuzzFeed in response to public records requests show that the EPA was working on 33 threat investigations as of mid-March. Ten of those in fiscal 2018 involved Pruitt, the documents show.The documents include incident reports about the threats Pruitt faced, some of them sent via Twitter, emails, postcards and phone calls. Investigators looked into threats involving a range of people in an array of states, at times recommending criminal prosecution of those involved — though federal prosecutors often declined to move forward with charges.In one instance in January, according to the records, a person in Arkansas, who claimed to be 85 years old, wrote an expletive-filled letter on the back of paperwork from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The person mentioned Pruitt’s comments on global warming and said of the EPA chief, “[I] hope you & your kind die of cancer of the guts, slowly in agony, & rot forever in a toxic sewer in hell.” What exactly investigators found was unclear, but they concluded the case should be “closed without further action.”Now I'm finally starting to get it. "Acting" special agents deal with "threats," while acting special agents deal with threats.

If you've had your identity stolen or if you're worried about having been doxxed by Equifax, you can freeze your credit record, and then Equifax, Experian, Trans Union and Innovis will block any requests to access your credit report. (more…)

Doug Ford -- alleged hashish kingpin and brother to the dead, racist, violent, sexist, rapey crackhead ex-Toronto-Mayor Rob Ford -- stole the nomination to lead the Ontario Conservatives in an upcoming provincial race. (more…)

Party on, dudes.After 27 years, metalheads Bill S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves) will time travel again on the big screen in a threequel called Bill & Ted Face the Music. Hollywood Reporter writes:Currently in preproduction, Bill & Ted Face the Music will see the duo long past their days as time-traveling teenagers and now weighed down by middle age and the responsibilities of family. They’ve written thousands of tunes, but they have yet to write a good one, much less the greatest song ever written. With the fabric of time and space tearing around them, a visitor from the future warns our heroes that only their song can save life as we know it. Out of luck and fresh out of inspiration, Bill and Ted set out on a time travel adventure to seek the song that will set their world right and bring harmony in the universe as we know it. Together with the aid of their daughters, a new crop of historical figures, and some sympathetic music legends, they find much, much more than just a song.“We couldn't be more excited to get the whole band back together again," said Reeves and Winter. "Chris and Ed wrote an amazing script, and with Dean at the helm we've got a dream team!"Bloom's Alex Walton said: “Fans of Bill and Ted have been waiting for Reeves and Winter to reunite since their last Bogus Journey in 1991. This is excellent!”Bill and Ted's mentor Rufus (played by the late great George Carlin who passed in 2008) will be part of the new film, according to its writer Ed Solomon in a JanuaryDigitalSpy interview."There's actually a scene – one of my favourite scenes in the whole movie – where middle-aged, 50-year-old Bill and Ted return to the Circle K and see their teen selves and Rufus, and actually interact with their teenage selves, played by their actual teenage selves."They return to that scene at the Circle K when Bill and Ted first meet themselves, only now they're watching their younger selves and looking at the exuberance and joy that they had at that time in their lives. And they see Rufus, they see George Carlin...Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter Reteaming for 'Bill & Ted 3'

When I Macon County, IL K-9 trainer Chad Larner's claim that marijuana legalization would necessitate euthanizing 275 Illinois drug-sniffer dogs that couldn't be retrained and who would be driven mad by the pervasive smell of legal weed, I thought, "Gosh, I hope some cops from a legal weed state like Colorado show up to explain that this guy is full of shit." (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKUFK7MWvgA group of scientists from Intel and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign have published a paper called Learning to See in the Dark detailing a powerful machine-learning based image processing technique that allows regular cameras to take super-sharp pictures in very low light, without long exposures or the kinds of graininess associated with low-light photography. (more…)

In 1921 a schooner ran aground on the treacherous shoals off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. When rescuers climbed aboard, they found signs of a strange drama in the ship's last moments -- and no trace of the 11-man crew. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll examine the curious case of the Carroll A. Deering, which has been called "one of the enduring mysteries of maritime history."We'll also experiment with yellow fever and puzzle over a disputed time of death.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Last month, an unnamed 19-year-old Nova Scotian grew frustrated with the lack of a search interface for the province's public repository of responses to public records requests; he wanted to research the province's dispute with its public school teachers and didn't fancy manually clicking on thousands of links to documents to find the relevant ones, so he wrote a single line of code that downloaded all the public documents to his computer, from which he could search them with ease. (more…)

