This week, AV-TEST's census of samples of circulating malware that attempt to exploit the Meltdown and Spectre bugs hit 139, up from 77 on January 17. (more…)

This owl was a gift from an absolutely lovely woman. I declare it Superb Owl 2018.

Because of course they do. The Republican National Committee supports Donald Trump's yet-unexecuted order to ban transgender people from military service, because the RNC says being transgender is “a disqualifying psychological and physical” condition. (more…)

Stock indexes plunged on Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling by more than 600 points mid-day. (more…)

On November 29, 1981, Natalie Wood drowned off Catalina Island near Los Angeles. She had been partying hard on a yacht with her husband Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken. The only other person on the boat was its captain. Wood's death was initially ruled an accident but in 2011, Los Angeles County police reopened the case. Now, stories from witnesses "portray a new sequence of events on the boat that night" according to police. From the Associated Press:One of the witnesses described hearing yelling and crashing sounds coming from the couple’s stateroom, she said. Shortly after that, separate witnesses heard a man and a woman arguing on the back of the boat and believe the voices were those of Ms. Wood and Mr. Wagner, (police spokesperson Nicole) Nishida said...The statements differed from the original version of events provided by witnesses, including those who were on the boat, she said.Wagner, who has always denied any knowledge of how his wife died, is now a "person of interest" in the case. Apparently he's refused to talk to investigators.

Filmmaker Oliver KMIA was traveling in Rome where he noticed the throngs of tourists surrounding the Trevi Fountain all trying to get the same photo of themselves with the monument. "I couldn't secure a picture of the Trevi Fountain for my Instragram account but I still had a very nice time in Italy," he writes. And when he got home, he was inspired to make this video, "Instravel - A Photogenic Mass Tourism Experience.""I'm basically making fun of something I'm part of," he writes. "The irony is strong."

Miami photographer Oliver KMIA edited together Instatravel, a "Photogenic Mass Tourism Experience" that rapid fires other people's Instagram travel images. By doing so, he shows their undeniable similarities.He writes:I came up with this idea last year while traveling in Roma. I wanted to take a look at the popular Trevi Fountain but I never managed to get close to it. The place was assaulted by hundreds of tourists, some of them formed a huge line to get a spot in front of the Fountain. Needless to say that I was very pissed by this sight and left for the not less crowded Pantheon.I was shocked by the mass of people walking all around the city, yet I was one of them, not better or worst. Like all these tourists, I burned hundred of gallons of fuel to get there, rushed to visit the city in a few days and stayed in a hotel downtown. Then, I remembered a video I watched a few months earlier from the artist Hiérophante (vimeo.com/151297208). I decided to make this kind of sarcastic video but with the focus on travel and mass tourism. Hiérophante admitted that his video was "cliché" and that he got inspired by other videos. So I'm basically making fun of something I'm part of. The irony is strong.While the era of mass world tourism and global world travel opened up in the 60s and 70s with the development of Jumbo Jets and low cost airlines, there is a new trend that consists of taking pictures everywhere you go to share it on social networks. During my trip, I felt that many people didn't really enjoy the moment and were hooked to their smartphones. As if the ultimate goal of travel was to brag about it online and run after the likes and followers...In the end, social networks are just a tool. For better or worse, (or both). Eventually, I couldn't secure a picture of the Trevi Fountain for my Instragram account but I still had a very nice time in Italy.(reddit)

John William Waterhouse's painting, Hylas and the Nymphs (1869), was removed from display at the Manchester Art Gallery in northern England. The museum said it banished the painting to “challenge a Victorian fantasy.” From Art News:On the night of January 26, the gallery team and invited collaborators took over the gallery and removed the pre-Raphaelite painting Hylas and the Nymphs (1869) from the wall, as well as postcards of the painting from the shop.The offending image depicts a mythical scene of bare-chested nymphs tempting Hylas to his death, and is not the only one of its kind in a room devoted to 19th century art that is titled “In Pursuit of Beauty.” The stunt was filmed as part of a new artwork by Sonia Boyce, who is exploring “gender trouble” in the paintings and wider culture of the 19th century. The full film of the action will be shown in her upcoming retrospective at the gallery, which runs March 23 through September 2.From Reason:"For me personally, there is a sense of embarrassment that we haven't dealt with it sooner," Clare Gannaway, the gallery's contemporary art curator, told The Guardian. "Our attention has been elsewhere...we've collectively forgotten to look at this space and think about it properly. We want to do something about it now because we have forgotten about it for so long."Gannaway also described the painting—and others like it—as old-fashioned for depicting women "either as passive beautiful objects or femmes fatales." She said there were "tricky issues about gender, race and representation." It's a bit unclear what exactly the problem is here, but the curator seems to be suggesting the girls are too white, and too naked.The Guardian reports that the #MeToo movement "fed into the decision.Liz Prettejohn, a professor of history of art at University of York, told BBC News:This is a painting that people love and the most ridiculous thing is the claim that somehow it's going to start a debate to take it out of public view.Taking it off display is killing any kind of debate that you might be able to have about it in relation to some of the really interesting issues that it might raise about sexuality and gender relationships.The Victorians are always getting criticised because they're supposed to be prudish. But here it would seem it's us who are taking the roles of what we think of as the very moralistic Victorians.Some interesting comments already on the @mcrartgallery wall and online too https://t.co/Q667SptU5Y #MAGsoniaboyce Looking forward to more conversation about this... pic.twitter.com/21omdwR9vY— MAGcurators (@MAGcurators) January 30, 2018

