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According to their website, Cora is a fixed-wing craft powered by 12 independent lift fans, which enable it to take off and land vertically like a helicopter. Therefore, Cora has no need for a runway. (more…)

Here's a little something for artsy wired types. Pantone has a number of colorful mugs, some of which may match how you take your favorite hot beverage. Note: they do not seem to have any dark enough for how many of our dear readers prefer. (more…)

Even if you don't own a home, this fascinating glimpse into the world of terrible roofing contractors is worth a watch. This inspector says it's the worst he's ever seen, then shows a dozen reasons why. (more…)

Seattle-based self-taught baker Lauren Ko of Loko Kitchen was inspired to start making her now-viral geometric pies after seeing some cool ones on Pinterest. For Pi Day, Tasty posted this video of Ko telling her story while showing us step-by-step how she does her thing. It's so satisfying to watch, esp. that sped-up crust-weaving part.Be sure to follow her pie-making adventures on Instagram. Since she started it in August 2017, she's gained over 150K followers, including Martha Stewart.Here's a taste:https://www.instagram.com/p/BcTfX67HPmD/?taken-by=lokokitchenhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BdvfGbUHBMT/?taken-by=lokokitchenhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BetGtVHnWvi/?taken-by=lokokitchenPreviously: These deliciously geometric pies are almost too pretty to eat

Ooo, betrothed comic book nerds, this one's for you. Mallory McKenney of Wisconsin makes wedding bouquets and boutonnieres by cutting up upcycled comics. From Batman to the Wolverine, and just about any character in between, the Milwaukee crafter can whip up something super for your big day. Before you get all up in arms about the comics she's chopping up, Mallory's husband Nick explains her source, "...she actually buys damaged comic books for super cheap from a couple comic book stores here in Milwaukee, so she’s definitely not using ones that anyone would want otherwise. The only real exceptions are if people request really specific comic books or characters that aren’t super popular and didn’t appear in too many issues."She sells her creations in her Etsy shop, glamMKE. Prices start at $10 (for a single flower) and go up to $200 (something for the entire wedding party).(reddit)

Meet John Kelly, the White House's "adult in the room":Reporters gathered at the White House on Friday were stunned when Chief of Staff John Kelly shared a very embarrassing story about outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.Kelly recounted a very awkward conversation with Tillerson during which he informed the secretary that President Donald Trump would very likely soon fire him. ... Tillerson, Kelly told the room, was suffering from a stomach bug during a diplomatic swing through Africa, and was using a toilet when Kelly broke the news to him.Sources were stunned that, even in an off-record setting, Kelly would say this—to a room filled with White House officials and political reporters—about Tillerson, who does not officially leave the State Department until the end of the month.The idea that John Kelly is the "grown-up" is one of the saddest lies the press tells itself about Trump's White House. Kelly is a stone-faced moron in public and an adolescent boy in private, a Jessup-esque archetype of the military lifer made real. A perfect fit for Trump, not a foil.

Two of the largest parts of a journalist's job are waiting and making phone calls. When you're waiting, it's likely for someone to return a call. When you're making a phone call, it's likely to set up an interview, or interview someone over the phone, Skype or whatever.Antoine Trépanier is a reporter for Radio-Canada: it's the French language farm of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Think PBS, only Beyond the Wall. Recently Trépanier was covering a story about a manager from a high-profile NPO falsely representing herself as a lawyer. Just another day in the dry-as-a-popcorn-fart world of public broadcasting. He called this individual, Yvonne Dubé, the executive director of the Big Brothers Big Sisters chapter in Gatineau, Quebec, to see if she'd be interested in sitting for an interview. She was down with the idea, or so it seemed. She cancelled the interview at the last moment. Trépanier emailed her, explaining that Radio Canada was going to run the story on his investigation. He wanted her to have the opportunity to comment on the allegations being leveled against her.The next day, the Gatineau police dropped by to arrest Trépanier for criminal harassment.According to the CBC, The Crown (our Queen-loving version of a district attorney) hasn't decided whether the charges will make it into court. The story of Trépanier's arrest touches on the topic of where the right of a journalist to contact a source ends and the rights of a source begin. It's an important issue: How much does the public's right to know about a topic that could effect their lives matter versus an individual's right to privacy? Should the rules for this be different if the individual in question holds no public office? Where are the lines drawn? A great American example of this issue can be found in whether American citizens have the right to see President Trump's tax returns from before he took office.As a tech journalist, I don't have to worry too often about pissing in someone's cornflakes. More often than not, companies want to talk to me and show me all of their new toys. I've always felt that journalists reporting on hard news do a more important job than I do. That what they uncover matters more than my telling you whether a smartphone sucks or not. It's my feeling that they deserve the highest levels of access possible, where the public trust is concerned.What's your take on it?Image: Evan-Amos - Own work, Public Domain, Link