Doug Ford is the leader of the Ontario Provincial Party, a job he got through outright fraud; and it's only getting better: on Monday night, Ford -- brother of the dead, disgraced, crack-addicted, racist, sexist, rapey, violent, lying former mayor of Toronto Rob Ford -- showed up for a leadership debate in Toronto, cheered on by throngs of supporters, who turn out to have been paid actors pretending to be Conservatives. (more…)

In this video, a 27-year-old Korean woman is playing an odd dating game, kind of like a live-action Tinder.She first chooses her ideal type of guy using options on her phone (e.g. "isn't cocky," "funny," "buff") and then 10 men (in masks) who meet her qualifications are seated in front of her. Communicating with them individually only in a chatroom, she then spends the next 30 minutes deciding who is the best guy for her. She finally picks one after eliminating the others. Pulling her chair closer to his, he then quietly takes his mask off, and the video awkwardly ends. Will they go on a date? Was he tall enough for her? Did his stamina meet her requirements? We may never know!(Honestly, I was surprised that not one guy sent her a dick pic.)(reddit)

On September 22, 1990, Nirvana played at Seattle's Motorsports International Garage. Kurt Cobain played his Aria Pro II Cardinal Series guitar that he ultimately smashed to bits. (Video evidence below.) A fellow working security grabbed the busted body and after the show, Cobain requested return of the pickups. The security guard kept the rest and has now put it on the auction block. Estimated price is $40,000 - $60,000. "Kurt Cobain stage played and smashed guitar" (Julien's Auctions)https://youtu.be/aHjM1f8qlNo

One of the great things about the past few years has been having it come to pass that, if you build a long, respected career in the public eye, yet simultaneously act like a lecherous scumbag behind closed doors, you're going to pay for it. Hard.Days after Bill Cosby was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand 14 years ago, the hits to his legacy keep coming.Almost as soon as the verdict in Cosby's case was announced, universities and colleges that had given the comedian honorary degrees over the years began to take them back. Five days ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, less than thrilled with the optics of having a convicted sex criminal among its members, kicked Cosby's puddin' pop loving ass to the curb. But the best was yet to come: yesterday, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts followed suit by revoking Honors that its board had bestowed on the tranquilizer-and-rape-happy celebrity over the years. Cosby is the first honoree in the Kennedy Center's history to have his awards rescinded.That should look real nice on Cosby's Wikipedia page.From the Washington Post:In a statement released Monday, the arts center said that Cosby’s conviction eclipsed his decades-long performance career.“The Honors and Mark Twain Prize are given to artists who, through their lifetime of work, have left an indelible impact on American culture. As a result of Mr. Cosby’s recent criminal conviction, the Board concluded that his actions have overshadowed the very career accomplishments these distinctions from the Kennedy Center intend to recognize.”That quote, in my mind, is the literary equivalent of a throat punch.Given that Cosby still hasn't even been sentenced yet, the fallout that's come of his crimes being exposed and validated by the courts is astounding – and so very apt. No amount of public embarrassment, shame or even the 30 years in the clink that Cosby may be facing can ever make up for the emotional and psychological pain that's been endured by his victims over the years.Image: The World Affairs Council of Philadelphia - The World Affairs Council and Girard College present Bill Cosby, CC BY 2.0, Link

By the time George Barris tricked-out this Cushman golf cart, he had already built quite a few custom cars including, most notably, the coffin-shaped Munster Koach in 1964 and the Batmobile in 1966. Known as the "King of the Kustomizers," Barris built this one-of-a-kind vehicle in the early 1970s in the likeness of its iconic golf-loving celebrity recipient Bob Hope: ski-jump nose, jutting chin and all. It featured "a TV, a tape deck and a rear-mounted camera so that Hope could film his swing," according to Golf Digest.In this video, you can see those details:https://youtu.be/FKMBRWTKKPQ(Do you know where the car museum shown in the video is? I would love to know!)(Pee-wee Herman)

Rudy Giuliani is like having a second Trump in the White House, only not as smart. John Oliver has a field day with Giuliani's latest client-damaging crazy talk on a recent Fox News interview. He also looks at Giuliani's career, which reveals that he's always been out of his mind.

