https://vimeo.com/245992513Filmmaker Brett Gaylor (previously) realized that Google had saved all the voice-searches his five-year-old had done since he discovered the feature a year ago; in a charming little animated documentary, Brett muses on the ambivalent miracle of a child being able to do research on anything or anything (but while storing all their intellectual history with a giant, creepy multinational company).

The New York Times has an article about "Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program." $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, there are 2 declassified released videos that the reader is left to assume is proof of alien visitors (one of the authors of the articles is promoting a UFO book at this time). It has a lot of facts the NYTimes left out like the CEO of the newly formed crowdfunded company via the CROWDFUND ACT, Tom DeLonge. If you’re wondering if it’s that Tom DeLonge, yes! DeLonge was the guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the band Blink-182. It was reported that DeLonge allegedly left Blink-182 in 2015 because of aliens and national security. (more…)

More Christmas fun with the British middle class! Previously: When gifts are for the giver.

I've not see these videos of The Beatles' " Paperback Writer" and "Rain" before. The quality is great and I love both of these songs, especially Ringo's phenomenal drumming on "Rain."https://youtu.be/cK5G8fPmWeA(Thanks, Mark!)

In 2013, Tea Party activists claimed that they'd been singled out by the IRS for political reasons, and that's why their associated nonprofits were not being approved by the tax agency. In reality, a longrunning investigation found that the IRS was merely incompetent and understaffed, but the Tea Party's tactic of going after the referee rather than the system worked for them: the result was an IRS that has had its resources cut even further, leaving it less -- nor more -- able to evaluate charitable organizations that apply for tax-exempt status. (more…)

In case you've never heard of gender reveal parties, let me clue you in. It's a celebration for expecting parents, or their guests (or sometimes both), that announces the gender of the child, usually in creative ways. First-year Burners Lainey Deanne and Wesley Robinson of Utah conceived their first child at Burning Man this past summer. So, it makes sense that they would light a miniature model of the Man on fire in their backyard bbq grill as a way to reveal their baby's gender. Most folks use the colors pink or blue in some way to let everyone in on the surprise, but as their mini-Man burnt, a name was uncovered instead (it's difficult to see in the video). Spoiler alert: It's a boy! Baby Isaac J Mike will arrive in May 2018.Congrats to the Robinsons!

A Polish entomologist has observed and recorded footage of a bee-like moth called the Oriental blue clearwing. (more…)

This little faux-gloved hand will pinch chips for you, so your own hands won't get greasy. You don't need it, no one does, but if you have to know, this poorly-reviewed product is available for $4.24 on Amazon.From its description: *NO Grease any more!Just the Way I Like:In common sense,many people like eating snacks like potato crisps while ussing computer.* It directly leads to a very greasy hands and keyboard.* This heavily demage our health and clean imageFrom now on,let Potato Crisp Hand regain our elegant and healthy eating style.* The item designed like a just a hand,can use thumb and forefinger on the hand to control.* when we want to eat crisp,just hold the rod of the hand,push the button,the thumb and the forefinger can be closed and pick up the crisps.* In fact,just like our thumb and forefinger to pick up the crisps.* The unique hold system inside allow to Apply the most appropriate strength on the chips to not let the crisp be broken.* Therefore we got a elegant and healthy eating crisp way.Elegant. Healthy. RIGHT...(Foodiggity, Oh Gizmo!)

FixNation is a nonprofit working to reduce the feral cat population. To raise funds, they commissioned cool cat shelters from prominent Los Angeles architecture firms, then auctioned the structures like Flora-Gato in the video for charity. (more…)

Visitors to the Minoo reserve in Japan's Osaka prefecture have long observed female adolescent macaques mounting and humping adult male deer; in a fascinating paper (Sci-Hub open access link) in Archives of Sexual Behavior, three psychology researchers from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, conduct a careful study of these behaviors ("the first quantitative study of heterospecific sexual behavior between a non-human primate and a non-primate species"), and, through a set of naturally occurring experiments, formed an evidence-supported picture of what's going on here. (more…)

A pass to the national parks ($80); vulva-shaped chocolates ($20; a donation to Planned Parenthood (varies); anything from Patagonia (they're suing Trump); ACLU tees ($28); Cards Against Humanity ($25) and many more items, all in The Guardian's Ultimate gift guide for the Trump-hater in your life. (Thanks, Mom!)

