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Protesters against ICE's campaign of mass deportations were treated to a bizarre public stunt by Portland, OR police, who put them in isolation hoods and sound-muffling ear-protectors reminiscent of the treatment described by Gitmo prisoners and other survivors of US torture. The police were attempting separate the protesters from the bonds they used to stick themselves together and the measures were nominally taken to protect the protesters' hearing and vision from police power-tools. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Justin Delay breaks down and recreates the otherworldly 1980s synth sounds of Vangelis's stunning score for the original Blade Runner.

The US is the only developed country in the world without universal healthcare. Americans pay more for their healthcare than anyone else, and get significantly worse outcomes than people in every other developed nation. The majority of Americans support universal healthcare. And yet, we are told that universal healthcare is impossible in America. (more…)

On Wednesday, security researcher Randy Abrams visited the Equifax site to contest bad information in his credit report and was attacked by malicious software that tried to get him to download a fake Flash updater that was a vector for an obscure piece of malware called Adware.Eorezo. (more…)

Actor Ben Affleck expressed surprise after Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was exposed as a serial abuser of women, but few seemed to have time for his denunciation of the famous producer. It was remembered that Affleck not only groped Hilarie Burton on camera, but was well-aware of Weinstein's behavior.After this, McGowan, who received a $100,000 settlement from Weinstein, was kicked off of Twitter. Here's The New York Times:The message in the screenshot said that the lock was in effect because Ms. McGowan’s account had “violated the Twitter rules.”It was not clear which tweets had resulted in the suspension. However, on Tuesday, after Mr. Affleck tweeted that the allegations against Mr. Weinstein “made him sick,” Ms. McGowan called him a liar, saying he had long been aware of what Mr. Weinstein had done.Grim irony in the attempt to silence a Weinstein survivor speaking out. And another warning of the power social media companies wield, their blindness to its consequences, and their growing complicity in the harm caused.

A version of Yes, an app that says "y" at maximum speed, is built-in to unix-based operating systems. You can test it by firing up a terminal, typing "yes", and then watching it fill your window; you'd usually pipe it to another app or script. But there's a problem: it can only generate 51 megabits per second worth of yes, and something must be done about it.Lessons learnedThe trivial program yes turns out not to be so trivial after all. It uses output buffering and memory alignment to improve performance. Re-implementing Unix tools is fun and makes me appreciate the nifty tricks, which make our computers fast.As benchmarked by the author's computer, 3GB/s of yes is now possible!

https://youtu.be/EzdQE3fJW2EI'm not a guitar player (though I did take lessons in my youth), but I am a huge Nick Drake fan and have always been haunted by the very unique, dark, and moody guitar tones that he achieved. In this fascinating video by YouTube guitar teacher, Josh Turner, he presents and demonstrates his theory for how Nick got his signature sound. Spoiler Alert: He identifies these four characteristics that he thinks are the most significant contributors:1. Small-bodied guitar (probably)2. "Dead" nickel strings3. Medium-length fingernails, long thumbnail4. Classical guitar-style hand position with bent wrist and thumb angle (and playing over the sound hole)At the end of the video, to demonstrate the sound, he launches into the first part of Things Behind the Sun. It sounded so beautiful, it made my eyes want to roll back in my head. And made me immediately run to the original as soon Josh's video was over.https://youtu.be/L1AkYgBTc4MIf you are also a fan of Drake's, you'll want to check out Remembered for a While, the the lovingly curated scrapbook of all things Nick that his sister, Gabrielle Drake (perhaps best known as the purple-haired Lt. Ellis on the cult-fave 70s British TV series, UFO) put together. Here's the review I wrote of it here on Boing Boing.

People will share anything on camera. These 100 were asked, "What's the worst thing you've ever done?" Their answers ranged from the innocent to the downright criminal, like that girl at the 1:29 mark. Yikes.

Tucked away in a quiet neighborhood in Alameda, California is "A Very Very Trump Halloween," a lawn display that may well be the world's scariest.The decor is the brilliant creation of Alamedans Cathy and Dan Balsam who shared, "These decorations are the scariest thing we could possibly think of."What makes their lawn decor so spooky?Well, it features an all-star monstrous cast of the ghouliest of all ghouls in American politics.Like...Lizard man Mitch McConnell...Putrid undead Pence...The ever-grim Steve Bannon...Dark puppetmaster Vladimir Putin...(Skeleton Putin riding a horse skeleton is a nice touch on that one.)Scary Steven Mnuchin...The eerily-silent Sarah Huckabee Sanders...Brainless Ben Carson...Melancholy Melania Trump...The resemblances are spooky, aren't they?! And, there's lots more frightening faces here. "A Very, Very Trump Halloween," indeed. photos by Rusty BlazenhoffPreviously: 'Fuck Trump' projected on a building in California's 'Mayberry by the Bay'

