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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)

Wil Wheaton has publicly discussed his anxiety and depression before; I know several people whose lives were improved by reading what he had to say. (more…)

I survive spring allergies by rinsing out my sinuses. (more…)

The Washington Post created some interesting maps that show levels of diversification in various American cities. They categorize cities like Chicago as examples of legacy segregation, where cities like Houston indicate rapid diversification. (more…)

By way of the Daily Grail comes this fascinating bit of Pioneer spacecraft history. Kirby was among the artist asked to submit ideas for the plaques to be flown on the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes, launched in the early 1970s. Kirby's submission was vastly different than the very literal pictogram designed by Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, and Linda Salzman-Sagan and flown on the missions. Jack was not comfortable with the idea of giving some future Galactus GPS directions to our house. I would have included no further information than a rough image of the Earth and its one moon. I see no wisdom in the eagerness to be found and approached by any intelligence with the ability to accomplish it from any sector of space. In the meetings between ‘discoverers’ and ‘discoverees,’ history has always given the advantage to the finders. In the case of the Jupiter (Pioneer) plaque, I feel that a tremendous issue was thoughtlessly taken out of the world forum by a few individuals who have marked a clear trail to our door.My point is, who will come a-knocking – the trader or the tiger?In describing his approach to the art he submitted, he wrote:It appears to me that man’s self image has always spoken far more about him than does his reality-figure. My vision of the plaque would have revealed the exuberant, self-confident super visions with which we’ve clothed ourselves since time immemorial. The comic strip super-heroes and heroines, in my belief, personify humanity’s innate idealism and drivePersonally, I don't think we want "underwear perverts" (as Warren Ellis has called spandex supers) representing us, but you've got to love the idea of communicating "exuberant, self-confident super visions" of ourselves.

I used eight small disc magnets in this Raspberry Pi computer case that my daughter and I designed for playing the early 1980s game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, and I have 112 magnets left over. The pack of 120 costs $10. I don't know if they're neodymium, but they're strong for their size. I'm planning to use them, whenever feasible, as a superior substitute to screws in every 3D project I make. If you're attending Maker Faire this year, come to our talk and say hi. I'll give you a magnet, if I remember to bring them with me.

The Truck Surf Hotel is a modded Mercedes Actros outfitted with a hydraulically-expanding two-story inn. Inside is a living room, kitchen, four double rooms with bunk bed, one double room with a single larger bed, bathroom, and shower. Over the course of a week vacation package, the hotel travels to surf destinations in Portugal and Morocco. The trip is around $700-$900 depending on the destination and season; airfare not included. Truck Surf Hotel (via Uncrate)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB5TneZwY2s

Multiple Facebookers and ex-Facebookers risked lawsuits by revealing the company's longstanding problem with employees who abuse their access to Facebook's databases to stalk Facebook users, and its longstanding practice of binding all concerned to nondisclosure, keeping it a secret from the people who were stalked by its employees. (more…)

Diana A. Smith is a user interface engineer, and to show off her skills, she creates art using hand-coded HTML and CSS. The results are stunning.

I'm always afraid of getting cut off at the last minute by lane-changers who aren't paying attention. It's happened to me more than once when I'm in the car pool lane and some idiot stuck in a traffic jam decides to change lanes without looking, forcing me to slam on the brakes. Here's a guy who got cut off so harshly his car rolled on two wheels for a second. Glad he caught it on his dashcam.

It took maker Eli Peterson several weeks to make this silver and "nowhere near perfect" diamond engagement ring, making mistakes along the way that forced him to melt the ring back down and start over a bunch of times. But he's condensed his process into about three-and-a-half minutes to show us how he did it.

Deep brain stimulators -- pacemaker-like implants that deliver electrical impulses to specific regions in the brain -- are common treatments for Parkinson's and other neurological disorders. It's known that strong electromagnetic fields from the likes of ham radio antennae and arc welders can damage the devices. Now, researchers report the case of a 66-year-old woman whose deep brain stimulator was knocked out when lightning hit her apartment. Fortunately, the lightning shut off the device without damaging her brain. “The patient was not charging the battery of her IPG (implantable pulse generator) during the event, and the recharger for the IPG was disconnected from the power supply during the storm," the researchers wrote. "The recharger and IPG were therefore not destroyed. The patient realized that something was wrong only 1 hour after the storm subsided, when the dystonic tremor in her neck reappeared.”"Lightning may pose a danger to patients receiving deep brain stimulation: case report" (Journal of Neuroscience via Mysterious Universe)

Vsauce3's Jake Roper reveals the wondrous perceptual paradoxes of "impossible objects" from Escher's cube to the Penrose triangle.(via Laughing Squid)

The BBC reports on the deluge of spelling errors in official White House communications, from amusements such as "Air Force Once" to dangerous mistakes such as this week's accidentally-on-purpose suggestion that Iran still has a nuclear weapons program.Less than a month after taking office, the White House misspelled the name of British Prime Minister Theresa May three times in a press release announcing her visit.Her first name was spelled repeatedly with no "h" which, the Independent noted, is the name of a pornographic actress who starred in films including "Whitehouse: The Sex Video" and "Leather Lust".Mr Trump later made a similar mistake in a tweet, when he tagged a Sussex woman (whose Twitter account had only six followers) with a similar name to the politician.They are countless—there's simply no-one there in possession of both literacy and authority. My favorite is "lasting peach."