As the father of a five-month old baby and the owner of a copy of Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, this has been the funniest 11 seconds of 2017.

The annual Share Festival, held in both Turin and Belgrade, features a juried prize for electronic art; this year's theme is "Fr@nkenstein: The Modern Prometheus," and will be judged by an international panel under the direction of Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic. (more…)

Sarah Jeong is right (as usual): Rogue One is about internet freedom, a movie about the struggle to upload a large file under time-constraint in a post-Net-Neutrality dystopia where Dropbox is a distant memory and you can't just email a file to yourself for later reference. (more…)

Tis the season (1:12:27). (more…)

The FCC is only allowed to change existing policies if they can show evidence of some change in facts, so at yesterday's bomb-threat haunted hearing to destroy Net Neutrality, Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his Republican colleagues made a pro-forma recitation of the reasons justifying his extreme actions. (more…)

All of you.

This puppy looked so far gone, I don't think most people would have thought they could bring it back to life. But the determined, resourceful cyclist who found the pup did everything right, including cutting off the bottom of a water bottle and then using it as a tube to breath air into the puppy's mouth. The incredible rescue in this video is hard to watch, but seems to have a happy ending – I only wish we could find out how the puppy is doing now.

The Harry Potter series has an unusual new chapter and J.K. Rowling didn't write it, machines did.Botnick Studios, a "human-machine creative collective" which describes itself as "a community of writers, artists and developers collaborating with machines to create strange new things," created a predictive keyboard that later penned the unauthorized chapter. By "training" the keyboard on all seven Harry Potter titles, machines were able to write this humorous new work. Harry Potter and the Portrait of what Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash is the fabricated book's title and the faux chapter is called, "The Handsome One."Here's a few quotes from its ghostwritten pages:"Magic: it was something that Harry Potter thought was very good.""Ron's shirt was just as bad as Ron himself.""The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: 'You are Hagrid now.'""'The password was BEEF WOMEN,' Hermione cried."Read the entire chapter here. Be sure to take a look at Botnick's other work, like this predictive text Thanksgiving dinner video.("BEEF WOMEN" will now be my new password.)

Hey Santa, 1983 called. Eddie Murphy wants his tight red leather suit back.This Team Coco bit imagines Santa Claus telling off-color jokes for a stand-up comedy special on Netflix called, "Sack Up! Santa Live!" It's so wrong.

The University of Pennsylvania's Matt Blaze (previously) is a legendary figure in cryptography and security circles; most recently he convened Defcon's Vote Hacking Village where security experts with no particular knowledge of voting machines repeatedly, fatally hacked surplus voting machines of the sort routinely used in US elections. (more…)

To celebrate the upcoming release of The Last Jedi, we’re offering a selection of Star Wars-themed interior decorations in the Boing Boing Store for 15% off the usual retail value — all you have to do is enter coupon code GIFTSHOP15 during checkout. Here’s what you can get:3D Mega LampsThese custom-fabricated LED lamps light up the darkness with eye-catching 3D illusions. They’re modeled after a handful of fan-favorite ships and characters, so you can choose one that best matches your digs. If you strongly identify with heroic outlaws like Han and Chewie, you can get one shaped like the iconic Millennium Falcon. Alternatively, anyone who respects the brutal authoritarianism of the empire will die for a 3D Death Star lamp. And for the pacifist droid lovers, we’ve even got one shaped like gravity-defying BB-8. Each one of these 3D Mega Lamps goes for $39.99, but you can take an extra 15% off with code GIFTSHOP15.Star Wars 3D DIY Metal SculpturesGive your office desk some galactic flair with a statue of your favorite Star Wars spacecraft. After choosing which side of the force you’re on, you can put these metal sculptures together yourself. They come in a variety of classic shapes, including X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Imperial Star Destroyer. Save 15% off our normal $9.99 price when you enter GIFTSHOP15 at checkout.Star Wars ArtThese wall hangings are printed on high-quality 100 lb archival paper, so you can be sure that they’ll last. This artwork is by illustrator Devin Schoeffler, and it depicts memorable scenes from the original trilogy like Luke’s training in the Dagobah system, and the the Empire’s assault on Hoth. These posters are in the Boing Boing Store for $19.99, but you can save an additional 15% with code GIFTSHOP15.