In Seattle, a man attempted to break into the car of a KIRO Radio employee by banging on it with a mop handle. Then he climbed on the building's roof and fell off. Seventeen minutes later, he got up and vanished into the night. Below, John Curley of the "Tom & Curley Show" gives a play-by-play of the surveillance footage. (via Laughing Squid)Last night we captured surveillance footage of a vandal trying to break in to one of our employee's vehicles in our parking lot. While the suspect is still at large, we took the liberty to have John Curley give his play-by-play of the incident.Take a listen 🔊 pic.twitter.com/FYQTiJsTDt— KIRO Radio 97.3 FM🎙 (@KIRORadio) February 1, 2018

I wrote an article for California Sunday Magazine about BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen's new cryptocurrency, called chia. It's uses the Bitcoin codebase, but Bram is replacing the energy intensive proof-of-work validation algorithm with a combination of proof-of-unused-hard-drive-space and proof-of-wall-clock-time, which does require much electricity at all.No one owns the Bitcoin network — the code is open source — so Cohen is free to build off of it to develop his spinoff, Chia Network. With Chia, Cohen aims to replace the energy-greedy part of Bitcoin’s code, which rewards miners for generating trillions of numbers a second, with an energy-efficient system, which rewards miners (or “farmers” in Chia’s parlance) based on the amount of unused hard-drive space they have on their computers and how long they’ve had it. If you opt in, the Chia Network will essentially populate that unused space with bingo cards. If Chia calls the numbers on your card, you’ll be awarded newly minted chia.

In 1921, Edith Swan -- a 30-year-old laundress in the UK -- began sending abusive, curse-studded letters to several of her neighbors. She got away with it for a while by framing another of her neighbors, Rose Gooding. Swan, you see, was a respectable, middle-class woman, while Gooding was a working-class woman with an "illegitimate child". So the police and judge simply couldn't believe the respectable Swan could possibly use such gutter language! It was thus quite easy for Swan to frame her working-class neighbor, who spent a few months in prison before Swan was eventually caught. This is a completely demented story of social class, crime, and some filthy, filthy language. It's told in a new book The Littlehampton Libels, which I am ordering right now, and which is discussed in this essay in The London Review of Books:Here is an extract from a letter dated 14 September 1921: ‘You bloody fucking flaming piss country whores go and fuck your cunt. Its your drain that stinks not our fish box. Yo fucking dirty sods. You are as bad as your whore neybor.’ The Mays were sent many such letters in the course of 1921. Swan claimed that she had received similar letters herself, such as this one from 23 September: ‘To the foxy ass whore 47, Western Rd Local. You foxy ass piss country whore you are a character.’There was compelling proof that Edith Swan was the author of these letters, even the ones she received. The police searched the house where she lived with her parents and two of her brothers and found a piece of blotting paper which contained clear traces of some of the letters. Swan protested that the blotting paper had been found by her father in the washing house. A still more devastating piece of evidence was that Swan had been seen by a policewoman throwing one of the letters into the garden her family shared with their neighbours. Gladys Moss, the policewoman, was keeping watch on Swan through a slit in a garden shed when she saw her throw a folded piece of buff-coloured paper in the direction of the Mays’ house. The paper was addressed to ‘fucking old whore May, 49, Western Rd, Local’.As in the 1923 trial, the judge simply refused to accept the evidence of Swan’s guilt. Sir Clement Bailhache was not convinced by Moss’s testimony because it conflicted with what his eyes told him: that Edith Swan was the kind of Englishwoman who was incapable of swearing. ‘If I were on the jury, I would not convict,’ Bailhache announced. The jury followed his guidance.

