Nostradamus “predicted hurricanes and North Korea missile crisis,” claims this week’s Globe magazine, which promises to reveal the 16th-century French seer’s predictions for “what’s next!”It’s about as plausible and fact-based as anything else in this week’s dubious tabloids. “The false trumpet concealing madness will cause Byzantium to change its laws,” wrote the ancient prognosticator. “The false trumpet is an obvious reference to America’s president,” Nostradamus analyst Louis Lefrevre tells Globe. Wait a second – the Trump-loving Globe is calling the President a “false trumpet”? Sure, he makes a lot of noise and blows a lot of hot air, but then who is the true trumpet? Hillary? Bernie?The ancient writings continue: “The trumpet shakes with great discord. An agreement broken . . .” Lefrevre explains: “The broken agreement is Kim’s refusal to stop nuclear testing despite his former promises.” Well, that seems obvious once you explain it.So, what comes next?“The next war,” says Lefrevre, pointing to this Nostradamus verse: “Pestilences extinguished, the world becomes smaller, for a long time the lands will be inhabited peacefully.” What could be clearer than that? And should I be surprised that a Google search for what the Globe terms “University of Paris expert Louis Lefrevre” turns up zero matches?How about the Globe story that Jennifer Aniston and husband Justin Theroux are having a “trial separation”? Except she’s actually filming in Georgia, and he’s at home in New York. That’s not a marital split, it’s a working couple.How about the Globe finding “proof” that the coroner had Natalie Wood’s “autopsy faked!” Its proof? You’ll have to turn to Nostradamus for that, because the Globe comes up with none, except for a writer’s unsubstantiated “sensational claim” that coroner Thomas Noguchi “fabricated" findings to cover up her murder. What was fabricated? That’s never explained.How about fears that actor Bruce Willis is suffering dementia, because he starred on Broadway wearing an earpiece to feed him his lines. Except that performance was two years ago, and wearing an earpiece to receive lines in a show with a script being constantly reworked is hardly a sign of Alzheimer’s. Just ask Al Pacino, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, and the many other actors who have worn earpieces for line prompts on Broadway.The tabloids’ Guess-Your-Weight expert, who so accurately pin-points each star’s fluctuating heft to the nearest pound, now has a name: Dr. Stuart Fischer, creator of the Park Avenue Diet. Dr. Fischer tells the Globe that Caitlyn Jenner weighs “at least” 220 pounds, and blames the hormones that the former Bruce Jenner takes to be “girly” for her added avoirdupois.Dr. Fischer is there again, in this week’s National Enquirer, telling us that Angelina Jolie “looks like she weighs no more than 76 pounds,” and that she was recently “nearly 100 pounds after being as low as 79 pounds.” These are remarkably accurate assessments of stars’ precise weights, for a doctor who admits never having treated either Jenner or Jolie. Angelina, it seems, “is literally dying of a broken heart” following her split from Brad Pitt, claims the Enquirer. As Dr Gabriel Mirkin, who also hasn’t treated Jolie, explains, with repeated weight loss “you lose so much heart muscle that you can go into heart failure.”Nutritionist Lisa De Fazio also gets in on the act, informing the Enquirer that actress Tori Spelling “now weighs 150 pounds,” which qualifies her as a “plus-size pauper” because she was spotted shopping at Target – oh, the shame of it! – and browsing a yard sale. Oh, and “the chunky blonde stuffed herself during a recent family vacation at a pricey $10,000-a-night Mexico resort.” So that’s the sort of pauper we’re dealing with – one who can only afford $10,000 for a hotel room? How sad to be so impoverished.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Selena Gomez wore it best (and who doesn’t look good in a pink unicorn sweater?), that Grey’s Anatomy star Jessica Capshaw is incredibly humble (“What I like most about myself is that I’m kind”), that actress Natacha Karam (Who she, Ed?) carries Chanel Coco Noir perfume, “poo bags for my dog,” boxing gloves, and “like, 600 elastics” hair scrunchies in her drawstring gym bag, and that the stars are just like us: they play slot machines, eat ice cream, and shop for Halloween. Riveting stuff.Us devotes its cover to Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie and actor-husband Josh Duhamel as their “marriage explodes," blaming “baby battles, cheating and the pressures of fame.” Supposedly he wanted more children and she wanted to focus on her singing career, but the “cheating” line seems rather gratuitous, since it refers to unsubstantiated allegations by an Atlanta stripper claiming a one-night fling with Duhamel in 2010.People magazine gives its cover to Prince William, promising to unveil his “life as a dad and future king.” The British Royal Family are always big sellers for the celebrity mags, but sadly it’s an uninspired romp through old interviews, explaining that he’s a great father because he takes the kids to school when wife Kate can’t, and that he listens to people he meets. “There’s a lot of support for each other, and a lot of love,” says a mental health activist who met them briefly at an event last year. Well, that’s as good as a source inside Kensington Palace, isn’t it?Leave it to the National Examiner to predict that “by 2050 sex with robots will be more common than lovemaking for humans only,” and that the RealDoll company already “markets a line with customized genitalia and interchangeable faces.” Because robot sex should be like eating at Burger King: you can have it your way.Intriguingly, most “sexbots” are female, and the Examiner reports that “for whatever reason, women seem less interested in being intimate with androids!” Perhaps because most men in the sack perform like mechanized robots anyway?Onwards and downwards . . .

