On Tuesday, Quebec's Minister of International Relations, Christine St. Pierre, offered to donate blankets, pillows, beds, hygienic products and manpower to the survivors of Hurricane Harvey. She spoke with Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, who was touched that she called him, but he turned down the offer. He preferred that she send him prayers. With Hurricane Harvey being the one of the biggest storm disasters in recent US history, perhaps prayers AND supplies would be a better decision. Or, as commentator Paul Begala tweeted, "This moron doesn't understand that those blankets and other donations are the answers to prayers."This moron doesn't understand that those blankets and other donations are the answers to prayers. https://t.co/DLs7jxFXmz— Paul Begala (@PaulBegala) September 1, 2017More details at CBCNews. Image: SoSTX

Google's influence at a supposedly independent think tank it funds was exposed this week when staffers critical of the company were fired. But Kashmir Hill reports that there's nothing new about Google's ruthless treatment of critics in the press. ...I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished. After joining Forbes as a writer, she learned from a meeting with Google salespeople that sites refusing to add the Google Plus +1 buttons to their sites would "suffer" in search results.After the meeting, I approached Google’s public relations team ...The press office confirmed it, though they preferred to say the Plus button “influences the ranking.” They didn’t deny what their sales people told me: If you don’t feature the +1 button, your stories will be harder to find with Google. ...Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. (I had signed no such agreement, hadn’t been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.)It escalated quickly from there. I was told by my higher-ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News.As if to make clear what would be brought to bear, Google immediately scrubbed the article from Google, including the URL cache.the most disturbing part of the experience was what came next: Somehow, very quickly, search results stopped showing the original story at all. As I recall it—and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory—a cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results.Ironic ending: the last place you can find the story is apparently the Internet Marketing Association, which scraped it from Forbes.

Kelly Richman-Abdou reports on the fabulous animal puppets made by Haruki Nakamura. Beautifully-animated cartoon surprises—but made of paper!Crafted from paper and cleverly constructed, each whimsical creature puts a paper twist on karakuri, or mechanized puppets. Like traditional karakuri, each figure's movements are prompted by human touch. This means that when pressed, poked, or prodded in certain places, the puppets come alive. Whether they're shedding surprising disguises, showcasing amazing acrobatics, or coming out of their shells (literally), the animals exhibit both the capabilities of the kirigami craft and Nakamura's creative approach to paper dolls.While Nakamura sells his delightful dolls in his online shop, they only ship within Japan. However, if you're overseas and would like to get your paws on your own paper puppets, you can learn how to create your own with Karakuri: How to Make Mechanical Paper Models That Move. Or, if it's kirigami that has piqued your paper interest, check out Kirigami: The Art Of Folding & Cutting Paper.Read the rest of Kelly's article for many more GIFs like the one here.

It’s easy to get used to the old sheets on your bed, since most of your time in them is spent completely unconscious. But giving your linens a refresh can feel like putting a new pair of underwear over your whole body. This Organic Essentials Cotton Sheet Set can give your bed a fresh new makeover, and it's available now in the Boing Boing Store.These luxurious sheets are made from premium cotton without any harsh chemicals — you can rest easy on their ultra-soft surface knowing that they were produced in the most environmentally-friendly way possible. The set comes with both fitted and flat sheets, along with two matching two pillowcases.The 4-piece set is available in full, Queen, and King sizes and is available here for $39.99.

Jake Rossen takes a deep dive into the iconic American novelty toy company Wham-O and its storied history. (more…)

El Bolillo's late shift bakers found Houston's streets impassable during the hurricane, but since the power was still on, they got to work turning two tons of flour into pan dulce for the two days they were stuck inside. (more…)

Fear of Palindromes stuffed an entire computer inside a standard power supply box, complete with gaming-class GTX 1060 video card and a (smaller!) internal power supply. While lesser ATX units can't do anything on their own, and must be installed in a case and hooked up to other parts in order to create a functional system, STX160.0 is entirely self-contained, fitting within it's case both the power delivery subsystem, and a full gaming computer! Here we can see that despite the somewhat large size compared to other ATX units, there is not a bit of wasted space. ... In order to fit within the 150mm width of the ATX form factor, a Mini-STX had to be used, this particular one being an ASRock H110M-STX.

I just bought this 45-piece toolkit for $7 on Amazon. It comes with tweezers, an extension bar, a handle, and 42 bits, including metric sockets, Torx bits, and a few exotic bits.

