Writing in Politico, Jeff Flake -- the junior Republican Senator for Arizona -- writes that the Republican Party is "in denial" about the extent to which trumpism (and its precursor, which he says is was the obstructionist movement to block Obama's agenda) has destroyed the GOP's brand of conservatism. (more…)

Calling Bullshit (previously) has released a wonderful lecture series on the epidemic of misinformation in today's media landscape. This lecture looks at dataviz ducks, the craptacular USA Today-style charts that dumb down and garbage up information graphics. (more…)

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I tried to make a "flamethrower" with a bag of flour and a hairdryer when I was a kid. It wasn't very reliable, but it got the job done.July 31, 2017 at approximately 1:00 pm. Switz City, Indiana. White Farms Inc. Overhead tank collapsed full of corn. It hit a power line on the way down and sparked the grain dust igniting the dust and causing the flash. We are very fortunate that there were no injuries!

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 much more. GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”Filled with wild twists and funny dialogue” -Publishers Weekly) Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Is Outback Steakhouse the devil's restaurant? Several twitter users mapped the location of Outbacks around some major cities to the shape of a pentacle or pentagram. Are the restaurant's flame broiled steaks delivered rom Satan's kitchen? Or is it just the fact that Outbacks are generally located in the suburbs around metropolitan areas? Outback's response below. (WCPO)Outback Steakhouse is slaughtering cows and sacrificing them to SATAN: a conspiracy theory pic.twitter.com/RQP8DWUvDt— ♡ JUJU ♡ (@QueenIdle) July 28, 2017Plot twist. pic.twitter.com/t2VEpCrWY2— Outback Steakhouse (@Outback) July 28, 2017Wtf is Outback Steakhouse planning pic.twitter.com/l1CSafkdOK— balenci-who? aga ☭ (@eatmyaesthetics) July 27, 2017

Magic Wheelchair is an organization that teams up with makers to build costumes for kids in wheelchairs. In this video, Adam Savage met with them to check out some cool Justice League-themed costumes.

"This is not cookery as the egg breaking implies, but massage." Scenes from Madam Frieda Moroz's Natural Beauty and Health Salon, circa 1962. (via Weird Universe)

Teenage girls read far more than teenage boys. Daniel Handler, author of the Lemony Snicket series and other fantastic tales, has a suggestion on how to increase teen boys' interest in books: more sex in the pages. From Daniel's essay in the New York Times:It is a gross generalization, of course, to say that what young men want to read about is sex — or to imply that the rest of us aren’t as interested — but it’s also offensive to pretend, when we’re ostensibly wondering how to get more young men to read, that they’re not interested in the thing we all know they’re interested in. There’s hardly any real sex in young adult books, and when it happens, it’s largely couched in the utopian dreams or the finger-wagging object lessons of the world we hope for, rather than the messy, risky, delicious and heartbreaking one we live in.My new novel portrays a young boy’s emotional, heteroflexible sex life — and I’d like young people to read it. But it’s being published for adults, partly because the guardians of young people’s literature get so easily riled up about sex, preferring to recommend, say, books about teenagers slaughtering one another in a post-apocalyptic landscape, rather than books about kids masturbating at home.To which many would say, so what? Don’t we have more important things to worry about than giving sexually explicit literature to young people? Shouldn’t we be more concerned about, say, the rampant misogyny of everyday life, in a nation led by a self-admitted sexual predator?Which to me is precisely the point. I believe in the power of literature to connect, to transform, particularly for young minds beginning to explore the world. I want books to be an unlimited resource for young people and their curiosity, not a sphere restricted by how uncomfortable some curiosities make adults feel."Want Teenage Boys to Read? Easy. Give Them Books About Sex."

Kelly says no more dicksucking jokes. The Mooch is out.From the NY Times:The decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.It was not clear whether Mr. Scaramucci will remain employed at the White House in another position or will leave altogether.Image: Jdarsie11

Joe Arpaio, the notoriously brutal and racist former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, was found guilty of criminal contempt, report correspondents from the courthouse in Phoenix. He'll be sentenced in October.https://twitter.com/MarcyJonesFox10/status/892086824843198464The charges stem from Arpaio's illegal roundups of dark-skinned people, ostensibly illegal immigrants, which were condemned as racial profiling in an earlier court ruling. Arpaio refused to stop the patrols, and was therafter charged and today convicted.

