Boing Boing

Pecos Hank has seen his share of storms, as evidenced by his cool footage of ominous green-hued clouds. He explains the science behind why massive thunderstorms can "go green," as they say in stormchaser parlance. (more…)

Five years ago, Steve Ballmer said "we can make Windows devices once again the devices to own." Last week, Microsoft announced that Windows will no longer be a standalone unit at Microsoft, ending a division dedicated to personal OS that started in 1980. Via Ben Thompson at Stratechery: (more…)

Donald Trump's budget sought to punish blue states by removing income tax deductions for mortgage interest on high-ticket real estate; this was enough to prick the Manhattan property bubble, with co-op and condo sales volume dropping 25% year-on-year for Q1/18; the majority of red ink is in the luxury property market, where Q1 prices fell 15% year-on-year. (more…)

In 1981 Howard Phillips got a job at a Nintendo arcade game shipping warehouse in Seattle. One the the perks of the job was being able to play the games without spending quarters. As a result, Phillips became an expert at the games, and Nintendo management soon realized the enthusiast warehouse worker could become its gateway into the zeitgeist of US market. They hired him as a "gamemaster" and solicited his advice on which games to introduce into the US. He was presented to the media as Mr. Nintendo and became a famous face to gamers all over the country. Here's a six-minute profile of Phillips, in which he reflects on his period of fame.

George Church's Harvard lab is one of the most celebrated fonts of innovation in the world of life sciences. George's earliest work on the Human Genome Project arguably pre-dated the actual start of that project. Subsequently, he's been involved in the creation of almost a hundred companies - 22 of which he co-founded. Much of George's most recent and celebrated work has been with a transformationally powerful gene-editing technique called CRISPR, which he co-invented. George and I discuss CRISPR and its jarring ramifications throughout this week's edition of the After on Podcast. You can listen to our interview by searching "After On" in your favorite podcast app, or by clicking right here:Our conversation begins with a higher-level survey of the field -- one which cleanly and clearly defines CRISPR by placing it into a broader, and also a quite fascinating framework. We cover four topics, which I'll now define up-front for you, so as to make the interview more accessible. We begin by discussing genetic sequencing. "Sequencing" is a fancy (and rather cool way) of saying, "reading." Your genome is about three billion characters long. It's written in a limited alphabet, of just four letters: A, G, C, and T. And if someone sequences your genome, it simply means they've read it. They haven't modified it in any way. They haven't have cloned you. They've just gotten a readout (kind of like determining your blood type -- only a few billions times more complicated). George and I next discuss gene editing. As the word suggests, editing the genome of a person, bacterium, or virus involves changing some of its letters. This can significantly change an organism's function -- perhaps causing a small critter to produce something useful, like a medicine, or a biofuel. Or, perhaps someday giving people or animals superpowers. CRISPR is a form of editing. But it's not the first one. It's the tenth one -- in a lineage that goes back decades. CRISPR's better than most editing techniques at many things. But it's not better than all techniques at all things. And it's definitely not the last form of editing. There's massive headroom for improvement in genetic editing, and CRISPR will be superseded many times by more powerful approaches in the future. The third thing we discuss is DNA synthesis. Specifically, the creation of relatively small, customized units called "oligos." These are short sequences of DNA, which typically run from a couple dozen letters to a couple hundred letters long. That's obviously tiny in relation to your 3-billion-letter genome. It's also tiny in relation to bacterial genomes, which often range in the millions of letters; Or viral genomes which often range in the 100,000's. Oligos are building blocks, which are made to order in specialized labs. Like sequencing, DNA synthesis has gotten radically cheaper in recent decades, and continues to get cheaper every year.Our fourth topic is DNA assembly. This is the process of stringing those oligos together into long strands. In theory, there's nothing to stop scientists from linking several million oligos into a strand as long as a human genome. But practice, errors creep into the process -- both as the underlying oligos lengthen from dozens to hundreds of letters, and as the number of oligo links in a final assembly rise. As a practical matter, things start getting tricky well before 100,000 letters, and the days of a fully synthesized, error-free, human-length genome are still many years off. So that's the table of contents of the first half of our interview: Sequencing, editing, synthesis, and assembly. With those foundations in place, George and I then talk about the astounding things that this integrated set of rapidly improving, and mutual reinforcing fields are enabling. Please join us!