If a young girl wanted to participate in a pirate event at Disneyland, it's unimaginable that she would be turned away because she's a girl. But Noah, a 3-year-old boy, who was "buzzing with excitement" when he heard about the Disneyland Paris princess-for-a-day event (his favorite Disney character is Elsa from Frozen), was banned from participating because of his gender. From YouTube:His mother was shocked when she was told boys could not take part – that the event was for girls only.“I was so angry I literally couldn’t stop shaking for half an hour afterwards. It’s just – I was so shocked. I mean, I’m his mother, and if I’m okay with him doing it, who are Disney to tell me that he can’t do that? I don’t understand,” said Hayley McLean-Glass, Noah’s mother. “If a little girl went to Disneyland and wanted to do a pirate experience or a Spider-Man experience, there would be no way that they would stop a girl from doing that because there would be uproar, so why is it different for a boy?”Disneyland ended up apologizing to Noah's mother. According to NBC News:Disneyland Paris said they “sincerely apologized” to Noah and his mother in a statement to ITV News and that it was an “isolated incident.”“An isolated incident, the cast member’s response is not reflective of any policy or belief held here at Disneyland Paris,” read the statement — Disneyland calls all of their employees "cast members."It continued, “We are going to ensure this does not happen again."“Of course, both boys and girls are welcome to enjoy The Princess For a Day experience in addition to all our other special activities,” the statement added.https://youtu.be/EK3X315TbZ4?t=17s

One of the hallmarks of a great con artist is that his victims will return again and again to be fleeced. A few months ago I interviewed psychologist Maria Konnikova, author of The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time, and she told me there have been many cases where con victims have happily paid the legal expenses of con artists when they were prosecuted in court. Sergei Mavrodi sounds like a great con artist. He's been running a pyramid scheme for nearly 30 years. It's called the Mavrodi Moneybox Mondial (MMM) and despite the fact that Mavrodi was imprisoned for tax fraud in Russia in 2000, there is a long line of suckers begging to throw money at him. He has now moved into Nigeria, and is wiping out the savings of people living there.If you visit the MMM Nigeria website, you will be greeted by live person ready to help you in a chat window.From the site:ATTENTION!YES, IT IS POSSIBLE TO GET 100% PER MONTH HERE, BUT THIS IS NOT A HYIP!This is a community of ordinary people, selflessly helping each other, a kind of the Global Fund of mutual aid. This is the first sprout of something new in modern soulless and ruthless world of greed and hard cash. The goal here is not the money. The goal is to destroy the world's unjust financial system. Financial Apocalypse! Before you join, be sure to be acquainted with our IDEOLOGY!If you are interested in learning how much you'll make, use the handy MMM "Calculator of Happiness." If you invest 1 bitcoin ($4700) per month, in just 12 months you'll have 4,100 bitcoins ($19 million). I'm sold!From Buzzfeed:Mavrodi was Russia’s Bernie Madoff. A trained mathematician who sports trademark oversized glasses and a comb-over, he has perpetrated one of the biggest pyramid schemes in the world. At its peak, MMM was raking in so much cash that its founders spoke in terms of how many “rooms” full of banknotes they had.In 1994, four years after it began, the scheme collapsed.The following year Mavrodi was elected to the Duma, Russia’s parliament, after convincing investors he’d bail them out with taxpayers’ money. Instead, he fled within a year after Russian authorities stripped him of his parliamentary immunity so they could put him on trial.After eventually serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence, Mavrodi launched a failed presidential bid, then hosted a radio talk show called Pyramid in which he gave financial and life advice to callers. Then he branched out beyond the former USSR, taking his racket to the US, India, and China, among other places.The endgame for MMM, Mavrodi frequently tells journalists, is “a financial apocalypse” that will destroy the global financial system. It will then be replaced with his own, fairer system, where users call themselves “Mavrodians” and trade using “Mavro” currency units. More than 230 million users have signed up globally so far, according to a perennially upward-ticking counter on its official website.

If you were on the Moon during last week's solar eclipse, you would have seen the Moon's shadow moving across Earth. This image was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) satellite. From Arizona State University's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) site:As LRO crossed the lunar south pole heading north at 1600 meters per second (3579 mph), the shadow of the Moon was racing across the United States at 670 meters per second (1500 mph). A few minutes later, LRO began a slow 180° turn to look back at the Earth and capture an image of the eclipse very near the location of maximum length of totality. The LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) began scanning the Earth at 18:25:30 UTC and completed the image 18 seconds later (UTC is 4 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, or 7 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time).The NAC builds up an image line-by-line rather than the more typical "instantaneous" framing camera (i.e. your cell phone camera). Each line of the image is exposed for 0.338 milliseconds, and since the camera acquires 52224 lines, the total time to acquire the image is about 18 seconds. The line exposure time was set at the lowest possible value to prevent bright clouds from saturating the CCD (charge coupled device) sensor.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZ-zx_y74cRendering of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter:LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC):

Airplane travel is not much fun these days (unless you are very rich). It's made worse by drunken passengers, sociopathic flight attendants, and mechanical issues. “Flights From Hell: Caught On Camera” is a cheap, sensationalistic documentary that compiles the best of the worst flight incidents in recent years.Via One Mile at a Time.

