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“Chappi found out a way to enjoy bath time. 😍🐾💦” "Splish splash I was taking a bath"By request of @yayboobs [instagram] Chappi found out a way to enjoy bath time. 😍🐾💦 #hedgehogsofinstagram #hedgie #hedgiemom #bathtime #cute A post shared by Chappaquiddick 💫 (@chappi_momma) on Aug 8, 2017 at 12:20pm PDT

What hell hath Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker wrought?https://twitter.com/BradThor/status/895399427459993604The Fox News host Eric Bolling is suing social media star and Huffington Post contributor Yashar, who last week reported Bolling sent grotesque sexual messages to female colleagues some years ago. (more…)

In 1969, Alan Watts collaborated with filmmaker Elda Hartley on "The Flow of Zen," a lovely psychedelic 16mm film with a rather eerie score. (Archive.org via /r/ObscureMedia)

On August 20 and September 5, 1977, NASA launched two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, on a grand tour of the solar system and into the mysteries of interstellar space. It was an incredibly audacious mission, and it's still going. My friend Timothy Ferris produced the Voyager golden record that's attached to each of the spacecraft and went on to write a dozen enlightening books about science and culture. (Tim also wrote the liner notes for the Voyager Golden Record vinyl box set I co-produced that's now available here.) In the new issue of National Geographic, Tim tells the remarkable story of the Voyager mission and why "it almost didn’t happen." From National Geographic: The prospect of a “grand tour” of the outer planets emerged in 1965 from the musings of an aeronautics graduate student named Gary Flandro, then working part-time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the world’s preeminent center for interplanetary exploration. At age six, Flandro had been given Wonders of the Heavens, a book that showed the planets lined up like stepping-stones. “I thought about how neat it would be to go all the way through the solar system and pass each one of those outer planets,” he recalled.Assigned at JPL to envision possible missions beyond Mars, Flandro plotted the future positions of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune with paper and pencil. He found that they would align in such a way that a spacecraft could tap the planets’ orbital momentum to slingshot from one to the next, gaining enough velocity to visit all four planets within 10 or 12 years rather than the decades such a venture would require otherwise. The mission launch window would open for a matter of months in the late 1970s, then close for another 175 years.It was an ambitious idea at a time when the apex of interplanetary exploration was Mariner 4 shooting 21 grainy photos as it flew past Mars. No probe had ever functioned for anything close to a decade in space. None had the intelligence to manage complex planetary encounters at vast distances without constant human hand-holding. Playing crack-the-whip past multiple planets might work in theory but had never been attempted in practice. “I was told, ‘This is impossible; stop wasting my time,’” Flandro recalled."Why NASA’s Interstellar Mission Almost Didn’t Happen" (National Geographic)

In the 1960s, book designers gave many science and psychology paperbacks glorious avant-garde and op art covers. Henning M. Lederer just released his second collection of animations of these fine book jackets! Below is the first, from 2015.https://vimeo.com/141891887

Artist and experiential futurist Stuart Candy created a hypothetical near-future product called the NurturePod, a "programmable para-parenting pod" that takes care of all the bothersome things parents have to do to raise a baby, like pay attention to it. NurturePod is on exhibit at M HKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium.Andrew Curry interviewed Stuart about the project:AC: One more thing that strikes me about this, about the languaging, is it's not just about marketing. There are a whole lot of cues about the idea of the new, the idea of the modern, and the classic ways in which technology companies make us feel inadequate and then sell us reassurance.SC: I suppose using those tropes could be said to invite reflection on how embedded in the tropes we are, because we know this particular thing doesn't exist. But that's a bit of an intellectual angle. I find people's emotional responses interesting, from watching them interact with it and from what they've shared in conversation.AC: What sort of things have they said?SC: "I'm really drawn to this, and also repulsed by it." There's this sense of being torn, and that is quite satisfying to hear, because I think creating or inviting a complex emotional response is something that we should strive for in futures work. This is why design and film and performance and games are important –– the whole repertoire of approaches to experiential futures; like the proverbial toothbrush that reaches places regular ones can't. Hopefully we are on our way to a better futures toothbrush.Related: Baby cries furiously whenever phone taken away, instantly pacified when returned