Vigilante mobs in Malawi have killed five people accused of ritualistic human blood drinking and the threat has left a bad taste for United Nations officials. The U.N. has pulled staff from two southern districts where the vampire scare has spread from neighboring Mozambique, according to the BBC. U.N. staff members were temporarily relocated to safer areas when the organization reported villagers began placing roadblocks to hunt for “vampires.” The Malawi government put a curfew in place from 5pm to 7am local time to try and prevent more deaths, which is appropriate considering would-be vampire hunters are likely to work during peak nighttime vampire hours, according to most vampire folklore. Image: Illustration by David Henry Friston, 1872

In September 2016, we learned that the University of New Hampshire was going to use $1 million that an incredibly frugal librarian saved while working as a library cataloger for 50 years to buy a new scoreboard for its stadium. (more…)

Of all the outlandish technologies I propose in The Punch Escrow, the one nobody seems to ever take umbrage with is “printing.” For those who haven’t read my book, a base assumption I make about 22 century Earth is that we will be able to 3D print pretty much anything: the food we eat, the silverware we eat it with, heck, maybe even some people to join us for dinner.Tal M. Klein's The Punch Escrow is available from Amazon.How? E=mc. Really, it all comes down to E=mc; Einstein’s energy-matter equivalence principle. This equation tells us that mass is just another form of energy. That means we should be able to take some mass and directly convert it into pure energy, a thesis supported by real evidence. For example, it’s how we explain the energy that keeps atomic nuclei together. If we were to weigh the nucleus of any atom, we’d find it weighed slightly less than the sum of its parts. Where’d the extra heft go? It was converted into energy -- the “glue” holding everything together (in other words, dude, energy is the carpet of our universe). Since E=mc is a balanced formula, we should be able to -- at least in theory --convert energy to mass.In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows energy to briefly decay into particles and antiparticles which then transmogrify back to pure energy. At small enough scales, the energy of these fluctuations would be large enough to cause significant departures from the smooth spacetime seen at macroscopic scales, giving spacetime a "foamy" character. This “quantum foam,” were we to harness it, could be used to essentially construct anything — it is the quintessential building block of the universe. Quantum foam’s a hell of an ink.In The Punch Escrow, “replication printing” is the catchall name for the process used to create objects in this way. Basically, everything is available anywhere, provided one has the “blueprint,” printer, and “ink.” Replication of valuable or patented items is prevented through safeguards such as unique molecular signatures. I looked to the way we handle digital rights today as a model for how we might handle a world where anything could be printed. For example, if someone managed to illegally replicate a gold bar, it would have an identical signature to the original blueprint. Any piece of gold with that bar’s molecular signature could only be sold once, thus branding any other copy a fake. That doesn’t prevent two of the same bar of gold from existing, but only one of them could have market value. And lest you still think printers would collapse the market value of consumable things like expensive liquor, fancy cheese, and truffles, these are all things which could be licensed, either permanently or ephemerally. I use the Big Mac as an example in the book.My thesis is that we humans place a lot of stock in originality -- our culture has always focused on “the real thing” having true tangible value, and with the use of authentication techniques such as the aforementioned molecular signatures, it could become nearly impossible to make illegitimate replications of anything patented. The printing infrastructure itself would need to be built to enforce legitimacy, akin to an Amazon Prime of things -- one only has access to things that come with the service or they’ve which they have already purchased -- such that if someone illegally replicated a Big Mac, the printer that printed it would flag it as illegitimate. To enforce this illegitimacy, we need mechanism for governing and tracking folks.Because The Punch Escrow’s 22 century Earth is a corporatocracy, infrastructure, federal institutions, and the legal system are all semi-privatized. “Semi” in that I didn’t reinvent law. A company could only hold one equal seat on a nine governing corporate panel, that is in essence what we now know as the executive branch in America. Each seat is doled out annually based on the nine firms with the respective highest valuations that year. There’s a legislative branch too. It ensures further checks and balances, as well as prevents collusion, by providing companies from specific geographies with a voice and a vote. There is also a judicial branch entrusted with enforcing common law. There are no elected officials -- companies make decisions and people vote with their chits (we’ll get to those in a sec). Minimum basic needs are provided for everyone free of charge. That way, the corps reckon, nothing is out of reach for anyone. The rich could still be rich, but things like food and shelter are readily available to all.The Punch Escrow’s global economy is powered by “chits” -- an elastic global blockchain cryptocurrency. Chits are secure and unforgeable by design and make most financial crime obsolete. What do I mean by “elastic”? The idea is that the “price” of something is a moving target based on real-time demand, the wealth of the procurer, and the percentage of the procurer's wealth that the procurement transaction represented. This allows a rich jerk to buy the last piece of bread in a hypothetical municipality, but it would make the cost of bread incredibly prohibitive to that person (because 80% of their income might be worth more to them than 80% of the income of the local municipality’s denizens. Since 80% of zero is zero, if someone is truly broke, the bread is free, and they could afford to pay 100% of their income to buy it). It sounds complicated, but we’re also talking about a world in which no one can effectively lie to “the system” about their worth; the tradeoff for these societal capabilities is the loss of privacy.So, is a world where basic needs are provided for and we can print anything a utopia? I posit: No. But it’s no dystopia either. Is a system that ensures nobody goes hungry and that no one person or corporation could manipulate the market beyond its natural elasticity worth the loss of what many of us believe is a fundamental inalienable right? Only the future will tell.Tal M. Klein was born in Israel, grew up in New York, and currently lives in Detroit with his wife and two daughters. When his daughter Iris was five years old, she wrote a book called I’m a Bunch of Dinosaurs that went on to become one of the most successful children’s book projects on Kickstarter —something that Tal explained to Iris by telling her, “your book made lots of kids happy.” Iris then asked Tal, "Daddy, why don’t you write book that makes lots of grownups happy?" Tal mulled this over for a few years, and eventually wrote his first book, The Punch Escrow. It won the Inkshares Geek & Sundry Hard Science Fiction Publishing contest, and will be the first book published on Inkshares’ Geek & Sundry imprint.Photo: Lai Long