Researchers demonstrated single-molecule nanomachines that can target diseased cells and then kill them by drilling through the cell membrane. Developed by a team at Rice University, Durham University (UK), and North Carolina State University, the single-molecule nanomotors are about one-billionth of a meter wide and spin at 2 to 3 million rotations per second. They're activated by ultraviolet light and could also be used to deliver drug treatment into the cells. From Rice:“These nanomachines are so small that we could park 50,000 of them across the diameter of a human hair, yet they have the targeting and actuating components combined in that diminutive package to make molecular machines a reality for treating disease,” Tour said...The researchers found it takes at least a minute for a motor to tunnel through a membrane. “It is highly unlikely that a cell could develop a resistance to molecular mechanical action,” Tour said.Pal expects nanomachines will help target cancers like breast tumors and melanomas that resist existing chemotherapy. “Once developed, this approach could provide a potential step change in noninvasive cancer treatment and greatly improve survival rates and patient welfare globally,” he said...The Pal lab at Durham tested motors on live cells, including human prostate cancer cells. Experiments showed that without an ultraviolet trigger, motors could locate specific cells of interest but stayed on the targeted cells’ surface and were unable to drill into the cells. When triggered, however, the motors rapidly drilled through the membranes."Molecular machines open cell membranes" (Nature)

Corey Payne and his fiancée Kayla Harris bought a three-pack of eclipse glasses on Amazon. Now they say they are suffering from impaired vision and they filed a lawsuit in federal court in South Carolina on Tuesday.From The Next Web:On August 10, Amazon issued a recall of glasses it was unable to verify as safe. The retail giant emailed customers to return their units, although Payne and Harris say they didn’t receive an email. They aim to represent other people who suffered injuries and weren’t warned by Amazon.There are almost two million independent sellers on Amazon’s platform, and counterfeiting has long been a problem for the service. In response, the company has launched initiatives designed to stem the flow, including a registry that makes it easier for shoppers and brands to flag counterfeit goods, and a program called “Transparency,” that lets companies label products with a code, which can later be used to check authenticity.

Diphylleia grayi, the "skeleton flower" is normally opaque white but when it rains, the petals become transparent until the flower dries. Nanotechnologists are developing new materials inspired by the flower's structure that could lead to the likes of new underwater goggles that repel oil. From Mother Nature Network:Skeleton flowers are native to wooded mountainsides in the colder regions of Japan, and they bloom from mid-spring to early-summer in shady conditions. The plant might be easier to spot if you look for its large, umbrella-shaped leaves. The pearly white (or clear, if it's raining) blossoms top the leaves in small clusters...A related species, Diphylleia cymosa, can be found in the deciduous forests of the Appalachian Mountains here in the United States.(via Daily Grail)

A motorcycle driver stopped at a red light last week in Washington state when suddenly a man lurches towards him. "How ya doing?!" he asks, the gun pointing right at him, reminding me of a killer clown from a horror movie."Oh shit!" the man on the motorcycle says. "What are you doing to me?!"Turns out it's an unhinged bully cop without a uniform. He doesn't introduce himself. [UPDATE: he is King County sheriff's detective Richard Rowe, 53, and he was placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation Tuesday morning.]"What do you mean what am I doing?" the cop screams at him. He wants to see the driver's ID, but the driver is scared to death, and on top of that he can't hear well with his helmet on. He keeps asking if he can take off his helmet, but the cop just keeps yelling at him to take out his ID. "Take out your ID! If you move your bike I'm going to dump you!" "I'm sorry," the motorcycle driver says at one point, trying to explain why he's frozen. "You have a gun drawn on me.""Yeah, you're right! Cuz I'm the police!"Turns out the bully cop is a detective with the King County Sheriff's Department in Washington. Apparently he didn't like the way the motorcycle was driving, but never gave him a citation. The motorcycle driver has filed a complaint with the King County Sheriff's Department.

My friend Koichi, founder of the Japanese culture website Tofugu, went to Tokyo to "rent" Kotani Makoto for ¥50 (45 cents). Kotani became homeless in 2013, and is now famous in Japan. Read Koichi's article about the experience here."Do you sleep on the street?" I asked between bites of salmon and rice."I haven't done that in a while now," Kotani said. "Only the first couple months was spent on the streets. That first month was tough. I used my phone to write about my homeless life on Twitter and it got a little popular. I also tried to get some part-time jobs, but the interviews didn't go so well. Then Nishino-san suggested I sell myself for ¥50 per day, so I did."At first, Kotani-san was skeptical of how it would work out. But then, he noticed something: people felt guilty about renting him for only ¥50. He would do a favor for someone for basically no money at all, so his "customers" would buy him food, and sometimes offer their couch or floor to sleep on.Kotani would do something for them and they wanted to return the favor. He ate more than ever before and gained a lot of weight. Then he tweeted that he couldn't fit in his pants because he got fat. One of his followers bought him new pants."I have this 'worldwide family' now," he said. Kotani looked at each of us in turn. "Either I'd become friends with someone who rented me and at the end of the evening they'd offer to let me stay at their place, or I'd ask on social media and someone would offer. I'd be like: 'Is there anyone who can let me stay over tonight?' There are so many good people in the world."