A CPR tutor needed resuscitating when he went into cardiac arrest during class, it rained pork sausages in Florida, and a pet parrot turned canary to help convict a killer.It’s reassuring to know that good old-fashioned tabloid stories haven’t entirely disappeared, though this week's magazines persist in offering their warped window on the world of politics.“33 Clinton Enemies Murdered!” screams the 'Globe’ cover, asking: “Who’s Behind The Killings?” We don’t have to wait long for the answer: it’s on page 8: “Hillary Killing Her Enemies!” Cue the libel lawsuit. “Evil Clintons will do ANYTHING to bury the truth about corruption,” adds the story, which claims that “Ruthless Hillary Clinton’s secret squad of brutal assassins is quietly rubbing out her enemies.”After citing a succession of suspicious deaths the ‘Globe’ source concedes: “No one has ever proven if any of these people were actually murdered on Bill and Hillary’s orders - but there are just too many of them to ignore!” Right. That should stand up in court.The ‘National Enquirer’ continues its Trump-loving coverage with its cover exclusive: “Obama’s Plot to Destroy Trump!” Its source is none other than ‘Enquirer’ political columnist (a job title that must count as a career pinnacle) Dick Morris. He exposes former President Obama’s “secret war room” in Washington D.C. with its “bunker” that “reeks of sabotage, intrigue & dirty tricks.” Obama is allegedly trying to save his legislative achievements, which is hardly shocking or nefarious. The ‘Enquirer’ even quotes “political maverick Roger Stone” allegedly confirming the existence of an “Obama war room,” explaining “The Obamas are desperate to return to power. Barack intends to insert his wife as president.” Because former presidents have the authority to declare their spouse the next president? Is that really how it works, Roger?“Gotcha!” yells the ‘Globe’ headline (echoing the infamous headline in the ‘Sun’ when Britain sunk Argentine warship the ‘General Belgrano' during the Falklands War) reporting on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arresting 114 “vicious crooks and perverts” in a New York raid, The 11-day operation was “spearheaded by Donald Trump,” reports the ‘Globe,’ which implies that he was out on the raids wearing a SWAT flak jacket and carrying a battering ram, rather than just ranting repeatedly about criminal immigrants. But ICE officials have declined to say if many of those arrested were picked up at courthouses - a self-selecting group that would give the false impression that the majority of immigrants picked up in raids are criminals, and a practice denounced by legal aid groups.But you can't argue with a publication that on the same cover reports on Brad Pitt’s marital split keeping him from his daughter: “Shiloh: 323 Days Without Daddy!” That’s an awfully long time for an 11-year-old not to see her father. Except when you read the story on page 4, the ‘Enquirer’ reports: “Brad has weekly supervised visits with all the kids . . . “ So, it’s actually been no more than seven days since Shiloh last saw her father? That’s close to 323 days, isn’t it?‘Titanic’ movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet “take their romance off-screen,” claims the ‘Enquirer,’ assuring: “It’s Real Love!” Poolside photos show DiCaprio with his arm around Winslet’s shoulder, while she has slipped an arm across his back. Why, they could almost be old friends. The fact that Winslet is married, and that DiCaprio has an appetite for supermodels half his age seems to have been ignored.Back in the real world, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s “divorce is off” according to ‘Us’ magazine, which quotes a less-than-convincing unnamed source saying: “It wouldn’t be surprising if they announced that they’re calling it off and trying to work things out.”‘People’ magazine’s cover girl this week is TV’s ‘Bachelorette’ Rachel Lindsay, who explains why she chose to give her final rose to Bryan Abasolo: “I followed my heart.” Does that mean she ignored her head, and all the voices of logic that told her not to get engaged to a man after only two months of public serial cheating with 30 other men?Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at ‘Us’ magazine to tell us that Jennifer Garner wore it best, Cat Deeley loves cheese (“the stinkier the better”), and that the stars are just like us: they shop at Whole Foods, ride rollercoasters, and play with their pets. Actress Lili Simmons carries bamboo reusable eating utensils, pink Beats headphones and rose quartz from Sedona “that reminds me to love and stay grounded” in her Louis Vuitton purse, How does rose quartz help you stay grounded - unless you carry 200 pounds of the mineral in your purse? Try getting that off the ground.Or 15 pounds of Italian pork sausage, which is what inexplicably fell from the sky and landed on the roof of a South Florida family, according to the ‘National Examiner,’ which also brings us the story of CPR instructor David Knowles who had to tell his students how to save his life when he suffered a heart attack while teaching a class in Exeter, Britain. Both stories, sounding implausible, are of course among the few accurate reports in this week’s tabloids, as is the ‘Enquirer’ story about the parrot which apparently witnessed a Michigan woman killing her husband and whose repeated squawks of “Don’t shoot!” helped convict her.What is the world coming to if the most inane stories in the tabloids are actually true?Onwards and downwards . . .