Stevie Wonder can see again, the Las Vegas killer joined a cult before the massacre, and Tom Petty could have been saved, according to this week’s fact-distanced tabloids.How wrong can the tabloids get?Having killed off country music star Loretta Lynn months ago, the Globe now reports “Loretta Lynn is back from dead!” Less than five months after a supposedly fatal stroke, she was back on stage this month and “showed no ill effects from the stroke.” Or maybe reports of her death were premature?Robert Redford, who beat polio at the age of 11, is suffering a “relapse fear” claims the Globe - because at 81, he “was seen struggling to get out of a vehicle.” Sure, that couldn’t possibly be the result of old age, rheumatism or arthritis, having overdone it in the gym, or soreness after a long horse ride. It’s polio, naturally.“Sex-starved O.J. heading right for hookers!” reports the National Enquirer, which claims to have followed the recently-paroled ex-con O.J. Simpson for a week. And after seven days, how many hookers did he visit? None. It’s just the owner of the Moonlite BunnyRanch brothel saying vaguely: “It’s going to happen . . . the BunnyRanch girls are anxious for O.J.’s visit.” Right.“Hugh Hefner didn’t have to die!” claims the Enquirer, citing a “toxic cloud of black mold” in the Playboy mansion for hastening the Lothario publisher’s demise. “Everything in the mansion felt old and stale,” says Hef’s former girlfriend Izabella St James. But that’s just a failure to renovate (as well as a description of Hefner in his later years) and there’s no evidence of mold. Rocker Tom Petty also didn’t have to die, and “could have been saved” reports the Globe, which claims he was “too frail” and worked “too hard” on his last concert tour. “People tried to tell Tom to slow down but he wouldn’t hear of it,” says a typically unidentified source. Yet the Globe tells us that “Tom Petty was ready to die!” Evidently he knew “last concert would be his farewell.” He allegedly “needed vitamin shots to boost his energy, and was set for hip replacement surgery, insiders said.” The last time I checked, vitamin shots are used routinely by performers to maintain health and boost energy, and pending hip replacement surgery is no precursor to cardiac arrest.Continuing its flights of fancy, the Enquirer reports that Las Vegas mass killer Stephen Paddock had joined a “cult of death” before the shooting, finally explaining his “chilling motive.” What cult was this? The Enquirer has no idea, because it simply offers a series of supposed experts saying that Paddock had the profile of “the sort of people who fall victim to cults,” and speculate that he “may have reached out to a cult-like group.” Wild, unsubstantiated wishful thinking, matched with unequivocal declarative headlines: a tabloid specialty.The Enquirer publishes a photo of the dead gunman sprawled lifeless on the floor of the Mandalay Hotel, except editors have spared squeamish readers any discomfort by air-brushing the photo so that he appears nothing more than a dark smudge across a blood-stained carpet. It could be a photo of spilled red wine, for all we know.Sister publication the Globe has no such qualms, however, and prints the same photo in every glorious blood-drenched detail, lovingly showing a river of blood gushing from Paddock’s mouth and nose after he blew his brains out, a glistening pool of blood still wet beneath him. Why does the Enquirer think its readers are too delicate to view this gruesome image? Enquiring minds want to know.Will singing legend Stevie Wonder read the Enquirer cover story claiming that he can “see again”? The Enquirer claims to have "uncovered evidence” that the entertainer, blind since birth, “has undergone a secret, high-tech procedure that has given him some vision.” They speculate that he has had a retinal microchip implant that restores some vision.It’s true that scientists have developed an artificial retina implant that restores lost vision in rats, but clinical trials in humans are only set to begin this year. And the “evidence” that Stevie Wonder has undergone this highly experimental surgery? He reached out and hugged a winner of TV’s Star Search in 2004, claimed he was losing weight to appear on TV’s Dancing With the Stars in 2011, apparently caught a falling microphone while performing with Paul McCartney at the White House in 2012, and attends basketball games where he cheers the action. All “evidence” of sight restored by a surgery which can’t have taken place back in the day when this “evidence” occurred. Details, details.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Cindy Crawford wore it best, that Anne Heche “had no TV growing up,” that actress Madelaine Petsch carries sunglasses, lip gloss and mints in her black backpack, and that the stars are just like us: they shop for coffee, shoes and toilet paper. Shocking, as ever.Us and People magazine this week seem to be having a competition to see which can put the most boring couple on their cover. People gives it a good shot with the stars of TV’s Fixer Upper, Chip and Joanna Gaines, explaining that they are quitting their show because “our family comes first.” But Us magazine has the winning edge, with a mind-numbingly vacuous cover story on Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt’s “miracle baby.” Didn’t we all stop caring about this a couple years ago? How was their 6 lb, 12 oz baby – as yet unnamed, because they’ve only had nine months to think about it, just give them a little longer – a “miracle”? Was Heidi told she could never conceive? Did the labor last 72 hours? Was there a dramatic life-or-death battle to save the newborn’s life? None of that. From what I can tell, the miracle is that anyone’s interested in this pablum. Labor lasted only five hours, and Spencer Pratt brought $27,000-worth of healing crystals into the labor room, “so literally as my contractions are going, he’s running in, putting these huge crystals all over,” says Heidi. “It was mayhem!” But I’m sure their unnamed son appreciated entering the world thinking he was in a Topanga Canyon rock store.Leave it to the National Examiner to tell us that “Flying Alien Beasts Terrorize Chicago!” The story describes how “hideous humanoids plunge to within feet of petrified pedestrians.” The story is true – at least, it’s true that numerous Chicagoans have alleged to have been swooped upon by a large flying creature that some claim appears humanoid, echoing tales of Mothman sightings in West Virginia in the 1960s. There have been 29 alleged sightings in Chicago this year alone, and supernatural phenomenon researcher Lon Strickler tells the Examiner: "I have long theorized that the Mothman, and other unknown winged beings, are multidimensional life forms . . . that can be summoned by the high-energy incorporeal entities that reside on our Earth plane.”Well, that makes perfect sense. Or it could just be a large owl, or a man in a winged flying suit, or even a drone decorated to look like a flying creature, as experts suspect.Onwards and downwards . . .