It's Girl Scout cookie season again which made me think of this box I've been hanging onto since the year 2000 or so. Just an innocent box of Tagalongs, right? Well, not so fast. Look a little closer and I think you'll agree something else is going on: lesbian subtext! Years ago, LGBT activist and sex advice columnist Dan Savage wrote about the questionable box in Savage Love:Hey, Everybody: If you haven't bought a box of Girl Scout cookies this year, I suggest you pick up a few boxes of Tagalongs Peanut Butter Patties pronto -- these boxes are sure to be collectors' items one day. Pictured on the front of the box are two Girl Scouts up to their chins in water, nose to nose, looking deep into each other's eyes. "Go for it!" is written above their heads. I [heart] subtle and subversive homoeroticism, and despite the braces one of the girls has in her mouth -- sure to get in the way of any late-night "going for it" back at the cabin -- this photo qualifies as teenage lesbian erotica in my book.If unsubtle homoeroticism is more to your liking, you need only flip over the box, where the text reads: "I just love water sports! Our teachers are complete pros! Jamilia and I actually synchronized our strokes ..." [My italics.] Okay, let's stop and examine the first three lines: The Girl Scouts pictured on the box are only shown swimming -- no one is shown on water-skis, playing water polo or snorkeling. Swimming isn't water sports, plural, it is a water sport, singular. So why doesn't the copy read, "I just love swimming!" Why "water sports"? "Pro" is slang for prostitute, and "strokes," well "strokes" has a vaguely sexual vibe.Now the appearance of water sports, pros and strokes on the back of a Girl Scout cookie box could be a completely innocent coincidence, but, ladies and gentleman of the jury, I submit to you line four from the copy on the back of the Tagalongs Peanut Butter Patties box: "We did the whole length of the pool on our backs." On Our Backs, as any dyke worth her strap-on can tell you, is the grandmammy of lesbian porno magazines -- this month's issue features lesbian nuns. Not interviews with members of the lesbian nun community, not an article about lesbianism in medieval convents -- but big, glossy, black-and-white photos of two humpy young women in habits munching each other's cookies. (I'm guessing these girls aren't really nuns -- unless genital piercings were recently approved by Rome.)"Go for it!" "Water sports." "Pros." "Strokes." "On our backs." Someone, some deep-cover operative of the International Homosexual Conspiracy (IHC), has clearly infiltrated whatever agency designs Girl Scout cookie boxes. Like the IHC plant who designed Mattel's Earring Magic Ken -- Ken came complete with a cockring on a chain around his neck -- the Girl Scout operative succeeded in slipping a completely queer product past his or her completely clueless hetero supervisors, shaking the heterosexual dictatorship and striking a blow for lesbian visibility. When Mattel realized they'd been had, Cockring Magic Ken was quickly pulled off the shelves, and Mattel's press spokesperson denied they were in the business of "putting cockrings into the hands of little girls." The Girl Scouts, once they realize what's actually going on in that pool pictured on the back of the peanut butter cookie box, will probably do the same. Get a box of Tagalongs while you still can.Let's get a little closer...In an old Straight Dope forum, someone commented that the box was discontinued in 2001. photos by Rusty Blazenhoff

Brian Ashcraft on what happens to returned and defective comic books in Japan.https://twitter.com/rereibara/status/959074722641162242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fkotaku.com%2Fajax%2Finset%2Fiframe%3Fid%3Dtwitter-959074722641162242%26autosize%3D1Oshikiri added that some of his manga were also included in the recycling bin. “As you’d expect, there were [other] ones that touched my soul, and I thought that manga creators and people in the publishing business should come one time to see this sight with their own eyes.”

Earworm alert: Remix maestro melodysheep (previously) just released "Phone Home," a "happy little E.T. song to brighten your day." It did.

Like the headline says, just Spiderman dancing to a-ha's "Take on Me." According to the Daily Mail, it's a 16-year-old guy with the moniker "ghetto.spider."Want more? He's got a whole Instagram full of spidey-dancing-in-public-places videos:https://www.instagram.com/p/BeblmiSAa3X/?hl=en&taken-by=ghetto.spiderhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BeeDqWBAbJ6/?hl=en&taken-by=ghetto.spiderhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BYwSkxHANUk/?hl=en&taken-by=ghetto.spiderMy spidey senses tell me that he's going to have knee issues in the future.

The Bronx Zoo unveiled a controversial exhibit in 1906 -- a Congolese man in a cage in the primate house. The display attracted jeering crowds to the park, but for the man himself it was only the latest in a string of indignities. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review the sad tale of Ota Benga and his life in early 20th-century America.We'll also delve into fugue states and puzzle over a second interstate speeder.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Artist Kate MccGwire creates remarkable sculptures from carefully-curated feathers sent to her from around the globe. This short documentary examines her philosophy and aesthetic. (more…)

Christie's is holding an auction of meteorites, and they're strikingly gorgeous. Prices? Anywhere from $1,000 to $250,000.The essays attached to each meteorite are unusually fun to read. Auction-houses typically explain the provenance of an object up for bid -- but in this case, they're describing artifacts that originated in various far-flung parts of our solar system. They begin with a sort of Yelp-like description of the meteorite (in this case, the one above) ....An uncommon smooth metallic surface delimits a somewhat ellipsoidal metallic abstract form. Numerous sockets and perforations abound in a very-rarely-seen proximity. Wrapped in a gunmetal patina with splashes of cinnamon and platinum-hued accents, this is among the most aesthetic iron meteorites known.... and then dive into the provenance:Like all iron meteorites, the current offering is more than four billion years old and originated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Evocative of a Henry Moore, this sculptural form was once part of the molten iron core of an asteroid that broke apart—a portion of which was deflected into an Earth-intersecting orbit. It was approximately 49,000 years ago that it plowed into the Arizona desert with the force of more than 100 atomic bombs. Fragments were ejected more than 11 miles away from the point of impact and the main mass vaporized, creating the most famous and best-preserved meteorite crater in the world—the renowned Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona nearly one mile across and 600 feet deep. The fragments of iron that survived the impact are referred to as Canyon Diablos (“Canyon of the Devil”), and they are the quintessential American meteorite prized by museums and private collectors everywhere. [snip] Canyon Diablos are noted for containing nodules of graphite and carbonados (minute black diamonds). In the specimen now offered, it was the ejection of the graphite inclusions that resulted in the sculpting of sockets or hollows in the mass. In a process referred to as terrestrialization, these sockets expanded in size when exposed to Earth’s elements as the seasons turned over tens of thousands of years. Some of these hollows expanded sufficiently to entirely penetrate the mass resulting in the sought-after rarity of a naturally formed hole. This meteorite has seven such complete holes, perhaps the most of any single iron meteorite. (Image used with permission of Christie's)