A gentleman in Ottawa, Canada -- eager to get sent to jail in order to sell weed he had packed inside of eight Kinder Surprise plastic egg "yolks" and stored in his rectum -- threw a rock at a police car in front of the courthouse. Wish granted. But once inside, his body got the best of him. From the Ottawa Citizen:It’s not known if the guard noticed (Damian) O’Reilly was in some discomfort but whatever the reason, the guard had suspicions that O’Reilly might be smuggling drugs. The young inmate was escorted to dry cell No. 9. A dry cell has no plumbing and guards will either attempt to seize the contraband or wait for it to be expelled.In this case, it was O’Reilly himself who, once alone in the dry cell, removed eight Kinder Surprise eggs from his rectum. A guard had to then collect the eggs and photograph them before securing them inside the Ottawa police drug safe at the jail.In all, the eight eggs contained 59 grams of marijuana, a gram of MDMA, tobacco, rolling papers and matches.

Youtuber Rich Colburn made this wonderful animation showing of Evel Knievel's legendary steam-powered SkyCycle-X2! (more…)

Of course the answer is very, very well. But there's more to it than that. (Polyphonic)

For the last 18 years, French chef Sébastien Bras' restaurant, Le Suquet, has received 3 Michelin stars. Now the chef wants to part ways with Michelin. He's tired of the pressure that the rating puts on him and is begging Michelin to release him from the stars.While Michelin has called his food "spellbinding," the anxiety of having anonymous judges come into his restaurant at any given time is too much for the 46-year-old chef. According to The Guardian:He said his job had given him a lot of satisfaction but there was also huge pressure that was inevitably linked to the three Michelin stars first given to the restaurant in 1999. He asked to be allowed to continue his work with a free spirit and in serenity away from the world of rankings, without tension. He said he wanted to be dropped from the guide from next year.Bras, who took over the family restaurant from his parents 10 years ago, later explained to AFP: “You’re inspected two or three times a year, you never know when. Every meal that goes out could be inspected. That means that, every day, one of the 500 meals that leaves the kitchen could be judged.“Maybe I will be less famous but I accept that,” he said, adding that he would continue to cook excellent local produce “without wondering whether my creations will appeal to Michelin’s inspectors”.Michelin says Bra's reason and method of asking to have his stars stripped is a first. Although they respect his plead, his stars won't automatically be stripped – they are in the process of considering his request.Here is Bras on Facebook asking Michelin to keep him out of the guide, in French:

Josh from Fight for the Future writes, "The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is threatening to rollback its net neutrality protections, which help make the Internet a place of equal opportunity and international innovation." (more…)

Sammy Davis Jr. brings an instant smile to my face and brightens any day. Enjoy this clip of he and James Brown playing around!