During a survey of New Yorkers who fly the failed symbol of Confederate racism, a fantastic moment occurred. (more…)

Serpstat provides powerful growth hacking tools in your browser, and right now the Boing Boing Store is offering a premium subscription.This all-in-one SEO platform provides superior rank tracking and content analysis. Unlike similar tools that only show your domain’s individual rank from its initial launch, Serpstat tracks the value of your site’s keywords against the top 100 performing domains. You can get to know your competitors in search, and even perform research on their advertising strategies. With the related keywords database, you’ll get insight into other terms that are likely to attract visitors by showing you what else your audience is searching for. Serpstat also performs page audits to encourage proper semantic markup within your site’s HTML and improve domain crawl rates with other suggested structural fixes.Get a premium subscription to Serpstat from the Boing Boing Store today for $34.99.BUY NOW

Babbling Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke somehow feels native tribes people have a deep love and respect of the Confederacy. The United States must keep its Confederate memorials for the sake of the natives!Employing racism to excuse racism, Zinke referred to first tribes people as "native Indians" and attempted to draw a false equivalency between Union commanding officers and Southern ones. Americans should remember both Grant's heroic work as an extremely drunk General in our Civil War, AND the fact he ran the most corrupt administration in American history... right up until about that time Orange Julius appointed Ryan Zinke.I do not see how these folks who may well never have been to India benefit from the display of memorials to people who invaded Pennsylvania.Via TPM:“Where do you start and where do you stop? … If you’re a native Indian, I can tell you, you’re not very happy about the history of General Sherman or perhaps President Grant,” Zinke said during an interview with Breitbart Sunday, referencing the Union generals’ monuments around the U.S. despite their roles in creating federal policy that caused great harm to native Americans.While Zinke has maintained this opinion about Confederate monuments since at least July, tensions over memorials for Confederate soldiers has risen significantly since August when a counter protester was killed at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The white supremacists gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in the city.Zinke said removing the statues will inhibit the U.S. from being able to “learn” from history.“I think we should never hide from our history or erase our history. I think we should embrace the history and understand the faults and learn from it. But when you try to erase history, what happens is you also erase how it happened and why it happened and the ability to learn from it,” Zinke said.

Oh, Equifax: "Equifax says that for approximately 14.5 million of the 15.2 million affected, the stolen records contained only a small amount of information, limited to name and dates of birth."

Brett Gaylor from Mozilla writes, "The FCC received 22 million comments in response to its plan to repeal Net Neutrality legislation. So we've created a virtual way for you to drop 22 million virtual leaflets on Ajit Pai at the FCC headquarters. And we're almost there! Folks have dropped over twenty million so far, and in the process made weird cyber graffiti appear all over DC. Help us get to 22 million!"

Section 108h of the Copyright Act gives libraries the power to scan and serve copies of out-of-print books published between 1923 and 1941; it's never been used before but now the mighty Internet Archive is giving it a serious workout, adding them to their brilliantly named Sonny Bono Memorial Collection (when Bono was a Congressman, he tried to pass a law that would extend copyright to "forever less a day" and was instrumental in moving millions of works from the public domain back into copyright, "orphaning" them so that no one could preserve them and no one knew who the copyrights belonged to). (more…)

Orange Julius wants "equal time" in the media. Jon Stewart attempts to balance out Colbert's obvious bias, and show Trump some love.