Televangelist superpastor Robert Jeffress says God has given Trump permission to bomb North Korea. "When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary — including war — to stop evil. In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong-Un.”From Vox:Jeffress has long been one of Trump’s political allies, one central to Trump and his team’s increasingly unsettling conflation of Christianity, nationalism, and pro-Trump cult of personality. Jeffress spoke at Trump’s inauguration. In July, he led a “Freedom Rally,” during which he praised Trump as God’s choice for America and a church choir sang a hymn with the lyrics “Make America Great Again,” which is now available for pastors to download for their own worship services.Jeffress also attended an impromptu White House evangelical prayer meeting last month, which, I previously argued, heralded a new age in church-state relations for the Trump administration. It was clear that Trump wasn’t just appealing to evangelicals to fire up his voter base, but rather using the rhetoric of divinely ordained rule to delegitimize criticism from the mainstream media or even fellow Republicans.

Uncombable hair syndrome is a real thing. It also goes by the names Pili trianguli et canaliculi, Spun-glass hair, and Cheveux incoiffables. According to Wikipedia:The hair is normal in quantity and is usually silvery-blond or straw-colored. It is disorderly, it stands out from the scalp, and cannot be combed flat. The underlying structural anomaly is longitudinal grooving of the hair shaft, which appears triangular in cross section. This is caused by mutations in one of three possible genes; PADI3, TGM or TCHH3.Today profiled Shilah Yin (Instagram), "one of only about 100 people in the world known to have the genetic condition."“Shilah loves her unique hair, but that has come from constant positive reinforcement at home from friends and family,” her mom Celeste Calvert-Yin, who lives in Melbourne Australia, told TODAY via email. People often say she has hair like Doc Brown from back to the future, lucky it's one of our fave movies #uncombablehairsyndrome A post shared by Shilah Madison Calvert-Yin (@shilahmadison) on Jul 12, 2017 at 2:49pm PDT

An influencer marketing agency called Mediakix showed how easy it was to create a phony Instagram star and get brands to pay money for the star to plug their products. They created two different accounts. For calibeachgirl310 they hired a model and photographed her in a lot of different outfits posing in beachy spots. The second account, wanderingggirl, was made completely from free stock photos of exotic locations, some with a blonde woman seen from the back.Then they bought fake followers for the fake stars:We started with buying 1,000 followers per day because we were concerned that purchasing too many followers at the onset would result in Instagram flagging the account. However, we quickly found that we were able to buy up to 15,000 followers at a time without encountering any issues.The pricing for followers ranged from $3-8 per 1,000 followers, depending on the reliability of the service. Websites that sold followers on the lower end of that price range often did not deliver in a timely manner, or sometimes at all, so we switched to more expensive follower providers later in the project. Even at $8 per 1,000 followers, we were able to accumulate over 30,000 followers for the travel account and over 50,000 followers for the fashion account with minimal investment over the course of just two months.Step three was to buy fake engagement -- between 500 to 2,500 fake likes and 10 to 50 fake comments per photo. "We paid around 12 cents per comment, and between $4-9 per 1,000 likes."Then they registered the fake accounts on various influencer marketing platforms: We secured four paid brand deals total, two for each account. The fashion account secured one deal with a swimsuit company and one with a national food and beverage company.The travel account secured brand deals with an alcohol brand and the same national food and beverage company. For each campaign, the "influencers" were offered monetary compensation, free product, or both.

Someone at the BBC is in trouble with the boss. During a news broadcast where anchor Sophie Raworth is talking about the game of cricket, a more interesting video is playing on a screen in the background, watched by a BBC employee who was slumped in a chair wearing headphones. A half-dressed woman peels off her shirt, and then proceeds to take off her black bra. The BBC's 3.8 million viewers got an eyeful – if they happened to look towards the left of the screen.According to The Sun:“The employee is on borrowed time when bosses catch up with him. You can’t get away with this sort of stuff anymore.”Andrew Allison, of The Freedom Association, which wants to axe the BBC license fee, said: “I’m surprised the BBC hasn’t got internet filters to stop staff doing this sort of thing. I bet they get them now.”Bemused viewers took to social media. Zane Jawad tweeted: “@BBCNews why is there a porn video playing behind one of your news anchors during a report?”Another user wrote: “Did I just see boobs on News at Ten?”

