https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJYc3mPvRgJason Allemann of JK Brickworks (previously documents his latest creation: a poltter that squeezes precise patters of icing onto cookies, built out of Lego Mindstorms, and includes full, downloadable instructions. (more…)

When you lose a phone you have limited options, like disabline it or taking remote photos. Cartoonist XKCD created a lost phone security system that I would love to have.

Princeton's Ed Felten (previously) is one of America's preeminent computer scientists, having done turns as CTO of the FTC and deputy CTO of the White House. (more…)

Watch Portland, Oregon area KATU's Mike Warner attempt to climb stairs in 90mph winds.

It is common in industrial and post-industrial societies to suppose a rigid, almost antagonistic division between work and play. We work in order to earn enough money to afford us time for something called fun or play—the antidote for work. Moreover, "play" is most often associated with children's pastimes, geeky video games, or other unproductive activities considered the opposite of seriousness. Maybe there is more to play than meets the eye?In the classic study Homo Ludens, the great scholar Johan Huizinga pointed out the anthropological relevance and the profound evolutionary implications of the human activity called play. Huizinga saw the instinct for play as the central force of civilized life: "Law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom and science. All are rooted in the primeval soil of play." Five hundred years before LEGO registered the trademark, Renaissance magus Marsilio Ficino used "Serious Play" (Serio Ludere) to describe the way the fathers of Western thought operated: “Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato had the habit of hiding all divine mysteries behind the veil of (...) serious play". And speaking of divine mysteries, in the Hindu mythology the god Brahman creates the world itself, as it were, through Lila — "divine play." Play seems to be serious business after all.Play is a state of mind, a highly sophisticated approach to life and work. Play is a fun, flow-inducing experience, among the most enjoyable states of consciousness available to humans. Play is a space for experimentation—a primal learning environment that allows one to take controlled risks without dangers. Play is a delightful, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment, of heightened functioning, optimistic engagement with the world around us. At its best, our play makes us feel alive, present in the moment, and fully activated as human beings.In this time in history, when the rules of the games we play are being rewritten, it may be worth injecting a healthy dose of playfulness in our daily lives—seeking more fun, lightness, engagement, and fulfillment.My personal interest in such a timeless topic recently led me to curate the TEDxPwCMilan event titled More Than Play. Produced by PwC Italia, one of the Big Four accounting firms, the event was designed to foster learning agility, explore the concept of play and its beneficial implications at the personal and organizational level.Among the high-profile speakers, Boing Boing editor and Institute for the Future researcher David Pescovitz shared personal tales about the importance of playfulness in his work. He described how play was and is a driving force behind Boing Boing itself; a pillar of the Futures Thinking methodology practiced at the Institute For The Future; and a crucial factor for the success of the Voyager Golden Record Kickstarter campaign. Each of these examples share a common thread: being moved to create and produce just for the fun of it-—eventually resulting in amazement at the unexpected fruits of one's play.It may be a long way before work will overcome its reputation of necessary evil, and before the divide between work and play are bridged. And let us not even forget the countless people working under inhuman conditions, those for whom work itself a distant dream, and the reflections upon work and play a luxury. However, I sense signals of hope. In the words of philosopher Alan Watts:"This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play."

I am pretty sure I'll be wearing this Mexican Funeral tee-shirt whenever I am supposed to, but not 100%.I love the BBC series Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The holistic assassin is so, so great.Todd's Mexican Funeral tee via Amazon

No Film school curated a best-of list showcasing some of the most striking and innovative cinematography from 2017. (more…)

Businesses in Detroit that wish to stay open after 10pm will have to join the city's high definition crime surveillance program. Shop keepers who participate in the program benefit by receiving prioritized Emergency Response Services when calling 911.Welcome to Delta City, Robocop fans! Install surveillance cameras for the cops or maybe they won't show up.Crain's Detroit interviewed Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan about the program:

What better way for a ceramic tile company to advertise their wares than in their own hallway? Casa Ceramica released a cool video showing how they created their trippy hallway in their Manchester offices. (more…)

Steam 250 lists the best-rated games ever on Steam, but its hidden gems page lists uses an absolute weighting that exposes little-played titles with few negative votes. First impression: bullet hell shooter fans know what they want, and they get it. Pictured here is Yorkshire Gubbins, the 25th-best-rated game on Steam, "a collection of incomprehensibly daft comedy adventures" set in the climate-challenged English county of that name.