This reminds of the saying that goes something like, "A mistake is when you fall. Failure is when you don't get back up." This little kid is the opposite of failure.no *you’re* crying pic.twitter.com/gR4HUqU3cW— A. Rascal (@rascality) March 15, 2018

I used to go to a lot of air shows when I was a kid growing up in Canada. I used to love seeing the American, British and French air forces show off their aircraft. It was always a thrill to see Canada's Snowbird aerobatic team show up to strut their stuff. Now, thanks to this video, I have a little insight into how they and other elite flying teams do what they do.

Enjoy this unusual performance of Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi and Mikhail Matusovsky's Moscow Nights. Then enjoy the video again, muted. Then enjoy a nice, hot, cleansing shower.

Since the first days of SXSW Interactive, Bruce Sterling has closed the festivities with a haranguing, funny, provocative keynote and nearly every year (2017, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2012 etc) we link to it. (more…)

Lifehack: Killing someone in cold blood, passion or even accidentally can land a person in jail for years, if not decades. But, if you film it, you could get off with a significantly less stringent sentence.If you're big into Darwinism, you might remember Monalisa Perez. Last year, she and her boyfriend, Pedro Ruiz III, parted ways, permanently, after a YouTube video they were filming went horribly, predictably wrong. This wasn't the pair's first doing-dumb-things-on-camera rodeo. They'd posted questionable stunts to YouTube before. This time around, they planned on taking the Internet by storm with footage of Perez firing a gun at Ruiz, who believed that he could stop a bullet with nothing more than a hardcover book. There were a couple of issues with this plan. First, trusting a book to protect you from death, unless you're boning up on how to make an anti-venom, is insane. Second, the pistol that Perez fired at her beau was a .50 caliber Desert Eagle. For the uninitiated, this is an insanely powerful handgun. With the right load, a round fired from it can bop through a bulletproof vest or pierce light ceramic or steel armor. In short, there was a very high probability that a book wasn't going to cut it.Despite this, Perez stood a foot away from her man and fired a single round. It went through the book! It went into him! He was killed! She got it all on tape, with not one, but two cameras. When Ruiz went down, she called 911 and told the operator what had happened. In December, Perez plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter. According to The Star Tribune, this past week, as the result of a plea bargain, she was sentenced to 180-days in jail for the crime:Monalisa Perez’s punishment, as outlined in an agreement to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter, is a 180-day jail term, and lifetime bans on possessing a firearm or receiving payment for telling the story of the June shooting of 22-year-old Pedro Ruiz III outside their home in the northwestern Minnesota town of Halstad.The sentence falls below state sentencing guidelines that would have sent her to prison. Norman County Attorney James Brue said that was proper under the circumstances for the 20-year-old mother of two.What do you folks think? Is the sentence too lenient, given the circumstances? Or, taking her intentions into account, does it seem fair?Image via Wikipedia Commons

For those who want to know how to use their eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher properly, here is a tutorial that explains it in simple steps.And for the rest of you who just want to know what the heck an eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher is, it literally means "eggshell predetermined breaking point causer." According to Wiktionary, it's "a device used to create breaking points in egg shells in order to allow one to easily remove the top part of an egg using a knife without causing the shell to splinter; used for the humorous effect of its overly-formal construction."And yes, they do sell them on Amazon.