A jackass jogging down Putney Bridge in London pushes a 33-year-old woman out out of his way and into oncoming traffic. A bus has to swerve to avoid hitting her. According to The Telegraph, the bus stopped and passengers helped the woman, who had minor injuries. Officers said the jogger ran the other way across the bridge around 15 minutes later and the victim attempted to speak to him, but "he did not acknowledge her".An appeal has been launched for witnesses or anyone who recognises the jogger in the CCTV.The jogger is described as white in his early to mid-30s, with brown eyes and short brown hair.He was wearing a light grey T-shirt and dark blue shorts.Anyone with information is asked to call police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

Chiba-based sculptor Yoshitoshi Kanemaki carves wonderful, weird figures out of wood; the interstitial images that document his process are a fascinating glimpse into the way his imagination manifests itself in his medium. (more…)

Tony Berthelot is an oyster farmer on Ile de Re, an island off France's west coast; rather than task his family-members to staffing a roadside stand, he's invested in a refrigerated live-oyster vending machine that dispenses fresh bivalves 24/7. (more…)

The classic beatbox – not an expensive clone or a collection of cleverly-tweaked samples – is back. Roland's TR-08 directly models the original machine's analog circuits to recreate its sound as accurately as possible with modern digital technology, and joins revived versions of the TR-909[Amazon] and TB-202[Amazon] in the company's lineup of boutique boxes.The TR-08 brings the look, sound, and feel of the original 808 — with stunning accuracy — to the Roland Boutique format. From the instantly-recognizable red-orange-yellow-white markings, the shape of the sequencer buttons, switches and knobs are details that have been painstakingly reproduced to match the iconic recreation of sounds. Along with the aesthetic touches, the TR-08 contains new features like 16 sub-steps for fast rolls, independent trigger out track, compression/gain/tune for instruments and a selectable modified “long decay” bass drum for more of that legendary BOOM!https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=O5qVbJeranIUnpopular opinion time! The Boutique stuff is cute and it is best, but if you just want all the classic beats in convenient form on a modern drum synth, the Roland Aira[Amazon] seems a more pragmatic choice. Roland recently asked Propellerheads to quit selling Rebirth too, which seems hamhanded but at least suggests the company's taking a welcome interest in exploiting its own technical heritage. The cease-n-decisting of web-based tribute toys is sad and alarming.

If you owe someone money in China and kidnap them to get paid, the police are likely to treat the whole thing as a civil matter of "unlawful detention" and stay out of it (especially if the debtor is a foreigner and the lender is Chinese). (more…)

The Wayback Machine is the Internet Archive's indispensable record of the web itself, containing regular snapshots of a huge slice of the entire web that you can browse in order to see what a given page looked like on a given date. (more…)

Paul Manafort, who served as President Trump's campaign manager and is otherwise famous for shady dealings in Ukraine, was paid a visit by the FBI in recent weeks. The Washington Post reports that the "predawn raid" was in connection with the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 general election.Federal agents appeared at Paul Manafort’s home without advance warning in the predawn hours of July 26, the day after he met voluntarily with the staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee.The search warrant was wide-ranging and FBI agents working with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III departed the home with various records.The raid came as Manafort has been voluntarily producing documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The search warrant indicates investigators may have argued to a federal judge they had reason to believe Manafort could not be trusted to turn over all records in response to a grand jury subpoena.Corresponds with when Trump started getting sweaty and shaky about Mueller.Photo: Reuters

Valve, publisher of legendary game series such as Half-Life, Portal and Team Fortress, announced a new game at The International, a convention for players of DOTA, one of its big hits. The hyped-up crowd's reaction to finding out that Artifact is to be a "DOTA card game" is quite something.It seems like a perfect conceptual faceplant, where two popular things are combined to form something comically unappealing. But is there an ironic angle? The völkisch consumerism of gamers got out of hand years ago, so it seems unlikely to be a joke at their expense. In any case, one hopes players have to pay for every single card: a good innovation would be a micro-transaction for every time a card is deployed.

Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara died last month at age 105. Over his long life, he helped many others achieve long lives by popularizing annual medical checkups and by sharing what he knew, which was one of his tips for longer living: (more…)

Vanilla Ice's legacy lives on through the Game of Thrones cast as they "sing" a portion of his 1990 rap hit, "Ice Ice Baby." This music video is apparently a promotion for the show by TV channel Sky Atlantic.And, what the heck, here's the original music video for comparison/amusement sake:https://youtu.be/rog8ou-ZepE(reddit)