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Not only that, but as Randy Michaels quipped, "The most Christmas carols ever gathered in one book. Period." (more…)

As a safety measure, SNL writer Nick Kocher recently installed a Nest cam in his apartment. He then left town for the weekend, letting his friend Jon Bass crash at his place. (more…)

Donald Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made a terrible, unfunny video mocking the tens of millions of Net Neutrality advocates whose comments he has discarded (along with filings from the internet's inventors and leading scientists and engineers). The video was posted to the fringe-right website The Daily Caller. (more…)

When Massachusetts GOP Senator Scott Brown was elected in a 2010 special election, Senate Democrats agreed to delay a key vote on health care reform until he could be seated, so that the vote would be held by elected officials, not the appointed lame duck who was sitting in the seat that Brown was about to occupy. (more…)

It’s rare, but once in a while the tabloids just get a story right. While Us magazine bores us with the “most fascinating people of 2017” (Melania Trump? Meghan Markle?) and the National Enquirer tells us “What shocked and rocked in 2017” (branding Hollywood’s sex harassment scandals “Pervnado"), it is the Globe that hits the pitch-perfect end-of-year note with its “50 Most Annoying People of 2017.”Its catalogue of “whiners, losers and lamebrains” is hard to argue with: Kim Kardashian, Bill O’Reilly, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Harvey Weinstein, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow . . . the list goes on. Caitlyn Jenner, Megyn Kelly, Anthony Scaramucci, Johnny Depp . . . there’s ten pages of this, and I’ll bet they could have filled the entire magazine with names if they wanted to.Yet the Globe inexplicably omits the year's unquestionably most annoying person: Donald Trump. It’s another week when the Trump-toadying tabloids become the mouthpiece of the White House, with highly debatable information that appears spoon-fed from the West Wing.“Clintons Rigged Trump Investigation!” screams the grammatically-challenged cover of the Enquirer, which claims to have exposed “Bill & Hillary’s dirty tricks” in loading special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team with Clinton supporters. But while Mueller’s law firm WilmerHale indeed made contributions to Democrats as the Enquirer alleges, it also made substantial contributions to Republicans, in fact donating almost twice as much to Republicans from 1996 to 2002, though favoring Democrats in recent years.Prince Harry’s betrothed Meghan Markle’s father Tom “won’t live to see wedding,” predicts the Enquirer, based solely on a photo that shows the 73-year-old appearing rather portly. They roll out the standard rent-a-quote doctors to explain the health dangers of being overweight, concluding that Mr. Markle is “eating and smoking himself to early grave.” Obesity carries many risks, it’s true, but it takes the Enquirer team of medically trained psychics to diagnose that Mr. Markle’s demise will come before his daughter’s wedding in May.The Globe doesn’t need psychics, however, when it has a “body language expert” to predict that Big Bang Theory actress Kaley Cuoco’s “upcoming marriage is doomed!” It must be right – you can’t argue with science.The Queen’s “last Christmas” is in ruins, reports the Globe. You might think she’d be happy with a third child on the way for grandson Prince William, and Prince Harry poised to walk down the aisle, but no – the Globe reveals: “It’s malice at the palace like we’ve never seen before,” according to an “insider.” Maybe it's one of the Queen’s Corgis ratting out the Royals again. Apparently the Royals are all at each others’ throats, because they’re just characters in a soap opera, after all.Old houses always need a lot of maintenance, and the White House is no exception. The General Services Administration, which maintains the venerable mansion, recently reported that it has dealt with cockroach infestations, mice and ants, and replaced a toilet seat in the Oval Office bathroom – all routine problems that have plagued the abode for decades, through successive administrations. But that’s enough for the Globe to claim: “Obama family left place a total disaster . . . leaving it a disgusting vermin-infested roach motel."Snopes has noted that President Jimmy Carter battled mice and that First Lady Barbara Bush had a run-in with a rat. President Grover Cleveland’s wife found a giant rat trying to devour her pet canary, and lamented numerous infestations of spiders and cockroaches. Screw history, says the Globe, it’s all the fault of those filthy Obamas.People magazine barely brightens the mood with its innocuously bland cover story on Full House star John Stamos revealing: “I’m Gonna Be a Dad!” When a man realizes at the age of 54 that “I had to do some work on myself first” before considering fatherhood, and admits "I had to straighten up,” it’s not so much a reason for celebration as it is for sadness that it took him so long.Fortunately Us magazine’s crack team of investigative reporters tell us that Jennifer Lopez wore it best (when did we stop calling her J Lo?), that Kate Sackhoff carries eyedrops, decongestant and skin cream in her Chanel bag, and that the stars are just like us: they grocery shop, buy Christmas trees and feed parking meters. But wait! This week Us brings us a rare page of reality: “Stars – They’re NOT like Us!” They ride on yachts, have streets named after them, and fly in private jets. I always had my suspicions that the stars were not like us, but now it’s finally been proven! Thank you, Us magazine.Onwards and downwards . . .