A fresh hell for the flooded plains of Texas: Yes, That's a Huge Floating Mass of Live Fire Ants in Texas. (Photo: Brant Kelly / CC BY 2.0) Sarah Zhang:“Holy crap. I have never, in my entire career as an ant researcher, seen *anything* like this,” tweeted Alex Wild, curator of entomology at University of Texas at Austin, in response to the image below. Of course, Wild told me, it is all perfectly logical. “They actually love floods,” says Wild. “It’s how they get around.” Fire ants displaced by water form rafts; a lot of fire ants displaced by a lot of water will form really big rafts. But still! The sheer size of them is incredible.https://twitter.com/The_Reliant/status/902536760038711296Dish soap breaks the surface tension and they sink.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kniVVLZ-eIk&feature=youtu.beHand made at 1/3 its designed size, this 125cc V10 engine has a miniature yet throaty roar. Creator Keith5700 explains:...my references for designing stuff is just to keep plodding away looking at pics, and reading stuff on forums. Most things are designed from scratch these days, but I do a lot of image Googling, looking for pretty things to copy.

Kalli (@aurelianrabbit on Twitter) understands well the truest and most important quest of humankind: the proper storage of bread. [via laughing squid]PREVIOUSLY: Sandwich alignment chart

When he's not winning speedcarving contests with his chainsaw, Estonian sculptor Igor Loskutow crafts wood into outsize sculptures and furniture, like these remarkable dragon benches. (more…)

The number of hummingbirds sharing this pool is astonishing, given how aggressive they usually are toward each other. (more…)

The QFX Elite Series wireless speakers can be synced up to provide a perfect multi-room sound system, and their most compact entry is being offered in the Boing Boing store for 60% off retail.Despite it’s small size, the 3” internal speaker of the QFX Bach kicks out 10 watts of transparent audio. It’s compatible with almost any bluetooth-capable device, and you can connect to this speaker over WiFi for a wider reach and greater signal stability. When paired with other units, or one of its larger siblings (aptly named Schubert and Mozart), you get a network of simultaneous playback all across your home.You can play songs from your personal collection, or connect to any streaming service like Pandora or Spotify. Get the QFX Elite Series Bach speaker here for $59.99.

The Russian army clearly needs to teach its tank drivers not to text and drive.

In the video below, a rooster in India tangles with a deadly cobra that can deliver enough venom in one bite to kill 20 people, and many more roosters. From National Geographic:The rooster pushes the cobra away from the other chickens, sometimes dropping and pecking at it and sometimes running with the snake dangling from its beak. The bobbing movements of the rooster seem well-suited for this kind of fight, making it harder for the cobra to strike with its lethal venom.At the end of the encounter, the rooster swallows the weakened snake whole, sliding the reptile into its beak as the creature’s muscles coil uselessly a couple more times.

Jeffery Shaver, 31, stood outside the Kitchener, Ontario courthouse yesterday in his underwear beside two signs that read "RETURN MY BONG" and "RETURN MY MARIJUANA." He claims that police seized his bong and stash at a local hospital where he was taken during a panic attack. He says he was yelling about a problem with a vending machine when they arrested and searched him. This is the second time one of his bongs and his weed were confiscated. From The Record:"I have a legal medical marijuana card. Five months after I got it, I was arrested for possession of marijuana, but I had my card on me," Shaver said."So two days later, I went back and smoked marijuana on the front lawn of the police station," Shaver said. "Again they arrested me. I went to jail for the first time. They held me there for 16 hours."And that charge, ironically, has already been dropped and this is the very bong they returned to me," he said, pausing to take a hit off the bong. "They refuse to return the other one because they haven't dropped that marijuana charge."photo: Vanessa Tignanelli/The Record

Photographer Philippe Echaroux used a cheap flashlight, a soda straw, and a Big Mac box to take some excellent portraits with his iPhone.

Of all the ways a Saarinen knock-off chair Magis Bombo stool could fail, this ranks among the worst.[via Bits and Pieces]

Venkatesh Rao coined the phrase "premium mediocre" and wrote about it on Ribbonfarm. The term came to him when dining at Veggie Grill. He describes that particular restaurant as in the same class as Chipotle which, of course, is inarguable premium mediocre. Below are some other things that Rao has identified as premium mediocre. Please list others in the comments! From Ribbonfarm:Premium mediocre is the finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden. Premium mediocre is cupcakes and froyo. Premium mediocre is “truffle” oil on anything (no actual truffles are harmed in the making of “truffle” oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Economy. Premium mediocre is cruise ships, artisan pizza, Game of Thrones, and The Bellagio.Premium mediocre is food that Instagrams better than it tastes.Premium mediocre is Starbucks’ Italian names for drink sizes, and its original pumpkin spice lattes featuring a staggering absence of pumpkin in the preparation. Actually all the coffee at Starbucks is premium mediocre. I like it anyway.Premium mediocre is Cost Plus World Market, one of my favorite stores, purveyor of fine imported potato chips in weird flavors and interesting cheap candy from convenience stores around the world.(via Kottke)