A dungeon master scrapped the pen and paper and created a touchscreen tabletop version of Dungeons and Dragons. Tumblr user Caethial recently posted photos of the full build that he and two other players put together in 2016. A 40-inch Samsung smart TV paired with a Dell Precision 5720 27-inch 4K workstation runs about $2,800. Don’t worry, an outdated wood table and basement location can still make you feel like a social outcast. See all of Caethial's step-by-step photos here. Image: Caethial/Tumblr

This NASA photo taken from the International Space Station shows crop circles in southwest Egypt's Sahara Desert. The crops thrive in the middle of the desert thanks to either secret alien technology or the amazing underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System that covers two million square kilometers. From the NASA Earth Observatory:The crop circles are a result of center-pivot irrigation, an efficient method for water conservation in agriculture. Groundwater from the Nubian aquifer is drawn up from wells in the center of the circles, and it is sprayed or dripped out of long, rotating pipes that pivot around the center.Most of the crops pictured here are likely potatoes (darker green circles), wheat (lighter brown circles), or medicinal and aromatic plants such as chamomile. The light, tan-colored crop circles likely have undergone controlled burning to remove excess plant matter and essentially clean up the land for the next crop. "Crop Circles in Sharq El Owainat" (NASA via the Daily Grail)

Manchester boasts England's second-largest police-force (after London) and some of the nation's shittiest IT. (more…)

https://twitter.com/jetscott/status/910187172648677381Scott Stein is beta testing a new mobile app from Ikea called Ikea Place. It lets you augment the real world with Ikea furniture, for your own amusement and that of others, and perhaps now and again to help you decide what furniture to buy.

In 1770, Hungarian engineer Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled a miracle: a mechanical man who could play chess against human challengers. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll meet Kempelen's Mechanical Turk, which mystified audiences in Europe and the United States for more than 60 years.We'll also sit down with Paul Erdős and puzzle over a useful amateur.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

When watching assembly line robots of today, it's easy to forget that gruelling repetitive work used to be done manually. This beautiful footage from 1936 shows the precision needed, and it's beautifully lit and shot in black and white. (more…)

The International Olympic Committee took the unprecedented step of announcing the 2024 and 2028 Olympic host cities (Paris and LA), because both cities were bidding unopposed, and LA had to be bribed with a $1.8B "grant" from the IOC to agree to host the games. (more…)

A Twitter user named @bigotbasher posted a photo of a man wearing a Nazi armband on a Seattle bus, who was reportedly "harassing a black man" and "screaming in peoples' faces." This set into motion a search to find the Nazi. Less than ninety minutes later he was located and knocked out.#AntiFascistAlertNazi shit head seen on D line headed to downtown #SeattleSubmitter said they were harassing a black man on the bus pic.twitter.com/ianQUnyCsC— BabyGoose (@bigotbasher) September 17, 2017Via Select All:People were initially posting videos of the faces of everyone involved in the Seattle incident unblurred, potentially placing people into legal jeopardy. 4chan attempted to track down the guy who clocked Richard Spencer earlier this year (though the man they identified was, ultimately, an already-dead guy). And the horrible series of mistakes made by the amateur sleuths at Reddit after the Boston Bombing, where several innocent people were named as potential terrorists, should loom large in any discussion about broadcasting the face and location of an individual.Twitter user @teethnclaws, when contacted over DM by Select All, says that using the internet like this is necessary. “[Fascists] already do this. The right has already murdered 27 people this year in the U.S., including one of my dear comrades. I’ve been stabbed twice by them in seven years,” he wrote. “The right is already tracking us, killing us. This is why we organize in numbers, and why we wear those scary black masks. When we are identified, we can lose our lives. Nazis just lose their jobs. So, am I worried that fascists will use our tactics? Yes. Is that a good point? No. Tactics can be used by anyone.”Video below (contains violence):https://youtu.be/uf2IG8xs68E

An eagle-eyed mom spotted a cave-drawing penis in a Netflix children’s show and posted her outrage on Facebook. The phallic depiction is located inside of a log during season one, episode 35 of Maya the Bee, according to The Mirror. “I know that something like this should not be in a kid's show whatever,” the mom says during the video. “I’m extremely disgusted by it...there should be no reason why my kids should have to see something like this.” Snopes gives the early anatomy lesson a “true” rating.Image: Snopes

A Colorado Springs running enthusiast, known locally as "The Mad Pooper," has been leaving gifts on a private lawn in a most public fashion.Via Competitor.com:A mystery woman in Colorado Springs, Colo. is giving runners a pretty crappy reputation. According to local CBS affiliate KKTV, this runner has been defecating outside the house of resident Cathy Budde for the past seven weeks. Even worse—her children first spotted the woman.Budde and her family have caught the runner at least three times. However, this has not stopped this mystery runner. She continues to leave waste behind at least once a week. The woman has gone so far as to change her running schedule to avoid prying eyes. The community has nicked named her “The Mad Pooper.”Budde thinks the act is intentional, even if she is unsure who the woman is.“I put a sign on the wall that’s like ‘please, I’m begging you, please stop.’ … She ran by it like 15 times yesterday, and she still pooped,” Budde told KKTV.