Last week, a worker on a farm in New Zealand was rounding up cows before sunrise when he noticed a massive sinkhole, almost falling into it while riding on his motorbike. But it wasn't until daylight that anyone realized how massive the sinkhole was – six stories deep and the length of two foot ball fields – thought to be the largest ever in New Zealand, according to Science Alert.It looks more like a canyon than a sinkhole:RAW VIDEO: See the massive sinkhole — six stories deep, two football fields long — that opened underneath a New Zealand farm. A volcanologist says it may have been growing underground for up to 100 years before recent heavy rain opened it up. https://t.co/LmtY2V4c7e pic.twitter.com/rxMXV2uEN4— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) May 4, 2018The sinkhole, near the city of Rotorua in an area called Earthquake Flat, looks like it's been forming for up to 100 years. From Science Alert:What is thought to be the largest known sinkhole in New Zealand has ripped open across a farm on NZ's North Island, revealing a gigantic cavernous void estimated to have been decades or even a century in the making..."The largest I've seen prior to this would be about a third of the size of this, so this is really big," volcanologist Brad Scott from Kiwi geoscience firm GNS Science told AP...According to Scott, the sinkhole could have been forming for up to 100 years, after decades of rainfall slowly eroded the farm's limestone rock foundations.After a period of intensive rainfall at the end of April that lasted for about a week, the last of the rock's resistance gave way, opening up to reveal this jagged, 200-metre-long (656 ft) ravine that looks like something out of the movie 2012.The sinkhole has been fenced off to keep farm stock – as well as motorbikes – from falling in.

MrBeast, best known for surprising video game streamers and restaurant workers with enormous donations and tips, also dabbles in goofy experiments, like seeing how many toy cars it takes to pull an actual car. (more…)

Bloomberg's new paywall isn't terribly remarkable, but the price--$35 a month--suggests a new type of walled garden. Danny Chrichton favors the paywall model, but...Incentive alignment is one thing, and my wallet is another. All of these subscriptions are starting to add up. These days, my media subscriptions are hovering around $80 a month, and I don’t even have TV. Storage costs for Google, Apple, and Dropbox are another $13 a month. Cable and cell service are another $200 a month combined. Software subscriptions are probably about $20 a month (although so many are annualized its hard to keep track of them). Amazon Prime and a few others total in around $25 a month.Worse, subscriptions aren’t getting any cheaper. Amazon Prime just increased its price to $120 a year, Netflix increased its popular middle-tier plan to $11 a month late last year, and YouTube increased its TV pricing to $40 a month last month. Add in new paywalls, and the burden of subscriptions is rising far faster than consumer incomes.I’m frustrated with this hell. I’m frustrated that the web’s promise of instant and free access to the world’s information appears to be dying. The return of media to "channels" is inevitable because the internet is infested with normalcy and the forces involved are too great to stop, but so is the return to bundling. It'll ride in on the horse of "all your paywalls, one low monthly fee."

Plunging scalding hot glassware into ice water is not very safe, but it does create tremendous pressure, enough to suck ten eggs into a jug with a mouth slightly smaller than an egg. (more…)

Amongst people who care deeply about typography and fonts -- which is, in our typographic age, probably a reasonable chunk of people online -- there's been a low-level war about spacing after a period. Specifically: When you finish a sentence, do you type one space, or two?There are many heated views on this matter.But recently, a couple of scholars decided to science this one out, and ... things did not turn out well for the one-spacers.As the Washington Post reports:So the researchers, Rebecca L. Johnson, Becky Bui and Lindsay L. Schmitt, rounded up 60 students and some eye tracking equipment, and set out to heal the divide.First, they put the students in front of computers and dictated a short paragraph, to see how many spaces they naturally used. Turns out, 21 of the 60 were “two-spacers, ” and the rest typed with close-spaced sentences that would have horrified the Founding Fathers.The researchers then clamped each student's head into place, and used an Eyelink 1000 to record where they looked as they silently read 20 paragraphs. The paragraphs were written in various styles: one-spaced, two-spaced, and strange combinations like two spaces after commas, but only one after periods. And vice versa, too.And the verdict was: two spaces after the period is better. It makes reading slightly easier.Mind you, the reading-speed improvement with double spaces was only 3%, so we're talking about a pretty tiny delta here.Small enough, in fact, that this study has not so much resolved this debate as fanned its eternal, eldritch flames. Over a Lifehacker, Nick Douglas notes that the study didn't really model the type of reading people do all day long: The text was typed out in a monospaced font with double-spaced lines, whereas the majority of reading we do online (and in print) is with proportional fonts, and rarely double-spaced. Meanwhile, Matthew Butterick wrote -- in a proportional font, bien sur -- a terrific essay looking at these questions from the perspective of typographers.Me, I'm a one-spacer. When I cut and pasted the text from the Washington Post into this blog post, I immediately noticed that the Post writers had composed their story using two-spaces, those sly dogs. (In a wonderfully meta turn of events, the reason I was able to notice this is that the "text" editing format in Wordpress, the CMS in which we write these Boing Boing posts, itself uses a monospace font. So maybe monospace isn't quite as dead, for composition, as one might think!)Anyway, the instant I saw the double-spacing, I aesthetically recoiled. Like any normal person would. So I dumped the text into Clean Text, a little Mac app I keep open all day long while I'm at work, because it's great for quickly cleaning up the wonky formatting of text cut-and-pasted off the web. It's even got a preset command for "Fix spaces", which of course means "take all double spaces, which are an affront to all right-thinking citizens of good conscience and discernment, and replace 'em with single spaces".And I hit it.(CC-licensed photo via J E Theriot)