The audio work makes it funny; the original, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is just uncomfortable, even as it smooths over the fact you're watching Zuckerberg eat plain toast right out of the toaster while nodding mechanically.

Smart home speakers are nothing new, but Apple has finally gotten into the game with its HomePod speaker. Blending Apple Music and Siri together, this innovative speaker makes it easy to handle everyday tasks while blasting your favorite tunes. The HomePod retails for $349, but you can get your own without spending a dime by entering into the Apple HomePod Giveaway.Absolutely free to enter, this giveaway nets you a shot at taking home Apple's HomePod speaker. Ideal for the music aficionado, this device learns your taste in music and allows you to play whatever you want just by saying it out loud. Its intelligent sensors know how to deliver the sound based on the size of your surroundings, and it's still capable of controlling the smart features in your home.Simply sign up, and you'll be one step closer to taking home your own HomePod for free with the Apple HomePod Giveaway.

(more…)

Welcome Ed Piskor back to Boing Boing (previously), where he'll be offering an annotated page-by-page look at the first part of X-Men: Grand Design, his epic retelling of how Marvel comics' pantheon of heroes came to be. — Eds.My work on X-Men would never have been possible without the popularity my work has achieved thanks to Boing Boing publishing Hip Hop Family Tree for four and a half years. It's a pleasure to bring the Marvel mutants to the Happy Mutants for this limited serialization of X-Men: Grand Design. I created each page to function as its own unique and complete episode/strip that, when read in total, would tell a bigger story. Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be posting a page at a time, and providing a director’s commentary with every strip, to give you some insight into where my mind was when while creating the whole tale.Strip 1One of my cardinal rules for purchasing comics as a lad was never to buy a story that was halfway through being told. If I saw “Part 3” on the cover or splash page I was out. This left few options, but one consistent purchase was Marvel’s What If… volume 2 (early 1990s). The conceit was that Uatu The Watch would stand-in as defacto EC horror host, a la The Crypt Keeper, and give us an alternative-reality tale of a famous Marvel story (Example: What if...The Fantastic Four fought Dr. Doom without their powers?). I always held a personal geek-theory that Uatu was the narrator of all those ethereal caption boxes that permeated the pages of Marvel comics. In X-Men: Grand Design I used the opportunity to make this theory into law. Using The Watcher is also the perfect device for jumping around through the complicated X-Men lineage to connect dots and make correlations along the way.Panels 1 & 2 are silent because I want the reader to decide the exact amount of time that Uatu has been standing on that rock observing the happenings on Earth. The time that transpires between panel 1, 2, and 3 can be seconds, minutes, years, decades, centuries, millennia, etc. Your call. This illusion would have been destroyed if I had any dialogue in those panels as it would imply that the image exists as a moment that lasts only as long as it takes to read the text within.Panel 3 and the rest: The Recorder! My introduction to the Recorder was from his cameo in Uncanny X-Men 137 and he was drawn so tiny >(and kind of unclearly) that there was plenty left up to the reader’s imagination. I didn’t realize he was a classic Jack Kirby character until much later. My version of The Recorder here is how I imagined him to look before I read the Kirby Thor comics where he was introduced. It was the ‘80s when I saw that classic issue of X-Men which would explain why the recorder uses analog means for warehousing data as opposed to solid-state media. One last formal thing worth noting is that when you look at Uatu’s positioning in every panel I wanted to imply that he was slowly orbiting the earth while conducting his observations. He’s not up there statically in place. He looks at the story in all angles.The first X-Men Grand Design collection is now available for purchase on Amazon, with X-Men: Grand Design, Second Genesis already up for preorder. Stay tuned for another strip this time next week!Comment on the BBS

Following a crowdfunded restoration, the film of Hugo Bettauer's eerily prescient novel will tour Europe again as anti-Semitism is on the rise. At the film's release, Bettauer was doxxed by local media and murdered by a young Nazi soon after. (more…)