Try as it might, this magnificent, noble creature can't break the crust of a bedsheet. Why isn't the snow breaking? from funny

This looks brutal! During halftime at a Eagles-Chiefs game in Kansas City on Sunday, a camera operator is running across the field and runs right over a cheerleader during a dance routine. She didn't see it coming. The person taping this gasps out loud. Amazingly, the cheerleader was okay, according to USA Today.

The fine folks at Super Deluxe mounted a camera on a train traveling through the desert, and it's as relaxing and scenic as it sounds. (more…)

Not cool dude. The young son of WBO middleweight champ Billy Joe Saunders might have thought he was being funny when he punched opponent Willie Monroe in the groin and then kicked him during the London weigh-in over the weekend. And Monroe seemed to be a good sport about it, but he's understandably not happy. According to Huffington Post:When Monroe tousled the boy’s hair as he stood on the stage, Stevie Saunders pounded him in the groin and kicked him, the video above shows. And he appeared to do it with a smile...But Monroe wasn’t having it. According to the BBC, he accused promoter Frank Warren of allowing the attack to happen. “Warren should be ashamed of himself,” said Monroe, who demanded compensation for the incident and threatened to sue.

Surgeons close internal incisions with stitches and staples but they, and their patients, would benefit from a glue that stays stuck even to wet tissue and organs. Researchers from McGill University in Montreal are making progress with a powerful new glue inspired by the the sticky slime secreted by scared slugs. Science News surveys the state-of-the-art in adhesives that take inspiration from marine worms, mussels, and geckos:>Using the (slug-inspired) glue to plug a hole in the pig heart worked so well that the heart still held in liquid after being inflated and deflated tens of thousands of times. (McGill University's Jianyu) Li, who did the research while at Harvard University, and colleagues also tested the glue in live rats with liver lacerations. It stopped the rats’ bleeding, and the animals didn’t appear to suffer any bad reaction from the adhesive...One layer of the material is a polymer, a type of material made from long molecules built from many repeated subunits, like a string of beads. Positively charged appendages dangling off the polymers are drawn to wet tissue surfaces by the same forces underlying static electricity. This first layer weaves into another layer, a water-based gel. The gel layer acts like a shock absorber in a car, Li says. It soaks up energy that might otherwise dislodge or snap the adhesive.Despite being 90 percent water, the material is both sticky and tough, Li says. The fact that it’s mostly water makes it more likely to be nontoxic to humans."Animal goo inspires better glue" (Science News)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p624MDdDw4

A gentleman in Arizona was throwing a birthday party for his kid when he spotted a rattlesnake in his yard. Rather than staying clear of the venomous snake, 48-year-old Victor Pratt thought it would be a good idea to grab the snake and throw it on the BBQ, but first he wanted some photos. He began to pose with the live snake in his hand when the snake got the better of him and bit him twice – once on the chest and once on the face. Fortunately, because it wasn't the first time he'd been bitten by a rattlesnake, he knew he was in extreme danger and got immediate help. According to USA Today:"I said, 'We gotta go now,' because I knew what was going to happen," Pratt said. He was taken immediately to a local hospital, which doctors said saved his life. He also has received doses of antivenom. "If an airway is not established in the first few minutes, in our experience less than 15 to 30 minutes, then those patients really don't have a chance to survive,'' said Dr. Steven Curry, Banner hospital's toxicology director. Pratt says he's done playing with snakes. Image: Jean Beaufort

"A Filipino man makes and sells these action figures made out of worn out flip flops," according to Goal1's post on /r/pics.