Several people died when a 950-ton pedestrian bridge collapsed over a roadway near Florida International University (FIU). Live video footage of the incident shows 5 or 6 cars flattened beneath, pinned down by enormous concrete slabs. It is hard to imagine any of the people inside having survived, but some have. (more…)

Rihanna criticized Snap for running an ad on its platform that asked users if they would rather "Slap Rihanna" or "Punch Chris Brown." In 2009 Chris Brown beat Rihanna so badly that she was hospitalized.From BBC News:Snap told Newsbeat the advert, which was only published in the US, was published "in error" and had been removed immediately.Ads on the social media platform are subject to a review process, while it also has a list of banned content.Snap said: "The advert was reviewed and approved in error, as it violates our advertising guidelines. We immediately removed the ad last weekend, once we became aware."Is it just me, or is this ad that popped up on my Snapchat extremely tone deaf? Like what were they thinking with this? pic.twitter.com/7kP9RHcgNG— Royce Mann (@TheRoyceMann) March 12, 2018pic.twitter.com/VE4AT8zmYe— Roc Nation (@RocNation) March 15, 2018Just awful. Awful that anyone thinks this is funny. Awful that anyone thinks this is appropriate. Awful that any company would approve this. Thank you Brittany for calling this out.— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) March 12, 2018[via Digg]

Combined gifs - the art of taking clips from two or more different videos and mixing them together to create a funny little story - are hitting a new high water mark. Here's a collection of some good ones. Please share your favorites in the comments.https://imgur.com/a/yny3l?ref=hvper.com&utm_source=hvper.com&utm_medium=website

This dog has bumped his snout into the sliding glass door enough times to know that taking a treat offered by its human companion could have painful consequences.Good Boye Ran Into Glass Door Too Many Times from r/aww

New York Police Department Officer Yessenia Jimenez was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents on weapons and drug trafficking charges following a month long investigation. According to AP, Jimenez "helped her boyfriend run a heroin trafficking ring that spanned from Mexico to New York."NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill is so troubled by the arrest that he suspended Jimenez without pay. "Cops are charged with enforcing the law, not breaking it," he said in a statement. "Today’s arrest — for serious allegations of trafficking heroin — are troubling.”Did it really take this long for O’Neill to become troubled about crimes committed by his officers? Here are are a few recent stories about serious misdeeds conducted on his watch:Lawyer says nine NYPD officers bullied teen girl who accused two detectives of cuffing and raping herSecret NYPD files show hundreds of cops committed serious crimes and kept jobs and pensionsNYPD cops charged with felonies after beating up mailman

As brilliant as OK Go's "The One Moment" music video is from their Hungry Ghosts album, the math that went behind it is even more genius. Using spreadsheets and an incredible amount of math, you'll see why this meticulous and gorgeous video took years to make. If you haven't yet seen the "The One Moment" music video, you should watch it first (below) before seeing how it all added up. https://youtu.be/QvW61K2s0tA

If you attended either of the past two World Science Fiction Conventions or are registered for the next one in San Jose, California, you're eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, which you can do here -- you've only got until midnight tomorrow! (more…)

Learning how to play the guitar is no easy feat, and plenty of aspiring rock stars wash out due to either lost interest or simply lousy teaching. The Jamstik+ aims to remedy both of these issues with a 21st-century approach. This smart guitar teaches you about chords, scales, and the like via an app on your smartphone. This week only, Boing Boing readers can get it on sale for $269.99 (normal: $279.99, MSRP: $299.99).Combining real strings and frets with an accessible tutoring program, the Jamstik+ teaches you how to play the guitar quickly in a simulated, encouraging environment. You'll follow along interactive videos and games and get real-time, onscreen feedback from sensors on the device. Plus, the guitar's compact size makes it easy to take your lessons on the move.The Jamstik+ Portable Smart Guitar can get you started learning the guitar, and it's on sale for $269.99.

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First there were Finger Hands, little vinyl hands that fit on your finger, much like finger puppets. Now, there are Finger Hands for Finger Hands, even smaller hands that fit on the fingers of your Finger Hands (or pens/pencils). Of course, I love them because they're so perfectly bizarre.For $5 you get 10 of them and they come in light and dark skin tones. If you need A LOT of them, they are available in bulk too (144 mixed skin tones/left and right hands for $59.95). They're from Archie McPhee, of course.