Last night Kentucky Republican state Rep. Dan Johnson drove onto a bridge in Louisville, Kentucky, shot himself inside his car, and died. 24 hours earlier, he had been publicly accused of molesting a teenager in 2013.In 2013, then 17-year-old Maranda Richmond had to ward off a drunk evangelical pastor – Dan Johnson – who kissed her and put his hands underneath her clothes inside a church on New Years Day. Three months later she reported the incident to police, and the Louisville Metro Police Department started but then closed an investigation without charging Johnson.In January of this year pastor Johnson became a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from the 49th district, but it wasn't until earlier this week that the molestation case was made public with a lengthy report by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.According to CNN:The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting got its hands on police documents on the alleged sexual assault, and interviewed Richmond, leading to its story on how Johnson allegedly forced himself on her when she was a teenager.On Tuesday, a day after the center published its report, Johnson denied the allegations, saying Richmond was motivated by his political opponents."This allegation concerning this young girl absolutely has no merit," he said. "As a matter of fact, some of this I heard yesterday for the first time as I read the story."...Johnson posted a message on his Facebook page Wednesday evening, saying the accusations "are false" and 'only God knows the truth." The post appears to have been deleted. https://youtu.be/38tqfW9-ncg

Patients of Dr. Simon Bramhall probably weren’t expecting an autograph on their transplanted organs. That didn’t stop the surgeon from signing their livers like Roy Moore on high school yearbook day. Bramhall pleaded guilty to two counts of assault for using an argon beam to burn his initials on two patients’ livers at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2013, according to the BBC. The beam can be used to sketch a non-harmful outline for operation on the livers surface. Bramhall pleaded not guilty to assault causing bodily harm. His initials were originally discovered by another surgeon. Via the BBC: "It was done in the presence of colleagues," he said.His actions were carried out "with a disregard for the feelings of unconscious patients", the prosecutor added.Bramhall resigned after a disciplinary hearing with University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust in May 2014.Image: Alex Nelson