Breaking into a truck, WCGW ? from WhatcouldgowrongA motorcycle with three riders drives up behind a large truck at night. One of them snaps a lock with bolt cutters, and dismounts the bike to board the bus. But when he steps off the motorcycle, he knocks it off balance, causing the remaining two riders to crash and fall. The man standing on the truck sees what he did, then steps off the truck onto the road, falling on his back.But wait! A few seconds later, they are back on the bike, ready to try again. "Failure isn't getting knocked down. It's not getting back up."

This is a fun podcast I just learned about. It's called Stoner. The host Aaron Lammer (also the co-host of the Longform Podcast) says, "Stoner is a freewheeling conversation that often starts with 'when was the first time you ever smoked weed?' and can end up anywhere."I embedded the episode above, which is an interview with our friend, Matt Haughey, who created Metafilter.Matt Haughey never touched weed as a teen, despite being a competitive BMX rider in Southern California. He didn't smoke any weed in his 20s either, busy founding Metafilter one of the internet's first collections of "cool shit people find on the internet." By the time he was in 30s, Matt was curious to try marijuana but didn't know anyone who had any. Finally, a decade later, legalization came to the West Coast and he set off for Washington State to acquire some weed so he could smoke his first joint, age 42.We talked about the lack of beginner's weed-smoking information on the internet, touring elementary schools and churches performing in a D.A.R.E. BMX show, and why he gave Metafilter away after 16 years.

The Raspberry Pi 3 can do almost everything a standard desktop can do, just for a fraction of the cost — as well as plenty of things that you would never expect out of a laptop. It offers an extremely open-ended platform for interacting with countless physical and digital things, and is a great way to explore electronics and computer science. To help you dive right in to this single-board wonder, the Raspberry Pi 3 Board + Mastery Bundle is currently available in the Boing Boing Store.Here’s a list of some cool things you can do with your Raspberry Pi, and how to build your skills with our bundle:Make your computer truly personalAt it’s core, the Raspberry Pi is just an extremely general-purpose computer. If you ever wished your workstation wasn’t just a mass-produced slab of aluminum, the Pi gives you freedom to reimagine your computer in whatever form suits you best. Just take a look at this Raspberry Pi Netbook Briefcase, which uses a handful of off-the-shelf parts for a clever self-contained desktop. You don’t even need any advanced technical skills to assemble a custom machine. As long as you can successfully boot into the Raspbian OS, the hardest part is either building your enclosure or choosing a pre-made one from Adafruit.Smarten up your homeBecause of it’s slew of connectivity options, the Raspberry Pi excels at bridging the gap between physical sensors and the internet. Instead of waiting for IoT consumer technology to mature, you can roll out your own home automation using this cheap computer. The Raspberry Pi Mastery Bundle features several courses on automation. To design your own home system, you’ll learn to use Cayenne, a drag-and-drop IoT project builder, as well as get experience using Python code to interface directly with raw input from your Pi’s GPIO pins. Once you learn to read real-time data and feed it to a web back-end, you’ll have the freedom to wire up almost anything. For some idea of the possibilities, check out this DIY Raspberry Pi Weather Station that automatically logs environmental information to CSV files for easy processing.Dig for treasureBitcoin mining on stock Raspberry Pi hardware is possible, but not very lucrative. However, you can employ some specialized peripherals to make better use of its relatively small power footprint, as seen in this Pi Bitcoin Miner. It uses several USB ASIC devices that can process transactions at speeds that rival desktop graphics cards for more efficient blockchain verification. While this bundle doesn’t come with a complete moneymaking machine, it will teach you how to set up a Bitcoin Wallet and all of the Terminal commands needed to make it happen.Build robotsRaspberry Pis are also great brains for robots and other specialized mechanical devices. Aside from reading data, the GPIO pins can also interact with electrical components like servos and DC motors. You can get introduced to the basics of robotics, and cover concepts like h-bridge circuits and degrees of freedom with three of the courses included in this collection. The projects range from a simple robot arm, to a fully remote-controlled Pi car. After mastering this material, you can start setting your sights to the future, like this incredible augmented reality robot made with Raspberry Pi and Microsoft Hololens.The Raspberry Pi 3 Mastery Bundle includes a Pi Board, a robotic car kit with all of the necessary hardware, as well as the following seven courses:Build Your Own Armbot Step By Step Using Raspberry Pi ZeroHome Automation in 48 Hours Without CodingInternet of Things Automation Using Raspberry Pi 2Raspberry Pi RoboticsBitcoin Mining Using Raspberry PiHardware Projects Using Raspberry PiAutomation with Raspberry Pi ZeroIt's everything you need to get started with a fun, technical new hobby, and it's all in the Boing Boing Store for $178.99.

