Williams Sonoma's $30 "Reversible Meat Tenderizer" is described on its website as an "impressively weighty pounder" and "two tools in one." (It's also available on Amazon as the Leifheit Pro Meat Tenderizer Tool)

Last Friday night, my Facebook feed blew up with images of "UFOs." It took a beat before my concerned SoCal friends got the news that the big illuminated streak they saw across the sky was actually Elon Musk's latest rocket launch on its way to space, and not something nefarious.Shortly after, my brother Andrew texted me in excitement from Arizona, saying that he and his family had caught the rocket launch from Scottsdale. I was surprised to hear that it was visible in Arizona, as I had already learned it was launched from Vandenberg in California. Then today I came across this gorgeous timelapse video shot by photographer Jesse Watson and I can see what all the fuss was about.Watson writes:

In 1936, Hugo Green, a postal worker in Harlem, published his first "Negro Motorist Green Book," a guide to the places that black travelers could eat, sleep, gas up, and be physically present and alive without being discriminated against, harassed, threatened, beaten or murdered. (more…)

Keep fucking that chicken, everyone.

Bettie Bee, a lovely two-faced kitten, was born two weeks ago in Eastern Cape, South Africa. According to her Facebook page, she is receiving wonderful care and doing quite well even though so-called Janus cats rarely live very long. The medical term for the rare condition is diprosopus.Updates on Bettie Bee at her Facebook page.

Sam Zeloof, 17 built out a 1970s-vintage chip fab in his parents' New Jersey garage so he can make DIY integrated circuits. Why? So he can better understand how they work.It's a "way of trying to learn what’s going on inside semiconductors and transistors," Zeloof told IEEE Spectrum. "I started reading old books and old patents because the newer books explain processes that require very expensive equipment.”From IEEE Spectrum:

How long does it take, from keypress to the letter appearing on-screen, in a basic terminal window? My Core i7 PC with a GTX 1070 video card and 32gb of RAM might -- might -- be about as fast as 35-year-old Apple IIe. And almost nothing else is. It seems that modern computers are so complex that there are just some things they can't do quickly (Dan Luu).

Fleetwood Mac's California cocaine trilogy of Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, and Tusk are some of my absolute favorite rock albums of the 1970s. In the above video, Nerdwriter deconstructs the production of "Dreams." And below, a live performance of the track from 1977.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Uss5lSIwg

In 2016, the deep-red, Mormon-dominated state of Utah had to choose between voting in favor of a rapist, or in favor of allowing women to control their own fertility, and they chose the rapist. (more…)

My end-of-the-year roundup the year in DRM for EFF's Deeplinks blog hits seven lowlights, from the catastrophic (the W3C greenlighting DRM for the web) to the idiotic (North Korea's DRM-encrusted tablets) and beyond. (more…)

The crew of the International Space Station watch Star Wars: The Last Jedi in this photograph posted to Twitter by astronaut Mark. T. Vande Hei: "Space Station movie night, complete with “bungee cord chairs”, drink bags, and a science fiction flick!"

Stanford's Futurity interviews Stanford Law expert Ryan Singel and International Studies expert Didi Kuo about the meaning of a non-Neutral internet, and the pair make an excellent and chilling point about the subtle, profound ways that Ajit Pai's rollback of Net Neutrality rules to pre-2005 levels will distort and hobble the future internet. (more…)

The New Scientist reports that the World Health Organization is to include "gaming disorder" in its International Classification of Diseases (Amazon). The wording is yet to be finalized, but will encompass gaming “to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests” and meets various criteria of adverse effects such as anxiety, antisocial conduct and withdrawal symptoms. The Independent:

America's spy agencies have always talked a good game about the "official channels" available to spies who discover wrongdoing, insisting that the procedures to investigate their claims and protect them from retaliation mean that no spy should ever have to go to the press. (more…)

Director Frank Capra said "It's a Wonderful Life" was designed to "strengthen the individual’s belief in himself" and "to combat a modern trend toward atheism." But the FBI's 13,533-page Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry classed the movie as a secret work of Communist propaganda, "written by Communist sympathizers...to instigate class warfare" and "demonize bankers." (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUySE5moIFINothing evokes yuletide wonder quite like huddling around a modern Christmas family classic such as Die Hard or Eyes Wide Shut. But did you know that there are christmas movies more than a century old? Keep the holiday flame going through Boxing Day with the Nitrate Diva's pick of ten pre-1918 xmas films. Embedded above is James Williamson's joyous and celebratory 1902 The Little Match Seller, just a few minutes long.

Bethany Heck's Font Review Journal is dedicated to criticism of fonts, and itself very handsomely typeset by Phil Moody. The latest in-depth review is of Lucas Sharp's Ogg.

If you're concerned that these Uranium Glass Marbles are simply standard marbles with phosphorescent material or somesuch, worry not! Amazon assures the consumer that they'll get a geiger counter going.

London's Evening Standard reports that a man burst into flames in a Haringey street before horrified onlookers, and investigators can find no cause for the fire.

The Associated Press reports that the classic "whatever" was the most annoying word of 2017, though "fake news" gave it a run for its money. Whatever.

Newfangled muon imaging recently discovered a huge empty space inside Khufu's Pyramid (also known as the Great Pyramid of Giza), but exploring these ancient structures without damaging them is tricky.Two French research institutes have come up with an intriguing concept: An autonomous robot blimp. It would collapse to such tiny size that they could drill a 3.5-mm hole into the pyramid, inject the blimp on a rod-like docking station, whereupon it inflates and floats around exploring the interior. When it's done, it returns to the docking station and the researchers pull it back out.As a story in IEEE Spectrum points out:

We now live in a world where new accusations of sexual harassment and/or assault get dropped on the daily. Because it was getting hard to keep track of, D.C. web designer Chris Herbert created The Creep Sheet, the "most complete list" of accused public figures.

The "uncanny valley" is the well-known propensity for us to get super creeped out by robots that look nearly, but not completely, human. The hypothesis, for years, is that uncanny imagery unsettles us because the not-quite-there humanoid faces trigger our unconscious instinct to avoid people with horrible, infectious diseases.But maybe there's more going on here. Kimberly Brink and her colleagues recently conducted an experiment that complicates things in an interesting way. They took 240 children, ages 3 to 18, and showed them videos of three different robots, ranging from a classically uncanny, humanoid-style one to cutesy nonhuman bots along the lines of Wall-E. They probed the kids' reactions, including, crucially, whether they were creeped out by the robots.The result? Kids younger than 9 didn't find the humanoid bot unsettling -- but kids older than 9 did. This suggests that our sense of the uncanny valley is a learned behavior, not something purely innate. Interesting!Secondly, and more provocative yet, is Brinks' second finding: What chiefly disturbed the older kids was the idea that the robots had a distinct mind. The kids didn't like that. The younger kids, however did. As Brink writes:

In 2016, the Obama DoJ issued guidance to US courts telling them to cease the practice of levying fines on poor people that exceeded their means to pay, especially fines for failure to pay earlier fines. This week, Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed that order. (more…)

Senator Bob Corker got a rush of progressive love when he dissed Donald Trump in public, then fell from grace when he flipflopped on blocking the tax-bill after his colleagues modified it to personally give him millions -- but that guy was always dirty as hell. (more…)

Behold the "international eye chart" designed by George Mayerle, a German optician who made his name working in San Francisco in the 1890s.Optometry was a new field back then, filled with all manners of quackery, some of which Mayerle himself engaged in. (He enthusiastically sold "Mayerle's Eyewater", something he claimed was "the Greatest Eye Tonic".) But optometry was also professionalizing and becoming more research-based, and Mayerle himself pitched in by creating an eye chart designed to be used by people from a wide variety of backgrounds.San Francisco was, back then, a hotbed of immigration, and Mayerle wanted to serve the city's polyglot community. The goal was to produce a single chart that would allow an optometrist to do an eye-test for nearly anyone who walked in the door:

There's a "Party Hats for Grownups" store and it's got all you need to say "good riddance" to 2017 in cone-shaped, elastic-under-the-chin style.The first one pictured above shows a bunch of dumpster fires with the words "adios" and "bye."When flat, the second one, called "The Shit," looks like this:And the third, "The Adios," like this:A set of five (one style) is $10.25.(swissmiss)

Wow, these Star Wars-inspired sculptures are really mind-blowing. To make them, artist Gabriel Dishaw of Indianapolis, Indiana marries junk with upcycled 1970s Louis Vuitton luggage. While the thought of tearing up vintage Vuitton may make some gasp, certainly no one deny the end products are pretty spectacular.Dishaw was recently featured in the Indy Star about his SW/LV pieces:

Thought we had hit peak ironic ugly Christmas sweater already? Well, take a moment to watch this video where this winner of some workplace "Ugly Christmas sweater contest" is shown playing "Carol of the Bells" on her winning entry. Game over, folks. Time to go home.Previously: Ugly cryptocurrency sweaters

One by one, the New York Times warns of the dangers of every hot smart toy your kids are begging for this Xmas: Furbies, Cayla, kids' smart watches, the ubiquitous Vtech toys (they omit the catastrophic Cloudpets, presumably because that company is out of business now). (more…)

Since the Great Recession, the wealth gap between poor whites and poor blacks and Hispanics collapsed (all the poor people are living in similar poverty), but the wealth gap in the middle class grew: middle class blacks and Hispanics are worse off than middle class whites, a phenomenon that's increased since 2008/9. (more…)

20% of the Virginia workforce is earning $10.33/hour or less, while wages for the top 20% of earners have soared to $50/hour or more -- the top two deciles are earning, on average, 280% more than the bottom two deciles. (more…)

Contrary to popular belief, mastering the fundamentals of robotics doesn't have to be a mind-numbing slog through programming and electronics courses. SunFounder's Nano DIY 4-DOF Robot Kit offers an intuitive and beginner-friendly way to break into the field by walking you through building your own programmable robot, and you can get it in the Boing Boing Store for $50.https://www.youtube.com/embed/dLktGrecKsMGoing by the name of Sloth, this DIY kit is compatible with the included SunFounder Nano board or an Arduino Nano board. It's equipped with two legs that you can program to walk, kick, or even dance, and, thanks to its HC-SR04 ultrasonic ranging module, it can even detect and avoid obstacles intelligently. What's more, this simple kit comes with a visual programming language, allowing any DIY-er to start from scratch regardless of their coding background.The SunFounder Nano DIY 4-DOF Robot Kit can be yours for $50 when you order it from the Boing Boing Store.

For nearly every year since my daughter Poesy was old enough to sing, we've recorded a Christmas podcast; but we missed it in 2016, due to the same factors that made the podcast itself dormant for a couple years -- my crazy busy schedule. (more…)

Reality Winner is the NSA whistleblower who is accused of leaking US intelligence community documents confirming Russian interference in the 2016 elections to the Intercept and who has been a cross between a punchline (her improbable name, her ill-chosen words on recorded prison conversations with her mother) and a cipher. (more…)

You may not have heard of blockchain technology, but you're likely familiar with Bitcoin, the now wildly successful cryptocurrency. For the uninitiated, the blockchain is effectively an infallible, decentralized digital ledger that records economic transactions online, and it has paved the way for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum to turn the world of finance on its head.With the Complete Ethereum Blockchain Mastery Bundle, you can learn how to leverage this groundbreaking technology by creating your own decentralized apps on the Ethereum platform, allowing you to tap into the economic potential behind booming cryptocurrencies. Using tools like Solidity and Truffle, you'll learn how to create your own exchange as you follow a series of beginner-friendly and hands-on tutorials.You can get this bundle for $29 when you purchase it at the Boing Boing Store

In Nieman Labs's "predictions for journalism in 2018" roundup, there's Kawandeep Virdee’s "Zines Had It Right All Along": which celebrates the low-fi, experimental, handcrafted diversity of the golden age of zines (which was the environment that birthed Boing Boing, as it happens). (more…)

E pluribus unum ("Out of many, one") has been an American national motto since 1782. It embodies two things trumpists hate: a highbrow phrase in a dead language deployed by early American aristos in the service of classing things up by excluding people who don't read Latin; and a message of strength through unity and diversity. (more…)

https://youtu.be/BXZy3Ecm47QIn 1977, the Sex Pistols did a charity gig to raise money for the families of striking miners and firefighters in Huddersfield; the show started at lunchtime with an all-kid audience, and went on into the night, with adult punks showing up later in the day. (more…)

In a new white paper, Consumers Union (publishers of Consumer Reports) looks at the "consumer stake in the encryption debate": they note that governments want to ban working cryptography so that cops can spy on crooks, but the reprt does an excellent job enumerating all the applications for crypto beyond mere person to person communications privacy. (more…)

In cryptographic and security circles, the "evil maid" problem describes a class of attacks in which a piece of unguarded hardware, is tampered with by someone who gains physical access to it: for example, a hotel chambermaid who can access your laptop while you're out of the room. (more…)

The average person in America is much more likely to come into contact with the administrative branch of the government -- the regulatory agencies the president staffs and directs -- than they are to end up in court (judiciary) or to be charged under the law (legislative). (more…)

Eric Schmidt, the ex-Sun CEO who came onboard at Google to be the "adult supervision" for the founders and who has repeatedly declared privacy dead and dismissed people who worried about surveillance business-models as unrealistic nutcases, is stepping down as head of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. (more…)

The mid-19th century vogue for flowing, diaphanous women's garments made from open-weave fabrics like "bobbinet, cotton muslin, gauze, and tarlatan," combined with gas lighting, candles, and open fires meant that it was extremely common for women to literally burst into flames: on stage, at parties, at home. (more…)

With new, innovative apps and programs dropping everyday, it pays to have a powerful computer. But forking out the cash for a pre-made rig can get expensive — especially when it's perfectly feasible to build your own at a much lower price point. Of course, not all of us have the IT acumen of a Windows technician, but you can give yourself the necessary know-how with the How to Build a Computer Bundle — now on sale for $19.Featuring five beginner-friendly courses, this collection will guide you through the steps and concepts crucial to creating a computer from scratch, or upgrading your current machine. You'll start with the essentials, learning all about the functional roles of the various components and hardware that make up a computing system. Then, you'll move on to more advanced concepts, like making hardware modifications, network cabling, overclocking your CPU, and more.Plus, this collection also includes training on upgrading laptop hardware, thereby improving the versatility of your newly acquired skill set.The How to Build a Computer Bundle is available in the Boing Boing Store for $19.

IDEO.org, the nonprofit sister branch of global design firm IDEO, has created a pack of 32 cards to "spark creativity and collaboration."The deck is called the Design Kit Travel Pack and it's selling like gangbusters over at Kickstarter.They write:

It's not a good machine or a precise machine, but it is still a machine that will wrap gifts (and sandwiches and ankles) in 10 seconds.But the best part of this video isn't the present wrapping, it's when inventor Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines shows his many attempts at automating the Christmas-tree-decorating process.

I'm not sure who reads the classifieds anymore but this special optical illusion ad section by Felipe Salazar and Karen Castañeda is definitely worth a look. The Columbia-based graphic designers took the text-heavy newspaper page and it turned it into a kitchen, which is an ad for HiperCentro Corona supermarket. Can you see it?If you're having a hard time seeing the kitchen, click here.(Neatorama, DesignTAXI)image via Felipe Salazar and Karen Castañeda

I can't quite believe this is real: a novel by former movie star and Putin pal Steven Seagal, with a foreword by racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, titled "The Way of the Shadow Wolves", with a cover that looks like a photoshopped parody of itself.