I am heavily digging this ASCII art generator: Type in your text and it'll render it in one of several dozen ASCII fonts.A few of my favorites ...

I use my Amazon Fire HD 10 every day. At $120 it is the bargain tablet I wanted.My bright red Amazon Fire HD 10" tablet is amazingly darn useful. Compared to the Apple equivalent I've saved $100s of dollars on features I didn't want to use. I bought this tablet as soon as it was announced, and it has become a pretty constant companion. (more…)

Fortnite Battle Royale, a 100 player last-person-standing video game, has become all the rage in my home. It is easy, and free, to hop in and play but takes a lot of strategy, and tactics to play well. These videos have been helping my daughter and I.I love Ben "Dr. Lupo" Lupo. Ben is a streamer whose giant heart made the Destiny community proud a few years ago. Lupo is smart, eager, friendly and completely aware that his audience is of all ages and sorts. You can watch Lupo without fear of misogyny or racism, which is a lot to say for white male streamer. You can also learn from him. Domeshot University is a series of videos Lupo has been creating that explain exactly what he is thinking, and why he is doing what he does he as plays Fortnite. He has helped my gameplay immensely.I've learned to make finding a shotgun my early focus, how to prioritize healing items, and a lot of 'how Dr. Lupo looks at the map.' This all really helps. Please keep making them, Ben!Look at how I've improved:https://youtu.be/IAqIf5WAuvII still have not won a solo match, but I came really damn close. The above video is me trying SO hard. I thought you'd enjoy my painful fail at the end. I think the other player got a lucky headshot.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOOTx2RJMg4My daughter loves Ali-A. This guy has more energy than the energizer bunny, gets that young kids are in the audience and speaks to the 11 year-olds of Fortnite. My kid currently has just as many Season 4 wins as I do (one in squads each,) so who am I to say no...

After listening to tons of racist and ignorant horseshit from NRA conference attendees, the owner of Dallas-area eatery Ellen's decided to donate a portion of this weeks proceeds to groups pursuing reasonable gun legislation. The NRA asked its members to eat elsewhere.Everyone wins except the people dead of gun violence.Via Share Blue:Ellen’s, a restaurant in downtown Dallas where the NRA is holding its annual convention, had a message printed on its customer receipts: “Thanks for visiting Ellen’s! A portion of this week’s proceeds will be donated to organizations dedicated to implementing reasonable and effective gun regulation.”Most Americans consider that a sensible message — especially following the mass shootings at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Parkland and the daily murders all around the country. But it angered the NRA.The group tweeted an image of an Ellen’s receipt. “Attn @AnnualMeetings attendees. Steer clear of Ellen’s in downtown Dallas! Why go there when there are so many other great choices.”Joe Groves, the owner of Ellen’s, said he added the message because of what he heard from NRA convention attendees. “I’m making a list of the vile, racist, moronic conversations overheard from NRA attendees eating at the restaurant,” he wrote on Facebook. “They don’t even speak softly.”He told the website Eater that the attendees have insulted his wait staff with racial epithets. One person reportedly asked a Latino staff member, “Your illegals are kept in the kitchen, right?”Another NRA fan reportedly told black employees they “don’t sound black” and asked if they were from India.“The only reason we need our guns is because of the blacks,” another attendee reportedly declared.But these repugnant statements are part of a pattern for the NRA and its supporters. The group has embraced racism and bigotry as part of its pro-gun advocacy.

