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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."

This 3D printed house was unveiled today at SXSW in Austin, TX. A cement house like this – 650 square feet, single story – takes just 12-24 hours to "print."It's "the first permitted, 3D-printed home created specifically for the developing world," says New Story, the non-profit for international housing, who has partnered with the 3D-printed housing construction company ICON to create 100 of these homes for low-income people in El Salvador by next year if all goes as planned.According to The Verge:Using the Vulcan printer, ICON can print an entire home for $10,000 and plans to bring costs down to $4,000 per house. “It’s much cheaper than the typical American home,” Ballard says. It’s capable of printing a home that’s 800 square feet, a significantly bigger structure than properties pushed by the tiny home movement, which top out at about 400 square feet. In contrast, the average New York apartment is about 866 square feet.Not only is the ICON/New Story partnership making really affordable housing, but it's also making really cool-looking houses. Take a look inside:This isn't the first house to ever be 3D printed, but others before it “are printed in a warehouse, or they look like Yoda huts," Jason Ballard, co-founder of ICON, told The Verge. "For this venture to succeed, they have to be the best houses.” https://youtu.be/SvM7jFZGAec

Known worldwide for his incredible fingerstyle guitar covers of popular songs, Alexandr Misko performs a-ha's 1985 hit "Take on Me" in his latest video.The 20-year-old Russian musician writes, "This song is a tough one to play, but i tried my best!" (He's humble to boot!)Previously: Air-horn version of a-ha's 'Take on Me'

The Heritage Foundation ranks Singapore as the world's second-most "economically free" country; pro-capitalist economist Bryan Caplan says it approaches the "capitalist ideal." (more…)

Wireless networks are known to be fickle beasts, delivering inconsistent speeds and disconnecting throughout the day. However, there are steps you can take to bring your network—and browsing experience—back to 100 percent. NetSpot Pro for Windows allows you to visualize, optimize, and troubleshoot your wireless networks with any PC or Mac so you can get the best connection possible at all times, and it's on sale for $39 in the Boing Boing Store.With NetSpot Pro, you can analyze your Wi-Fi coverage anywhere you are or plan on being. Using the mapping feature, you can create a comprehensive heatmap of your network, cluing you in as to where the strongest and weakest points of connectivity are, as well as where dead zones might be lingering. Plus, NetSpot includes a troubleshooting tool, so you can diagnose and fix connectivity issues and get back online faster.Lifetime licenses to NetSpot Pro for Windows and Mac are available today for $39 in the Boing Boing Store.

It's not often a video game can create a vibrant open world, fill it with complex characters, and let you play your way through on high-octane adventure. In this regard, Mafia III is not like most games. You play as Lincoln Clay, an orphan and Vietnam veteran hellbent on revenge against the Italian Mafia in 1960's New Orleans. It's on sale now in the Boing Boing Store for $16.99.Jump in and explore a vast, open world ruled by the mob and corrupt officials with sights, sounds and intense social atmosphere of 1960's New Orleans. You can choose your own way to fight, from brute force to stealth tactics, and you can build a new criminal empire in your own unique way by deciding which of your lieutenants you reward and which you betray.Mafia III is on sale for $16.99, nearly 60% off the usual $39.99 retail price.

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I'm a big fan of Oakland psychedelic artist, Skinner. Back in 2016, I posted here on Boing Boing about his incredible animated video for High on Fire's "The Black Plot."I also love the work that pop-up book artist, Rosston Meyer, is doing with his Poposition Press. Last year, I did a review of his collaboration with Japanese pop artist Junko Mizuno, for her book, TRIAD.So, imagine my excitement when I heard that Meyer and Skinner were collaborating on a pop-up book illustrating scenes from the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The resulting tome is truly a mind-twisting artifact. Skinner's Necronomicon renders five scenes from Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Out of Time, The Call of Cthulhu, At The Mountains of Madness, and The Colour Out of Space. Each pop-up spread also contains two quotes from the work that drop down from the outside edges of each page. The whole effect is one of wonder, high-weirdness, and the kind of eyeball-popping, slavering insanity you would expect of anything associated with Lovecraft. And Skinner.Here's the video that Popsition released when they were taking pre-orders. It offers a look at some of the pop-up spreads and close-ups of the artwork.https://youtu.be/7yL626djYIgYou can order Skinner's Necronomicon directly from Poposition Press.