Adam Tuminaro gathered clips from his earliest days of drumming to the present, and comments on what he learned at each point. It's a great motivational template for any creative endeavor. Nobody starts out perfect, and staying focused on improving along with putting in the hours will eventually yield rewards. (more…)

The Pirates of the Caribbean was the last ride Walt Disney personally supervised; it has undergone many replications and revisions over the years, but last year Disneyland Paris removed the "Buy a Bride" scene, in which we are treated to a lighthearted human trafficking auction in which captured women are auctioned to pirates as "brides." (more…)

Hey, remember when that dangerous orange toddler that runs America retweeted the online blather of a bunch of English facists? Good times. Today, a company that's made some hilariously poor choices in the area of user privacy, curbing spam and stomping out hate speech proved that they've got more of their shit together than the – God help us – leader of the free world.According to The Verge, Facebook has banned U.K.-based far-right racist shit heels Britain First from their social network for "inciting hatred against minorities."In a statement made earlier today, Facebook explained that in the past, they've tried to find a balance between free speech and decency that would allow a variety of opinions to be voiced and considered on their social network. But their patience for hateful bullshit only goes so far:There are times though when legitimate political speech crosses the line and becomes hate speech designed to stir up hatred against groups in our society. This is an important issue which we take very seriously and we have written about how we define hate speech and take action against it in our Hard Questions series. We have Community Standards that clearly state this sort of speech is not acceptable on Facebook and, when we become aware of it, we remove it as quickly as we can. Political parties, like individuals and all other organizations on Facebook, must abide by these standards and where a Page or person repeatedly breaks our Community Standards we remove them.Content posted on the Britain First Facebook Page and the Pages of party leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen has repeatedly broken our Community Standards. We recently gave the administrators of the Pages a written final warning, and they have continued to post content that violates our Community Standards. As a result, in accordance with our policies, we have now removed the official Britain First Facebook Page and the Pages of the two leaders with immediate effect. We do not do this lightly, but they have repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups, which disqualifies the Pages from our service.Nice.Of course, banning a single, high-profile group from using their service won't put a stop to the sort of hate speech that finds its way on to Facebook each and every day, but lopping off Britain First's social media head is a strong, symbolic action that could start the wheels turning towards the dawning of an online world where fascists, racists and other hateful wastes of flesh will be afraid to show their faces.Image by Petr Kratochvil/PublicDomainPictures.net

Facebook maintains a repository of success stories trumpeting the advertisers who have attained greatness by buying Facebook ads; most of these are businesses, but until recently, Facebook also trumpeted Florida Governor Rick Scott's use of Facebook ads to "boost Hispanic voter turnout in their candidate’s successful bid for a second term, resulting in a 22% increase in Hispanic support and the majority of the Cuban vote." (more…)

Brains are so overrated. Sure, they let us know when it's time to poop and help us to find our car keys, but that's not very impressive for an organ that takes up just about all of the space in a skull. You could totally get away with a smaller brain just fine. Check it out: according to The Washington Post, a seemingly healthy fella was found to have a 3.5" air bubble in his skull where a good chunk of his grey matter should be and he was still walking around, eating sandwiches and everything.The 84-year-old gentleman's missing brains were discovered after he complained of taking frequent falls and a loss of sensation on one side of his body – symptoms commonly associated with a stroke. When he reported to the emergency room to get checked out, the ER doctors were gobsmacked to discover that their patient had a massive, pressurized air bubble – called a pneumatocoele – in his skull where brains should have been. The empty head space was particularly surprising because the man arrived in the emergency department with afflictions otherwise common for his age. He had been complaining to his regular doctor about repeated falls and feeling unsteady in recent months. When the man added left-sided arm and leg weakness to the list of complaints, his doctor advised him to go to the emergency room, fearing a possible stroke.But aside from the weakness and unsteadiness, the man was in good shape. In the case report, doctors noted that “there was no confusion, facial weakness, visual or speech disturbance… He was otherwise fit and well, independent with physical activities of daily living (PADLs) and lived at home with his wife and two sons. He was a non-smoker and drank alcohol rarely."It took a while, but the man's medical team managed to figure out how the air bubble had been formed inside of his skull. A small hole in the bone between his sinus and brain cavity had been made by a benign bone tumor. Whenever the man coughed or sneezed, a smidgen of pressurized air was forced into the brain cavity. Over time, the 3.5" bubble was formed.So, go ahead: hop on your bike without wearing a helmet – take a spill for fun! You've likely got more brains than you need.Image via Pexels