Every time a conservative jackass accuses a high school kid of being "a crisis actor" remember this: someone hired actors to support an energy company's proposal. The actors were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. Some of the actors talked anyhow.Via The Lens NOLA:At least four of the people in orange shirts were professional actors. One actor said he recognized 10 to 15 others who work in the local film industry.They were paid $60 each time they wore the orange shirts to meetings in October and February. Some got $200 for a “speaking role,” which required them to deliver a prewritten speech, according to interviews with the actors and screenshots of Facebook messages provided to The Lens.“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” said Keith Keough, who heard about the opportunity through a friend.He said he thought he was going to shoot a commercial. “I’m not political,” he said. “I needed the money for a hotel room at that point.”They were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements and were instructed not to speak to the media or tell anyone they were being paid.But three of them agreed to talk about their experience and provided evidence that they were paid to endorse the power plant. Two spoke on the condition that they not be identified, saying they didn’t want to jeopardize other work or get in trouble for violating the non-disclosure agreement.Another attendee, an actor and musician who played a small role on HBO’s “Treme,” told WWL-TV he was paid to wear one of the orange shirts at a meeting of the council’s utility committee.Paying people to create the illusion of grassroots support is known as astroturfing. Although it’s misleading, it appears to be legal. The Lens couldn’t find any prohibition against such activities, and Louisiana’s lobbying laws only cover money spent directly on public officials.But Councilwoman Stacy Head called what happened in those meetings “disturbing.” Councilwoman Susan Guidry, the only member of the Utility Committee to vote against the plant, called it “morally reprehensible,” saying, “I think it had a phenomenal impact on public opinion.”The two men who recruited and organized the actors, Garrett Wilkerson and Daniel Taylor, appear to be from out of town. In our story about the October hearing, Wilkerson offered an apocalyptic prediction about what would happen to New Orleans if the power plant weren’t built.It remains unclear who was behind the effort, but Guidry has a guess. “How can you not link Entergy to this?” she asked. “Who else would have paid all these people to come there and say they want a gas-fired power plant?”Entergy New Orleans did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The company told WWL-TV, “Entergy New Orleans did not pay anyone to attend.”Previously on Boing Boing:"Citizens" who speak at town meetings are hired, scripted actors

Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber made a landmark contribution to the debate about inequality, money, and wealth with his massive 2012 book Debt: The First 5,000 Years (a book that helped inspire my 2017 novel Walkaway). (more…)

One effect of the Snowden leaks is that the NSA now makes an annual disclosure of the extent of its domestic surveillance operations; that's how we know that the NSA collected 534 million phone call and text message records (time, date, location, from, to -- but not the content), which more than triples its surveillance takings in 2016. (more…)

In the decade since the UK rolled out its Great Firewall, the project of somehow dividing the entire internet into "good" and "bad" (or even "all-ages" and "adult") has run into a series of embarrassing gaffes, blocking rape crisis sites while letting through all sorts of ghastly porn -- and at every turn, the Conservative government's response has been to double down on internet censorship, expanding it from a parental filter to an opt-out porn filter, whose biggest backers have repeatedly demonstrated their technical incompetence. (more…)

Remember the fantastic attention experiment in which you have to count the times the basketball is passed? (If you don't know it, watch the video before reading the rest of this post.)In a recent paper in the scientific journal Acta Astronautica, University of Cadiz psychologists suggest that like the gorilla experiment, "selective attention" based on our preconceptions about possible extraterrestrials and how they may communicate may cause us to overlook evidence of their existence. Over at the SETI Institute blog, BB pal and astronomer Seth Shostak likens their argument to the gorilla experiment and counters that right now, the best thing to do is what we know how to do. And that's scanning the skies with antennae listening for signals:It would be heavy-duty hubris to claim that we have considered every possibility in our efforts to find aliens. We’ve certainly been myopic in the past. During the nineteenth century, European physicists suggested we could establish contact with Martians by turning gas lanterns in the direction of the Red Planet. The plan was hopeless, but not because the scientists were ignoring other possibilities. They simply didn’t know about radio or much about Mars, and proposed a reasonable experiment given the science understanding of the time.Sure, our preconceived notions of what would be good evidence of aliens — including radio signals, flashing lasers, or megastructures — might be blinding us to clues that, like nitrogen in the air, are all around us and yet overlooked. But to quote Dirty Harry, “a man’s got to know his limitations.” The men and women searching for extraterrestrials can do no better than to go with what they know.So while it’s easy to complain, as members of the public occasionally do, that scanning the sky with big antennas is old school and parochial, the fact is that sending information from star to star on a radio wave is fast and efficient...New ideas about how to search are important when they make a prediction that can be verified with a telescope or some other instrument. Succinctly put, the idea that we’re missing the boat would be more interesting if it were accompanied by a battle plan for finding boats."What can a fake gorilla teach us about the search for space aliens?" (SETI)