From Nintendo president Tatumi Kimishima's corporate management policy briefing today (PDF):We have starteddevelopment of an animated movie featuring “SuperMario” with Illumination, the movie studio thatbrought films such as “Despicable Me” and“Minions.” For this project Mr. Chris Meledandri,Founder and CEO of Illumination and ShigeruMiyamoto, Representative Director, Fellow ofNintendo will co-producing the film. The film will beco-financed by Universal Pictures and Nintendo,and distributed theatrically worldwide by UniversalPictures.Further announcements on details such as releasedates will be made at a later date. We look forwardto providing further information about the releasetiming for this movie that we hope everyone willenjoy.As a part of our effort to expand Nintendo IP beyondvideo games, we look forward to bringing smiles topeople around the world through this movie.Let's hope it fares better than last time.(via Rolling Stone)

Every year, Locus Magazine's panel of editors reviews the entire field of science fiction and fantasy and produces its Recommended Reading List; the 2017 list is now out, and I'm proud to say that it features my novel Walkaway, in excellent company with dozens of other works I enjoyed in the past year. (more…)

LA's homeless population is up 75% over the past six years; remove LA from the national statistics and the rate of American homelessness is actually in decline. (more…)

Colistin is known as the "antibiotic of last resort," and is given to humans who are extremely ill. India has been using hundreds of tons of colistin to make healthy meat animals like chickens grow more quickly.From The Guardian:A study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that hundreds of tonnes of colistin, described as an antibiotic of last resort, have been shipped to India for the routine treatment of animals, chiefly chickens, on farms.The finding is concerning because the use of such powerful drugs can lead to an increasing resistance among farm animals around the world. Colistin is regarded as one of the last lines of defence against serious diseases, including pneumonia, which cannot be treated by other medicines. Without these drugs, diseases that were commonly treatable in the last century will become deadly once again.There is nothing to prevent Indian farmers, which include some of the world’s biggest food producers, from exporting their chickens and other related products overseas. There are currently no regulations that would prevent such export to the UK on hygiene terms, except for those agreed under the EU. Any regulations to be negotiated after Brexit might not take account of these regulations.Image: Pexels, CC0 License

Calculating inflation, earning power, social progress, equality and inequality -- they all depend on being able to compare what used to be happening in our economy to what's happening now, and the way we do that is with money. (more…)

How many plumbers does it take to unclog a Norwegian Air toilet? Apparently, way more than 80.A Norwegian Air flight was shuttling over 80 plumbers from Oslo to Munich for a trade event, but less than an hour after takeoff the passengers were informed that the plane had to return to Oslo. Why? "Toilets problems!"But rather than the usual angry mob of passengers a flight crew usually encounters when there's a forced return landing, this plane was full of laughter.“Seldom has there been more laughter in an airplane . . . when the reason given is ‘toilet problems,'” one of the plumbers on board told the Washington Post. “Even the flight attendant came and told me that she has never done a U-turn with that many passengers smiling on board,” he said. “We are still smiling.”And actually, jokes aside, it would normally take less than 80 plumbers to deal with a faulty Norwegian Air toilet – but these toilets need to be fixed from the outside of the plane.🛫🚽🛬 Norwegian flight #DY1156 with 84 plumbers on board was forced to return to Oslo becasue of a problem the toilets on board.https://t.co/lUPlJIxGMU pic.twitter.com/I5YqeR6hvJ— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 29, 2018Image: Adrian Pingstone

Daniel Contreras, the owner of El Guero Canelo restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, recently learned that his $3.50 Sonoran hot dog took one of the James Beard Foundation's five 2018 America’s Classics awards this year. The Sonora, Mexico native confessed to Tucson Weekly that he was unfamiliar with the James Beard Foundation (JBF) and its award prior to winning:"First of all, like I told everybody else, I didn't even know who they were... I said, 'Well, I don't know who you are.' We miscommunicated because of my English, or I didn't understand exactly what they wanted from us. This is incredible what we have been honored."The JBF writes that the "honor is given to regional establishments, often family-owned, that are cherished for their quality food, local character, and lasting appeal" and describe the winning dog as such: The Sonoran hot dog evinces the flow of culinary and cultural influences from the U.S. to Mexico and back. Decades ago, elaborately dressed hot dogs began to appear as novelty imports on the streets of Hermosillo, the Sonoran capital. Today, Tucson is the American epicenter, and Daniel Contreras is the leading hotdoguero. A Sonoran native, Contreras was 33 in 1993 when he opened El Guero Canelo. The original stand is now a destination restaurant, outfitted with picnic tables and serviced by a walk-up order window. Fans converge for bacon-wrapped franks, stuffed into stubby bollilos, smothered with beans, onions, mustard, jalapeño sauce, and a squiggle of mayonnaise. Contreras operates three branches in Tucson, one in Phoenix, and a bakery to supply the split-top buns.Contreras and the other recipients will be honored on Monday, May 7 at the James Beard Awards Gala at Lyric Opera of Chicago.(Time)image via El Guero Canelo