Trencherman Matt Stonie was able to drink one gallon of milk and eat 203 Chips Ahoy cookies in 27 minutes, 33 seconds. That's 12,800 calories. He was a little worried that he wouldn't be able to do it because his dog headbutted him in the jaw earlier that day and it was sore.

When measured by power output, nuclear energy is the safest major energy source, according to Our World in Data, an online publication produced at the University of Oxford.Discussions with regards to energy safety often incite the question of: how many died from the nuclear incidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima? We addressed this question in a separate blog post. In summary: estimates vary but the death toll from Chernobyl is likely to be of the order of tens of thousands. For Fukushima, the majority of deaths are expected to be related to induced stress from the evacuation process (standing at 1600 deaths) rather than from direct radiation exposure.As stand-alone events these impacts are large. However, even as isolated, large-impact events, the death toll stands at several orders of magnitude lower than deaths attributed to air pollution from other traditional energy sources — the World Health Organization estimates that 3 million die every year from ambient air pollution, and 4.3 million from indoor air pollution. As so often is the case, single events that make headlines overshadow permanent risks that result in silent tragedies.Based on historical and current figures of deaths related to energy production, nuclear appears to have caused by far the least harm of the current major energy sources. This empirical reality is largely at odds with public perceptions, where public support for nuclear energy is often low as a result of safety concerns.

This AC outlet has two built-in USB charging ports. I have found it to be useful not only for phone charging, but for keeping bluetooth speakers charged, too. One reviewer said it will charge two iPads at the same time. Last April they were $18, but they are on sale for $15.

Two related tweets from Joey DeVilla.

I bought this wall clock at a garage sale on Saturday for 25 cents. The aluminum clock hands were bent and damaged beyond repair, but I figured I could 3D print some replacements. The clock was a single piece of molded black plastic. It was dusty but was otherwise in great shape. I decided to remove the battery powered quartz movement so I could wash the body in the sink. To do that I had to remove the hands from the movement. There was a little pin, which looked like a thumbtack, at the end of the shaft. I had to get it off to remove the hands. I inspected the pin with a magnifying glass (this awesome illuminated one that costs $1.85 including shipping). I thought I saw threads on the shaft. I tried to unscrew it but the shaft just rotated. So, foolishly, I removed the back cover on the quartz movement in order to hold the shaft with pliers, and a bunch of the gears fell out. At the same time I also learned that it didn't help to lock down the shaft to unscrew the pin. It wouldn't unscrew. But I stopped worrying about getting the pin off for the time being. I worked in getting the gears back in place. I thought I succeeded, but when I closed the cover, the movement didn't work any longer. Only some of the gears were rotating. After a while I discovered the problem -- one of the gears was missing. I found it on the floor (it was the only clear gear -- the others were white) and put it where it belonged. This time when I closed the cover, I was happy to see all the gears turning. Next, I did what I should have done at the outset, learn from YouTube. There are many videos about quartz movement clock repair. I learned that you can simply pull the pin out with a pair of pliers. I was able to pull it out with my fingers. Oh well, at least I got a tour of the inner workings of a quartz clock movement. It's amazing how simple they are. And inexpensive! You can buy them on eBay for $1:Once the pin was off, it was easy to get the hands off and remove the single nut keeping the movement secured to the clock body. I cleaned the body with soap and water and spray rinsed it.Finally, I got to work on making new hands. I used this $13 pair of digital calipers to get the diameter of the holes in the existing hands. I measured the length and width of the hands. With these measurements, I went to Tinkercad and modeled a new set of hands. It took a few iterations to get everything right - I had to make the hole diameter a bit bigger, and I made the hands less floppy by adding a reinforcement beam along the length. I also decided to use red plastic inside of the metallic silver I started with:If, for some reason, you want the 3D model, here you go.The end result:Later that evening, I became curious about quartz movements. Here's a good article that presents a high level overview. Basically, when a quartz crystal is electrically stimulated, it oscillates 32,768 times a second. And when it oscillates, it produced electrical pulses at the same frequency. A small circuit with a microchip divides the frequency to produce a 1 Hz signal, which drives a stepper motor. The gearing provides the rotation of the minute and hour hands. Quartz movements are very accurate - to within 5 seconds a month!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6DlkMBKVVsChris Msando is the Kenyan electoral commission IT manager who oversaw the country's computerized voting systems; now, just days before a hotly contested election, his body has been found in the Kikuyu area in Nairobi's outskirts, and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission says he was tortured and murdered. (more…)