According to the Vatican, demonic possessions are on the uptick. In order to meet the rising demand for assistance by those assailed by the demonic, the Vatican-backed International Association of Exorcists will be holding a training course for Priests interested in fighting the demonic. According to The Guardian, the course will held at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome between 16-21 April.The announcement of the upcoming Vatican course comes at a time when concerns over whether the rite of exorcism could be seen as a form of spiritual and physical abuse are being raised.From The Guardian:Last year, the Christian thinktank Theos reported that exorcisms were a “booming industry” in the UK, particularly among Pentecostal churches.But some warn that “deliverance ministry” can be a form of spiritual abuse. Critics also say LGBT people and those with mental health issues are targeted for deliverance in the belief that their sexuality or psychiatric problems are the result of demonic possession.For their part, the Vatican, as well as the Anglican and Orthodox churches, acknowledge that medical care and psychological assessment of anyone asking for exorcism is a must--mistaking a medically treatable condition for spiritual affliction doesn't help anyone. Of equal importance is the fact that, as part of an exorcist's training, it's reinforced that unwanted touching or unrequested exorcisms should not take place.No matter where your beliefs (or lack thereof) fall on the issue of exorcism, having more trained exorcists rolling around out there will likely be a good thing for those who feel that their only recourse from torment or spiritual danger is through a cleansing rite. Desperation always draws sharks. As it stands, the shortage of recognized clergy that have been trained in the rites of exorcism has led to a cottage industry of shady independent exorcists practicing their craft across Europe, sometimes at a cost of up to 500 euros per session.That's a high price for people to be forced to pay for help with their assumed or legitimate spiritual woes.Image by follower of Hieronymus Bosch - Sotheby's London, 14 April 2011, lot 5, Public Domain, Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fB0GBwJ2QAJohn Oliver is in very good form in this 18-minute explainer on America's ghastly immigration courts, where "we try death penalty cases like it was traffic court," forcing refugee claimants (even children as young as three years old) to represent themselves in deportation proceedings where their very lives are at stake. (more…)

When we think of democracy, we generally think of voting: the people are polled, the people decide. But voting is zero-sum: it has winners and losers. There are other models of governance that can make claim to democratic legitimacy that produce wins for everyone. (more…)

Inspired by DEVO, Memphis musicians Tony Thomas, Sam Shoup, and Tom Lonardo took a break from the weirdo jazz fusion jams of their "real" trio create Dog Police. Dig the lyrics:The boys in blue had my baby on the floor,They were asking her if she wanted some more.They pulled out a net, they pulled out a leash,They said they were the... Dog Police!The resulting video was a big hit on MTV's "Basement Tapes" DIY music video contest and later on Night Flight:In the spring of 1990, the video’s popularity also led to the creation of a TV sitcom pilot called “Dog Police,” about a trio of psychic doggy detectives from outer space who wear fedoras and beige trenchcoats and grumble their dialogue to each other like they’re all channeling Humphrey Bogart.Comic actor Adam Sandler made a cameo appearance in the pilot (which possibly was never aired more than once), and the show was to also prominently feature Jeremy Piven as a beat cop. (Clip below.)More at Night Flight (via r/ObscureMedia, thanks UPSO!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bfFNojAvI

Cambridge Analytica claimed that it could sway elections thanks to the devastating power of psychometric profiling, and they may have even believed it, but those claims should be read with a critical eye, because they're marketing hype aimed at people whom Cambridge Analytica was pitching as client; and because Cambridge Analytica is not a scientific enterprise, but a secretive corporation whose researchers never had to subject their experiments and results to critical, peer-reviewed scrutiny, opening up endless possibilities for self-deception and truth-shading. (more…)

Behold the wire-bending machine—a video I though would be curiously satisfying to watch, right up there in the "robots making things" pantheon of satisfying videos depicting repetitive movements, but which isn't satisfying at all, really, even if it is briefly hypnotic when it makes the loops. It's too staccato, too arrhythmic, too angry. You get the feeling the wire-bending machine hates its job.