Even the most stringent privacy rules have massive loopholes: they all allow for free distribution of "de-identified" or "anonymized" data that is deemed to be harmless because it has been subjected to some process. (more…)

Andrei Kashcha‏ has created a lovely fractal generator, using WebGPL. Click "Randomize" to have it generate a new fractal. If you want, tinker with some of the parameters by changing values in the function, and watch as it produces trippy results! (Deeper instructions by Kashcha here, along with the code.)I've been sitting here in a trance staring at this thing for half an hour now, somebody help me.

YouTuber Logan Paul filmed himself in a fluffy barnstormer hat looking for suicide victims in a Japanese forest and finding one to show to his 16 million viewers. He also pranced around the country making dumb and offensive jokes. The outrage was such that YouTube booted him from the site's celebrity-tier ad platform, forcing him to issue a soft-focus apology and self-care PSA in which he is seen to have learned and paid for his lesson about why you don't pose in silly hats with suicide victims. But the apology tour is showing cracks, with new excuses shining through: “the idea was to shock and show the harsh realities of suicide and get people talking about something that I don’t think people are talking about much.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWj0-dhsei4Logan Paul is continuing his apology tour following the widely criticized video of a dead body he posted on YouTube at the end of 2016. In an interview with Good Morning America today, the 22-year-old vlogger says that he posted Aokigahara forest video with a specific goal: “The idea was to shock and show the harsh realities of suicide and get people talking about something that I don’t think people are talking about much.”Paul’s video, which he removed from YouTube after swift backlash, featured the vlogger heading into the forest with friends to do another “fun vlog,” he says. They planned to camp for the night and “make an entertaining piece of content in a forest.” Shortly after they entered the forest, he says, roughly 100 feet away from the parking lot, the group encountered the body of a man who appeared to have recently hung himself. Part of the criticism around the video is Paul’s reaction as he struggles to suppress laughter and cracks a few jokes, as well as the clear disregard for the somber legacy of the forest.He doesn't really understand why anyone is upset, so it's inevitable that the rhetoric of his apology tour will end up blurted out as justification for the original videos. Fans get a carefully-crafted PSA centering Paul within a narrative of remorse and healing, but the temptation to offer journalists a journalistic rationale is too tempting. I bet a skilled radio comedian could get him giggling about it again within three minutes.

On Twitter this fine February morning, the President of the United States claimed that his State of the Union speech, watched by 46 million people, was seen by "the highest number in history." https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/959034299222843394Though this is a fine haul, outstripping the yawners of Obama's late presidency, it's far from the winner. In fact, it wasn't even as popular as the "unofficial" one he gave last year, which clocked in at 48m viewers. (Incoming presidents give a speech to Congress instead of delivering a State of the Union address)Two of Obama's earlier SoTU addresses won more viewers (48m in 2010 and 53m in 2009), too. Bush Jr. got 63m for his one after the Iraq War. Clinton got 53m in 1998 and 67m in 1993. But it's likely that an earlier president holds the record, from the era when nothing else was on.There's something so weird about it. Why would Trump say it, knowing it will immediately be checked? Lying to an audience of true believers who won't care seems too simple an answer: perhaps he's being lied to and is just too disoriented and narcissistic to notice what results.https://twitter.com/perlberg/status/959039499228667909

Nicky James Burch demonstrates her technique for making vibrant psychedelic liquid art with basic acrylic paint. Looks like a fun kids' project! (more…)

Here's an amazing set of photos of the female librarians of the 1930s, who traveled by horse to remote mountain areas in Kentucky, delivering books to catalyze literacy.It's the sort of brilliant, public-minded program we could use a lot more of today. As History Daily writes:President Franklin Roosevelt was trying to figure out a way to resolve the Great Depression of the 1930s. His Works Progress Administration created the Pack Horse Library Initiative to help Americans become more literate so that they’d have a better chance of finding employment.These librarians would adventure through muddy creeks and snowy hills just to deliver books to the people of these isolated areas.These adventurous women on horseback would ride as much as 120 miles within a given week, regardless of the terrain or weather conditions. Sometimes, they would have to finish their travels on foot if their destination was in a place too remote and tough for horses to go. [snip]These women had to be locally known to people too or else those living in the mountains would not trust them.It's another reminder -- as if we needed more -- that we should probably let librarians run the country.