In Impact of excess NOx emissions from diesel cars on air quality, public health and eutrophication in Europe, published today in Environmental Research Letters, researchers from Norway, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands estimate that 5,000 early European deaths per year attributable to diesel emissions are caused by Volkswagen's Dieselgate crime, in which cars were designed to sneak lethal levels of toxic emissions past regulatory checks. (more…)

California's Inland Empire was hit hard by the 2008 crisis, with disproportionate foreclosures on poor and working-class families, leaving neighborhoods blighted by empty, vandalized homes. (more…)

Three high-ranking Equifax executives are being investigated for selling shares of Equifax shortly after the company was hacked, but long before Equifax admitted it had been hacked. They are Equifax Chief Financial Officer John Gamble, President of U.S. Information Solutions Joseph Loughran, and President of Workforce Solutions Rodolfo Ploder.Equifaxdisclosed earlier this month that it discovered a security breach on July 29. The three executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in early August. The company has said the managers didn’t know of the breach at the time they sold the shares.To run afoul of laws that prohibit insider trading, a seller has to be aware of nonpublic information, said Stephen Crimmins, a former enforcement lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission.From Ars Technica:[The Equifax breach] very possibly is the most severe of all for a simple reason: the breath-taking amount of highly sensitive data it handed over to criminals. By providing full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and, in some cases, driver license numbers, it provided most of the information banks, insurance companies, and other businesses use to confirm consumers are who they claim to be.” — Dan Goodin, Why the Equifax breach is very possibly the worst leak of personal info ever.Image: Dwight Burdette/Wikipedia

The sky is always much clearer outside of urban spaces. Next time you find yourself in the wilderness, you should come prepared with this Outdoor Monocular Telescope. It provides a crystal-clear view of stars, landscapes, and the rest of the natural world, and is now being offered in the Boing Boing Store.This telescope features a 50mm glass objective lens that’s capable of magnifying your sight up to 90x. It comes with a lightweight aluminum tripod, and everything together is small enough to fit in a backpack. Amateur astronomers can get a closeup of constellations on camping trips and better take advantage of pollution-free skies.To accommodate different viewing environments, it also includes a selection of eyepieces for maximum comfort. You can grab this Outdoor Monocular Telescope with Portable Tripod for $58.99 in the Boing Boing Store.

If you’ve been meaning to upgrade your 30-year-old cassette collection to something more modern, or make permanent backups of old mix tapes, take a look at this 2 in 1 Audio Cassette to MP3 Music Converter, available now in the Boing Boing Store.This device makes an excellent walkman replacement. Aside from being a fully-functional portable tape player, it has a built-in analog to digital converter that streams audio to your computer over USB. Recording your tapes is straightforward with the bundled software — you’ll be able to save your worn-out music from degrading further just by playing it back. It also has an auto reverse feature, for getting a seamless rip of both sides.Grab the 2 in 1 Audio Cassette to MP3 Music converter here for $20.99.

One week after announcing the worst breach in American history, and days after it was revealed that the breach had been caused by simple negligence, Equifax has announced the "retirement" of its Chief Information Officer, David Webb, and Chief Security Officer, Susan Mauldin, though "the company's review of the facts is still ongoing." (more…)

While attending a Cal Berkeley football game, Martin Flores witnessed a cop shutting down an unlicensed street vendor, taking cash from his wallet and citing him. (more…)

Looks like some Trump supporters are not happy that he met with Democrats on Wednesday to talk about a possible deal to protect DREAMers. And to protest his wrong-doing, they are burning the one thing that unites all Trumpsters: the Make America Great Again hat. They are posting the red-hot caps on social media, using the hashtags #burnmyMAGAhat and #amnestydon (referring to Wednesday's Breitbart article, "Amnesty Don’ Trends at Number One on Twitter in Washington, D.C."). Take a look: #AmnestyDon #burnmyMAGAhat pic.twitter.com/xECHLI1XZn— Nathan Simms (@ClevelandSimms) September 15, 2017 When @realDonaldTrump lets the swamp monsters in and shows the base the door...the base fights back -The Deplorables #MAGA #DACA #NoAmnesty pic.twitter.com/EvpyekS26y— MAGA G (@Pandas4Trump) September 15, 2017Dear @realdonaldtrump pic.twitter.com/CX0VRMOxJB— Luis Withrow (@_weese_) September 15, 2017Found this by the side of the road ... #amnestydon #burnmyMAGAhat pic.twitter.com/QivQ81xClG— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) September 14, 2017Thanks Mashable!https://youtu.be/WN9YYFwczEE