A Detroit firearms enthusiast scared off an attacking pitbull by shooting its victim in the leg! Apparently the force of the impact caused ol' Cujo to run away.The mauling/shooting victim was taken to a local hospital where the 53 year-old woman was pronounced dead.The shooting is under investigation.The dog is still on the loose.Via CBS:Police say a woman who was being attacked by a stray dog in Detroit has been fatally shot after a man fired a gun at the dog and hit her instead.CBS Detroit cites police as saying the woman, 53, was mauled by a pit bull while walking on Monday evening, was shot in the hip and taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Her name wasn't immediately released.Police responded and searched for the dog, but it wasn't immediately found.Detroit police Captain Darin Szilagy says the man lived in the area. Szilagy says he was trying to be a "good Samaritan" and had a license to carry a concealed weapon. Szilagy says it's a tragic story, but notes "we're responsible for every round we fire."The shooting is under investigation and prosecutors likely will review the case.

Equifax division TALX has a product called The Work Number, where prospective employers can verify job applicants' work history and previous salaries (it's also used by mortgage lenders and others): you can create an account on this system in anyone's name, provided you have their date of birth and Social Security Number. The former is a matter of public record, the latter is often available thanks to the many breaches that have dumped millions of SSNs (the latest being Equifax's catastrophic breach of 145,000,000 Americans' data). (more…)

Everyone loves Halloween, including the hippos at the Cincinnati Zoo, because they get to chomp down on delicious pumpkins. (more…)

A brand manager at Dong Energy finally convinced them that their company name might be getting in the way of their messaging. They will be Ørsted from here out. (more…)

Once a species is considered extinct, it usually stays that way. But not so for an Australian stick insect that had been considered extinct since the early 1920s, and officially extinct by 1986. Alas, they have come back from the dead. The "tree lobster," or "land lobster," or Dryococelus australis, was a native to Australia's Lord Howe Island, but was wiped out after a 1918 shipwreck unleashed black rats, which decimated not only the D. australis species on the island but other species as well, including "five birds, two plants and 13 invertebrates (including D. australis) - not found anywhere else in the world," according to Science Alert. Then in 2001, the insect was discovered alive on nearby sea volcano, Ball's Pyramid, yet it wasn't official that these creatures were indeed the tree lobster – they didn't look quite the same as their Lord Howe Island ancestors. But "DNA testing has confirmed that the insects are, indeed, D. australis - an extremely rare success story."According to Science Alert:Although the Ball's Pyramid insects didn't look like the Lord Howe Island specimens, comparison between the genomes of the two found less than 1 percent difference - a small enough difference that they can officially be declared the same species.This means that eventually, they may be reintroduced to Lord Howe Island, pending the completion of a rat eradication program that is due to commence in 2018.Here's a really cool 2012 video about them:https://youtu.be/Eg3dcYJ2oI4Image: Granitethighs

Rodney Brooks -- eminent computer scientist and roboticist who has served as head of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and CTO of Irobot -- has written a scorching, provocative list of the seven most common errors made (or cards palmed) by pundits and other fortune-tellers when they predict the future of AI. (more…)

Thirty years ago, the collapse of the USSR and the ascendancy of the neoliberal policies of Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet and Mulroney sent the left into retreat, and what has passed for the left ever since has been dominated by Bill Clinton/Tony Blair-style "triangulation" or "humanized capitalism," whose core hypothesis might be summed up as, "Rather than allowing 150 white male CEOs to run the world, we should ensure that at least half of them are women and/or people of color." (more…)

Sarah Emerson created a cool print of the Beatles' "Hey Jude" lyrics as a flowchart

Even if you were born with perfect pitch, nimble fingers, and rock-hard calluses, getting good at guitar takes a long time. There’s no easy way to solidify scales and positions into your muscle memory, but FRETX significantly speeds up the process of learning fundamental patterns. This clever teaching tool attaches to your guitar neck, and uses colorful LEDs to mark where your fingers are supposed to go on the fretboard itself. Right now you can get one in the Boing Boing Store for $69.99.The FRETX device fits any size guitar neck, no matter if you have a baseball-bat acoustic or a speedy electric guitar. Installation is easy — just line up the LEDs with your strings, and wrap the excess material around. Everything sticks on with semi-permanent adhesive strips, so you won’t have to worry about ruining your guitar’s finish. Once you’re all set up, you can start learning essential chords right away with their free mobile app.https://www.youtube.com/embed/eihus-1PN7oIn the FRETX app, budding guitarists will find a variety of useful resources, including chord diagrams and a tuner. Built-in song lessons make use of the device’s LED indicators to display chord voicings and melodies in real time. Since the app can listen to you play with your phone’s built-in mic, you get fully dynamic feedback to help you practice more effectively. It lets you know if you hit a wrong note immediately, and keeps track of your progress over time. Songs can be played at whatever speed feels most comfortable, and you can even loop specific phrases to get them down perfectly.After you graduate from the beginner material, your teacher can program new songs and chord exercises. FRETX’s open platform makes sharing instructional content easy, and opens the doors for future 3rd-party app integration. If you want to start learning how to strum and shred as quickly as possible, you can grab a FRETX Smart Guitar Learning Device here for $69.99.BUY NOW