Last Saturday on August 5th, the LA venue Rhabbitat held a special release party for the limited edition Adidas Skateboarding x Bonethrower footwear and apparel collection and gave people a chance to step into the trippy, sensational world of artist Bonethrower. Put together by Juxtapoz Magazine and Adidas Skateboarding, the event featured otherworldly sculptures, statues, and paintings by Bonethrower that seemed to come to life through changing, colorful lights and a funky DJ.Bonethrower was at the event and gave away Adidas Skateboarding x Bonethrower shirts as well as signed posters and skate decks. I had a moment to speak with Bonethrower, who told me that he wants people to have fun when they see his art and to interpret his work in their own way. His art was super fun and psychedelic to be surrounded by for an entire night. One of my favorite pieces at the event was an alien-like throne that people could sit in and put on masks. It was so cool to see everyone interacting and hanging out on this art piece. Be sure to also check out the 200th issue of Juxtapoz magazine which features Bonethrowers’ art.

After finding wet tea leaves in a garbage can, a SWAT team in Kansas City raided a family home looking for marijuana, terrorizing the family for hours. The cops found nothing, and when the family sued, the "federal district judge who heard the case dismissed it, declaring that the police had probable cause and had acted reasonably," reports to George Leef in Forbes.The family appealed to the Tenth Circuit:[T]he panel of judges ruled that the district judge was in error in his dismissal. Each of the judges wrote part of the opinion, but the sizzling stuff was penned by Judge Carlos Lucero. Rarely will you find an opinion in which a judge so reams out the police for misconduct.Judge Lucero begins, “Law-abiding tea drinkers and gardeners beware: One visit to a garden store and some loose tea leaves in your trash may subject you to an early-morning, SWAT-style raid, complete with battering ram, bulletproof vests, and assault rifles. Perhaps the officers will intentionally conduct the terrifying raid while your children are at home, and keep the entire family under armed guard for two and a half hours while concerned residents of your quiet, family-oriented neighborhood wonder what nefarious crime you have committed. This is neither hyperbole nor metaphor – it is precisely what happened to the Harte family in the case before us.”At no step in this investigation, the judge continues, was there any probable cause, “Not at the garden shop, not at the gathering of the tea leaves, and certainly not at the analytical stage where the officers willfully ignored directions to submit any presumed results to a laboratory for analysis.”Summing up this astounding case, Judge Lucero states, “The defendants caused an unjustified governmental intrusion into the Hartes’ home on nothing more than junk science, an incompetent investigation, and a publicity stunt. The Fourth Amendment does not condone this conduct and neither can I.”[via Ted Balakar]Image: Oregon Department of Transportation / Wikipedia

Rolling Stone reports that country legend Glen Campbell is dead at 81.Campbell was a rare breed in the music business, with various careers as a top-level studio guitarist, chart-topping singer and hit television host. His late-career battle with Alzheimer's - he allowed a documentary crew to film on his final tour for the 2014 award-winning I'll Be Me - made him a public face for the disease, a role President Bill Clinton suggested would one day be remembered even more than his music.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wOUFo4Lwf8

Even infants are seduced by the smartphone. Watch this baby throw a tantrum with kicking legs and loud cries every time an adult takes away the phone. Once the phone is returned, all is immediately well in the world again.