Alex Jones is the self-described "performance artist" whose four-hour-per-day show mixes odious conspiracy theories (like the idea that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the grieving parents are paid actors) and aggressive pitches for foul-tasting, evidence-free "remedies" that are often just the same shit Gwenyth Paltrow sells through her Goop empire, repackaged for easily confused right-wingers. (more…)

The Comic Book Plus site has an unbelievable trove of over 33,000 Golden Age and Silver Age comics books, scanned and ready to be read in full. Once you get drawn into it, it's like you're a kid sitting on the floor, surrounded by piles of rare and amazing comic books you'd never imagined you'd ever get to read.I love the Dell comics section, particularly the Four Color series. This is a series that was published several times a month, featuring mostly licensed one-shot comics. The quality of the art and writing is surprisingly high, and the comic book versions of obscure sitcoms (Car 54, Where Are You?), cartoons (King Leonardo and His Short Subjects), adventure shows (Sea Hunt), and tons of other material are fascinating and hilarious (intentionally and otherwise). Where else would I have discovered King of Diamonds, a comic book based on a short-lived TV show about detective John King (Broderick Crawford) who ONLY takes cases involving the recovery of stolen diamonds? The guy is weirdly obsessed. And he's a comic book hero who looks like this:(art by Mike Sekowsky, Frank Giacoia)I have no comment on the site's claim that all the comic books on the site are in the Public Domain, except to say that it's so obviously in everyone's interest that these comics are made available for people to see, and no one's economic interests are harmed in the least.

If you want an idea how desperately bad the U.S. healthcare system is for those unable to afford it, the reader reviews on Moxifish—aquarium antibiotics—make for grim reading. Worked in two days! My fish no longer has a tooth infection:) lolMy fish started work at a new job and his insurance hadn't kicked in yet. Well, of course, my fish got a bad case of bronchitis or something like that. Nevertheless, we decided to get him some meds and boom! Within 2 days he was all new again and just kept swimming!My fish got bronchitis the first week of a new job and didn't have the time or money to go see a doctor. I received these quickly after ordering them and now my fishy's nasty cough is gone!My fish have been sick for two weeks straight and having trouble sleeping at night. I finally figured out that the fish have a bad sinus infection and swollen glands. After just a few hours the swelling is gone and my fish can breath again. They were even outside all day building a shed and didn't feel sick at all. :).$40 for thirty 500mg amoxycillin capsules isn't a good deal, and it seems likely the reader reviews have become more about the joke than the broke. But doctor visits can cost hundreds of dollars without insurance (and $50 or more with it), alternatives are not easily accessible, so here we are. P.S. survivalists have long suggested stocking up on pet antibiotics for the comic-book apocalypse. It used to be that America was the land of millionaires and the temporarily embarrassed, but the new dream is to fantasize about managing one's own misery in a world where misery has already prevailed. For however long the pills last, that is.

Ben Blatt's Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing takes advantage of the fact that so much literature has been digitized, allowing him to run statistical analyses on writers, old and new, and make both fun and meaningful inferences about the empirical nature of writing. (more…)

A Bronx restaurant has one less chicken today, according to reports from ABC News in New York, with the pollo purloiner also making off with a tray of biscuits.Employees are reportedly "crying foul." After taking the food, the suspect flew the coop.The suspect is described as a man with long braids. He was last seen wearing a black and pink shirt, blue jeans and blue sneakers. He also had a white towel over his head.