Ever wonder what the inside of a giant firework looks like as it explodes? This super-slo mo footage shows what happens when a shell that's been cut in half gets lit. (more…)

Static shelves with bins holding small parts take up a lot of space. It's interesting to see this case study of how a traditional warehouse was able to use wasted air space to reduce storage area by 94%. (more…)

Going viral this evening is a marvelous comic strip by the legendary W.K. Haselden, as published in the Daily Mirror on March 5, 1919.Without formal training his drawings first appeared in a couple of short lived publications but in 1903 he was taken onto the staff of the Daily Mirror, which was then a ‘Ladies’ newspaper, in the true Edwardian sense.His daily cartoons on the fads, fashions, foibles and follies of the age soon earned him a large following. His style was gentle, subtle and his tone conservative. His targets were the upper middle-class householder and his family, and he was greatly exercised by the advances made by women, their careers, their voting rights and their increasing independence from the corset, both the physical and the metaphorical one of male domination. A viewpoint with which at the time the majority of his readers would have approved.Each year between 1906 and 1935 around 100 of these cartoons were published in paperback under the title of ‘Daily Mirror Reflections’ and it was a stack of these from 1918 to 1931 that I unearthed. His pioneering work with the large single frame divided into four or more panels connected by a single theme gave him the title, according to his Times Obituary, ‘the father of British strip cartoon’.↬ Myko Clelland

I’m a Reality TV producer. I make the stuff. Oh, go ahead, scripted television snob, snark away, I’ve heard it all before. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll confess: we have created a Monster. But why are rational Americans surprised by Trump? Twenty years after The Truman Show sent up a cautionary flare about our obsessive self-regard, we are now living in a reality TV show -- a nation of over-sharers and approval whores, each of us our own pathetic little brand. We’re all producers shooting our own docu-series now. So Reality TV has given us the worst president in living memory. There’s that. Still and all, I will defend Reality TV as a viable and ground-breaking storytelling vehicle right up until the day Trump drops the big one on North Korea and I’m out of a job. As a longtime producer on The Bachelor and its numerous spin-offs, I’m here to point out that it’s time to stop dissing the genre and acknowledge it as a powerful narrative delivery system that can hold its own with anything else in the streaming cosmos - I’m looking at you, Transparent. Just as Balzac and Zola’s novels savaged the petit bourgeois of 19th century France, with its inflated self-regard, it’s frivolous customs and status-hunger, so Reality TV shows like The Real Housewives franchise do much the same. Reality TV is the new Comedie Humaine, television as 19th century French Social Realist novel. This is not a popular position to take in Hollywood (first, you have to find someone who’s read Balzac). As a Reality TV dude, I am the recipient of condescension both subtle and overt. And let’s not get started on my financier father, who is still trying to wrap his head around what I do and wonders why he doesn’t see more books coming from me (follow the money, Dad.) It’s time to debunk the theory that us Reality TV folk opted for the genre when our scripts didn’t sell. Some of us have Masters degrees from Ivy League schools. We not only read books, we write them. In other words, great storytelling for us is King beyond any shenanigans that might pull in ratings. Many of us aspired to tell nonfiction stories and have documentary filmmaking and journalism backgrounds. There is no shortage of smart, talented people working in Reality TV who are very aware of how and how not to unpack a Romantic narrative. And they really, really, enjoy the work.Reality TV wasn’t my calling, but then again, had it existed as a college major in the late 80’s, I might have opted in. I was contentedly zooming along as a print journalist when the Great Internet Upheaval siphoned off my dead tree media work, making me feel like a Smart Car at a Monster Truck Rally. My job as a freelance journalist in jeapordy, I made the decision to embed myself to a growth industry that valued what I did best - telling stories about real people and their problems. Hence, my current career. At first I was as guilty of denigrating reality TV as the next Pynchon worshipper, and I’ll admit it felt like a step backwards. But it didn’t take long to realize that Reality TV had things to teach me about landing a joke, or setting up and paying off conflict. Admitting to my writing colleagues that I had cast my lot with the TV format that gave us Sex Sent Me To The ER was another matter. While they were sweating out their novels, I was writing wrap scripts for Bachelor host Chris Harrison. They scoffed, but I knew my words would be heard by more people than would ever read their books. And doesn’t a writer ultimately want his words to resonate, even if it's for Bachelor viewing parties? And the Internet - the very thing that cratered my journalism career - has now become my BFF. Social media has leveled the cultural playing field, even in this Golden Era of scripted TV; The Bachelor generates as much Twitter traffic as The Walking Dead I’m producing shows for an audience that really cares about whether Vanessa and Nick will actually get married (shame on you if you don’t get that reference!) Whether its detractors like it or not, The Bachelor is a huge driver of the Zeitgeist.Why? Reality TV’s narrative is appealingly indeterminate. Our audience doesn’t want dialogue, actors or directors - they want their drama unmediated and messy. Not messy as in unstructured - more on that in a minute - but as in unpredictable. It’s kind of like watching a great sporting event. Contingency creates the frisson of not knowing, and that’s gold. To call Reality TV the opiate of the fly-by states is to severely misjudge it. That attitude is reductive and ignorant; it’s Trumpian thinking (The Bachelor’s number one market is New York, by the way.) The format is already 25 years old, and like all maturing art forms, it has sprouted specific subgenres: Harridans in Revolt (The Real Housewives of wherever); Artisanal Smackdown ( Top Chef, Project Runway), Schadenfreude (The Biggest Loser, Teen Mom ) and so on. With an established reality TV show like The Bachelor, certain leitmotifs materialize over time. It’s akin to working in genre fiction. There are things viewers expect to see; the rose ceremony, the fantasy suite, and the 2 on 1 date are as essential to Bachelor fans as the zanni and innamorati are to Commedia dell'arte. The challenge lies in keeping things lively within the format. It’s not easy; you don't just point cameras at train wrecks with Adderall issues. Because it’s unscripted, Reality TV is an act of improvisation – the Ornette Coleman kind. For those who think the inverse is true, and that it’s pre-meditated and ‘soft scripted’, I would say: you’re giving us far too much credit. As to the ontological debate about what constitutes “reality” on Reality TV, I will say that it’s all too real. Of course cast members know they are being filmed, but it’s astonishing how unfettered on-camera behavior can be when real feelings are at stake. After all, The MOST SHOCKING MOMENT IN BACHELOR HISTORY occurred in 2008 when Bachelor Jason Mesnick, after asking erstwhile Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Melissa Rycroft to marry him, pulled a fast one after the season had been shot and wound up rejecting Melissa for Molly Malaney on the post-show After The Final Rose special in front of millions of delightedly confused viewers. (It was our version of the LaLa Land-Moonlight Oscars mix up.) We were blindsided by it, but it turned out to be a highwater mark for the show, and it was real, folks: no one without a SAG card has acting chops that sharp. The truth is, Reality TV was a tremendous uptick for me - it continues to be the best and steadiest money I’ve ever made. It’s also the most fun I’ve ever had with a paycheck attached. Trump might only have a few more years left, but Reality TV is an irrefutable fact of life and it’s not going away. And one other thing: I know you’re a closet Bachelor fan. Don’t worry, you’re secret is safe with me.