For months, the European Parliament has been negotiating over a new copyright rule, with rightsholder organizations demanding that some online services implement censoring filters that prevent anyone from uploading text, sounds or images if they have been claimed by a copyright holder. (more…)

In the open access debate, advocates for traditional, for-profit scholarly journals often claim that these journals add value to the papers they publish in the form of editorial services that improve their readability and clarity. (more…)

Battling Against Demeaning & Abusive Selfie Sharing (AKA the Badass Army) is an activist group founded by revenge porn survivor Katelyn Bowden to offer self-defense training against the tactics of traffickers in "involuntary pornography," particularly the loathsome denizens of Anon-IB. (more…)

Jason Kottke's blog turns 20 today (our online incarnation is a mere 18.3 years old, though we go back in print by another decade-plus); he celebrates with a lovely essay that recalls some of his thoughts in 2008, when he celebrated his tenth by speculating on whether he'd still be going in 2018, 2028 or 2038: "I had a personal realization recently: kottke.org isn’t so much a thing I’m making but a process I’m going through. A journey. A journey towards knowledge, discovery, empathy, connection, and a better way of seeing the world. Along the way, I’ve found myself and all of you. I feel so so so lucky to have had this opportunity."

It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from the door chime in this Volvo 240. Why? Because it plays an 8-bit version of Toto's "Africa." This sweet mod was created by Chris NG, a fan of the YouTube channel 8 bit Universe. NG's currently got a Kickstarter going for custom vehicle door chimes.Need more Toto?:-- Toto's "Africa" playing in an abandoned mall-- Toto's 'Africa,' as performed by a computer hardware orchestra-- The story behind Toto's 'Africa'-- Pop music genres illustrated with Toto's Africa on a lightweight portable keyboard"I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've become"(reddit)

IllustrisTNG, a next-gen simulator for cosmological events, created this beautiful animation of a "late-type" star-forming galaxy. It's fascinating to watch how mind-boggling mass and energy on a mind-boggling time scale looks familiar to observable phenomena on earth. (more…)

Anything A Bad Lip Reading does is a-ok with me. Their latest video is a musical one where Grand Moff Tarkin sings delightful nonsense with Princess Leia.It's called, "It's Not a Moon."Previously: Bad Lip Reading Rap of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back's Battle of Hoth

A puppy died on a United Airlines flight Monday after "an attendant forced the animal’s owner to put the pet in the cabin’s overhead bin." (more…)

The Kids in the Hall are Canada's greatest national export. (more…)

The Mirai and Reaper botnets were just the beginning. xkcd's graph on the fragility of IoT systems is a warning of things to come.

Apple produces some powerful computers, but without the right apps, you're probably not using your Mac to its full potential. Of course, finding the right programs can be a daunting task given the sheer number of them available, but with the 2018 Mac Essentials Bundle, you can net ten great apps for just $2 apiece. Here are some of the highlights:1. BusyCal 3This calendar app adds a new level of flexibility to your schedule. It boasts a host of smart filters and custom views to boost your productivity and tracks your to-dos inline with your calendar events. Plus, it even syncs with your iPhone, Google Calendar, iCloud, Exchange, and more.2. Systweak Anti-Malware Pro: 2-Yr SubscriptionThere's a widely held belief that Macs are immune to malware, but such is not the case. This robust program detects and quarantines any unwanted or malicious programs automatically and alerts you so you can clean it up fast.3. Movavi Photo EditorMovavi simplifies the photo editing process by arming you with a myriad of smart selection options that make photo processing extremely easy. You can experiment with backgrounds, delete unwanted objects, apply digital makeup, add filters and textures, tweak parameters using color-coded sliders, straighten, and crop and flip frames, all with just a few clicks. You can access these three apps and the rest of the collection when you pick up the 2018 Mac Essentials Bundle, now on sale in the Boing Boing Store for $18.99.