The 32-year-old grandson of the billionaire who invented the Red Bull energy drink killed a policeman in Thailand five years ago and is still living the life of luxury. And now Interpol has issued a "red" alert, asking for member countries to arrest and extradite him.The wealthy heir, Vorayuth Yoovidhya, from Thailand, was zipping around in his Ferrari when he hit a policeman on a motorcycle, dragging the officer and the bike behind the fancy car for at least nine feet before stopping. This was in September, 2012, when he was 27-years-old, and Voovidhya, who goes by the name "Boss," has been dodging the law ever since, simply by not showing up for court.But he's not hiding out in some cabin in the woods, like you might imagine a fugitive to do. No, this entitled gentleman has been living the Red Bull lifestyle, with the help of his family. According to AP News:Within weeks of the accident, The Associated Press has found, Vorayuth, then 27, was back to enjoying his family's jet-set life, largely associated with the Red Bull brand ... He flies around the world on private Red Bull jets, cheers their Formula One racing team from Red Bull's VIP seats and keeps a black Porsche Carrera in London with custom license plates: B055 RBR. Boss Red Bull Racing.Nor is he all that hard to find. Just last month, social media clues led AP reporters to Vorayuth and his family vacationing in the ancient, sacred city of Luang Prabang, Laos. The group stayed at a $1,000-a-night resort, dined in the finest restaurant, visited temples and lounged by the pool before flying home to Bangkok.And according to NPR:Vorayuth's case has drawn attention to the apparent impunity of the extremely wealthy in Thailand. "Justice has failed," read one headline in the Bangkok Post in 2013. An AP piece from 2016 called Vorayuth a "famous untouchable," one of a generation of "deadly rich kids" causing fatal crashes and dodging any punishment.And, as is typical with spoiled brats, Yoovidhya's attorney has been filing petitions claiming that Boss has been treated unfairly.

When you think about your future health, career, finances, and even longevity — you imagine a rosy, hopeful future. For everyone else, though, you tend to be far more realistic.In other words, if you are a smoker, everyone else is going to get cancer. You’ll probably be in the that lucky portion who smokes into your 90s, or so you think. Similarly, the odds of success for a new restaurant change depending on who starts that venture. If its you, the odds are pretty good. If it is someone else, you see the odds as pretty bad.For about 80 percent of people, the brain overestimates the likelihood of future good events and underestimates the odds of future bad events. This, guest Tali Sharot says, is our built-in optimism bias.Sharot is the director of the Affective Brain Lab and teaches cognitive neuroscience in the department of Experimental Psychology at University College London. In this episode, she explains why we are prone to optimism and hope over realism and the skepticism of experience. She also details how we can use our knowledge of this mental quirk to our advantage both personally and institutionally.Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudThis episode is sponsored by Dignity Health. Just two minutes of mindful thinking can reduce stress and help us be more mindful of the moments and people around us. Share #take2mins on social media to tell the world how you are incorporating mindfullness into your daily life.This episode is sponsored by Blue Apron who sets the highest quality standards for their community of artisanal suppliers, family-run farms, fisheries and ranchers. For less than $10 per meal, Blue Apron delivers the best ingredients along with easy-to-read, full-color recipes with photos and additional information about where your food came from. Check out this week’s menu and get your first three meals free with free shipping by going to www.blueapron.com/YANSSSupport the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.Links and SourcesDownload – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudPrevious EpisodesBoing Boing PodcastsCookie RecipesThe Optimism BiasSharot’s TED TalkSharot’s Website

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed Wednesday that the Kremlin received an email from Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, during the 2016 presidential campaign.According to The Washington Post:President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday that they received Cohen’s email, which was sent to the press office’s general email address. Peskov said it was one of many emails the Kremlin press office gets — since its email address is available online — and that the Kremlin did not reply to it.Cohen admitted on Monday that Trump's company had been working to land a project in Moscow during the presidential primary, but it fell through.And according to Business Insider 's article, "A Timeline of Trump Associates' Russia-Related Emails Reveal Consistent Efforts by Russia to Infiltrate the Campaign," yesterday:The messages show that Russians were consistently trying to infiltrate the Trump campaign, and that many of Trump's associates felt that meeting with Kremlin representatives would somehow bolster Trump's election chances. The newly uncovered emails, moreover — along with Cohen's statement — could used by FBI special counsel Robert Mueller to demonstrate an intent to collude."If the reports are true that Cohen emailed a general Kremlin mailbox, that would be another example of malicious intent being tempered only by incompetence on the Trump team's part," Price said.Image: Michael Vadon