Nazy Cardiel Camargo from Amity Bloom crafts lovely journals festooned with textiles, found art, and other ephemera, and the results are quite beautiful. (more…)

Baffling. Boggling. Florida.This story has everything from a hitman named 'the Rabbi' to a child pornographer asking his mom to arrange a murder.Via People:A Florida man who had pleaded guilty to child pornography now faces additional charges in a suspected murder-for-hire plot to kill the presiding judge in his case, PEOPLE confirms.To arrange the hit, Robert Anthony O’Hare allegedly used codes while talking to his mother on recorded jailhouse phone calls in Lake County, Florida, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.On Jan. 7, O’Hare allegedly gave his mom a message that said “Kill Briggs.” Investigators believe this was a reference to Judge Don F. Briggs.Authorities claim that O’Hare asked his mother to write the message down and give it to a friend called “the rabbi.” In the call, O’Hare allegedly told his mother that the rabbi would know what to do.“As far as the weird scale goes, it’s off the charts, totally,” Lt. John Herrell with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office told local TV station WKMG.On a subsequent call, O’Hare’s mother allegedly said that she had spoken to the rabbi. “He knows what you want, but he can’t do it.” she said, the court records claim. “He’s just a ‘rabbi.’ ”

This exhaustive database of Garbage Pail Kids is structured to make it almost easy to find one with the same name as yourself. Meet the uncannily apt Rodent Rob.

Oil of wintergreen makes for lovely glowsticks, but the secret ingredient is the solvent used to create chemiluminescence. (more…)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.IF you like Tom the Dancing Bug, be part of the team that makes it happen: INNER HIVE! Join for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, commentary, 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…)

Surprise! Making perfect blackened salmon is easy. (more…)

Australian science fiction author Sean Williams (previously) is an Australian Antarctic Division Arts Fellow, who got to live in the Antarctic while researching an alternate War of the Worlds retelling. (more…)

Australian national broadcaster ABC has gotten hold of a massive trove of state secrets that were inadvertently sold off in a pair of cheap, locked filing cabinets purchased from a Canberra junk-shop that specialises in government surplus furniture. (more…)