Norwegian band a-ha recently took to the stage to sing an acoustic version of their 1985 hit song, "Take On Me." It's nice to hear that lead singer Morten Harket can still hit those high notes after all these years.The band will begin an MTV Unplugged acoustic tour through Europe in early 2018, followed by a full-electric tour in the summer. (The Loop)Previously: A-ha! This app turns your living room into a 1980's music video using augmented reality

Security researcher Amit Serper reports getting command-line access to a set of supermarket scales, and he wasn't even trying: "The app that displays the weight crashed and dropped into a management screen." This is how you get free jalopeno olive salad, people.https://twitter.com/0xAmit/status/916810108516134912https://twitter.com/4n6expert/status/916850590390525952Previously.https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/917358996675354625

In August, Dutch photographer Michel Klooster captured these unusual photos of a newlywed couple.HuffPost reports:For one image, the couple posed as if they were having sex in a maroon pickup truck.Then they took another picture that can only be described as “blue.” In the photo, the bride appears to be performing oral sex on her new hubby.Klooster told HuffPost that the bride’s mother suggested that photo to him.“We were taking photos and she [told] me that they wanted that kind of picture, but the bride and groom didn’t dare ask me,” he said in a Facebook message. “Then I just said, ‘Of course, we are gonna do it.’ So I suggested where they need to stand for the right vibe!”Did I mention they're NSFW?While the wedding took place on August 17 in the Netherlands, the images were just shared October 2 on the photographer's Facebook page. Naturally, they went viral.images by Michel Klooster

After Speaker Rebecca Kadaga ordered opposition party members evicted during a debate on lifting a presidential age limit, things got a little heated. (more…)

Destinyland writes, "The Church of the Subgenius has moved online. (Founded in 1979, the 38-year-old parody religion combines UFOs and conspiracy theories with some social commentary and a few H.P. Lovecraft characters.) Their official Facebook page is now touting a new video channel on YouTube -- and in 'Adventures in the Forbidden Sciences,' former church CEO K'taden Legume makes a big announcement." (more…)

For professional creatives, it can be a pain to tackle administrative duties when you would rather be making things. If you are self-employed and struggle with bookkeeping, AND CO can automate a variety of your admin tasks, and you can get a subscription from the Boing Boing Store for $39.99.By connecting your business bank account to AND CO, you can simplify the process of getting paid for your work. Invoices are quick and easy to prepare and invoice, and you can allow your clients to pay you directly with credit, ACH transfers, and a variety of payment providers like PayPal. It can also track your expenses automatically, and will prepare your income statements when it’s tax time.With AND CO, you’ll be well-equipped to handle the tedious aspects of your freelancing job. A lifetime subscription to AND CO's Graphite Plan is $39.99 when you order it here.More Deals from the Boing Boing Store:Social Media Rockstar Bundle: $29 (97% off)Clip & Snap Smartphone Camera Lenses: $17.99 (74% off)4-Piece Knife and Peeler Set: $26.99 (73% off)

Parents of Georgia middle schoolers are saying a teacher gave students an assignment asking them to create a mascot for the Nazi party. WSB-TV Atlanta reports sixth graders from Shiloh Middle School in Snellville were handed a homework assignment to imagine being commissioned by nazis, then draw and name them a mascot based on all their teachings about Hitler and nazis. “Directions: The year is 1935 and you have been tasked with creating a mascot to represent the Nazi party at its political rallies,” the directions read. “Think about all the information that you have learned about Hitler and the Nazi party. You will create a COLORFUL illustration of the mascot. Give the mascot a NAME. You will also write an explanation as to why the mascot was chosen to represent the Nazi party.” Via WSB-TV Atlanta: Gwinnett County Schools said learning about Nazism, the use of propaganda and the events that resulted in the Holocaust is part of the sixth grade social studies curriculum.However, a school district spokesperson said in a statement, “This assignment is not a part of the approved materials provided by our Social Studies department and is not appropriate and the school is addressing the use of this assignment with the teacher."Image: DrRandomFactor

TastyFloats is a "contactless food delivery system" that uses ultrasound to raise bits of food and droplets of drink to your mouth without any utensils at all. While this method to levitate small objects is well known, what's fascinating is that a small scientific study shows that the levitated food apparently tastes better. Researchers from the University of Sussex describe TastyFloats and their sensory experiment in a scientific paper they'll present at this month's ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces conference. From IEEE Spectrum:The researchers experimented with three of the five basic tastes: sweet (a positive taste), bitter (a negative taste), and umami, which is a savory taste that can also enhance other flavors. The researchers asked a group of volunteers to test TastyFloats with the three basic tastes, delivered in three different volumes (5 microliters, 10µL, and 20µL), with tongue delivery via pipette as a non-levitating control. Participants were asked to identify each droplet, and then rated each on intensity, pleasantness, and satisfaction.The most significant difference between levitated tastes and tastes delivered via pipette was in intensity: sweet tastes were more intense and recognizable, while bitter tastes were harder to distinguish. The researchers suggest that this might make TastyFloats more suitable for dessert delivery, although it could also be used to make bitter but healthy foods (like broccoli) more palatable to people who wouldn't otherwise enjoy them.