Indian design studio Sylvn Studio creates cardboard lamps that are as economical and eco-friendly as they are beautiful. (more…)

Who needs mp4 and the mystery meat data within? Kornel Lesiński's lossygif compresses GIF images, including animations, at the cost of noise. Though GIF does not offer true lossy compression, superimposing long horizontal lines of identical pixels gets the job done before encoding. Photoshop already does this, but this is better at it and it's free.See also Gifski, the author's high-definition GIF movie encoder. It does the exact opposite thing, manipulating the GIF format into showing thousands of colors per frame at the cost of massive file sizes.

The success of the Primitive Technology channel has spawned a raft of other channels like Evolution Technology, who built an Ewok-style primitive treehouse complex. (more…)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's mission by signing up for the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and much more. GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”Filled with wild twists and funny dialogue” -Publishers Weekly) Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

US Paralympic Track & Field medalist Megan Absten lost her left arm in an accident when she was 14 years old. In January of this year, the 23-year-old athlete created a YouTube channel to provide tutorials that show how she does everyday things with her remaining arm. In this video, she shows how she ties her shoelaces. In others, she shares how she gets dressed, how she puts on makeup and more. Be sure to check out her Instagram too. It's truly inspirational!

This is really sweet. A young Irish girl, Grace Lehane of Cork, played "Britches full of Stitches" on her concertina by the side of a green pasture full of cattle. Watch in this video that her dad Denis uploaded in 2017 as the animals come running over to hear the "moosic." The beaming smile on Grace's face is precious!(The Kid Should See This)

If you've managed to get through the whole of Monday without being driven into a white-hot rage, don't worry, I've got your back: the owner of an unlicensed daycare has been sentenced to decades in prison for drugging the kids under her care, daily, so that she could go to the gym to work out and tan.According to The Oregonian, when parents left their kids with 32-year old January Neatherlin at her Little Giggles, they did so believing that their children would be well cared for while they were at work.And they were--provided your definition of care includes pumping kids full of a compound that makes them sleep for hours, every day.It seems that, instead of doing her job, Neatherlin would, on a daily basis, give each of the children under her care a gummy candy chockful of melatonin, so that the kids would snooze for long enough that she could nip out to get swol and tan. To cover for her behavior, Neatherlin insisted that parents not drop off or pick up their kids between 11am and 2pm, as it would screw with the day care's nap-time schedule.Neatherlin might have gotten away with her high-fallootin' pro-grade narcissism, had it not been for complaints about her pattern of child endangerment to the police from a former roommate and an ex-boyfriend. The police surveilled Neatherlin and discovered that she was routinely clocking in at a local cross-fit gym when she was supposed to be watching the kids back at Little Giggles. Boom: charges were laid.Neatherlin was charged with 11 counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment and one count of third-degree assault, resulting in a sentence of 21 years and four months in prison. While this sounds like a harsh sentence, which she totally deserves, I'd like to point out that there's a silver lining for Neatherlin: Suddenly, she's got all the time she'll ever need to hit the gym.Image: Alexis O'Toole from Who The Hell Knows Anymore, USA - tanning bed, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

Vim is a text editor greatly loved by many programmers, because of its radically keyboard-centric design. When you're coding in Vim, you generally never touch the trackpad or mouse; everything is done with the keyboard. Indeed, your hands don't even move around very much on the keyboard, because Vim doesn't even use the arrow keys. To move the cursor left by one character, for example, hit the "h" key. The "l" key moves you one character right, "k" takes you up one line, "j" down one line. There are also tons of clever little key-commands that speed up text-editing: Type "dw" and it deletes the word you're currently on, type "d$" to delete to the end of the line.The upshot is that once you've mastered Vim, there's a glorious feeling of Csikszentmihalyian flow: Your fingers move in a blur of supremely economic, efficient movement. Your fingers spend far more time on the home-row keys. But wait, you might wonder: How does this work? What if you want to use h/l/k/j to type letters, not to navigate? Well, Vim has two modes -- "command" and "insert" mode. You enter command mode to use all those nifty shortcuts, and go back into insert mode when you want to type text. When you write in Vim, you're constantly shifting back and forth between those two modes, using the "esc" key to enter command mode.That shift -- between those two modes -- is the only thing I've ever heard coders occasionally complain about with Vim. It's the only thing that seems to (sometimes) trip up their flow. (You have to reach up to hit the "esc" key enter command mode.)But hey! The programmer Aleksandr Levchuk hit upon a clever way to solve this problem: He created a USB footpedal. Put your foot down, and you enter command mode -- lift it up, and you're back in insert.It's the "Vim Clutch".When I tweeted about it this morning, coders around the world alternately a) squeed in delight or b) tsk-tsked at the madness of their peers ... https://twitter.com/pomeranian99/status/973022871311257601 Me, I don't use Vim; I tried it but never spent long enough to build up the muscle memory. But I'm a touch-typing keyboard freak, and I love the idea of adding more ways to key on a computer. I'm pondering now what ways I could rig a footpedal to pull off complex key-command chains in other pieces of software ...

