https://youtu.be/AsJ43cYGGEI?t=50sAs part of an annual celebration of life in the Portuguese village of Vale de Salgueiro, parents encourage children as young as 5-years-old to smoke cigarettes.But if you ask these parents why the heck they're giving youngsters cigarettes, they have no clue.According to AP:

I am a near daily user of my Kmashi 10,000mah USB battery pack since 2015 and its larger sibling, a Kmashi 15,000mah, has been my travel buddy since 2016.This is the errand runner. The 10,000mah fits handily in the chest pocket of my favorite motorcycle jacket. It fits in my bluejeans back-pocket without creating a pants-full appearance. This battery is the size of small glasses case, and after 3 years still it recharges my 2900 mah iPhone 7+ 2 and a half times (the iPhone is actually down to 2700/2800 max cap.) With this along for the ride I get far better than a full days use out of my phone, even with Waze sucking down juice and the screen on.Sadly, this weekend I dropped the 15,000mah pack. I must have dropped it many times before, a million times or more, but this one killed it. I quickly reordered another. This is the workhorse for travel. Days of running from meeting to meeting, tablet, Kindle, iPhone, GoPro, it don't matter. This pack has your back wherever you roam. Up all night watching movies in your tent? Need the tablet for filming video of that lovely sunrise? No problem.I also love that neither battery is burdened with flashlights, sirens or other bullshit. It is a USB battery for charging devices. Use your charged phone as a flash light.I get that they are similar in size. Estoy claro que solo hay 5000mah más en el mas grande. Wahlen Sie die eine, die Sie mogen. These are the two most useful battery sizes I've found.KMASHI 10000mAh Portable Power Bank with Dual USB Ports 3.1A Output and 2A Input via AmazonKMASHI 15000mAh External Battery Power Bank, Portable Charger with Powerful Dual USB Output and 2A Input via Amazon

https://youtu.be/t5k0UyZ939IUC Berkeley economist J Bradford DeLong's wide-ranging Reinvent interview covers a lot of ground, but is especially fascinating on the long-term trajectory of small businesspeople who bet their commercial futures on platforms -- he uses Uber drivers as an example, but this has implications in lots of sectors. (more…)

Photographer Daniel Biber caught some spectacular sunset images showing murmurations of starlings. In the most remarkable of these, the murmuration itself looked like a starling. (more…)

Whether conventional keyboards don’t really work for you, or spelling is the bane of your workday, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 gives your computer powerful voice dictation abilities. We've got the basic version in the Boing Boing Store for $19.99.This software works on Windows 7 or higher to provide speech recognition with up to 99% accuracy. You can create documents in a fraction of the time it would take to type them by hand, and it lets you control your apps with simple voice commands. Searching the web and drafting emails becomes as fluid as possible, and their acclaimed engine can even learn complicated proper nouns just as well as idiosyncratic phrases.Pick up Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Basic here for $19.99.

Accidents are going to happen, and while we lack the clairvoyance to see them coming, we still have to power to outfit ourselves with the appropriate gear to get through them. Case in point, the UltraBright 500-Lumen Tactical Military Flashlights are a welcome addition to any emergency or survival kit. They're on sale for $20, but you can take an extra 17 percent off when you plug in the BESTOF17 coupon code at checkout.These torches are powered with 500 lumens and boast an adjustable zoom that provides up to one mile of range, giving you tremendous visibility. Plus, they feature bright, lower bright, and SOS modes for added versatility, and their wide working voltage enables a long battery life. What's more, this two-pack includes an ultra-durable storage case for added protection and easier portability.You can get a two-pack of UltraBright 500-Lumen Tactical Military Flashlights on sale for $20, plus when you plug in the BESTOF17 coupon code at checkout, you can take an extra 17 percent off the final price.