Donald Trump was so eager for Vladi­mir Putin to attend his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, he personally wrote the Russian President a letter inviting him. Robert Mueller's investigative team somehow got a copy of the document. It is the first known communication that shows Trump trying to establish contact directly with Putin. (more…)

In a detailed Washington Post piece at the end of a bizarre political week, David Nakamura writes, “The White House dumped its South Korean ambassador nominee, State's top North Korean expert resigned; the NSC's Asia director was on paternity leave for 2 weeks. One man swooped in to fill the vacuum: Trump.”“In Trump’s decision on North Korea, the world glimpses a president who is his own diplomat, negotiator and strategist.An excerpt from the story of how we arrived at this bizarre point of United States/North Korean diplomacy, without a single Dennis Rodman in sight:Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration’s roster of Korean experts, already depleted, grew even thinner. The White House mysteriously dropped its choice for ambassador to Seoul. The State Department’s top North Korea specialist resigned. And the senior Asia director at the National Security Council was out the past two weeks on paternity leave.But when a high-level South Korean delegation arrived at the White House on Thursday afternoon for two days of meetings over the North Korea threat, one person swooped in to fill the vacuum: President Trump.In a stunning turn of events, Trump personally intervened into a security briefing intended for his top deputies, inviting the South Korean officials into the Oval Office where he agreed on the spot to a historic but exceedingly risky summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He then orchestrated a dramatic public announcement on the driveway outside the West Wing broadcast live on cable networks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I7FVyQCjNgdanah boyd's SXSW Edu keynote, What Hath We Wrought? builds on her essay from 2017 about the relationship of media literacy education to the rise of conspiracy theories and the great epistemological rift in which significant numbers of people believe things that are clearly untrue, from climate denial to flat-earthing. (more…)

Olivia Watts, a Melbourne-based circus performer, combines gymnastics with some sort of magic in this highly-skilled 6-hoop performance.

If you were hoping that a person you detest will get hit by a piece of the out-of-control Chinese space station when it crashes to Earth the in the next few weeks, I have bad news: The European Space Agency (ESA) says the "average American citizen is around ten times more likely to win the Powerball lottery than they are to be struck by a piece of the Tiangong-1 as it plummets back to earth."From SOFREP:There has only ever been one confirmed report of a person being struck by a piece of debris that fell from space in history: Lottie Williams, who was hit by a piece of a defunct NASA satellite as she walked through a park in Oklahoma in 1997. Despite holding what may be that singular distinction, William’s recollection of the incident may assuage any fears people may have about the Chinese space station’s reentry.“We were still walking through the park when I felt a tapping on my shoulder,” Williams told reporters. That tapping was actually debris that had survived reentry and made it all the way from orbit to her walking path. “The weight was comparable to an empty soda can,” Williams went on. “It looked like a piece of fabric except when you tap it, it sounded metallic.”

Corey King, a sheriff's deputy in Washington County, Georgia put out an arrest warrant for his wife, Anne King, after she posted on Facebook: "That moment when everyone in your house has the flu and you ask your kid's dad to get them (not me) more Motrin and Tylenol and he refuses." Anne King's friend, Susan Hines, commented on the post, calling Deputy King a "POS." "Give me an hour and check your mailbox," she wrote. "I'll be GLAD to pick up the slack."Deputy King told his ex-wife to delete the post. When she didn't, he requested a warrant to arrest both women on a charge of "intent to defame another, communicate false matter which tends to expose one who is alive to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, and which tends to provoke a breach of peace.CNN reports on what happened next, which shouldn't surprise you:The next day, a Washington County court magistrate issued warrants for both Anne King and Hines.The women were charged with "criminal defamation of character," processed and spent about four hours in jail before posting $1,000 bail.At their hearing, state-court judge stated there was no basis for the arrest and the case was dropped."I don't even know why we're here," the judge said, according to the complaint.Also not surprising, Anne King is suing for compensatory and punitive damages and Deputy King is saying it's not his fault; it's Magistrate Judge Ralph Todd's fault for actually issuing the warrants.