The story varies depending on the source—momma being killed by a trap, run over by a car, lawnmowered, etc—but in all cases the result is this video of a pile of baby hedgehogs suckling on a cat.https://twitter.com/RTUKnews/status/891645569319424001

INORI (Prayer) is a proof of concept inspired by a call for artists and technologists to collaborate on works that push boundaries. (more…)

For one reason or another, these three elderly gentleman had never tried cannabis, until now. Watch as "grandpas" Robert, Marvin, and Graham smoke some sweet bud for the very first time. Graham about smoking from the bong, "It's like a porno thing."Robert, when asked what his parents would think about him trying weed, "My dad, if he was still alive, would disown me.""Legal? It never should have been illegal," Marvin's thoughts on whether weed should be legal.As they get higher, the video gets funnier. By the middle, Grandpa Graham is starting to feel "really relaxed."(digg)

Set this Mandelbrot zoom video to full screen and prepare to zone out on deep fractals for the next five+ minutes. It has 750 million iterations and its creator Fractal universe claims that's a new record. They also report that it took "more than 10 gigabytes of ram to render the reference."(reddit)

EyeEm announce the finalists for their 2017 awards, and among the many standouts, the Outdoors category is especially impressive and competitive. (more…)

Romanian artist HyperGlu creates programs and algorithms that generate fascinating images and animations with a geometric and mathematical beauty. (more…)

What would some of the most iconic items of recent pop culture look like if they were real, enormous, and left to rot away? Filip Hodas explores the possibilities in his cool illustrations. (more…)

In 2016, Dan Piech photographed an amazing lightning bolt over New York City. The shot was so popular that he spent hundreds of hours upconverting it to a massive 5.45 gigapixel file that can be printed at 50 feet wide with no loss. (more…)

Listen: Boars, Gore, and Swords for Episode 3, "The Queen's Justice."The new season of Game of Thrones has come ashore, and Boars, Gore, and Swords is ready to count the many fleets burned in their recap of "Queen's Justice". Ivan and Red discuss Cersei's worsening mental state, a surprisingly subtle torture, Tyrion's massive strategic self-own, and so much more. To catch up on previous television seasons, the A Song of Ice And Fire books, and other TV and movies, check out the BGaS archive. You can find them on Twitter @boarsgoreswords, like their Facebook fanpage, and email them. If you want access to extra episodes and content, you can donate to the Patreon.

Starting on August 1, select visitors riding Tokyo Dome City's Big-O Ferris wheel will be able to sing their hearts out as they swing (rock?) high above Tokyo. The Japanese entertainment complex has added karaoke to eight of the Ferris wheel's 40 air-conditioned passenger cabins. Riders have fifteen minutes to belt out songs from the 50-song playlist which includes The Beatles' "Let it Be," and Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together." Bloggers from SoraNews24 checked it out and report:As the wheel lifted the men upwards they kicked things off with “Love You Only” by Tokio. Even for these two schlubs it turned out to be surprisingly fun. For some reason, the upward motion seemed to raise the energy as well. This is a sensation you cannot find in any karaoke box or bar.And as their gondola reached the apex so too did their singing reach a climax. Singing so high up and alone was exhilarating, and even when singing songs for the first time, our boys were belting the lyrics out powerfully like a pair of peckish Pavarottis.So surprisingly not only was karaoke on a Ferris wheel not a misfire, it turned out that the combination was even greater than the sum of its parts. The two amusements accentuated each other in ways they never could have imagined.

By the late 1950s, Elvis Presley merchandise was selling like hotcakes, but not everyone was buying. So, Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had an idea to free everyone of their money by selling buttons with anti-Presley statements. These round badges looked similar to the "I Like Elvis" ones that were already being sold but instead read, "I Hate Elvis," "Elvis is a Jerk," and "Elvis is a Joik*." Rather genius!If you're interested in the Colonel and how he made Presley a big star, a biopic titled The Colonel is slated for 2018. It's based on Alanna Nash’s 2004 book, The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley.*I'm not 100% sure I know what a "joik" is, but I don't think it's good.image via TalkBass.com

Since the 2000 Bush-Gore election crisis and the hanging-chad controversy, voting machine vendors have been offering touchscreen voting machines as a solution to America's voting woes -- and security researchers have been pointing out that the products on offer were seriously, gravely defective. (more…)

Although regular meditation has been shown to ease physical stress and reduce immune system activation, many people have embraced it as a powerful way to support their mental health. Mindfulness techniques like meditation and conscious breathing are powerful tools that can be used by anyone, and newcomers shouldn’t feel intimidated to try them.If you’ve never meditated before or have found it difficult to fit into your life, Welzen’s 5-day program can help you develop your practice from scratch. Whether you’re looking for a daily commitment or just need a breather on certain tough days, Welzen offers a wide variety of subject-specific guided sessions, as well as a new 10-minute mediation every day. They have meditations to match your current mood, so you can enhance your focus when you’re feeling positive, and lift your spirits when the end of the day can’t come soon enough.You can pick up a lifetime subscription to Welzen in the Boing Boing Store for $49.