When my pink-haired pal Brittany High told me that she won a ride with Angelyne in her signature pink Corvette and that she wanted me to come along, I thought, "Oh, this will be interesting."When identical twins Marian and Vivian Brown twins were still alive, it was considered a good omen to run into them up here in the San Francisco Bay Area. When I was pregnant, I spotted them in Union Square and felt my unborn child had been charmed in some way by their mere presence. An Angelyne sighting in Los Angeles has the same effect on people. I had briefly met the famous-for-being-famous L.A. icon once before. Near the end of 2013, I was driving to a lunch place in Burbank with my pal Allee Willis who startled me, "Pull over! Pull over! It's Angelyne!" And sure enough, there was her pink Corvette parked in front of a paint store. Allee told me to have cash ready but I didn't have any on me. I told her so. Allee, an icon herself, has known Angelyne since 1986 and knew the drill. Pushing money into my hand, she said, "You WILL buy something from her." I promised not to embarrass her and we headed to the Corvette.Our visit was short but yielded this epic photo of the three of us. I used the money Allee palmed me to quietly buy a t-shirt. Like the time I saw the Brown twins, I felt lucky stumbling upon Angelyne that day in Burbank.So, nearly four years later, when Brittany invited me to fly down to meet the Angelyne with her, my answer was, "Of course I want to!" We thought it would be fun to tell our stories of our afternoon with the billboard queen in tandem. (Brittany begins. My input is in italics.)A few months ago I entered to win a ride with the legendary Angelyne in her hot pink Corvette.Not long after I got a text message saying I won.I was told I could bring a friend along and I knew exactly who I wanted to invite -- Rusty Blazenhoff. No one would appreciate this as much as she would!It's true! I live for this kind of stuff.Angelyne's assistant instructed us to meet her at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. "Bring cash," he said. "She has merch."Not her "assistant," her "secret agent," lol. That's how he described himself to me when I asked if he was her manager. He said he's been working with her for 30 years. His name is Scott and he literally wears rose-colored glasses.And merch, OMG, so much merch!As she greeted us, she gave us each a gem. She said Rusty’s was supposed to ward off evil. I didn’t get an explanation what mine was meant for. Angelyne was curious about the gem on the ring I the was wearing. “What is THAT?” she asked. “Forever 21,” I answered.Mine is a Carnelian. It now sits in my pop culture trophy case gently fending off any bad juju. Angelyne was wearing a giant Quartz around her neck. Angelyne instructs Brittany how to properly do the flamingo stance in front of the Coffee Bean at Sunset near Vine.---Ok wait, let's get back to the merch. I think it's important to note Angelyne's truly inspired "merch table." It's the trunk of her Corvette. She pops it open and voila! there's t-shirts, hats, buttons, keychains, backpacks, and other pink and black goods. I remember envying her makeshift store back when I first met her. (I've honestly considered a Blazenhoff merch-trunk, but it just wouldn't be as sexy as hers, as I drive a gray hybrid and live in the 'burbs.)I also think a moment should be spent talking about the merch itself, as it's part of the overall ritual. Since I knew going into the meeting I would need cash, I brought a little over $100. Between the black trucker's cap (emblazoned with a large patch of her in her billboard's pinup pose), a pinback button, the opportunity to have our photograph taken together, and two large cups of coffee, I was soon parted with all of it. I'm not complaining. I look at it as the price of admission to a wild one-of-a-kind ride, a bonafide quirky-as-all-get-out L.A. experience. I feel it was money well spent.We briefly talked about out-of-body experiences, mass shootings, and what happens after you die as we drank “Angelyne coffee” (a blend of coffee, vanilla syrup, and African Sunrise Tea) out of tiny teacups. I knew hanging Angelyne was going to be interesting experience but I hadn't anticipated getting deep into a philosophical conversation about death and the afterlife with her.Then, she drove me in her hot pink Corvette around the block and down Hollywood Blvd with the windows down, blasting Angelyne’s very own music.She asked if I wanted to hear a joke and of course I said yes. It went something like this: A woman buys an expensive dress and her husband is angry how much money she spent. She says "The Devil made me do it." He asks why she didn't say "Get behind me Satan!" She responds "I did! And he told me it looked good from the back, too!" Angelyne asked which of her songs was my favorite. "All of them," I said and she skipped to "Sex Goddess." Then she told me we would be stopping at Denny's so she could use the restroom and said I should look up her music video for "My List" while I waited for her. When Angelyne returned, we walked back to her car and she asked me what I thought. She wanted to know how many boyfriends I had and if I wanted to get married. She asked me if Brittany was a stripper (she's not). I asked her how old she thought her inner child was, shared that mine was between 12 and 15, and she responded, "Three!" Then, later, "Sometimes fifteen."As we pulled back up to the Coffee Bean, Rusty was waiting there for us... and so was the person who was scheduled to have a ride next.If you'd like to try and win a ride with the lady-in-pink, the entry box lives on the counter of Ozzie Dots, a costume shop on Hollywood Boulevard.---photos by Brittany High and Rusty Blazenhoff