For a while I switched to a tiny ortholinear keyboard, the Planck, but gave up wrestling with both a new layout and the lack of unshifted numbers. But the Preonic, being offered in a month-long group buy at Massdrop, is tempting me with all its extra keys. It's $130 and requires assembly (soldering the switches, but not the board), with some case and keycap options to pick from.(If you're wondering, these are for people who hate typing fast.)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and extra other stuff!! GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”Filled with wild twists and funny dialogue” -Publishers Weekly) Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Alexis Madrigal got a chance to visit the fascinating town of Castle, a roads-only city constructed by Waymo for the sole purpose of developing self-driving cars. (more…)

A small ray of sunshine as the current Administration continues its war on journalism. A defamation lawsuit brought by former Vice-Presidential candidate and national laughing stock Sarah Palin, against The New York Times, has been dismissed.A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin against The New York Times, saying Ms. Palin’s complaint failed to show that a mistake in an editorial was made maliciously.“What we have here is an editorial, written and rewritten rapidly in order to voice an opinion on an immediate event of importance, in which are included a few factual inaccuracies somewhat pertaining to Mrs. Palin that are very rapidly corrected,” Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan said in his ruling. “Negligence this may be; but defamation of a public figure it plainly is not.”Via The New York Times, natch.

I tried a bunch of pens that promised an opaque fine white line on dark paper, and the only one that had an acceptable result was the Uniball Signo Broad. It was in a class of its own, superior even to markers (too chalky) and gloopy paint pens (hardly even work.)I tried equivalent models from Sharpie (the water-based marker is too thick, and the metal-tube pen just doesn't flow well), Pentel (not remotely opaque), and Sakura (fine in a pinch.)It wasn't perfect, though, and you'll have to write with more care than normal gel pens. In particular, the pigment dries fast on the ballpoint -- even as you write -- which can result in smudgy or lost corners or thin parallel tracks instead of the expected bold line.I tried using it as white-out, too. It did OK over Pigma ink (not pictured), but was pretty rough over Higgins ink (below). Reinking over it with Pigma and Tombow pens was fine, but Higgins required a extremely light touch with a Hunt #102 nib. UPDATE: My results comport with those of others! Here's Jetpens with a more exhaustive and illustrative roundup that nonetheless confirms that the Uniball Signo Broad is the best. And here's a another roundup from Rachelle at Tinker Lab, which serves as an important reminder that craft store own-brand stuff is particularly terrible and that the best white pen is, you guessed it, sound the guns, stop the presses... the Uniball Signo Broad.So, just get the Uniball Signo Broad [Amazon link]P.S. the black Post It notes (Amazon) are hard to find in real life but I spotted them in Target last week, which is funny because Target doesn't sell any pens that will write on them.

When Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer launched their artist marketplace website, Witchsy, they found sexism got in the way of doing business. That is, until they created their imaginary third partner, Keith Mann.Before "Keith Mann" came on board, Gazin and Dwyer consistently dealt with condescending and sexist attitudes from people they were trying to work with, such as developers and graphic designers. According to Fast Company:Some hurdles were overt: Early on a web developer they brought on to help build the site tried to stealthily delete everything after Gazin declined to go on a date with him. But most of the obstacles were much more subtle.After setting out to build Witchsy, it didn’t take long for them to notice a pattern: In many cases, the outside developers and graphic designers they enlisted to help often took a condescending tone over email. These collaborators, who were almost always male, were often short, slow to respond, and vaguely disrespectful in correspondence. In response to one request, a developer started an email with the words “Okay, girls…”But recruiting Mr. Mann to help man the company changed everything for them.“It was like night and day,” says Dwyer. “It would take me days to get a response, but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with.”Dwyer and Gazin continued to deploy Keith regularly when interacting with outsiders and found that the change in tone wasn’t just an anomaly. In exchange after exchange, the perceived involvement of a man seemed to have an effect on people’s assumptions about Witchsy and colored how they interacted with the budding business. One developer in particular seemed to show more deference to Keith than he did to Dwyer or Gazin, right down to the basics of human interaction.“Whenever he spoke to Keith, he always addressed Keith by name,” says Gazin. “Whenever he spoke to us, he never used our names.”Dwyer and Gazin sold $200,000 worth of merchandise in their first year, and recently received an investment from Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland. They are no longer using Mann as their frontman, and least not for now. Image: geralt/Pixabay