Comcast has found a new way to stem "cord-cutting" (cutting off your cable TV subscription in favor of subscription services like Netflix, or, as in my case, in favor of giving up on watching TV altogether); in markets where they are a monopoly or duopoly, they will reserve their highest-speed internet offerings for customers who agree to pay extra for cable channels that they don't want or need -- if all you want is internet access, Comcast will relegate you to its slow lanes. (more…)

In 1932 a quartet of Bronx gangsters set out to murder a friend of theirs in order to collect his life insurance. But Michael Malloy proved to be almost comically difficult to kill. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review what one observer called "the most clumsily executed insurance scam in New York City history."We'll also burrow into hoarding and puzzle over the value of silence.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Four sources tell the Washington Post that special counsel Robert Mueller told Donald Trump's lawyers that he could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, if Trump didn't voluntarily come in for an interview to tell what he knows about Russia, collusion, obstruction, and whatever else investigators want to know. (more…)

This 115 piece first aid kit is perfect for keeping in your car. It's small but has sterile eye wash, conforming bandages in assorted sizes and shapes, adhesive plasters, first aid tape, wound dressings, crepe bandaging, an instant ice pack, a thermal blanket, a non-adherent pad, knuckle and fingertip fabric strips, elbow and knee bandages, safety pins, gloves, tweezers and scissors, all in a long-wearing green nylon bag. You have to be a Prime member to get it at the sale price of $7.

Kernit is a font inspired by the work of Jim Henson. [h/t Akimbo_NOT].It's Nice That:Full of curves, with the counters and eyes of the letters appearing squished, Kernit is full of energy, as if it could spring off the page. “Our goal was to build a voice that is both unique and true to Henson’s work and visual style,” they explain. “Each letter and character is meant to capture the same imagination, fun and whimsy which we came to love in his creations.”As well as its obvious influences in its name and the colour palette of its specimen, Kernit was inspired by a host of Henson’s characters as well as the bold typography of the 1970s: an era of rounded edges. For example, Milton Glaser’s iconic “I love New York” logo with its curved serifs debuted in 1973.

After publicly admitting he prescribed hair loss drugs to the wildly maned US President, Doctor Harold Bornstein claims his office was raided by White House aides.Via NBC News:In February 2017, a top White House aide who was Trump's longtime personal bodyguard, along with the top lawyer at the Trump Organization and a third man, showed up at the office of Trump's New York doctor without notice and took all the president's medical records.The incident, which Dr. Harold Bornstein described as a "raid," took place two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had prescribed a hair growth medicine for the president for years.In an exclusive interview in his Park Avenue office, Bornstein told NBC News that he felt "raped, frightened and sad" when Keith Schiller and another "large man" came to his office to collect the president's records on the morning of Feb. 3, 2017. At the time, Schiller, who had long worked as Trump's bodyguard, was serving as director of Oval Office operations at the White House.

40-year-old Raji Afife Azar ran a LEGO theft and fencing operation in Portland, Oregon. Aided by the Fred Meyer market's Retail Theft Unit, Portland PD put a stop to this brick bandit.Via the Portland PD's statement on the arrest:This investigation began in early 2018 when Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit Investigators learned Azar was the leader of a fencing operation that involved the theft and sale of merchandise from multiple stores in the Portland metropolitan area. During the investigation, the Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit worked with the Northwest Organized Retail Crime Alliance and learned Azar had solicited multiple people to steal from various business throughout the area.During this investigation, undercover investigators were contacted by Azar on multiple occasions. The undercover investigators posed as theft suspects that would sell stolen merchandise to Azar at a fraction of the manufacturer's retail suggested price. On Thursday, April 26, 2018, Azar requested undercover investigators, who he believed were theft suspects, sell him approximately $13,000 in stolen merchandise. The undercover investigators met Azar in the 10300 block of Southeast Washington Street with the supposed stolen merchandise. After Azar purchased the stolen merchandise from undercover officers, he was taken into custody without incident.Once Azar was taken into custody, a search warrant was served at his family's residence in the 2000 block of Southeast 102nd Avenue. During a search of the residence, investigators located a large quantity of stolen Legos and other stolen merchandise (photograph provided with press release). Investigators with the Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit estimate the recovered stolen value of the Legos and other toys taken from Portland area Fred Meyer stores to be approximately $50,000 -- this estimate does not include merchandise that was recovered at the residence that came from other retail stores.Based on information learned during the investigation, detectives believe Azar would solicit the theft of items from stores through websites such as Craigslist and OfferUp. Azar would meet with individuals who stole items, purchase the stolen merchandise for pennies on the dollar of what the item was worth, then advertise and sell the stolen merchandise on Craigslist, EBay, and OfferUp. As part of Azar's fencing operation, people who often times suffered from addiction to opioids and other drugs would enter stores and steal items to sell to Azar. Azar would in turn buy the stolen merchandise for a small percentage of the items' actual worth and sell the stolen merchandise at a large profit for himself.Image via Portland PD

When the Cambridge Analytica scandal first broke -- and along with it, the news that the company had boasted of using deceptive and illegal tactics to sell Brexit -- Parliament asked Mark Zuckerberg to show up and account for himself. He told them to go fuck themselves. (more…)