New York's catastrophic homelessness is about to get much, much worse: the skyrocketing property values (driven by speculators who buy apartments in order to get their money out of corrupt and failing states abroad, leaving them empty with the understanding that they can be cashed out on short notice, thanks to the white-hot market of other money-launderers) have attracted very deep-pocketed, anonymous hedge-funds that are snapping up buildings with rent-stabilized and rent-controlled units, who use a ruthless set of highly refined tactics to kick out all their tenants and then flip the building. (more…)

The recent trumpist trumpeting about the plans of Chinese manufacturer Foxconn to open a manufacturing facility in Wisconsin omitted a few key details -- like the fact that Foxconn is being given a sweetheart tax-break that's topped up with 15 years' worth of guarantees of up to $200m/year in cash subsidies at taxpayer expense -- a record-setting taxpayer subsidy that exceeds the previous Wisconsin record-holder by a factor of fifty. (more…)

Last week, Reuters published an interview with Irobot CEO Colin Angle, in which the Roomba-czar explained his plan to have his cleaning robots produce detailed maps of your house that the company would sell to Amazon and Google, something the company could do today, thanks to an exceptionally broad and one-sided terms of service that you "agree" to when you become an Irobot customer. (more…)

The XXL Shower Speaker sticks to your bathroom wall with a sturdy suction cup, and it promises to be the best accompanist you've ever had in the shower.Aside from hearing your own singing voice, how often do you really get to enjoy the excellent acoustics of the bathtub? This Bluetooth speaker is totally waterproof, so you can bring your music, podcasts, and audiobooks with you into the shower. It puts playback controls front and center, with raised rubber texture so you can always find the play button when your eyes are full of soap. And you can easily answer or decline calls, depending on how hectic your morning is.The XXL Shower Speaker comes in several bright colors, or flat black if that fits better with your bath decor. You can get it here for $19.99.

Minimalist and modern-sounding, Man Ray is the sort of name that seems as if it should be outlined in buzzing neon. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia on August 27, 1890, the photographer and visual artist shortened his nickname, “Manny,” to Man, and after 1912 went by a less Jewish-sounding version of his surname in response to the anti-Semitism of the times. It was an inspired choice. Man Ray sounds like a shaft of light in human form—a radiant man. “I have freed myself from the sticky medium of paint and am working directly with light itself,” the frustrated painter exulted, after discovering the technique that enabled him to produce Rayographs, as he called them—spooky, one-of-a-kind images created by placing objects on light-sensitive paper and exposing them to light, producing white silhouettes that glow eerily against a black background, like ectoplasmic manifestations in a Spiritualist photograph. “Everything can be transformed, deformed, and obliterated by light,” he said. “Its flexibility is precisely the same as the suppleness of the brush.” Ray’s work is collected in a new book, Man Ray (part of Taschen’s Photo Masters series). A fellow traveler of the Dadaists and Surrealists, Ray (1890-1976) pioneered unconventional techniques that, married to his visual wit, evoke hidden realities. “By assembling a vocabulary of seldom-used darkroom techniques, he freed photography from its reputation for recording the observable world and used it to create images drawn from the imagination,” writes Katherine Ware in her essay “Chemist of Mysteries,” included in the book. In his alien still lives, Calla lilies give off a radioactive glow (a special effect produced by solarization, in which a print or a negative is exposed during its development, causing some darks to appear light, some lights to appear dark). He had an offhanded brilliance when it came to titles. An eggbeater, lit so it casts a shadow and photographed from an awkward angle, takes on a life of its own, especially when titled La Femme (“The Woman”). In “Le Violon d’Ingres” (“The Violin of Ingres”), a pair of f-holes, painted onto a photo of a naked woman with her back to us, turns a run-of-the-mill nude into a sly, Duchampian pun. But it’s his Rayographs of everyday detritus—bottles, combs, toy guns—that open the door to another world. Surrealist X-rays, they expose the unconscious lives of inanimate objects.