Gainesville, Florida Police Officer Michael Hamill loved it when his handsome face went viral. That's why it's so baffling that he closed his Facebook account just as his popularity was peaking. Oh, wait, maybe it's because Officer Hamill posted on Facebook about his desire to have Jews and "stupid people" placed in concentration camps and ovens. From the Gainesville Sun:One screenshot is of an April 2013 post, in which Hamill writes: “Who knew that reading jewish jokes before I go to bed would not only make me feel better about myself but also help me to sleep better as well. Here is one for everybody, “What’s the difference between boy scouts and jews?” Anybody know? Well it is because “Boy scouts come back from their camps.”One person replied to that Facebook post, calling it “messed up.” Hamill replied, “u don’t like it? don’t read it then.”In another screen shot from a 2011 post, Hamill writes: “so I find it funny that people will talk about how our government needs to do something about our economy and in reality it’s YOU who needs to stop taking advantage of our system and get a life and do something with your life. Gotta love reality when it hits you in the face. Stupid people annoy me. Put them in an oven and deal with them the Hitler way. Haha.”From People:Hamill told TIME on Wednesday, before news broke about the alleged Facebook posts, that he was shocked by the newfound attention.“I’ve never had this much attention before,” he said. “It’s an ego boost — very flattering and funny.”Hamill, who got married last March, said his new wife initially did not enjoy his turn in the spotlight. “My wife, she obviously wasn’t happy at first, but she’s taking it like a champ,” he said.

Almost 20 years after Cassini launched, the spacecraft vaporized in Saturn's atmosphere early this morning. Cassini's intentional destruction was to prevent it from possibly crashing into Saturn's moons Titan or Enceladus where there may be life. Above is the last image taken by the spacecraft. Over at the New York Times, Kenneth Chang celebrate and mourns this amazing spacecraft:Some of the Cassini scientists and engineers had worked on the mission for two decades of their careers.Nearby, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built and operated Cassini, staff in mission control worked through a bustle of final activities. When the project manager proclaimed an end of mission and end of spacecraft, engineers and scientists gave a standing ovation and embraced.The mission for Cassini, in orbit since 2004, stretched far beyond the original four-year plan to explore Saturn and its moons, sending back multitudes of striking photographs, solving some mysteries while upending prevailing notions about the solar system with completely unexpected discoveries.“To me, Cassini is really one of those quintessential missions from NASA,” said Thomas H. Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “It hasn’t just changed what we know about Saturn, but how we think about the world.”"Celebrating and Mourning Cassini in Its Finale at Saturn" (NYT)

This one-year-old baby is serious about doing laundry, even picking up items of clothing that have fallen to the ground and putting them in the dryer. See a longer video here. I remember when Amirah was little I use to make her pick her toys up and put them away. Now she does the dishes during the week day to help out. She also makes her bed every morning and takes out her own bathroom trash. Azarah always watches me and decided to help her dad today. If they are old enough to make a mess they are old enough to clean up after themselves. You want your kids to grow up and be responsible adults, start in your home. Trust me, doing everything for your kids only hurts them in the long run. Everyone helps in our home. #daddyanddaughter A post shared by Ashley Sirah Nicole Chea 🇵🇷🇰🇭 (@watermeloneggrolls) on Sep 10, 2017 at 8:06pm PDT

If you yearn for the sophisticated cleanliness of a European bathroom, the BioBidet A3 adds a bidet to your conventional toilet with minimal effort. And yes, it is available in the Boing Boing Store.This simple attachment hooks into a nearby water line, and hangs on the inside of the bowl to provide a controlled stream of water to keep those hard-to-reach spots squeaky clean. It doesn’t require any electricity, just pressure from its connection, and the intensity of the water is adjusted by an easy-to-reach knob.The BioBidet A3 Self-Cleaning Bidet Attachment is a highly economical way to get a more sanitary bathroom without expensive renovation, and will definitely save you money on toilet paper. You can pick one up here for $31.99.