Avatar is a self-actualization "technique" created by an ex-Scientologist named Harry Palmer, who defected from the "church" in 1986 to found a lookalike multi-level-marketing version where he serves as a commission-earning "upline" from practitioners who teach his high-priced "courses" -- his Scientology-alike borrows heavily from the original cult and even used some of its symbols until he lost a trademark suit to Scientology. (more…)

Matt Burns at TechCrunch: "The additional horsepower isn’t needed for general use, but the added graphics cards supercharge Macs for VR rendering and gaming. Only a handful of eGPUs are compatible with macOS so choose carefully before adding one to your rig."The AMD Radeon RX 580 is the best card for games on the compatibility list, but most of the eGPU boxes are pretty bulky. Your best best is probably the Sonnet Box, which is the smallest and comes with an RX 570 built in (with a cheaper RX 560 option). The caveat is that it doesn't have USB-C output, so you can't put it between a Mac and the LG UltraFine monitors that Apple actually sells. Other eGPU boxes have this feature.This will probably go unheralded but I think it's a huge milestone in Mac history: serious game support! Finally!

The National Coffee Association failed to demonstrate that a known-carcinogen produced during the coffee brewing process is not harmful. A judge in the Bear Republic ruled coffee cups need to carry a warning.Via the NYT:The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, a nonprofit group based in Long Beach. The group charged that Starbucks and other companies — a group that eventually included 91 defendants — did not warn consumers that ingesting coffee would expose them to acrylamide, a chemical formed when coffee beans are roasted.California keeps a list of chemicals it considers to cause cancer or reproductive harm, and acrylamide has been included since 1990. The state’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, known as Proposition 65 after it was passed in 1986, requires businesses to provide warning labels when exposing consumers to any of the hundreds of chemicals listed.Judge Elihu M. Berle, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, wrote in a proposed decision on Wednesday that the companies failed to show that acrylamide does not pose a significant risk when produced during the coffee roasting process.“Since defendants failed to prove that coffee confers any human health benefits, defendants have failed to satisfy their burden of proving that sound considerations of public health support an alternate risk level for acrylamide in coffee,” the judge wrote.https://youtu.be/1azwQxMaTxEBarry's Gold Blend tea merely invokes an existential crisis. Drink Barry's.

Today, the US State Department published a notice in the Federal Register seeking comment on a plan to require 15,000,000+ foreigners who get a US visitor visa to disclose all their social media identities as a condition of entry. (more…)

John "The Paper Airplane Guy" Collins shows us how to fold "Suzanne," the aircraft that set a 2012 world record for flying 69.14 meters. "I bring paper airplanes into classrooms and start talking about complicated ideas involved with fluid dynamics and using paper airplanes to explain it," Collins told Wired. "If you can have a group of middle schoolers and high schoolers that don't look at their phones for 45 minutes while you're doing a demonstration, you've hit success," he says.

Developed by Jussi Leinonen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, this is a visualization of the first ever 3D model of a snowflake melting in the atmosphere. Eventually, a deep understanding of how snow actually melts could "help scientists recognize the signature in radar signals of heavier, wetter snow -- the kind that breaks power lines and tree limbs -- and could be a step toward improving predictions of this hazard." From JPL:Leinonen's model reproduces key features of melting snowflakes that have been observed in nature. First, meltwater gathers in any concave regions of the snowflake's surface. These liquid-water regions then merge to form a shell of liquid around an ice core, and finally develop into a water drop. The modeled snowflake shown in the video is less than half an inch (one centimeter) long and composed of many individual ice crystals whose arms became entangled when they collided in midair."NASA Visualizes the Dance of a Melting Snowflake" (JPL)

RSS was a revelation for blogging and online media; we got our first RSS feed in 2001 and I have relied heavily on RSS feeds to write this site (and stay informed) for nearly two decades now; in 2005, Google bet heavily on RSS with its Google Reader product, which quickly eclipsed every other reader, so that by the time they killed it in 2013, there wasn't anything sophisticated, robust and well-maintained to switch to. (more…)

The late-great comedienne Joan Rivers was a frequent guest on Martha Stewart's daytime show. One year for Passover, they built gingerbread-like houses with sheets of matzo and decorated them with other kosher foods including macaroons, chocolate, dried fruits, and nuts. Such a cute idea!Watch:https://youtu.be/V9rTS8yNziIHappy Pesach to those of you out there who celebrate!