During the holidays, cases of cheap American lager were available to Canadians which isn't exactly news but these weren't ordinary cases. These limited-edition mega-packs were full of 99 "canettes" of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Canadian hipsters were able to purchase these special packs of PBR at Quebec's convenience store chain Couche-Tard.And buy they did...https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc-voc9ASOS/https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc_JoqlA2mC/This isn't the first time a 99-pack of beer has been offered. You may remember that in 2014, Austin Beerworks in Austin, Texas offered one of its Peacemaker ale for $99.(Foodiggity)

Maryam Omidi crowdfunded a photographic tour of Soviet-era sanatoriums, and the resulting book, Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums is like a weird 1970s sci-fi catalog. (more…)

He saved every one us. Stood for every one of us.Every man, every woman, every child.Flash Gordon was so awesome he wore his own logo tee-shirt.One of the best space operas ever filmed, Dino De Laurentiis Flash Gordon stands the test of time. As does this tee-shirt.Flash Gordon Logo Ringer T-Shirt via Amazonhttps://youtu.be/qjFCVTpsIps

My friend Elizabeth Bingham has created the most wonderful collection of 3D printed Mouse Ears. She and her fiance Randy visit the park every weekend, and wanted to make their visits a little more special.Check out Elizabeth's Etsy store!

Posted without comment, except for my photoshop of him infested with mind-controlling Leucochloridium paradoxum gastropod eyestalk parasites:https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/949618475877765120

Get ready to go down a rabbit hole of musique concrète documentaries, of which this one from 1979 was by far the most informative, with this clip especially interesting.. (more…)

Filipino student Hillary Diane Andales won a $250,000 scholarship from the Breakthrough Junior Challenge for this entertaining and easy-to-understand explainer on relativity and the equivalence of reference frames. (more…)

Josh Jones mapped out every leap from every episode of the classic sci-fi show Quantum Leap. Jump with Dr. Sam Beckett and his hologram pal Al all over the world again as he tries to find his way back to his own home, his own time, and his own body. (more…)

Kate Kato repurposed the popular Observer's Book series to include lovely paper sculptures of each book's subject. Above is The Observer's Book of Fungi. (more…)

goodbye.domains is an obituary column for the domain names that you, after years of squatting, now accept will never be put to use and which are, furthermore, worthless.I just let neverie.com lapse. "Neverie" was the title of the first novel I wrote as a teen, in the genre of trash fantasy. I'd imagined that I might one day edit and publish it, hence the domain. But I won't. Goodbye, neverie.com.Goodbye Domains [via Dean Putney, who retired deansli.st]

The Hang and Level is a pretty great tool for hanging pictures, mirrors and the like.Every piece of art I hung in my near-an-active-fault-line home would go crooked in days, or hours. I got a Hang and Level, and now most of them stay in place. With built in levels, and easy press tabs to mark the wall, it is hard to go wrong -- but I still can.Hang and Level picture hanging tool via Amazon

On Reddit I stumbled across this old screen test of Deborah Harry auditioning for the crime mystery movie Union City, which was released in 1980 to lukewarm reviews. She got the part as the leading actress, with a smaller role going to Pat Benatar.Here's the plot, from Wikipedia:

This cute little Raspberry Pi case was "inspired by the Nintendo Entertainment System." It's $11 on Amazon.

A class action suit by some of the 3,500,000+ Wells Fargo customers defrauded in the company's fake account scam was foundering in Utah, thanks to the company's insistence that its binding arbitration clauses also applied to the accounts it fraudulently opened (that is, by agreeing not to sue the company for defrauding you over the accounts you opened, you were also agreeing not to sue them if it opened a bunch more accounts and forged your signature on the papers). (more…)

After an outbreak of measles at Disneyland, California lawmakers had enough and passed SB277, banning kids from attending the state's schools unless they were fully vaccinated, and eliminating the waiver that let parents put their kids and others' in danger by signing a form stating that "immunization is contrary to my beliefs." (more…)

Cats like to sit in taped circles and hexagons on the floor. It's been recently discovered that they can be trapped in squares, too.https://youtu.be/Zhlvm0w_Dr8[via Neatorama]

A company called Rose Colored Gaming upcycles damaged Nintendo SNES consoles by putting them into clear acrylic cases.