Oriental Rat Flea(Xenopsylla cheopis)SIZE: Up to 1/6 in (4 mm)FAMILY: PulicidaeHABITAT: Near rats, their primary food sourceDISTRIBUTION: Worldwide, particularly tropical and subtropical climates, but some temperate zones as wellMEET THE RELATIVES: The cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis, is a relative, as is the dog flea C. can is—but in the United States, it is primarily the cat flea that preys on both cats and dogs. They are known to transmit tapeworms.Excerpted from Wicked Bugs (Young Readers Edition): The Meanest, Deadliest, Grossest Bugs on Earth by Amy Stewart, illustrated by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. © 2017 by Amy Stewart. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Young Readers. All rights reserved. Available from Amazon.On an autumn day in 1907, two brothers in San Francisco found a dead rat in the cellar. Inspired by their father, an undertaker, they decided to find a coffin for the rat to give it a proper funeral.When they ran home for dinner that night, the boys brought along a souvenir of their adventures—bloodthirsty fleas, starved for a meal after their rat host had died. Along with the fleas came a deadly disease—the plague. The rat flea would prefer to leave humans, cats, dogs, and chickens alone, but when rat populations experience a massive die off—as they do during epidemics of the plague—the fleas turn to other warm-blooded creatures for their food. This is exactly what happened to those two unfortunate boys. Within a month, the plague had killed their parents but spared the boys, leaving them orphans.This particular rat had died during an outbreak of the Black Death that began just after the turn of the twentieth century. A steamer called the Australia left Honolulu, Hawaii, and passed through San Francisco’s Golden Gate with its load of passengers, mail, and plague-ridden rats. The rats made their way through the city, which, at that time, was not a clean place. Garbage piled up,and makeshift sewers allowed germs and rodents to multiply. The rats felt right at home. Soon, a few people exhibited the dreaded symptoms of the plague—severe fever and chills, headaches and body pain, and telltale red lumps the size of boiled eggs in their armpits and groins. Before long, bleeding would give way to enormous black bruises, and death would not be far behind.The flea’s role in this dreaded disease had been discovered in the late 1800s, but the exact mechanism was still a mystery. It was not until 1914 that scientists realized that the gut of the flea held clues as to how it managed to spread the plague so swiftly and efficiently. They discovered a phenomenon called blocking, in which the plague bacteria build up in the gut of a flea to such an extent that the flea can barely swallow. Instead, it is only able to draw the host’s blood into its esophagus, the part of the body that runs from its throat to its stomach. There the blood mingles with live plague bacteria. Unable to swallow because it is so full of plague itself, the flea regurgitates the blood and the bacteria back into the host’s bloodstream. Flea vomit is the true culprit in a plague epidemic.But that’s not all. The fleas are so hungry because of their inability to digest a blood meal that they feed voraciously, moving from host to host in a desperate attempt to fill their bellies. Ultimately, the fleas die of starvation and exhaustion—if the plague itself doesn’t kill them first.The Oriental rat flea is just one of over eighty species of fleas that transmit the plague. The disease would have killed many more San Francisco residents during the so-called Barbary Plague except for one lucky fact: Oriental rat fleas were in the minority during this outbreak. The species most often found during the San Francisco plague were less likely to engage “blocking” and less likely to regurgitate plague bacteria.The plague appears to have evolved from a more benign gastrointestinal bug about twenty thousand years ago. It has run its destructive course through human civilization several times, reputed to have killed more people than all wars combined in the course of human history. An African and European pandemic in the sixth century known as Justinian’s plague killed about forty million people, which represented about a fifth of the world’s population at that time. When it reappeared in Europe in the Middle Ages, the plague was called the Black Death. For two centuries, it ravaged Europe, killing another one-third to one-half of the continent’s population.Doctors at the time believed that the plague circulated in the air. They ordered patients to keep their windows closed and refrain from bathing, which they believed would expose the skin to the sickening air. Keeping the windows closed wouldn’t stop the plague, but it might have stopped the stench of the dead and the dying. In large cities like London, there was no choice but to pile bodies in thinly covered mass graves. The rat population thrived in such a horrific mess. And because cats were believed to be witch companions in the Middle Ages, they were killed, nearly eliminating one of the rat’s natural predators just when Europeans could have used the cats’ hunting skills the most. The plague then moved from China to India to the United States in the early twentieth century. Today, cases of the plague still occur from time to time in the American Southwest, but modern antibiotics can usually treat a case that is caught early.

In the latest in its ongoing series about objects the world once considered indispensable but has somehow managed to live without, Collectors Weekly turns its attention to match holders, which were popular from around 1826, when the friction match was invented, until the 1920s, when matchbooks and lighters rendered them obsolete. For its story, CW turned to one of the definitive works on the subject, Match Holders: First-hand Accounts of Tinderboxes, Matches, Spills, Vesta Cases, Match Strikers, and Permanent Matches, which is filled with photographs taken by New Zealand collector Ian Spellerberg and diary entries written by his late match-holder mentor, John McLean.Snip:Match Holders begins with a chapter on tinderboxes, which were a popular form of portable fire-making prior to the invention of the friction match by an English pharmacist named John Walker. Tinderboxes consisted of three basic ingredients—a piece of steel, often called “fire steel”; a stone flint; and tinder, usually some dried fungi or charred linen. “With practice and patience,” McLean writes, “sparks could indeed be produced by striking the steel against the stone flint. If a spark landed in the dry tinder, care was needed to coax the spark into a smouldering piece of tinder then a flame.” As McLean recounts, the clink, clink, clink of steel coming in contact with stone was once a common early morning sound, as must also have been the curses that bounced off the rafters when cold, numb hands caused a hard chunk of steel to miss its mark. Little wonder, McLean writes, “that some domestic fires were kept permanently alight.”