Facing a crisis mixed with food shortages and an authoritarian power grab, Venezuela's government is urging its citizens to breed and feast on bunnies. President Nicolas Maduro’s government is launching the “Rabbit Plan,” with hopes that Venezuelans can look past those cute rabbit noses and serve them on the dinner table. “There is a cultural problem because we have been taught that rabbits are cute pets,” Urban Agriculture Minister Freddy Bernal said during a televised meeting with Maduro. “A rabbit is not a pet; it’s two and a half kilos (5.5 pounds) of meat that is high in protein, with no cholesterol.”Via Reuters: Rabbit consumption is common in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States. The animals are more efficient than pigs and cattle in converting protein into edible meat, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.But raising rabbits in significant quantities in contemporary Venezuela would be difficult.The country’s constant shortages, resulting from stringent price and currency controls, would probably leave the would-be rabbit industry struggling to find materials ranging from feed to metal and wire for breeding cages.Image: Skeeze

Polaroid (formerly the Impossible Project, whose key backer bought the original brand outright earlier this year) is releasing a sequel to the classic One Step camera. The new One Step 2 uses i-Type film (not Instax!), comes in white and dark gray, and is $99.

A comically sycophantic outcome at Harvard.Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell earlier Thursday announced his resignation as a senior fellow at Harvard over its decision to invite Manning. Mike Pompeo, the agency's current director, also canceled a speaking engagement there Thursday night."I now think that designating Chelsea Manning as a visiting fellow was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility," Kennedy School Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf said in a statement posted on the university's website early FridayManning: "The CIA determines what is said and is not taught at Harvard." The contrast between the two is striking: Morell is an advocate of torture and extrajudicial killings; Manning exposed them.

Michael Hamill is a 28-year-old Gainesville police officer whose mug went viral just days ago during Hurricane Irma. Sadly, his Facebook is full of comments like "who knew that reading jewish jokes before I go to bed would not only make me feel better about myself but also help me to sleep" and "put them in an oven and deal with them the hitler way." He's apparently still on duty while a "confidential" investigation is conducted, writes local reporter Deborah Strange. The viral mugshot does, at least, serve one useful purpose: if you're a Jewish person in Gainesville, you now know one face in the thin brown line.https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/741904787361300481?lang=en

A few years ago, I was invited for a bartending demo at 1901 Lounge, California's Adventure Club 33 counterpart. It was cool but I still dream of knocking Club 33 off my bucket list. Well, acccording to the Orlando Sentinel, my chances for getting in are increasing, though I will have to travel to Florida. The news outlet is reporting that four new "versions of the high-end establishment will open in each of the four WDW (Walt Disney World) theme parks by this fall." Those four parks being the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney's Animal Kingdom, and Disney's Hollywood Studios.The Sentinel article continues:Disney has not revealed the price structure for Florida’s Club 33s, although a spokeswoman says one fee will cover all four clubs. The “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” adage springs to mind.Disney also has not shared where in the parks its new “limited membership clubs” will be or their themes. They might not mirror the California version; we’re not even sure that the ones in Florida will include restaurants.photo by Sam Howzit

Halfway into his term, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shows every sign of breaking his much-vaunted promises to repair relations between the Canadian governments and the indigenous peoples of Canada: from the pipelines he's forcing through their sovereign territories to the endless and opaque reshuffling of the ministry that is supposed to carry on the "nation to nation" negotiations to make reparations and establish a new relationship to the ongoing, catastrophic discrimination against indigenous children in the child welfare system. (more…)

The US Office of Government Ethics has silently reversed its longstanding policy banning anonymous "gifts" to White House employees who have started legal defense funds after being accused of malfeasance. (more…)

There are some great music parodies coming from Parody Project, which look at today's politics in all of its strangeness. "Confounds the Science" is about Trump's tweets and stupidity. Here are the first two verses: Hello darkness my old friend.It’s time for him to tweet again,but first he’ll have to check in with Fox news‘cause that’s the only place he gets his clues.That’s how things get planted in his brain,where they remain,and it confounds the science.The problem is he’s not alone.He tweets to people on his phonethat global warming is a giant hoaxperpetuated by the liberal folks,and he hires people that all think the same,that play his gameand it confounds the science.If you like this one, here's another one of their other Simon and Garfunkel spoofs, The Tweeter (Lie Lie Lie), which parodies The Boxer. https://youtu.be/6SeKnM1lOtA

This week on Maker Update: a Pi-powered Rubik’s cube-solving robot, hacking your own tabletop pinball machine, a look at Fiber Fix tape, and a new issue of Make magazine. This week’s Cool Tool is Fiber Fix repair tape.