This mint condition 1969 Glass Enterprises "Bounty Hunter" dune buggy (Estimate: $30,000 - $50,000) will be a featured item at the upcoming Los Angeles Modern Auctions event on October 22. Painted in a shockingly bright yellow, the 1969 Bounty Hunter Dune Buggy demands attention. Having taken one year complete in 1969, builder and owner, Bill Lazelere made sure no detail went overlooked. From the chrome details throughout, to the gas cap under the hood, and 1965 Renault windshield, it is truly a modern design masterpiece. The car has remained in mint condition since its completion and is a timeless classic. The name ‘Bounty Hunter’ is a nod to Steve McQueen’s television show, ‘Wanted Dead of Alive,’ after one car’s designers met McQueen when the movie star ran out of gas. The Dune Buggy is estimated to go for $30,000- $50,000. Dune buggies originated out of Burbank, California in the mid-60s era and grew in popularity after being featured in Hollywood films such as The Big Bounce (1969). LAMA is excited to have such a time capsule piece of California pop culture to add to its already diversified 25th Anniversary Auction. The auction is set to take place October 22, 2017 at the Los Angeles Modern Auctions showroom at 12:00 p.m. 16145 Hart St., Van Nuys, CA 91406Mel Keys designed the "Bounty Hunter" dune buggy for Glass Enterprises. He was also one of the three men (middle in photo below) who made the original 11-foot model of the U.S.S. Enterprise that was used on the TV series:

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies announced that the FDA has granted MDMA (aka Ecstasy/Molly) a "Breakthrough Therapy" designation as part of a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). From the journal Science:One of the main targets in the war on drugs could well become a drug to treat the scars of war. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), better known as the illegal drug ecstasy, a "breakthrough therapy" for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a status that may lead to faster approval.The agency has also approved the design for two phase III studies of MDMA for PTSD that would be funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit in Santa Cruz, California. MAPS announced the "breakthrough therapy" designation, made by FDA on 16 August, on its website today; if the group can find the money for the trials, which together could cost an estimated $25 million, they may start next spring and finish by 2021.That an illegal dancefloor drug could become a promising pharmaceutical is another indication that the efforts of a dedicated group of researchers interested in the medicinal properties of mind-altering drugs is paying dividends. Stringent drug laws have stymied research on these compounds for decades. "This is not a big scientific step," says David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London. "It’s been obvious for 40 years that these drugs are medicines. But it’s a huge step in acceptance."

I am ready for a big dose of intrigue, weirdness, and true conspiracies from filmmaker Erroll Morris's new Netflix series Wormwood about the CIA's evil and bizarre 1950s experiments in LSD and mind control. Turn on, tune in, and get creeped out December 15.

Go back to the future with this amazing DeLorean sales pitch from 1981 used to convince car dealers to sell this fine automobile. (Thanks, UPSO!)

There was once a time when creating fire was an affront to the gods, but now all it takes is some spare change and a trip to the gas station. Disposable lighters are definitely convenient and available in basically any populated place, but you can do better than a Bic knock-off.The Plazmatic VEO Flameless Lighter makes the case for replacing butane with plasma. Most significantly, the flame is completely weatherproof. If you need to build a campfire in a sideways downpour, or light someone’s cigarette in the most futuristic way possible, this lighter’s electric beam can make a reliable flame in all conditions. It’s battery life provides up to 100 lights, and it only takes an hour for a full recharge using the same AC plug as your phone.Pick up a Plazmatic VEO from the Boing Boing Store for $36.99.

Nicely done.

Blow Me Up is an inflatable LED lighting fixture designed by Ingo Maurer and Theo Möller.From Core77:I currently have standard fluorescent lighting fixtures as house lighting in my photography studio, and the Blow Me Up is such a vast improvement over those. Consider that those fluorescent fixtures are metal, making them heavy; for safety’s sake they must be hung with chains connected to eye bolts mounted in the ceiling crossbeams, which limits their placement. On top of that the glass fluorescent bulbs are fragile, and anytime the large lighting boom is used in the studio, great care must be taken so as not to strike the fixture and potentially shatter a bulb.These inflatable lights could be hung anywhere in the studio using string and screws with anchors. If the boom strikes them, there’s no danger of falling glass shards. And they are of course easier to ship and transport than fluorescent bulbs.[via Core77]

In 1999, Dad will use his three-panel home computer to help him with his hobby of grafting fruit trees, Junior will watch his science lessons on a giant flat-screen TV and take quizzes on another computer (with a keyboard that has a bunch of paired X-Y buttons only), and Miltown-pacified Mom will take lunch orders from surly Dad and Junior through a video intercom and prepare the weekly meal plan with an AI health-conscious menu assistant piped in through a 110 baud connection to her three-display computer. It's easy to make fun of everything they got wrong here, but the thing they got right is how dependent we've become on interacting with screens all day and night long.From YouTube description:1999 AD was a film created by Philco in 1967. It was intended to celebrate the company's 75th anniversary by showing how electronics were going to change how Americans would live in a short 32 years... 1999 AD talked about other things in the future than just computing. It discussed things we'd recognize today as big screen plasma TVs, microwave ovens, and frozen food. Some of the things it didn't get right were the flying cars, modular homes, and the basic culture.[via Phil Are Go]

Scientific American dedicates its September issue to The New Science of Sex and Gender, and sociobiologists haven't been in this kind of tizzy since the Emmy-nominated Bill Nye episode about sex and gender. (more…)