The driver of a DeLorean modded to resemble the version from Back to the Future didn’t impress a Texas state trooper for hitting 88 mph. Mark Shields, who was driving his car to an event, told KHOU he thought the officer was joking when he pulled him over for the time-traveling speed. Shields said the trooper responded by saying he doesn’t “joke” about his job. Shields said the trooper continued to ask about the car and questions related to the movie, but ultimately handed the butthead a ticket. Image: Oto Godfrey and Justin Morton

Neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer was recently pushed off the web by domain registrars, but can supposedly still be found as a hidden service. And would you know that it has a 17-page style guide? They pay $14.88 a post. The site’s stylistic decisions, the subjects it covers, the specific racial slurs it employs — all are consciously chosen for the purpose of furthering The Daily Stormer’s ultimate goal, which, according to the style guide itself, is “to spread the message of nationalism and anti-Semitism to the masses.” Everything is deliberate. The guide is particularly interested in ways to lend the site’s hyperbolic racial invective a facade of credibility and good faith. Or at the very least, in how to confuse its readers to the point where they can’t tell the difference. The Daily Stormer, for instance, uses block quotes for much the same reason Richard Spencer stuffs himself into vestsHere's some tips on encoding incitements to violence as "joking."

My op-ed in New Internationalist, ‘Don’t break the 21st century nervous system’, seeks to cut through the needless complexity in the Net Neutrality debate, which is as clear-cut as climate change or the link between smoking and cancer -- and, like those subjects, the complexity is only there because someone paid to introduce it. (more…)

Last year, the Mirai botnet harnessed a legion of badly secured internet of things devices and turned them into a denial of service superweapon that brought down critical pieces of internet infrastructure (and even a country), and now its creators have entered guilty pleas to a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act federal case, and explained that they created the whole thing to knock down Minecraft servers that competed with their nascent Minecraft hosting business. (more…)

ADSL was a miracle when it debuted, delivering high speeds over old copper, thanks to a protocol that was so adaptable to suboptimal media that it was said it could run "over a piece of wet string." (more…)

I fondly remember the unalloyed joy of eating lionfish tacos in the Caribbean, consuming an invasive species that was wrecking a reef preserve; if you've never experienced a similar pleasure, be on the lookout for "jellyfish crisps" made from the huge blooms of jellyfish that are the result of climate change, whose presence is a nuisance and worse. (more…)

Gawker was bankrupted by Peter Thiel, who secretly backed Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the network of news, entertainment and gossip sites in an act of petty revenge. (more…)

Ever find yourself coming home from an attack-dog training session in heavy armored shinguards and come across a snowy hill and muse, man, if only my shinguards were a leeeetle optimized, I could drop to my knees and slide down that bad boy! (more…)

A dozen Michigan cops from Grand Rapids broke into a family home and rushed an 11 year old black girl, pointing guns at her and cuffing her while her terrified mother begged them not to shoot her. (more…)

Emojipedia notes that with Twitter's adoption of David Bowie-like figures for its singer emojis, the British pop legend lives on as such on four major platforms: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter. The only other easily-identified star is Prince, as used by WhatsApp. Bowie- and Prince-inspired characters are used for both man and woman singer emojis. Facebook, Samsung and others use generic (or at least less identifiable) characters, because they are boring.

Boot Camp is an excellent way for fans of Mac hardware to run Windows for work, games, or legacy software, but rebooting to switch operating systems is a hassle if you’re just looking to launch one or two apps. Fortunately, CrossOver 17 lets you install and run Windows software inside MacOS. Right now, this indispensable emulation layer can be had for $19 when you order it from the Boing Boing Store.CrossOver 17 removes the need for a full OS installation or virtual machine, and it treats Windows apps like anything else on your Mac. Everything runs at native speeds, and you can even launch programs from the dock. And because you never need to leave the confines of MacOS, you don’t have to worry about malware from questionable app downloads.Grab a copy of CrossOver 17 here for $19.