I was honored to be yesterday's guest on my favorite interview podcast, Erik Davis's Expanding Mind. Erik and I have been friends since the cyberdelic early 1990s. He is a brilliant head and prolific writer who explores the cultures of consciousness with rigor, wit, and genuine curiosity. On the podcast, Erik and I had a freewheeling conversation about the Voyager Golden Record vinyl release that I co-produced with Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad, my work at the Institute for the Future, and the intersection of science, art, and magic to spark the imagination. Have a listen:

Canada's filthy tar sands are the world's most carbon-intensive petroleum source, and in the boom years, they flooded the country with so much filthy money that the country spent a decade making war on science and trashing democratic fundamentals in a bid to sustain the tar-sands bubble. (more…)

The first thing I thought when I saw these glow-in-the-dark pacifiers was that they'd be easy to find when junior flings them in the middle of the night.Then I thought, oh these can't be for real babies, these must be for ravers.But no, they are actually for babies (and toddlers). These fancy orthodontic BPA-free binkies come in three "stages" to fit your child's mouth. Or yours. I don't judge.They're made by the design team at Smilo and are available for $9.99/3-pack.(Cool Mom Picks)

Here's a rare historical gem from Walt Disney World's history: the 15-minute long promotional video for Walt's utopian EPCOT Center (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). The Disney Parks Blog writes that they pulled it out of the "video vault" for Epcot's 35th anniversary:This film, which offers a look inside WED Enterprises during the “Imagineering” of EPCOT Center in the 1970s, originally ran on a loop in the EPCOT Preview Center at Magic Kingdom Park. The purpose of the film was to introduce a new kind of Disney theme park to guests, showcasing exciting experiences they could have in the park’s Future World and World Showcase areas. The film offered sneak peaks at attraction models, renderings and animation for The Living Seas, Horizons, World of Motion, CommuniCore and Spaceship Earth, as well as early construction footage. It also offered a first-listen to some of the fun music composed for this new park, including songs like “It’s Fun to Be Free,” “Universe of Energy” and “Listen to the Land.”As a bonus, here's the TV opening special for EPCOT which aired on October 23, 1982 (the park opened on October 1st of that year). It's hosted by Danny Kaye:https://youtu.be/TyKOA9k9qrw

Biomechanist Katy Bowman uses the metaphor of nutrients – and nutritious movement vs. junk food movement – to unpack what’s not working for most of us about our modern lifestyle. Turns out that even those we consider “active” spend most of their time sedentary, according to research. And our shoes, furniture, pillows and other props mean that we are not getting the full range of motion – the essential movement nutrients – out of the limited activity that we do. This video is a decent entry point into Katy Bowman’s eco-system. She’s also written eight books and published piles of free content on her blog. You can even watch a video tour of her house showing the movement-hacks the family has made around their home.Once you start thinking about movement from an ancestral point of view – what our bodies evolved to expect – you won’t be able to go back to the exercise/not exercise dichotomy.

Here is an amazing motorcycle backflip by stunt performer Travis Pastrana. With only a 75-foot gap between two barges in London's river Thames, Pastrana pulled off a stunt that hasn't been tried in 11 years. The last guy to try, freestyle motocross rider Mike Metzger, did some serious damage fracturing his vertebrae. According to Reuters:Set against the backdrop of London’s O2 arena, Pastrana had only 150 feet to accelerate to takeoff speed before jumping, with only 36 feet to come to a stop before he would have fallen into the river.The vessels used in the attempt were fitted with a steep ramp for the rider’s take-off and a more gently inclined one for him to land on.Congrats to Pastrana, who in the past has "broken more than 90 bones and suffered 25 concussions."

(NSFW)Len Enders writes, "(On December 8, 1989), a friend and I threw a party at our house to celebrate our 19th birthday. We rented a video camera for the occasion and this is a short edit of the remaining footage from that night." (via r/ObscureMedia, thanks, UPSO!)