In ADGN: An Algorithm for Record Linkage Using Address, Date of Birth, Gender, and Name, newly published in Statistics and Public Policy, a pair of researchers from Harvard and Tufts build a statistical model to analyze the impact of the voter ID laws passed in Republican-controlled states as part of a wider voter suppression project that was explicitly aimed at suppressing the votes of racialised people, historically likely to vote Democrat. (more…)

The introductory sequence of Bright is enchanting: signs and street art in Los Angeles that describe a world where the races of historical high fantasy stuck around into the present day to become the mocked or honored subjects of political graffiti.But once characters start talking, this geeky cool evaporates into a mediocre buddy-cop movie. The swirling fantasy tropes are a trash gyre on the seas of racial allegory.Bright's contemporary LA is also anchored in the past, all sterotypical gang violence, decrepit public services and despotic crime lords. At the top of society are elves, whose fortified enclaves echo South African apartheid more than Jim Crow. At the bottom are orcs, an underclass repressed due to their former allegiance to a long-defeated Dark Lord.In the middle is humankind, whose own internal racial consciousness and strata are supposedly absent or muted in the world of Bright—but whose humans constantly exhibit our world's racial conscioussness and strata.When star Will Smith's character kills a verminous bat-like fairy, for example, he declares that "Fairy lives don't matter today." The "today" warps a quip into darker territory: it suggests that fairies are sentient enough for there to be a slogan opposing the moral insignificance of their lives and that he is sick of hearing about it. Smith apparently ad-libbed the line, and offers a similar one later, telling an Orc to get his "Shrek ass" out of the way.Imagine the cultural signifiance of Shrek in the world of Bright! No-one involved in making Bright did.That said, it's surely a mercy that this fantasy world's history is only lightly exposed, a good policy at the best of times. The incipient fandom's first demand is for more dry, encyclopedic lore.What can be said about the story, though? It suffers throughout from being a toybox of generic fantasy elements tossed into a cop flick, which means there's never any solid sense of what can't happen. Joel Edgerton, as the affable and tolerant rookie Orc cop Jakoby, is the best thing about it. When Will Smith isn't phoning it in as unwilling partner Ward, the two have a few good moments ("You're not in a prophecy, you're in a stolen Toyota.") Noomi Rapace is perfectly-cast as a viciously athletic elf villain, but her character has all the depth of a Magic: The Gathering card. Édgar Ramírez and Happy Anderson are given more to work with as FBI pardners, a dandy elf and shlubby human, hot on the heels of Noomi's apocalyptic cult. Bright refers to people (few elves and rare humans) who have the magical potential to command the movie's mcguffin, Noomi's stolen wand. You get the picture.Bright's storytelling problem is that it knows all the tropes but not what tropes are for. Its racial consciousness is a cartoon sketch of Alien Nation, Shadowrun and Colors, dating it with peculiar accuracy to 1988. It's so incoherent that it could hardly be offensive, but it does echo two tragic lies: that racism's personal dimensions can be overcome through enlightenent, and that racism's structural invincibility grows from biological distinction.Netflix's $90m stab at a straight-to-internet blockbuster, Bright was mauled by critics. But it's liked by a motley set: I've seen vigorous defenses from suburban Hot Topic kids, meme-slinging Trumpkins, Sorkin Democrats, even a young activist who pointed out that it is at least better than Crash. What unites all these people? Maybe they just want fantasy stuff mashed into everything. Perhaps they feel that no part of American society should be held responsible for its collective failures. We've always preferred to imagine ourselves framed by a natural order beyond our consent, after all. But only Bright's has ninja elves.★★☆☆☆

The fine folks at Waterjet Channel found an enhydro agate, a type of metamorphic rock that formed with a pocket of liquid water inside. Naturally, they broke it open to get to the water and drank it. (more…)

Ciara Burkett is making wonderful voxel computers and such; bookmark their Ello page for more. [via Jay Allen]Above, an Apple â«». Here's a Compaq portable:

Jared Dines demonstrates several weird drum setups that not only sound good, but look pretty cool, too. (more…)