Last September, I wrote about Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Jessica Bruder's important, fascinating book-length investigation into the Americans who live on the road out of economic necessity, including the Camperforce, a precariat army of retirees who saved carefully all their working lives, only to be bankrupted in the 2008 financial crisis who travel from Amazon warehouse to Amazon warehouse, filling in as seasonal and temp workers on gruelling, 12-hour shifts that leave them in pain and with just enough money to make it to the next stop. (more…)

Thomas Homan is the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; in an interview on (where else) Fox News, he said that local officials in "sanctuary cities" (cities where law enforcement agencies do not pro-actively check immigration status of people they question or arrest, and require immigration officials to present warrants along with requests to detain people) should be held criminally liable for "harboring and smuggling" unauthorized immigrants. (more…)

Trump is freaking out over Michael Wolff's new behind the scenes book about the Trumpian White House, Fire and Fury:

In his new book Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff says that one-time White House chief strategist Steve Bannon accused the Trump campaign of "treason", a revelation that sparked a hilarious denunciation by Donald Trump, who claimed that his Chief Strategist didn't know anything about his strategies or his chiefs -- which drew more attention to the book (as did the legal threats the Trump administration fired at the book's publisher, Macmillan), widening the rift between Bannon and Trump. (more…)

Shortly after the election of Donald Trump, Russian exile Masha Gessen's essay Autocracy: Rules for Survival swept the internet, offering both hope and caution for the years to come. (more…)

https://youtu.be/jppxo4mwLtAWith the rise of white nationalist groups whose allies in government extend all the way to the President of the United States, tech companies are finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of deciding where tolerance begins and ends -- where they have a duty to step in and silence certain kinds of speech. (more…)

Jun from Jun's Kitchen has very well-behaved cats, even the new one they rescued. Here, he takes a break from cooking to show how they got so well-trained. (more…)

Lily Cole is a famous actress, model, and recipient of a double-first class degree in Art History from Cambridge University. How dare they appoint her a partner of the Brontë Society, formed to honor the creative heritage of the Brontë sisters, rants Nick Holland.

John Worboys is a cab driver thought to have sexually assaulted at least 100 victims and convicted on 19 counts in 2009. But he's getting out of jail after only 8 years, having nailed it as his first parole hearing.

My middle-school used to take us on field trips to the Spaced Out Library, the Toronto Public Library's science fiction reference collection founded by legendary author, critic, editor and activist Judith Merril, who emigrated to Canada after witnessing the police brutality at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. (more…)

Back in the 1800s, a curious retailing trend began where strangely costumed women would pose for cabinet cards advertising various businesses, like Heinz pickles or J. M. Dolph & Co. Furniture & Undertaking, above. (more…)

If you thought you might live out your days without seeing an industrial hedge clipper form shrubs into perfect spheres while accompanied by Wagner, everything changes today. (more…)

Bed Hog Shop, an Etsy seller from Bethlehem, PA, sells these custom made, $138 Sarlacc Pit baby loungers: " (would also likely be suitable for small pets): "Own your Star Wars fandom and allow the young one to snuggle in awesomeness without the fear of being digested over a thousand years!" (via Geeks Are Sexy) (more…)

Two days ago, an industry/academic team released a terrifying alert about a pair of CPU bugs called Spectre and Meltdown that allowed one program to steal data from another, even with the best memory-management and isolation techniques -- news that meant that virtually all the mission-critical computers in the world could no longer be trusted to handle sensitive data securely. (more…)

The Beryozka dance is a dance developed in the Soviet Union in the 20th century. It's now reached the status of beloved tradition because of the way the women's costumes and small dance steps make them appear to glide across the stage. (more…)

From bookkeeping to data entry, many of today's businesses rely on Microsoft Excel to maintain a firm grip on their mounds of information. As a such, employers are generally willing to give more consideration to applicants who can demonstrate their understanding of this software. The Ultimate Excel Bootcamp Bundle can set you up to impress during your next interview by netting you 70+ hours of Excel training for $49 in the Boing Boing Store.This four-course collection starts you off with the basics, walking you through Excel's most popular formulas and macros, so you can get more done faster. Then, you'll dive into the more advanced concepts, like Pivot Tables and business analytics. You'll understand how to leverage Excel's tools in a business setting by effectively practicing different presentation and forecasting techniques, including Moving Averages and Regression.You can catalyze your Excel education with the Ultimate Excel Bootcamp Bundle, on sale for $49. Take an additional 18% off with NEWYEAR18