Did celebrities take last week off?It seems that way, as so many of the stories in this week’s tabloids relate to events that happened years, even decades ago, though naturally they are presented as “news” complete with the mandatory exclamation points.Tom Cruise “self destructs over cancer diagnosis!” would seem to be a shocking new story in the National Enquirer, but of course it isn’t Tom who was diagnosed with cancer, but his father, who died . . . wait for it . . . 33 years ago. Tom was well aware of his father’s cancer, since he was at his dying dad’s bedside, so his father’s cancer diagnosis could hardly come as a shock, or news, to the actor.Demi Moore "cheats death in cocaine overdose," screams the Enquirer headline. When did this supposedly happen? In 1985 – 32 years ago, barely a year after Tom Cruise’s father’s cancer diagnosis.Continuing its streak of hot breaking news, the Enquirer reveals Sandra Bullock’s “cheating hunk hit her!” When was she allegedly assaulted by a boyfriend? In high school - 35 years ago.Globe joins in the fun with its story "Diana Ross put in mental ward!" This must seem like it happened only yesterday – back in 2001, a mere 16 years ago. "Rabid Rambo disembowels reality queen!” screams another Globe headline above a lurid true crime story that seems fresh by comparison – this only occurred in 2015.Is there nothing new happening in the tabloids? Of course there is, if you count slain Nicole Brown Simpson’s ghost haunting O.J. Simpson, and the “Mad Pooper In Deep Doo-Doo,” referring to a phantom defecator outside a Colorado family’s home, both courtesy of Globe.The Enquirer tells us that Gwen Stefani is pregnant (because she appears to have a slightly bulging stomach in some photos) while the Globe cover story claims that Prince Charles’ wife Camilla is “dying” and “has 8 months to live” after being diagnosed with liver cancer – a story that somehow eluded the entire Royal press corps in England, and which hasn’t prompted a word of coverage in the U.K. It also mysteriously lacks the usually self-congratulatory “Globe World Exclusive” tag that such stories boast when the Editor at least thinks there may be a slim chance it’s accurate.Whatever happened to former White House aide Dick Morris, whose regular Enquirer column of Trump sycophancy carries the promise: “The most feared voice in politics”? He’s penned a rant with the catchy title “How to kill Obamacare without even asking Congress!” But you won’t find it in this week’s Enquirer, because they didn’t have room for it. Must be all that decades-old news pushing his fine prose off the pages. Instead, you have to look for his “feared voice” online at the Enquirer website. Morris must be even more fearful online, I’m sure.Thankfully we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Hailey Baldwin wore it best, Scandal star Bellamy Young is a “crazy good knitter,” that The Blacklist actress Megan Boone carries foundation, highlighter and lip tint in her Maison Mayle purse, and that the stars are just like us: they do gardening, exercise, shop and carry too many bags (because when the paparazzi come around they send home their gardeners, personal trainers, personal shoppers and personal assistants.)Us gives us the softest of softball interviews with First Daughter Ivanka Trump, this week’s cover girl revealing “My Life at the White House” – but don’t expect any revelations. Ivanka won’t tell us if she’s crazy good at knitting, or if she carries lip tint in her purse. Instead, we learn that she feels “so blessed every day to be able to come in to work at the White House,” though she avoids reading criticism because “If I engaged too deeply, I wouldn’t be able to prioritize the things I came here to do.”Ivanka also reveals the biggest misconception about her father, President Donald Trump: “… how empathetic he is doesn’t always come through.” Ya think?People magazine devotes its cover to the “Nightmare in Las Vegas – Heartbreak & Heroes,” which tells the stories of survivors, but can’t help fetishizing human suffering, and makes each story sound like the “journey” of a contestant on American Idol.Leave it to the National Examiner to bring us the oldest breaking news of the week: newly declassified CIA files allegedly offer evidence that Hitler was alive in Colombia after World War II – in 1955. That’s only 62 years ago, which qualifies as breaking news in this week’s tabloids.Onwards and downwards . . .

https://youtu.be/-2TbYYXajNYDami Lee on the Qoobo: "Do you enjoy the sensation of petting a cat or dog, but hate the unconditional love and the fact that they have heads and limbs?"I'm looking forward to hacking one of these so that whenever it is petted, it emits a man's muffled screams.

If you can’t contain your excitement to get the new Google Pixel, you can enter now for a chance to get it free, along with the Daydream View VR Headset and Google Home.Building on one of the best Android handsets to date, the relatively still mysterious Pixel XL 2 is sure to be one of the biggest releases this year. To take advantage of the new phone’s improved specs, we’re bundling it with a Daydream View and a Google Home. The Daydream View is designed to fit Pixel devices perfectly, so you can immerse yourself in a variety of VR experiences from the Play Store, while Google Home gives you the capability to turn your home into a veritable Smart House.All three of these items have a combined value of $977, but you can register to win them all for free through the New Google Pixel & Friends Giveaway.More Deals from the Boing Boing Store:Social Media Rockstar Bundle: $29 (97% off)Clip & Snap Smartphone Camera Lenses: $17.99 (74% off)4-Piece Knife and Peeler Set: $26.99 (73% off)

Sadly, this reboot cycle was one infinite loop. Mercifully, restoring to a Time Machine backup:I'll guess I'll give it another try a couple of point releases in.Update: https://twitter.com/Beschizza/status/915382802778087425Let it not be said I'm playing favorites!

A Rice University chemist found that adding asphalt to lithium batteries allowed the battery to go "from zero charge to full charge in five minutes, rather than the typical two hours or more needed with other batteries."The Rice lab of chemist James Tour developed anodes comprising porous carbon made from asphalt that showed exceptional stability after more than 500 charge-discharge cycles. A high-current density of 20 milliamps per square centimeter demonstrated the material’s promise for use in rapid charge and discharge devices that require high-power density. The finding is reported in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.