In a paper in the World Review of Political Economy, economists from Sichuan University propose a model for an efficient planned economy that uses a hybrid of managed, two-sided "platform" markets (modeled on Ebay, Alibaba and various app stores) and central planning informed by machine learning and big data to fairly and efficiently regulate production in a system in which all substantial assets are owned by the state. (more…)

Over the weekend, Jim Carrey gave a deeply weird interview while at New York Fashion Week. Watch it above. “There is no me,” he said. “There are just things happening and there are clusters of tetrahedrons moving around together.” Below, he explains what he was saying. Kinda. Not really. And I love it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eemr5iR-wyc

The Ultimate Careers in Computer Science Bundle is currently being offered in the Boing Boing Store, and features eight introductory courses from a variety of tech fields.Aside from offering generally helpful technical interview advice in the Break Away course, this bundle will allow you to start preparing for a new career in the following areas:QA TestingQuality Assurance is a critical part of the software release pipeline. QA engineers ensure that no major bugs make it through to production using an array of automated testing tools. You can study the fundamentals of QA in Software Testing Omnibus: Sikuli, Selenium, JUnit and Principles of Testing.FintechIf you’re more of a numbers person, a job in financial tech will have you modeling economic behavior and financial risks to help you make sound market predictions. In the Fintech Omnibus, you’ll get familiar with the tools of the trade, and the theory behind the practice.Data ScienceBig Data plays a role in countless industries, from global logistics to meteorology, and there are not nearly enough skilled data scientists to fill the available roles. If you want to learn how to glean insight from massive volumes of data, this bundle includes two courses tailored for just that: The Big Data Omnibus: Hadoop, Spark, Storm and QlikView, and GCP: Complete Google Data Engineer and Cloud Architect Guid.Web DevelopmentSince the web has become a viable platform for application delivery, talented developers can expect to stay highly employable for the foreseeable future. To get familiar with the front-end, the Web Development Omnibus gives an overview of essential JavaScript tools for building interfaces: JQuery, Angular, and React.Machine LearningMachine learning has vastly simplified the parsing of messy data. AI tech like voice recognition and computer vision have become more prevalent, and tools like TensorFlow have made machine learning accessible to a wider audience. You can explore this exciting field with Machine Learning and TensorFlow on the Google Cloud.Product StrategyTechnology businesses need more than well-engineered products. Without proper market insight, even the best tech will flounder. For anyone who wants to learn from history’s mistakes, Time Capsule: Trends in Tech, Product Strategy will let you take look back at the last 23 years.

Grant Hart, the drummer and co-songwiter/vocalist for pioneering psychedelic punk band Hüsker Dü, has died from cancer at age 56. Our thoughts go out to Hart's family and former bandmates. Hüsker Dü was the first club show I ever attended and their music meant a lot to me throughout my life. Hart's music and impact on underground culture will not be forgotten. From a post by Hart's Hüsker Dü bandmate Bob Mould:It was the Fall of 1978. I was attending Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. One block from my dormitory was a tiny store called Cheapo Records. There was a PA system set up near the front door blaring punk rock. I went inside and ended up hanging out with the only person in the shop. His name was Grant Hart.The next nine years of my life was spent side-by-side with Grant. We made amazing music together. We (almost) always agreed on how to present our collective work to the world. When we fought about the details, it was because we both cared. The band was our life. It was an amazing decade.We stopped working together in January 1988. We went on to solo careers, fronting our own bands, finding different ways to tell our individual stories. We stayed in contact over the next 29 years — sometimes peaceful, sometimes difficult, sometimes through go-betweens. For better or worse, that’s how it was, and occasionally that’s what it is when two people care deeply about everything they built together.The tragic news of Grant’s passing was not unexpected to me. My deepest condolences and thoughts to Grant’s family, friends, and fans around the world.Grant Hart was a gifted visual artist, a wonderful story teller, and a frighteningly talented musician. Everyone touched by his spirit will always remember.Godspeed, Grant. I miss you. Be with the angels.New York Times obituary here: "Grant Hart, Hüsker Dü Drummer and Singer, Dies at 56"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1sYN0PuRs4

In 2016, Motherboard used public records requests to receive 3,000 pages of documents from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detailing the federal police agency's longstanding secret use of IMSI Catchers (AKA "Stingrays" -- the fake cellular towers that silently capture data on every cellphone user in range). (more…)