Sophia is an advanced social robot in her second year of development by Hanson Robotics. In this video, she's on a date in the Cayman Islands with actor Will Smith. He turns on the charm, goes in for a kiss but is immediately, awkwardly friendzoned by her. Last year Sophia was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon with her creator, former Imagineer Dr. David Hanson. On it, she tells Jimmy a joke and then plays Rock, Paper, Scissors with him:https://youtu.be/Bg_tJvCA8zw?t=2m20sP.S. You can follow Sophia on Instagram! I just did.https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg661Ikn2vF/?taken-by=realsophiarobot

"A cheetah decided to explore our vehicle on a safari I was leading for Grand Ruaha Safaris (in the Serengeti National Park," wrote wildlife photographer Peter Heistein on Instagram. "Another one jumped up on the hood and was staring at us through the windshield. They were just curious, we kept calm and let them go about their business. Quite a thrill to be this close! "Our guide Alex Mnyangabe... helped us through the encounter with instructions on how to treat the animal 'with respect.'"

https://vimeo.com/124474617Calyx is an amazing nonprofit, privacy-oriented activist ISP (they were the first ISP to successfully resist a secret Patriot Act warrant); they are notable for offering an unlimited, unfiltered, unthrottled 4G/wifi hotspot for a tax-deductible $400 year (mine has repeatedly saved my bacon). (more…)

As advanced atom smashers like the Large Hadron Collider come online, older ones are sometimes abandoned or, better, used for unexpected science experiments. Examples range from recording high-speed X-rays of the biological "motor" that flaps a fly's wings to finding an easter egg in a Degas painting. In the video above, Science Hack Day "global instigator" Ariel Waldman reveals how researchers hack particle accelerators for new uses.

For more than 15 years I've lived in Alameda, a lovely island city in San Francisco's Bay Area. Because we're surrounded by water, there's a boating community. Thus, we have marine stores. I am not part of the boating community, so I had never gone into any of these stores. That is, until today. Our local West Marine store is moving to another part of town, so they're having a big sale. I decided it was time to check it out. It was nicer than I expected. They're set to close at the end of March, so a lot of the shelves were barren. But there were still some neat nautical products left like international code flags, personal locator beacons, and boat beanbag chairs.Though, what really caught my eye were these bottles of fake champagne. They're for when you christen a boat. You just take the bottle and smash it against the vessel. They don't contain alcohol (one reviewer says it contains a "soapy liquid") and are scored to break easily.Read for yourself. Here's the product's description:Save the real champagne for guests and break this special christening bottle on your vessel’s prow. The bottle is scored around the middle and housed in a net to ensure that your first swing is a smashing hit. The result: cheers from the crowd when an impressive-yet safe-spray of imitation bubbly celebrates your boat’s dent-free debut.Watch and learn:https://youtu.be/fBSAwPqVIDEphoto by Rusty Blazenhoff

President Donald J. Trump today fired Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin, then tweeted that the White House doctor Ronny Jackson is his nominee to replace. (more…)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is running an excellent series on the potential and pitfalls of secure messaging app -- this is very timely given the ramping up of state surveillance and identity theft, not to mention anyone looking to #DeleteFacebook and transition away from Facebook Messenger. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2drwelVD4QwDale Lane's Machine Learning for Kids project uses extensions to the popular Scratch programming environment to teach the basics of machine learning to children. (more…)

In the USA, there are tens of thousands of teachers in open rebellion, in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona, Kentucky, and things are heating up in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa and Colorado. (more…)

Self-taught stop-motion filmmaker PES made his first animated short in 2001. It was a saucy little number called "Roof Sex" that featured furniture getting it on. The film won several awards and its success kick-started his career. The Oscar and Emmy-nominated director recently reshared this "Making of Roof Sex" video on YouTube, a fun NSFW-ish behind-the-scenes piece that was originally released in 2003. Here's the original (which is NSFW, primarily because of the sexy moaning):https://youtu.be/1aodpb3vFU0PES is currently teaching a course on stop-motion animation on Skillshare.