Towering English bodybuilder David Prowse was the man actor behind Darth Vader's menacing presence. With James Earl Jones's voice and Sebastian Shaw's face, he helped create one of cinema's greatest villains. But he's also famously eccentric and cantankerous, which will doubtless make the forthcomimg movie about his life more interesting.Chronicling his journey from champion weightlifter to the biggest bad ass in the universe, Strongman will follow Prowse through his tenure as Green Cross Code man, a British road safety mascot, and his career as an actor, where he appeared in films such as 1967's Casino Royale, A Clockwork Orange, The Horror of Frankenstein, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, and others.One of the peculiar coincidences of Star Wars casting is that Hayden Christiansen, who played a younger Anakin/Vader in the Star Wars prequels, looks uncannily like a young David Prowse, the only Vader actor whose face is never actually seen in the series. When Jedi Return of the Jedi called for mask-off scenes, however, Prowse (and Jones) were replaced by Shaw. If Hayden got the role, that'd be extremely cool.

Roy Moore, who has been thoroughly endorsed by Donald Trump, said in 2011 that the US government would "solve many problems" by ridding itself of every Constitutional amendment after the first ten -- a list that included the 13th Amendment (which ended slavery), the 14th (which gave citizenship to former enslaved people); the 15th (which gave the vote to black men) and the 19th (which extended voting to women). (more…)

Oliver Schmidt, the general manager of Volkswagen's Michigan environmental and engineering office, is going to jail for his role in Dieselgate, the company's criminal conspiracy to trick regulators about the emissions from their diesel cars, allowing them to emit lethal levels of NOx on roads all over the world. (more…)

Breitbart, Steve Bannon and co. mused often about destroying Twitter, reports Buzzfeed, exploring financial and legal options to bring the site to heel and Jack Dorsey to his knees. On Jan. 15, Yiannopoulos sent a peace offering to Twitter — a cordial email to Jack Dorsey asking for his verification to be restored in exchange for a detente. A screenshot of an email tracker Yiannopoulos used registered that the email was opened 111 times.But Dorsey never responded.And so the “#war,” as Bannon called it, carried on. Begging is not a position of strength. But Twitter ignoring the alt right and its fellow travelers still had consequences.This is hilarious, though:[Chuck] Johnson didn’t just short Twitter from behind the scenes. He had helped create a Twitter account @shortthebird in July 2015 and organized a campaign to put stickers and posters up around the company’s San Francisco headquarters with the hashtag #shorttwitter. (The hashtag never really took off, however, as it was simultaneously being employed by Twitter users to joke about their physical stature.)

https://youtu.be/HjLMAoejW-AWhy are so many Alabamians voting for Roy Moore, even after nine women say he sexually assaulted or pursued them when they were teenagers? They believe the women were paid to do so. They believe it is a "George Soros assassination plan." They believe it was OK because Moore didn't undress the teenage girls. They believe it's the fault of both Moore *and* the 14-year-old girl. They believe the women have questionable reputations. They believe Moore must be trusted until he's criminally convicted. They believe Moore must be forgiven because Christians forgive. They believe that "forty years ago in Alabama, there's a lot of mommas and daddies that would be thrilled that their 14-year-old was getting hit on by a district attorney." YouTube description:These are the views of twelve conservative voters who gathered inside a Birmingham coffee house Thursday for a candid discussion about the senate race in their state. Voters dismissed many of the allegations against Moore — while saying behavior that was acceptable in Alabama decades ago shouldn’t be measured by modern standards....The panel was compiled and moderated by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster well known for arranging focus groups with GOP voters.

Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai -- a former Verizon exec -- says that we can count on ISPs to voluntarily refrain from abusing their natural monopolies to degrade service to their customers in order to maximize their profits. (more…)

Sydney's Wynyard Station wooden escalators, built in 1932, have been preserved and repurposed as a sculpture titled Interloop, in the station where they operated for over 80 years. (more…)

Architect Shinsuke Fujii accepted the challenge from a client who wanted an accessible tall bookshelf that would not be affected by an earthquake. One entire wall of the house is slanted outward to allow climbing without any chance of tipping over. (more…)