Last year this new train station, "Cambridge North", opened in Cambridge, UK -- with its walls cut into this mesmerizing pattern.A bunch of mathematically-minded folks started sending snapshots of it to Stephen Wolfram, the computer scientist famous for studying cellular automata. Back in the 80s, he'd famously created 256 simple rulesets that, beginning with single cell, would produce complex, byzantine patterns. When Wolfram looked at the Cambridge North building, he recognized it as his favorite pattern of all time: "Rule 30".Rule 30 is famous for producing chaotic, seemingly-random results, which you can see in just the first few dozen iterations:The ultimate result of a Rule-30 sequence might be even useful in crypto, because it's pretty hard to work backwards to its initial state. Rule 30 is also found in nature, including in the patterns on the shells of Conus textile.Wolfram wrote an essay about the station, Rule 30, and the math behind its aesthetic appeal:

CTA Chairman Gary Shapiro: "We look forward to our next opportunity to host a technology policy discussion with him before a public audience."

Today, three groups of security researchers from the Technical University of Graz, Cerberus Security, and Google Project Zero revealed a pair of defects in modern computers that allow adversaries to steal passwords and other sensitive data from virtually any computer in use today. (more…)

State Representatives Bill Chumley and Mike Burns, both white Republicans, have introduced a bill honoring the no black soldiers who served their state in the Civil War. South Carolina refused service from black men because racism.Via Raw Story:

Every year, Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky take to The Well and conduct a weeks-long, wide-ranging "state of the world" discussion, trying to dig through to the zeitgeist's bedrock, taking questions from all comers (you don't need to be a WELL member to read, and you can send your questions in to Jonl). (more…)

On May 22, 1984, the Army asked Joseph McMoneagle -- a "psychic spy" -- to astrally project himself to the planet Mars ... 1 billion years in the past.The full transcript is online at the CIA's digital reading room, and it is exhaustively nuts. But a blast to read! Could someone hire a few actors and stage this? Or do a crackly-radio-serial recreation, as a podcast?Slate actually tracked down McMoneagle to ask him about the experience:

It's common for high-priced paintings and jewelry to be insured and stored with some sort of theft-proof security in place. But the bar owner of Cafe 33 in Copenhagen, Denmark didn't think to protect "the world's most expensive" bottle of vodka, Russo Baltique, reportedly worth $1.3 million, making it too easy for a thief to pilfer the liquid gold in the middle of the night. Well, not actually liquid gold, but the bottle is made of both gold and silver, and for an added touch, the a cap is "encrusted with diamonds," says BBC.According to BBC:

Onlookers were not expecting a massive gas fire to explode, sending a huge metal tank hurtling toward them. One person filming got bits and pieces of the near miss, which prompted talented video stabilizers to take a crack at making the footage more stable. Here's the original as a gif: (more…)

Alt-right impresario Steve Bannon called the meeting between Jared Kushner, Trump Jr, and a Russian lawyer at the Trump Tower in 2016 “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” in a forthcoming book by Michael Wolff called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.In response, Trump said his former BFF has "lost his mind."From a statement issued by the White House:

It’s a new year, but it’s sex, fat-shaming and politics as usual in this week’s tabloids.Meghan Markle is a “shameless sexpot,” rages the National Enquirer, positively shocked – shocked, I tell you – that Prince Harry’s betrothed wore a “daring sheer top” in official photographs. The hussy. An allegedly “stunned” Queen has decreed a makeover, and “called in tutors to spend several hours a day teaching Meghan how to be a real-life Princess.” Sounds like some reporters have been watching too many reruns of The Princess Diaries.Cameron Diaz is pregnant with a “baby miracle” claims the Enquirer, with photographic proof of her baby bump. Oh, no she isn’t, reports Us magazine, using the same set of photos to demonstrate “Cameron’s heartbreak” at not getting pregnant after her “secret IVF struggle.”The Globe offers “New Proof Diana Was Murdered!” This word, “proof” – I do not think it means what you think it means. A paramedic who helped transfer the Princess from her wrecked car into an ambulance says “. . . when she was put in the ambulance she was alive – and I expected her to live.” Given the inability of even the best-trained doctor to assess internal injuries, these words of French firefighter Sgt. Xavier Gourmelon hardly count as proof of anything, except his optimism in the face of a horrific car crash.The tabloids continue aspiring to be a sexed-up version of The Washington Post with further forays into politics. “What Trump’s Tax Cut Means For You!” screams the Globe cover, seemingly oblivious that its low-paid working class demographic are those being screwed the hardest by the president’s gift to America’s top one per cent. “Trump’s Tax Triumph!” reads the impartial, fair and balanced headline inside. How will the poor benefit? The Globe explains: “This tax cut should benefit many of the lower income taxpayers by simplifying the complicated process of filing one’s return.” Well, that’s a bargain. Who wouldn’t want to give tax breaks to corporations and the mega-wealthy in exchange for a simpler tax form?The Enquirer tackles international affairs with its usual nuanced delicacy: “Nuke-Crazed Kim Signing Own Death Warrant!” The rag reports that the “North Korean kook wants World War III – but he’s in over his head.” An international expert tells the Globe that Jong-un will target his nukes on Trump Tower in New York, which seems a move designed only to push Trump to spend more time golfing at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.Getting back to its roots, the Enquirer also reports on the “Real-Life Frankenstein” who “sold diseased body parts,” and gives us the classic old-school headline: “Mom Sawed My Dad to Pieces!”Nostradamus is the gift that keeps on giving, and this week the 16th-century seer is back forecasting a North Korean war with Japan, vice president Mike Pence’s rise to become Trump’s successor, and a stock market crash. You have to hand it to ol’ Nostradamus, foreseeing the existence of Mike Pence and the creation of the stock market. All this comes courtesy of a “long-lost” notebook of Nostradamus, allegedly rediscovered by a Swedish historian who “interprets” the ancient predictions, as reported by the National Examiner.The tabloids also continue their tone-deaf criticism of anyone who dares to have more than two per cent body fat. Actress Helen Hunt is deemed “flab-ulous” by the Globe despite looking slender in a bikini at 54, while actor Brendan Fraser is dubbed “George of the Jiggle” for not having rock-hard jungle abs at the age of 49. The Enquirer reports that Hugh Jackman is “ditching ripped for roly-poly,” while the Examiner brands TV’s former Dallas star Charlene Tilton “an overweight, washed-up recluse.” Nothing judgmental there.Fortunately we have the crack investigative squad at Us magazine to tell us that Jennifer Lawrence wore it best, that Lisa Rinna has “only had one cavity” her entire life, that Tyra Banks carries chewing gum, body butter, and her son’s toy VW bug van named “Bong Bong” (clearly meant to be called “BoingBoing”) in her MZ Wallace carryall, and that the stars are just like us: they shop for groceries, get coffee and pick up litter. Gripping.Us devotes its cover to “The Untold Story” of Katie Holmes’ romance with Jamie Foxx, and “How Real Love Changed Katie,” though the “no-strings-attached romance” the mag describes makes them sound more like friends with benefits than a couple in love.People magazine’s cover features Today show co-anchors Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie, who reveal “Our hearts were broken” by the Matt Lauer sex scandal. I imagine every woman who was a victim of Lauer’s sexual harassment, which Kotb and Guthrie seem to have watched silently from the sidelines, might say the same.Onwards and downwards . . .

The Secure Elections Act is a bipartisan Senate bill with six co-sponsors that reads like a security researcher's wish-list for voting machine reforms. Specifically, it reads like Matt Blaze's wishlist, hewing closely to the excellent recommendations laid out in his testimony to the House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information Technology and Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Affairs Hearing on Cybersecurity, recounting his experiences as a security researcher and as the founder of Defcon's Vote Hacking Village. (more…)

We have a lot of guitars, ukuleles, and cigar box guitars leaning against walls, stacked in closets, and hiding under beds. I just bought this four-pack of guitar hanger hooks for $8. They're highly rated on Amazon.

Montreal-based clothing designer and artist Raku Inoue has been populating his Instagram with plants and flowers crafted into colorful insects. (more…)

https://youtu.be/-3fU69y8K0ULupiga is a longrunning, much-loved independent news source in Croatia that is virtually single-handedly doing battle with the country's surging fascist movement; they're crowdfunding to continue operations. (more…)

Of course a Hasselblad is going to outperform a smartphone camera. But unless you zoom way in, the Pixel does a great job.