If you like David McRaney's You Are Not So Smart podcast, which explores human psychology in all its quirkiness, I think you'll enjoy his book, You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself.You believe you are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is, but journalist David McRaney is here to tell you that you're as deluded as the rest of us. But that's OK- delusions keep us sane. You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion. It's like a psychology class, with all the boring parts taken out, and with no homework.Based on the popular blog of the same name, You Are Not So Smart collects more than 46 of the lies we tell ourselves everyday, including:Dunbar's Number - Humans evolved to live in bands of roughly 150 individuals, the brain cannot handle more than that number. If you have more than 150 Facebook friends, they are surely not all real friends.Hindsight bias - When we learn something new, we reassure ourselves that we knew it all along.Confirmation bias - Our brains resist new ideas, instead paying attention only to findings that reinforce our preconceived notions.Brand loyalty - We reach for the same brand not because we trust its quality but because we want to reassure ourselves that we made a smart choice the last time we bought it.Packed with interesting sidebars and quick guides on cognition and common fallacies, You Are Not So Smart is a fascinating synthesis of cutting-edge psychology research to turn our minds inside out.Image: W.H. Calvin / Wikipedia

Forty years ago this month, NASA launched two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, on a grand tour of the solar system and beyond, into the mysteries of interstellar space. Mounted to each spacecraft is a golden phonograph record, a message to introduce our civilization to extraterrestrials, perhaps billions of years from now. The Voyager Golden Record tells a story of our planet expressed in sounds, images, and science. The Voyager Golden Record is a gift from humanity to the cosmos, but it’s also a gift to humanity. It lies at the intersection of science and art to spark the imagination, and delivers a dose of hope that so many of us are jonesing for these days. Two years ago, my friends Timothy Daly, Lawrence Azerrad, and I embarked on a long journey to release the Voyager Golden Record as a box set of vinyl LPs so those on Earth can hear it as it was meant to be played. We were humbled by the incredible support our project received. (You can read about our experience in the project updates here.)Ten months after our Kickstarter ended, the enthusiasm and excitement around the Voyager anniversary and the golden record continues to increase. We feel very fortunate that the story of this historical artifact resonates with so many people! As promised, we will never reproduce the Kickstarter "40th Anniversary Edition" box set again. Our Kickstarter backers took the journey with us and we are deeply grateful. However, for those who were not able to participate in the Kickstarter, we have decided to repress the Voyager Golden Record in a different edition than the one our Kickstarter backers will receive. This elegant second edition will include a full-color softcover book, three 140 gram vinyl LPs, metallic gold-printed sleeves, and the Voyager Trajectories turntable slipmat housed in a deluxe metallic gold-printed box. (And based on a surprising number of requests, we're also offering a hardcover book/2xCD version of the Voyager Golden Record.) You can pre-order the vinyl box set and CD/book for delivery before Christmas. Pre-orders of the vinyl box set directly from our label, Ozma Records, will include a free Voyager Diagram Pin. Ad astra!Pre-order the Voyager Golden Record (Ozma Records)

Seth Fishman and Isabel Greenberg (previously) have a forthcoming picture book called A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars, which uses masterful illustrations and text to convey the magnitude of the universe and its myriad significant things; in an accompanying Kickstarter, the pair are offering up a "growth chart" to help your kids record their progress while instilling a sense of the profundity and infinitude of our glorious universe. (more…)

A self-driving van was spotted tooling around in Arlington, Virginia. But when local News4's Adam Tuss spotted the vehicle and approached it, he realized that it was actually being operated by a person disguised as the car seat. The driver ignored Tuss's questions. From News4:After multiple inquiries by News4, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute said Monday afternoon that the van and van driver are part of a study they are conducting on driverless cars. The worker was wearing the uniform he was supposed to wear. "The driver's seating area is configured to make the driver less visible within the vehicle, while still allowing him or her the ability to safely monitor and respond to surroundings," a statement from the institute says. (via Laughing Squid)This is one of the strangest things I've ever seen @nbcwashington @ARLnowDOTcom pic.twitter.com/8ipKEnkeiq— Adam Tuss (@AdamTuss) August 7, 2017

Magician and optical illusion artist Victoria Skye created the mindbending riff above on the classic "Cafe Wall" optical illusion.(via @martinsytaylor)

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey and legendary free software creator Brian "bash" Fox took to the New York Times's op-ed page to explain that proprietary software and voting machines don't mix, because unless anyone who wants to can audit the software that powers the nation's elections, exploitable bugs will lurk in them, ready to be used by bad guys to screw up the vote-count. (more…)