“Don't be too nice” to “thugs,” said the President. Yep. In a speech to police in New York today, Donald Trump said it's okay for officers to physically abuse suspects. This is where we are, America. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXnK59dRghsAfter a long week of demoralizing Trump hijinks, what you need is the satisfying release of a hydraulic press video. Here's one crushing 1500 pounds of paper. (more…)

My friend Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie released a stunning new album today that is actually a re-recording of an old album, Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque from 1991. Bandwagonesque is an iconic album of 1990s indie rock and Ben's magnificent covers are a welcome reminder of the beauty in the originals and, sure, a bit of a flashback to alt.rock's heyday. But Ben's Bandwagonesque isn't a nostalgia trip. The sound of Ben's record is intensely contemporary. It is the emotive sound of today. Or of any day, really. As Ben wrote in a lovely essay in The Guardian, the album "is a retreat from the passage of time, a retreat from the political climate in our country and a reminder that there is beauty in the world." Indeed, let's not forget. Check out "The Concept" above. And here's more from Ben in The Guardian:There was a show on MTV called 120 Minutes that played underground indie and alternative videos. I would tape it on VHS and watch it over the course of the next week. The first Teenage Fanclub song I heard on it was probably The Concept – it was so melodic and beautiful, and the harmonies were amazing, but at the same time, like the punk rock I was listening to, I could see myself playing it. When I bought Bandwagonesque, it felt attainable to me, but also from some other magical world of music that I could only dream of travelling to. Teenage Fanclub, four men from Scotland, were making music that seemed to grab me by the heart and lift me off the ground. There was such an openness. I fell in love immediately.Benjamin Gibbard presents Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque(photo by Rachel Demy)

President Trump has pushed out Reince Priebus, his chief of staff. He'll be replaced by John F. Kelly, DHS secretary. Did Reince quit, or was he fired? Conflicting reports at this early moment of big news. (more…)

Grand Finale, a documentary covering legendary comedy troupe Ducks Breath Mystery Theater's final performance, is now available on iTunes!For 40 years Bill Allard, Dan Coffey, Merle Kessler, Leon Martell, and Jim Turner performed together as Ducks Breath Mystery Theater. From their humble start in Iowa City, to their humble decades on the West Coast, the troupe entertained audiences across the country, on radio and television.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPIfZAt1MEsSome of their characters grew to be more popular than the team itself! Merle Kessler's caustic pundit Ian Shoales may have been the inspiration for Bill O'Reilly. Dan Coffey's Dr. Science predicted a nation of climate deniers, and Jim Turner's Randee of the Redwoods would go on to become Generation X's most treasured presidential candidate.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1LhmLB3R-cIt was always more than a box!Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre Grand Finale

Beijing's Temple of Heaven is one of the world's most popular tourist spots. As such, it has a busy public restroom. The administrators felt that people were using too much toilet paper so they installed a toilet paper dispenser with facial recognition. If you received your 2-foot-long segment of toilet paper in the last 9 minutes, you'll have to wait to get more. From Mashable:In the short time it's been up, the system has already cut down usage to a fraction, temple staff said. According to the Beijing Evening News, each washroom average four rolls of toilet paper, compared to 20 rolls before.But some have reported that the facial recognition process — which is supposed to take three seconds — can take up to a few minutes, and that it has not been reliable.Some Weibo users have also responded with incredulity. "To be honest, 60cm is a bit too little," said a user.[via Clive Thompson]

Street artist Tom Bob has made it his mission to turn a world full of drab and unremarkable little corners into charming moments with his brightly-colored re-renderings. (more…)

If you're not familiar, RageOn is a company that allows anyone to create their own all-over clothing designs to sell on their platform. They use that relatively-new dye-sublimation printing process to put the designs on the fabric, and every piece is custom made to order. So, I was thrilled to discover that some RageOn designer-genius who goes by estro_gen has made La Croix Boi, a line of clothing that pays homage to the La Croix sparkling water that tastes most like '70s suntan lotion: coconut.Of course, the one downside of this printing process is that it only works on man-made materials like nylon or polyester. Or maybe that's an upside if you're really into that kind of thing. Thanks, Simone Davalos!