Why the driver of this car thinks it's a good idea to cruise through Ireland's Storm Eleanor, which caused widespread flooding and winds of up to 100mph, is anyone's guess. Needless to say, don't try this at home.Via Mashable

Gareth Branwyn of Make has assembled a collection of the best of his Maker Tips column from 2017. There are some gems in here, like John Park's method for twisting a pair of wires (above) and Becky Stern's method for "stripping, soldering, and shrink-tubing a cable splice. The trick is to offset the wire joins so that, when you add heat-shrink to the individual wires, and then the entire splice, you don’t get a big lump in the cable."https://youtu.be/6O7ScaYmZs8

Lucian Constantin's Motherboard guide to protecting your home router is full of excellent, nearly impossible-to-follow advice that you should follow, but probably won't. (more…)

Stylist Khaled A. Shabani, 46, was arrested after allegedly cutting a customer's ear with barber shears to punish the customer for fidgeting too much. He also cut the 22 year old customer's hair in the style of Three Stooges great, Larry Fine, which the customer didn't want.Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain told The Wisconsin State Journal, “While it is not a crime to give someone a bad haircut, you will get arrested for intentionally snipping their ear with a scissors.”

People have a tendency towards "illusory superiority," that is, they imagine themselves to be better than others. Interestingly, the more incompetent you are, the more superior you feel. It comes down to the fact that people who are bad at something "lack the very expertise needed to recognize how badly they're doing." This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, and is explained in this TED-Ed video.[via Open Culture]

Mathematician Hannah Fry explains the "Ham Sandwich Theorem," a mathematical concept that says that even the most poorly constructed sandwich can be cut exactly in half with only one straight cut of a knife. (more…)

If drawing stairsteps on an Etch A Sketch seems like the pinnacle of achievement, these masterworks by Kyle Fleming may inspire you to new heights. They may also inspire you to shake yours clean and permanently donate it to the nearest toddler. (more…)

University of Washington data scientist Jake Vanderplas found himself trapped in an interminable series of Snakes and Ladders (AKA Chutes and Ladders) with his four-year-old and found himself thinking of how he could write a Python program to simulate and solve the game. (more…)

William Forsythe created this choreographed installation titled Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, No. 2. (more…)

What is Life? collects some of the more interesting takes on whether we may be living in a computer simulation. (more…)

Portuguese artist Vanessa Barragão has invoked the otherworldly beauty of the sea for a new series of tapestries and rugs, like the Coral Reef Weaving series above. Below is a larger piece called Earth Rug: (more…)

In the film The Mess, Ellice Stevens presents a compelling look at what it's like to live with a bipolar diagnosis: the dizzying highs and the staggering lows. (more…)

In a new book, former Trump campaign manager and presidential strategist Steve Bannon is quoted as saying contacts the campaign had with Russian agents before his involvement were “treasonous” and “unpatriotic,” singling out a meeting attended by the president's son and son-in-law.

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN the Tom the Dancing Bug team, the INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics before publication, 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…)

After a two year hiatus, I've restarted my podcast! It's my New Year's resolution. (more…)

When a gentleman in an orange hat thinks it's okay to grab a topless woman's breast and then run off at a music festival, the woman and her friend take matters into their own hands. They immediately turn around and, without missing a beat, follow him to where he sits in the grass with his friends. The friend first pours her red slushy drink over him, and then the one who's been assaulted hits him three times before the two walk off. Nice to see a moron get what he deserves.

Is your New Years' resolution to start writing quantum-computing algorithms as a side hustle? Hey, me too!So I'm going to spend this weekend playing around with Microsoft's newly-released "Quantum Development Kit". It includes their language Q# – designed for writing quantum-computing algorithms – as well as a little "universal quantum simulator" to test your code.Their "Hello, World" quickstart here has you entangle two qubits. Another demo, outlined in the video below, includes teleporting a message via entangled qubits.This is going to be a super weird weekend.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7b4J2INq9c(Image via Wikimedia)

It is time to introduce my daughter to the wonders of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.As you likely know, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplantedthe great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository ofall knowledge and wisdom, so I really ought to familiarize my kid with it. This unabridged audiobook, read by the always amazing Stephen Fry should do the trick nicely. We have a 6-7 hr road trip.I hope my kid knows where her towel is at.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Audiobook – Unabridged via Amazon