A good way to scare yourself is by googling "phosphorus shortage." Agriculture requires lots of phosphorus for fertilizer, and after it's spread on crops, most of it gets washed into the ocean, where it is irrecoverable. Without phosphorus, food production will plummet, unless people come up with new ways to grow food. From the Global And Chinese Phosphate Fertilizer Industry, 2018 Market Research Report:In 2007, at the current rate of consumption, the supply of phosphorus was estimated to run out in 345 years. However, some scientists thought that a "peak phosphorus" will occur in 30 years and Dana Cordell from Institute for Sustainable Futures said that at "current rates, reserves will be depleted in the next 50 to 100 years."From The Conversation:Fertiliser use has quadrupled over the past half century and will continue rising as the population expands. The growing wealth of developing countries allows people to afford more meat which has a “phosphorus footprint” 50 times higher than most vegetables. This, together with the increasing usage of biofuels, is estimated to double the demand for phosphorus fertilisers by 2050.Today phosphorus is also used in pharmaceuticals, personal care products, flame retardants, catalysts for chemical industries, building materials, cleaners, detergents and food preservatives.From Critical Shots:The greatest natural reserves of unmined phosphorus exist in [Morocco]...According to the USGS, 42% of all phosphorus imported by the United States between 2012-2015 came from Morocco. China beats them out by a tremendous margin in production, but based on the most recent data Morocco and Western Sahara combined are sitting on 50,000,000,000 metric tons of reserves. From NPR:GRANTHAM: We're on a finite planet with finite reserves of phosphorus. And we are mining it and running through the supply. That should make the hair on the back of everybody's neck bristle.SMITH: There are widely ranging estimates for just how close we are to the phosphorus cliff. Maybe we've got 30 years. Maybe we have 300 years. It's hard to estimate. This is Jeremy's take.GRANTHAM: Whether it's 42 years, 62 years or 82 years doesn't really matter. We have to change our way of growing food.DUFFIN: We've known for a while that phosphorus was limited. But the price was cheap, and the problem just seemed so distant, so people were kind of like, meh, we'll deal with that problem later.SMITH: Then 2008 happened - the financial crisis. And along with many commodities, phosphate prices spiked, which - because of its use as a fertilizer - made food prices skyrocket. And now everybody's talking about phosphorus.NARRATOR: Across the developing world in 2008, hungry people rioted as food supplies ran low and the price of phosphate rock spiked by 800 percent.GRANTHAM: I would argue that that was a shot across the bows. That was the first warning to planet Earth that we are beginning to run out.From MIT:China is a very inefficient consumer of fertilizer: a recent China Agriculture University study found that northern Chinese farmers use about 525 pounds of fertilizer per acre, of which 200 pounds is wasted into the environment. This is six times more fertilizer and 23 times more waste than the average American farmer in the midwest uses and produces (Shwartz, 2009). These phenomena of growth and overuse, coinciding with peak production, will drive prices drastically higher and force a number of changes in the world's food production and consumption. The potential for catastrophic food shortages and global famine looms without significant systemic changes.

The Greatest Stories Retold is a project that presents classic fairy tales, like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," in the form of commercials ranging from six seconds to over three minutes. Above, a six-second version of "The Ugly Duckling."