South Carolina legislator Chris Corley, who was recently elected to a second term, is well-known for his support of the Confederate flag. When the flag was taken down from the Statehouse in July 2015 in response to the slaughter of nine black churchgoers by a Confederate flag embracing domestic terrorist, Corley sponsored a bill for a statewide vote to return the flag. The bill failed.Corley is no longer a South Carolina legislator. Yesterday he pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal domestic violence, which carries a sentence from probation to 10 years in prison. The judge was lenient, giving him probation. From AP:[A]uthorities say he attacked his wife during an argument over his infidelity the day after Christmas. In a police report, authorities said the couple's young children were present when Corley attacked his wife, biting her nose bloody and pointing a gun at her. "Just stop, Daddy. Just stop," his children can be heard on a 911 call. "Daddy, why are you doing this?" Corley's wife said he stopped hitting her only after noticing she was bleeding and hearing the children screaming, authorities said. Prosecutors said he took away his wife's cellphone to keep her from summoning help, but that she managed to call 911 on her Apple Watch. Authorities said that after Corley threatened to kill her and then said he'd kill himself, his wife took the children to her mother's house across the street.

Robert Douglass writes, "You have graciously covered the Open Goldberg Variations and the Open Well-Tempered Clavier projects on Boing Boing in the past, and it has resulted in these works being the most discoverable and obtainable examples of Bach's work on the internet (reading Wikipedia? You'll find these recordings. Searching Google or YouTube because you're curious about Bach? You'll find these recordings. Both recordings have also received lavish critical praise from the classical music industry's leading reviewers, eg Gramophone magazine." (more…)

“The (Federal Constitution) does not mention atheists. It goes against the Constitution and human rights," Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim told the Malaysian Parliament today. “I suggest that we hunt them down vehemently and we ask for help to identify these groups.” From Yahoo News:A photo of the gathering by the Kuala Lumpur chapter of Atheist Republic, or “consulate”, has caused uproar from some in the Muslim community recently after it was highlighted by pro-Islamist blogs, leading to violent and death threats on social media.Deputy minister in charge of Islamic affairs Datuk Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki said yesterday Putrajaya [the federal administrative centre of Malaysia] will investigate the local group, even roping in the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, as it allegedly involved the faith of Muslims in the country.Image: Sledge hammer of God / Wikipediaedia

Five years ago, a patent troll called "Personal Audio" started demanding money from podcasters, claiming that their patent on mailing cassette tapes of people reading magazines (a ridiculous patent on its face) also covered podcasting. (more…)

Security researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis wanted to demonstrate that the horrific stories of insecure networked sex-toys (and other Internet of Things devices) was the result of manufacturers' negligence, not the intrinsic limitations of information security. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4KvOJlu5XoThe oil industry is mired in a recruiting crisis because its workforce is aging out and millennials don't want to work for an industry that is destroying the planet they were hoping to live on. (more…)

Your "waste an hour on YouTube" YouTube channel of the day is Zeus the Stubborn Husky. And unlike the other dog video going viral at the moment, you won't have to watch it squirt salt water out its arse every time it barks.

Cindy Sherman is posting publicly on Instagram as _cindysherman_ after having her account set to private under a different account name. Many recent images use distortions and filters. (more…)

LilyPichu went to IndyPopCon with a melodica, then followed random cosplayers around while playing the songs from their game, film, or show. The different reactions are priceless. (more…)

Over at Imgur, user Q1s2e3 posted a timeline of women's high fashion from 1784 to 1970, focusing entirely on trends in Europe and North America. In fact, it's interesting that the switch in representation to American-style looks happened in the early 20th century. (more…)

This summer, two of the west coast’s largest metropolitan areas—Seattle and California—took major steps to curtail secret, unilateral surveillance by local police. These victories for transparency and community control lend momentum toward sweeping reforms pending across California, as well as congressional efforts to curtail unchecked surveillance by federal authorities. (more…)

Presidio Terrace is a "block-long, private oval street lined by 35 megamillion-dollar mansions" dating to 1905, where the homeowners are obliged to pay the city $14/year for property tax on their sidewalk, road and traffic islands. (more…)

On July 28, 1851, Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski took what's thought to be the first photograph of a solar eclipse. The Royal Prussian Observatory in what's now Kaliningrad, Russia, had mounted a six-centimer refracting telescope to a 15.8 centimeter Fraunhofer heliometer used to measure the sun's diameter. Berkowski made an 84 second exposure to create the daguerreotype seen above and below.(PetaPixel)

This Owl helped make a recent road trip a lot more fun!Simple to construct by following the numbers, this is a cute Owl-y way to pass some time.3D Wooden Owl -- $8 via Amazon