Hedgehogs dream of musical glory in these charming announcements for NPR's annual Tiny Desk Concert competition. (more…)

At Vintage Cassettes, "you will find the beatiful pictures of sealed compact cassettes." Cassettes from 1970-1990 are covered the most. Collecting vintage cassettes is a great hobby and brings all good memories back. Cassettes are organized by brands and then the years they were produced. We concentrate on the most important brands. This site try to cover three markets: US, Europe and Japan. We also added the History of Compact Cassettes located to the right. When I was a kid I wondered if METAL meant that it was specially made for taping, like, Megadeth. The companion site (with better images) would be The Tape Deck, which posts pictures of the cassettes themselves.

On Saturday April 7, celebrate the wonder of space exploration during the Yuri's Night bash taking place under the Space Shuttle Endeavor at the California Science Center! Special guests include astronaut Nicole Stott, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and many more. Among dozens of far out talks and stellar interactive experiences, I'll be there playing the Voyager Golden Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials launched into space 40 years ago. (My friends Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad and I co-produced the first ever vinyl release of the Voyager Record and we were honored with a 2018 Grammy award.) I hope to see you there! Tickets: Yuri's Night L.A.And of course if you're not in Los Angeles, there are Yuri's Night happenings all over the planet!

Julian Verland's "HP Joelcraft," an unholy union between the spine-tingling words of HP Lovecraft's "Nemesis" and Billy Joel's "Piano Man" music. Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night, I have liv’d o’er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight;And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright...(Thanks, UPSO!)

Intrepid vernacular photography collector Robert E. Jackson curated a delightful selection of creepy, fun, and funny vintage photos of the Easter Bunny. More at Flashbak.

I generally don't wear French cuff shirts, but I like the idea of Uncrate Supply's Lighter Cufflinks, $70. Problem is, I'd most certainly fiddle with them, leading to scorched sleeves or worse.

Privacy Badger is EFF's free privacy plugin; it blocks trackers and ads from companies that practice "non-consensual tracking," in which your browser's "do not track" instructions are not honored. (more…)

This automated watch winder automatically winds my favorite watch!I rarely wear a watch, I just don't remember to put them on any more. My favorite watch is a self-winding one and when I did go to put it on it has always stopped. I never remember to set the watch until I actually tried to use it, and then it is too late.I decided to try one of these self-winding gadgets, and it works. Once a day the mechanism spins the watch in the correct direction for about 5 minutes. The watch stays wound and my superlative chronometer with a perpetual movement keeps moving.I use the app Emerald Time to set my watches to an atomic clock. [Newly Upgraded] Versa Automatic Single Watch Winder with Sliding Cover via Amazon

People who buy sex toys generally want "high-quality, ergonomically designed toys that are intuitive to use," but Silicon Valley keeps delivering "innovative" and commercially unsuccessful sex toys whose selling-points are their "flashy apps and connectivity." (more…)

New Zealand set about expelling any Russians who might be spies, but couldn't find anyone who fit the profile. Apropos of nothing, there is a subreddit called "Maps Without New Zealand" dedicated to world maps that omit the island nation, as if the creator simply forgot that it existed or never knew in the first place.

Timothy Miller of Spirit Ironworks shows how to use a induction heater to heat metal extremely quickly. (more…)

A group of Chinese computer scientists from academia and industry have published a paper documenting a tool for fooling facial recognition software by shining hat-brim-mounted infrared LEDs on the user's face, projecting CCTV-visible, human-eye-invisible shapes designed to fool the face recognition software. (more…)

When Grey Heron surfaced this month selling anti-Signal and anti-Telegram surveillance tools at a UK trade show for cyber-arms-dealers, sharp-eyed journalists at Motherboard immediately noticed that the company's spokesman was last seen fronting for Hacking Team, a disgraced Italian cyber-arms-dealer that provided surveillance weapons to some of the world's cruelest dictators. (more…)

This LEGO Camper Van is far more accessible than the VW branded one.Growing up in Southern California instilled a love of all things camper van in me. My daughter loves our VW Westy so much that she cried when I suggested selling the ol' bus last year.There were peals of joy when she saw this kit!LEGO Creator Sunshine Surfer Van 31079 Building Kit (379 Piece) via Amazon

Courtesy the International Comet Quarterly, here's a list of meteorite strikes that focuses on situations where the meteorite hit something -- ranging from houses to cars to mailboxes and even a dog. There are a surprising number of tragic deaths; I can't imagine what the odds are of being maimed or killed by a meteorite, but it's got to be awfully high.A sample from the list:(CC-licensed photo via Pixabay)