Following the move by Cindy Sherman (previously), iconic photographer Nan Goldin now has an Instagram account for her studio. (more…)

Grab some superglue, some lab supplies, and you're good to go:

Every Hevesh5 creation is a delight, but this compilation of some of the best recent moments from the domino toppling channel is concentrated delight of the highest order. (more…)

Over the past couple of weeks, I ran two unusual episodes of the After On Podcast, both of them connected to … After On!The novel, that is. The podcast began as a DVD-extras-like supplement to it -- eight episodes diving deep into science, tech, and sociological issues that I could only explore so much without completely derailing the book’s storyline (I’ll make no claims about partial derailments). I later decided to continue making the podcast because it’s too much fun to give up.Most of my episodes are based upon in-depth interviews with world-class experts. But these last two are built around excerpts from the audiobook. This may sound like a lazy man’s response to the holidays (because of course it is). Still, I rank them among my finest episodes, as they feature magnificent performances from seven brilliant people -- some of whom will be familiar to a decent chunk of Boing Boing readers.Both episodes are designed to be spoiler-free, and also perfectly standalone -- in that you don’t have to know anything about the novel to fully parse and enjoy them. You may want to start with the second episode, as it includes the most voices (six of the seven):Although most of the novel is in a traditional narrative form, about a quarter of it is built from unusual media types. For instance, part of the story unfolds via 20 Amazon reviews. Part is told via excerpts from a mysterious second novel (a truly dreadful one. Hopefully hilariously so). There are also posts from multiple bloggers; tweets, texts and emails; and articles that I attribute to various sources.In this episode, the brilliant actor, comedian, and podcaster John Hodgman reads three of the Amazon reviews. Creator and star of The Guild (and all-around geek heroine) Felicia Day reads a post by an anonymous blogger named NetGrrrl. And podcasting stalwart Tom Merritt is the voice the New York Times.You’ll also hear the single most odious press release in tech history (read by Broadway actress January LaVoy), as well as pieces attributed to the Wall Street Journal and Ars Technica (both read by voice actor Sean Kenin), and the demonically paranoid WhistleBlowings blog (read by YouTuber Jesse Cox). It’s a cavalcade of both creepiness and comedy, and I believe every snippet will provoke a laugh, a shudder, or both.The other episode is easier to explain – it’s the first 70-ish minutes of the book, and it’s right here:It’s mostly read by January LaVoy, but there are also three excerpts from that ghastly external novel. These are read with true comedic brilliance by Patrick Rothfuss. Yes, that Patrick Rothfuss - the fantasy writer and author of The Name of the Wind, among other brilliant works. Patrick has a wickedly stentorian voice which he dusts off from time to time, and I knew it would be perfect for my novel-within-a-novel (which, if I wrote the whole of it, rather than just the excerpts, would be the single worst science fiction novel of all time. I’m fully convinced of that).I hope you enjoy these!

Alan McSmith has been a safari guide for 30 years. In that time, he's learned a thing or two about elephants, including how not to get killed by one. Here we see him calmly encourage an elephant to seek a nonviolent approach.[via Twisted Sifter]

Jennifer Boylan reflects on the death and life of companions in Inside of a Dog

Actor Paul Sorvino says Harvey Weinstein should hope he goes to jail. If not, "I will kill the motherfucker," Sorvino told TMZ in this video. Sorvino is rightfully angry with Weinstein for sexually harassing his daughter, actress Mira Sorvino, and then subsequently destroying her career for not complying with his demands. "This pig will get his comeuppance," Sorvino told the reporter.

Wired published an article about txt.fyi, the minimalist publishing "platform" I made: "Write something, hit Publish, and voilà: your deathless prose, online. "

This interactive graph of personal debt in the United States reveals the geography of poverty. The average household income in California is $91,757, while the median medical debt in collections is $795. The average household income in Mississippi is $55,494 , while the median medical debt in collections is $747.[via tywkiwdbi]

Orange Julius is insisting a book that is not favorable towards him fail to be published. Trump's legal team has sent an 11-page letter to the publisher, demanding the book not be printed.Via the NYT: