Fabio Palmieri directed IRREGULARS, a film about Cyrille Kabore, who tried time and time again to enter Europe after leaving his native Ghana at age 20. (more…)

The residence of Homer, Marge, and their kids is so unremarkably suburban that it's hard to describe what it looks like, let alone name the architectural style. Here's what it might look like as more distinctive styles found in America. Above: Mediterranean. (more…)

Upscale British supermarket chain Marks & Spencer is offering avocados without pits at their stores as a way to avoid "avocado hand," according to The Telegraph.

Arc ZERO is an art installation from this year's Japan Alps Art Festival in Omachi. It heightens the Japanese experience of komorebi, a word that roughly means "sunlight filtering through trees." (more…)

"City Life" by Istvan Banyai is one of many charming New Yorker magazine covers that never were. The website The Not Yorker hopes to gather up submissions to give them a second life and maybe share the love for the artists who submit. (more…)

This is too silly not to share. Like the headline reads, it's Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" featuring the vocals of "Mr. Chicken," an (extra)ordinary squeaky rubber chicken.Thank you, YouTuber Franco Muñoz for bringing us this much-needed laugh.(The Awesomer)Previously: Despacito performed by a rubber chicken

There's a new form of blog post going around comprising short, single-sentence paragraphs. Mostly marketing cliché delivered in the smugly impatient tone of know-it-all men, "Broetry" is the perfect material to game LinkedIn.

The open internet lost one of its unsung heroes this week, with the passing of David Vyorst, who served as Executive Director of the Washington, DC chapter of the Internet Society and as co-chair of the Internet Governance Forum USA.David wasn’t well known outside of certain geek circles, but his impact as a fighter for free speech, online privacy, and democratic governance was immeasurable. The thousands of people who assisted, attended and presented at the events he organized over the past decade include virtually every major thinker, builder, policymaker, journalist, entrepreneur, investor, and troublemaker working on internet issues in the Americas, and many from elsewhere around the planet, as well. David not only brought them all together, but helped them find common ground, and provided a platform for them to build, share and amplify an agenda for a more connected, humane, and just world.David’s passion for democratic media was rooted in his experience as a documentary filmmaker, which in turn was based on his personal experiences growing up Jewish in New York City. His film “The First Basket”, which explored the surprisingly central role of Jewish athletes in the rise of basketball and the NBA, received a lot of positive critical attention when it was released in 2008.In person, David was like a puppy dog, and his youthful exuberance and energy belied his 56 years. Whether speaking at a podium in front of a thousand internet policy wonks or crammed behind a table at his favorite DC haunt, Politics and Prose bookstore and café, he was always brimming with new ideas, always hot to discuss the latest news and technological developments, always game to wax poetic or philosophical at a moment’s notice. He especially loved to bring people with differing worldviews together, and after he’d made introductions, was content to lean back and watch the sparks fly.When I moved to Washington in 2015, David was one of the first people I reached out to, and he was instrumental in drawing me into the local internet policy scene. Together, we organized and co-hosted several events, including a panel on fake news and social media algorithms at American University during the week of T***p’s inauguration. I believed that these events were just the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership, and when I heard about his passing today, I felt the double pain of losing a lovely friend and an inspiring collaborator.David will be missed sorely by his many, many friends and aquaintances, and the loss of his leadership on internet governance issues leaves a gaping hole in American activism and policy. Let’s honor his memory by working together to keep the internet free, open, accessible, diverse, and friendly.

Enjoy the dark (very dark) comedy of this new Blondie video for the track "Doom or Destiny," starring Joan Jett and Debbie Harry anchoring an apocalyptic newscast about global warming, nuclear war, and, of course, President Trump.From Rolling Stone:

I bought some digital measurement calipers mainly as a tool for 3D printing, But I quickly learned that it was useful measuring other things - pipe diameters (inner and outer), screw diameters, small pieces of wood, and so on. If you're interested in 3D printing or model making, I'd say getting one of these for $10 is a no-brainer.

Filmmaker Dustin Farrell spent his summer traveling 20,000 miles to film lightning around the United States. He used a Phantom Flex4K camera to capture these brilliant bolts at 1,000 frames per second. The film is called "Transient."“Lightning is like a snowflake. Every bolt is different,” Farrell says. “I learned that lightning varies greatly in speed. There are some incredible looking bolts that I captured that didn’t make the cut because even at 1000fps they only lasted for one frame during playback. I also captured some lightning that appear computer generated it lasted so long on the screen.”(via The Kid Should See This)

TheKrane on Copenhagen's Nordhavn harbor is a coal crane converted into a two-person hotel suite. It's €2,500 per night. For that price, they should at least allow you to operate the crane. From the hotel site:

https://rumble.com/embed/u7hb9.v1fl5j/Gearing up in a flight suit inside a bathroom stall at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama may not be the most authentic way to prepare for the perils of space, but it’s the closest chance I’ll ever get to living my dream of becoming a cosmonaut.And since everyone’s dream is leaving Earth’s atmosphere and exploring, walking around in a blue onesie like you’re part of a cult doesn’t make you feel as stupid as I looked.I actually found myself getting strangely overinvested in my role as a Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM), making sure our virtual space shuttle completed its mission and landed safely while part of the camp group conducted space missions and flew a mock shuttle.Mission control was responsible for sifting through binder-filled specs to solve “anomalies” that would sporadically appear on our consoles while guiding the crew.The camp offers different difficulty levels with more math-involved scenarios for advanced admirers of space, but for a camp group of journalists and bloggers, the lower level, “kid’s” missions suited us perfectly. It may even be a little embarrassing the number of times the camp instructors had to step in with some hints.I also said “roger that” enough times to be committed to an insane asylum, but it was worth it to bring our crew safely back home. We were just able to land our shuttle a little sideways on the runway after our low orbit missions were completed. Today we do it again for a Mars simulation.I’ve also been able to try out some other simulators at the camp. The all-fearing Multi Axis Trainer consists of rotating steel rings produced to train astronauts in case a space capsule spins out of control.If any of you decide to build one at home, make sure to keep your eyes open or closed while in use. Switching between the two is said to make you feel more disorientated.Vomiting is actually unlikely to occur on one of these hellish machines since instructors assured me no matter how many times I asked that it doesn’t spin you in the same direction twice to make you dizzy and your stomach stays in the center of gravity the entire time.I personally felt like my eyes’ blood vessels were going to explode. Unfortunately they didn’t.And that may have been for the best because my eyeballs were certainly needed to piece together a plastic and cardboard small model rocket. There’s no justifying how many of us were enthused to be sitting down at a cafeteria table fighting over glue to attach parachutes inside our rockets. I’m still concerned I didn’t line the inside with enough pieces of fire retardant wadding for my parachute to deploy unharmed. Blast off will be Thursday and my team Marshall is hoping to defeat team Kennedy in this disturbingly grotesque space race.The only really upsetting part of this whole space camp experience is that no astronaut ice cream was located at the camp’s cafeteria. Dippin’ Dots machines are available onsite, which I’m sure is enough for most people, but I still felt silently and utterly destroyed upon this discovery. While my hopes melted away like the non-freeze-dried ice cream the camp had available, the experience of playing astronaut without any of the bravery or potential risk is an interesting adventure.And yes, I’m still debating if I should wear my flight suit on the plane ride back to see if it gets me upgraded to first class.Freelance writer Robert Spallone was sent to adult space camp in Huntsville, Alabama at as part of a trip sponsored by National Geographic on behalf of Darren Aronofsky's new series One Strange Rock and Ron Howard's new season of MARS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NHR0vpQYUUMassdrop's Hammer Fidget Spinner Artisan Keycap cost $20-$22, and fit any Cherry MX-compatible keyboard, with shipping in February. (via Ohgizmo)

A Justice department attorney representing the people owed money by Toys R Us doesn't believe the bankrupt corporation should pay lavish bonuses to the same executives who drove the toy store chain into the ground.From Judy Robbins filing:

Japanshop's Hanaga Tap Nose Outlet aren't cheap ($48), they take up two precious outlets and only give one back, and are two-prong only, but they still make me giggle. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church says he's working with Vladimir Putin to convene a Church-based inquiry into whether the execution of the royal family by revolutionaries in 1917 was actually a Jewish ritual killing; this appears to be an actual thing the Russian state is about to do, with many details confirmed in a public statement by Moscow's General Prosecutor. (more…)

Vox undertook a deep investigation into emergency room pricing, finding that emergency rooms, being the most monopolistic aspect of hospital care (because you don't shop for an ER while you're having a heart attack in the back of an ambulance) are also the most abusive and price-gouging. (more…)

“This Cop Killed Kennedy!” screams the National Enquirer cover, boasting a photo of a gun-wielding assassin. “Killer posed as Dallas cop,” says the report. His real job? A Dallas cop. Note to Enquirer: If you’re a real cop, you can’t really pose as one.British secret agents are erasing Royal bride-to-be Meghan Markle’s “wild past,” claims the Enquirer, aiming to “bury scandals before the wedding.”What scandals? As a student at Northwestern University, Markle “got a fake ID to go drinking,” and gained 15 pounds “binge eating,” the Enquirer reveals. Apparently an unidentified British man was asking questions of Markle’s old friends. I don’t suppose that could be what’s known in the spy trade as a “British tabloid reporter”?Michael Jackson is haunting Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s New York home, reports the Enquirer. After all, if you had an after-life, who wouldn’t want to be a spirit in Nicole and Keith’s home? It sounds like the culmination of Jackson's lifelong ambition to be as white as a ghost. His only disappointment: the couple have two young girls, not boys.The Enquirer digs into “sleazy” NBC host Matt Lauer’s sex harassment scandal, warning: “It’s worse than you think!” But how does the Enquirer know what I think? What if I’m thinking: bestiality? Is it really worse than that?America’s C-List actress-turned-Royal bride-to-be Meghan Markle gets the full-court press from this week’s tabloids. “Camilla Attacks Harry’s Bride!” yells the Globe cover, claiming that Prince Charles’ “evil . . . wicked” wife is waging a “vicious whispering campaign” against the Los Angeles-born interloper. Oh sure, that’ll derail the marriage. Vicious whispers.Us magazine’s cover foretells “Meghan’s Christmas With The Queen!” with the revelation that they’ll probably eat halibut in champagne sauce for Christmas Eve dinner and flaming Christmas pudding for Christmas Day lunch. Shocking. That will set the tumbrils rolling.People magazine devotes its cover to Markle’s “Real-Life Fairy Tale!” Did her fairy godmother appear and turn a pumpkin and mice into a coach and horses? No such luck. “She really does have star quality,” says a British photographer. That’s your modern-day fairy tale: the seal of approval from paparazzi.If you didn’t marry, divorce or die in the past year, you’re probably not in People mag’s “Year in Pictures.” If it’s not been photographed, it probably never happened. Pictures are worth a thousand words, after all – but sometimes they just run their mouth off.Either actress Goldie Hawn has a “breast cancer crisis” as the Globe claims, or she has a Band-Aid on her upper chest, which is what its photo actually shows. The Globe ran the same story three months ago, when Hawn sported a similar Band-Aid, and enlisted a doctor to speculate that he was “certain” she’d undergone a “breast biopsy,” which seems like a waste of time when you can diagnose patients perfectly well based on paparazzi photos.And what are we to make of the photo of former Dallas police officer Roscoe White pointing a rifle, beneath the Enquirer headline: “This Cop Killed Kennedy”? “Explosive proof found in document release,” the mag claims. But nothing in the recent government release of JFK files included such proof. The “document” in question turns out to be a supposedly incriminating diary penned by White, who died in 1971. Where’s that diary now? White’s son claims it was seized by the FBI in 1982. So what new documents suggest White’s involvement? Nothing that White’s son hasn’t had for 35 years – just three cryptic and unverifiable telex cables, as vague as any horoscope prediction, and about as useful.The Enquirer Guess Your Weight police are out in force, as ever. Melissa McCarthy “packs on the pounds again” and now tips the scales at 230 pounds, John Cleese at 300 pounds is “digging own grave – with a knife and fork,” and Beth Chapman, wife of “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” has “lost at least 50 pounds” and “is really sick.” For good measure, Charlie Sheen is looking “gaunt and haggard.”Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us mag to tell us that Margot Robbie wore it best (Melania Trump never stood a chance), that Lisa Vanderpump will “never be caught dead wearing Spandex” (though she didn’t say anything about wearing Spandex while she’s alive), that actress Kelli Giddish carries chewing gum, earphones and earrings in her Brooklyn Industries tote bag, and that the stars are just like us: they grab Starbucks coffees, browse shops, and feed parking meters. Insightful, as ever.Shockingly, no mention in the Enquirer, Globe or Us "of the sex harassment allegations against Dylan Howard, chief content officer of parent company American Media, Inc., whose 'self-proclaimed nickname was Dildo,'” according to a former employee, as reported by AP. I wonder what’s in his bag? Celebrity sex tapes? JFK’s assassin’s diary? Enquiring minds want to know.Onwards and downwards . . .

Dean Harvey is the co-founder of Factory Furniture, the company that created the Camden Bench, a piece of street furniture designed to stop anyone from using it for anything except sitting very briefly; it is the nadir of the "Unpleasant Design" movement, a bizarre response to rising homelessness and hostility to children in public spaces, in which cities and private companies try to shove the problem out of sight by making street furniture as inhospitable as possible. (more…)

Al Franken, the Democratic senator and admitted groper who should have been made to resign weeks ago so because there's never just one, idiots, is to resign.

It doesn't take long for this lioness to realize that a man entering her cage is her long-lost pal. There's not much he can do after that other than accept her enthusiastic display of affection.

The latest stupidospheric controversy in Donald Trump's America is Donald Jr's hard-to-parse claims of attorney-client privilege; Junior told Congress to go fuck themselves when they asked him to testify under oath about a meeting he had with his father about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, saying he didn't have to answer them because his lawyer was present and thus the conversation was privileged. (more…)

This woolen Pac-Man sweater, an Icelandic peysa, popped up in my Facebook feed on Wednesday and it made me squee with delight. It's the handiwork of my friend Christine Clarke.She told me that her husband, Doctor Popular, designed the sweater in knittingpatterns.is and, after some tweaking, she knit it up for him.

Hosted by the New York City comedy collective Improv Everywhere, the No Pants Subway Ride is an annual New York City tradition where folks go pantless --together-- on the subway. Now in its 17th year, the group has just announced that the 2018 event will happen on Sunday, January 7th. If you're interested in joining in on the fun, be sure to sign up for their mailing list. They'll be sharing more information there closer to the event's date.The event happens outside of New York City too, but Improv Everywhere doesn't specifically run it. People like you do. They write:

John D. Boswell, aka melodysheep, is using the force for good in The Force, his musical tribute to Princess Leia.He writes:

(more…)

Tomorrow, people across America will stand in front of Verizon stores, calling on the FCC -- whose chairman, the Neutracidal Maniac Ajit Pai, is a recovering Verizon lawyer -- is determined to rollback the Net Neutrality rules Americans cherish. Find a protest near you.

Researchers from the University of Toronto's amazing Citizen Lab (previously) have published a new report detailing the latest tactics from the autocratic government of Ethiopia, "the world's first turnkey surveillance state" whose human rights abuses have been entirely enabled with software and expertise purchased on the open market, largely from companies in western countries like Finfisher and Hacking Team. (more…)

If you buy one of those intrinsically insecure, always-on "smart speakers" from Google, Amazon, Apple or other players, you're installing a constantly listening presence in your home that by design listens to every word you say, and which is very likely to suffer at least one catastrophic breach that allows hackers (possibly low-level dum-dums like the ransomware creeps who took whole hospitals hostage this year, then asked for a mere $300 to give them back because they were such penny-ante grifters) to gain access to millions of these gadgets, along with machine-learning-trained models that will help them pluck blackmail material, credit card numbers, and humiliating disclosures out of the stream of speech they're capturing. (more…)

The EU's new blacklist of 17 money-laundering financial secrecy states includes South Korea, Mongolia, Namibia, Panama, Trinidad & Tobago, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and also includes a long-list of places like Guam, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. (more…)

No doubt you've heard the stories about cats smothering babies where they sleep. Well, there's a tabby cat in New York City that has perpetuated that rumor in a whole new and hilarious way when it decided to sleep where baby Jesus is supposed to lie. According to The Dodo, photographer Brooke Goldman wanted to sleep in last Sunday but instead walked her boyfriend to the train station as she had promised.

Acoustics researchers suggest that it's possible to hear the quality of champagne just by listening to the bubbles form. According to the University of Texas scientists, "There is a well-known notion that the quality of a sparkling wine is correlated to the size of its bubbles, and we are investigating whether the bubble size distribution of a sparkling wine can be obtained from simple acoustical measurements." Many people believe that smaller bubbles mean a better taste. From Smithsonian:

Etsy engineer Samantha Goldstein made a small wooden earring to hold her YubiKey 4 Nano, a tiny USB two-factor authentication device.From Motherboard:

Archaeologists digging in the sand dunes of Santa Barbara County, California discovered a 300-pound sphinx head. Notably, the artifact does not date back to ancient times but is only 95-years-old. The sphinx is actually a prop from pioneering filmmaker Cecile DeMille's 1923 movie The Ten Commandments. It was part of the so-called "Lost City of DeMille," a massive Egyptian set made for the movie. From the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center:

NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of the horrific fires rapidly spreading through Southern California. Stay safe, friends. From NASA:

University of Washington researchers 3D printed mechanical sensors and switches from standard plastic filament that can send data to Wi-Fi devices without using any electronics. As the engineers explain in this video, the plastic devices either reflect or absorb the ambient Wi-Fi signals and that effect is translated into a signal of zero or one. From the Printed Wi-Fi research page:

Rockstar editing by Robert Jones.

Twenty-four US government officials and their relatives were subject to a series of unknown, invisible attacks on the US embassy in Cuba starting last year. Doctors who examined the victims say the people have suffered brain injury as a result.From The Guardian:

"I will put forward my candidacy for the post of president of the Russian federation," announced Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has been in power since 2000. Spoiler alert: he's going to win.Image: Jedimentat44/Flickr

The Gourmand magazine commissioned Matthieu Lavanchy to create some of the most popular food emojis from the real thing. The whole project feels a bit like a modern update of Magritte's The Treachery of Images. (more…)

Whenever you want to befuddle someone by answering a question with another question that sounds like it might be a figure of speech, you won't do much better than shrugging and saying, "well, how quickly can a duck eat peas?"

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uTalk is an educational app designed to get you speaking in a new tongue as soon as possible, and the subscription in the Boing Boing Store has been reduced to $19.99.With uTalk, you can choose from a huge list of over 130 languages — you aren’t stuck with just the most popular selections from Europe and East Asia. Their system also starts off with a focus on essential vocabulary for conversation, so you won’t get hung up on translating the dictionary before you start speaking. It features interactive exercises and games to help you test your skills, as well as audio lessons from actual native speakers.uTalk Language Education keeps track of your progress online, so you can pick up where you left off on any device. A subscription is available now for just $19.99 and save an extra 15% with coupon code GIFTSHOP15.

The rise of the Information Age has put librarians in more demand than ever, according to this recent article in the Wall Street Journal.It simply makes sense that a librarian action figure would pop into the market, tiny red cape and all. This one is particularly special because it's fashioned after a real hero, librarian Nancy Pearl of Seattle, Washington.You can pick one up over at Archie McPhee for $9.95.

Noriyuki Saitoh creates these delightful life-sized insects from carved bamboo. (more…)

People who drive Tesla's Model X have a cool "easter egg" feature built right into their vehicle: a holiday music and light show set to the tune of Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s "Wizards In Winter"! When activated, this all-electric luxury vehicle will display a synchronized show using the car's headlights, turn signals, and falcon wings.The video above was shot by a woman in Ohio who writes:

For the past five holiday seasons or so, a group of my friends and I have been (somewhat reluctantly at this point) playing the LDB game."LDB" stands for "Little Drummer Boy."To win, you must survive the holiday season without hearing any version of "Little Drummer Boy." There are no prizes, just bragging rights that you successfully dodged another year of "Pa rum pum pum pum."Now I've learned there's a new game in town. It's called Whamageddon.To play this game, you just have to avoid hearing Wham!'s 1984 Christmas hit "Last Christmas" from December 1 to midnight on December 24. If you hear it, you're out. Grab the hashtag #whamageddon and enter "Whamhalla" by admitting your defeat on social media.Want to win? Do NOT watch this video:https://youtu.be/E8gmARGvPlIThe good news? It's finally ok to watch Pee-wee's 1988 Christmas special during the holiday season. Go ahead, click on Grace Jones' "Little Drummer Boy":https://youtu.be/9WDreOyCwvU(Lifehacker)Thanks, Timmmii!

German blogger Andrea David, aka filmtourismus, travels the globe to find the exact spot where movies and TV shows were filmed. (more…)

This week, German authorities will introduce a law that will allow law enforcement agencies to order companies to insert back doors into their products to assist in law enforcement queries; the law is backed by Thomas de Maizière, Germany's Interior Minister. (more…)