Love it or hate it, Toto's 1982 soft rock mega-hit "Africa" is here to stay. But how did a band from Los Angeles get famous for a song about Africa?Dave Simpson of The Guardian recently interviewed the song's writer (and vocalist) David Paich and found out:One of the reasons I was in a rock band was to see the world. As a kid, I’d always been fascinated by Africa. I loved movies about Dr Livingstone and missionaries. I went to an all-boys Catholic school and a lot of the teachers had done missionary work in Africa. They told me how they would bless the villagers, their Bibles, their books, their crops and, when it rained, they’d bless the rain. That’s where the hook line – “I bless the rains down in Africa” – came from.They said loneliness and celibacy were the hardest things about life out there. Some of them never made it into the priesthood because they needed companionship. So I wrote about a person flying in to meet a lonely missionary. It’s a romanticised love story about Africa, based on how I’d always imagined it. The descriptions of its beautiful landscape came from what I’d read in National Geographic.Paich told Musicradar in 2013:"Its first inception came when there used to be UNICEF commercials on TV, showing children and families living in poverty. The first time I saw that it affected me deeply…"I sat down and started playing and the chorus just came out like magic. I remember after I'd sung 'I bless the rains down in Africa', I just stopped and went, 'Wait a minute. I might be a little talented, but I'm not that talented - God's using me for an instrument here!'"I realised I had a song in the making, so I started writing on the Yamaha CS-80, which you hear in the intro - that's the keyboard playing - and then you hear the little kalimba sounds [on the Yamaha GS1] in the chorus. It was a fertile time to make music with new sounds, and that kind of defined that song."In 2015, Paich shared with Grantland:“We had finished our record, so when I started writing that, they were like, ‘Dave, why don’t you save this for your solo album?’ It’s kind of the joke — when someone writes a song that doesn’t really fit into the Toto mold, the joke is, everybody says, ‘Save that for your solo album.’ So the band kind of indulged me and let me start working on this track for it. This one barely made it; it just got on the end of the Toto IV album. It’s the one that didn’t get away, you know?”We hadn’t the faintest idea that this was going to be a hit, maybe until the head of Columbia Records called us and said, ‘You know that they’re starting to play this song “Africa”? It’s starting to become a dance hit.’ I go, ‘Are you kidding me? “Africa” is becoming a dance hit?’ ‘Yeah, they’re starting to play it in these discos and dance places in New York City.’“I think it starts breaking there, and you know how things catch on. It became popular, kind of like a little cult thing, and all of a sudden started climbing the charts. We couldn’t believe it. I mean, we still look at each other, turn to each other with a look of amazement today, at the journey that song’s taken. Normally, things that are kind of deep and musical and kind of off the beaten path don’t make for hit records. I mean not always, for us anyway, so that was a very special record.”The band has a new greatest hits album titled 40 Trips Around the Sun and will begin touring Europe in February.

Amy Shira Teitel of Vintage Space shares lots of cool facts about the golden age of space exploration. Here, she enumerates the engines (and motors) it took Apollo to get to the moon. (more…)

At the Under the Radar Festival in New York City earlier this month, a crowd of soon-to-be singers rehearsed "back ups" for David Bowie's "Heroes." After an hour, they were performing the song with David Byrne as a Choir! Choir! Choir! tribute to Bowie.According to Consequence of Sound, Byrne gave his thoughts on working with the choir group, in a press release: "There is a transcendent feeling in being subsumed and surrendering to a group. This applies to sports, military drills, dancing… and group singing. One becomes a part of something larger than oneself, and something in our makeup rewards us when that happens. We cling to our individuality, but we experience true ecstasy when we give it up. So, the reward experience is part of the show.”Byrne is beginning an ambitious tour in March for his new album, American Utopia. The album is his first solo LP in 14 years.

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Investor Warren Buffet, world's-richest-guy Jeff Bezos and cartoon villain Jamie Dimon have announced that their firms will collaborate to create an unnamed health insurer that is "free from profit-making incentives and constraints" (though that does not necessarily mean it will be a nonprofit, of course). (more…)

With its pink hairless body and huge incisors hanging out of its mouth, the naked mole rat isn't a particularly handsome creature. A rodent that is neither rat nor mole but the only species currently classified in the genus Heterocephalus, the nearly blind, nearly hairless naked mole rat lives in almost complete darkness its entire life. It has also recently been discovered that these rodents live to around 35 years, as opposed to a "regular" rat's six years, and the naked mole rat doesn't seem to actually age before it dies. According to Phys Org:A team of researchers at Google-owned Calico Life Sciences LLC has found that the naked mole rat defies Gompertz's mortality law. In their paper published in eLife, the group describes their study of the unusual-looking rodent and describe some of its unusual traits.Naked mole rats are very nearly hairless. They evolved that way by living in a harsh underground environment. They are also almost ectothermic (cold blooded). And now, it seems they do not age—at least in the traditional sense. Reports of long-lived mole rats prompted the team at Calico to take a closer look—they have a specimen in their lab that has lived to be 35 years old. Most "normal" rats, in comparison, live to be just six years old, and they age as they do so.The team collected what they describe as 3,000 points of data regarding the lifespan of the naked mole rat, and found that many had lived for 30 years. But perhaps more surprisingly, they found that the chance of dying for the mole rats did not increase as they aged. All other mammals that have been studied have been found to conform to what is known as Gompertz's mortality law, which states that the risk of death for a typical mammal grows exponentially after they reach sexual maturity—for humans, that means the odds of dying double every eight years after reaching age 30. This, the researchers claim, suggests that mole rats do not age—at least in the conventional sense. They do eventually die, after all.To see these delightful creatures in action, here's a short National Geographic clip from 2012:https://youtu.be/A5DcOEzW1wAImage by Jedimentat44