You know, maybe everyone's favorite felonious scam artist evangelist Jim Bakker was right when he said the goberment wants to outlaw Merry Christmas. Just look at the police officers in Sudbury, Massachusetts who pulled a driver over just because he was transporting a Christmas tree. The department posted a photo of the tree (and what can be seen of the car peeking out from under it) on Facebook, remarking, "Sudbury PD would like to remind you to transport your Holiday trees responsibly. One of our Officer's stopped this vehicle on Route 20 today!"

Data wizard Gregor0410 crunched the numbers and figured out what the most common swear words on Reddit are. The top two, running almost neck and neck, are "fuck" and "shit." An order of magnitude behind are "dick" and "bullshit", with "cunt" and "cock" putting in respectable totals each similar in size to other swear words combined. [via]

In today's Daily 360 from the New York Times, Ingrid Burrington, author of Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure points out the stuff in a city intersection that keep bits flowing.

It's one thing to pull off a successful fraud online, it's another thing to get away with it -- when crooks order merchandise with stolen credit cards or make withdrawals with stolen bank details, they risk leaving a train back to themselves. (more…)

Breaking news from America’s Finest News Source:

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.WE URGE YOU TO JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and Other Stuff. You can also now join through Patreon!HOLIDAY GIFT-GIVING ALERT: Every kid wants Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series, 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…)

Kraftwerk's first recorded concert was in 1970, according to this YouTube page. Here they are, decades before their time, awakening an audience whose reaction to the German electronic band runs the gamut from boredom, befuddlement and suspicion to grooving delight and rapturous laughter.

During Roy Moore's judicial bouts -- punctuated by frequent removals from the bench for gross misconduct -- he was part of the mass incarceration wave in America, which has resulted in millions of black people being thrown in prison on flimsy pretenses for long sentences, while whites in similar situations have gone free. (more…)

Morgan Stanley is one of the world's largest banks, so naturally it has racked up a long list of frauds, crimes, and misdemeanors, which it has emerged from largely unscathed, thanks to the unwillingness of governments to tackle corporate crime, especially in the finance sector. (more…)

At his war crimes tribunal Wednesday, Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak made a statement disdaining the court, then drank what he said was poison. He was rushed to hospital and died, according to reports, though courtroom footage depicts long moments of dithering confusion in the courtroom.

If you managed to snag a new MacBook on Black Friday, or just want to teach your aging desktop some new tricks, we’re offering a set of 10 powerful apps in our Cyber Monday Mac Bundle. This stockpile of productivity software is worth nearly $500, but we’ve got the whole lot for a pay-what-you-want price. Here’s what’s included:Path Finder 7: A significant upgrade to Finder, it provides dual-pane views, batch file renaming, and other clever sorting tools.Photolemur 2.2 Spectre: Family License: Enhance your photos with artificially-intelligent filters and effects.Live Home 3D: Standard Edition: A 3D modeling tool for interior design with intuitive controls and a massive object library.Pagico 8: Keep track of your projects with generated task flowcharts and a robust tagging system.VPN Unlimited: 3-Yr Subscription: Protect your privacy online and block ads with this acclaimed VPN.MacGourmet Deluxe: Manage all of your family recipes in an easy-to-use visual database.Screens 4: Remote control your Mac from anywhere in the world through a secure SSH tunnel.WallPaper Wizard 2: Beautify your desktop screen with thousands of curated backgrounds.iLocker PRO: Password protect any app on your Mac, and get notified of security breaches.Timing Productivity: Keep track of how long you spend working in certain apps for automatic time tracking.Beat the average price for this Cyber Monday Mac Bundle in the Boing Boing Store to lock in a sweet deal on all ten apps. Pay anything at all and you'll still get iLocker Pro and Timing Productivity.

Donald Trump retweeted anti-muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of far-right political group Britain First — and a criminal convicted of racially aggravated harassment who is currently facing more hate crimes charges in the UK.The group, so reviled even prominent Trump supporters were critical of his choice to promote them, was made famous after a member assassinated MP Jo Cox, shrieking the party's name as he shot and stabbed her to death.The group's leader, Paul Golding, was jailed after a series of "Mosque invasions" staged to intimidate UK muslims.One of the video purports to depict a "Muslim immigrant" attacking a disabled Dutch boy, but local media reported that the attacker was neither. The other videos purportedly depict a Muslim man smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary and an "Islamist" mob beating that was actually filmed during Egypt's 2011 revolution.“GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS YOU AMERICA!” wrote Fransen after Trump retweeted her to his 44 million followers.Fransen was convicted of aggravated harassment after accosting a Muslim mother-of-four on the streets during a "Christian Patrol." She was arrested again two weeks ago following a fascist rally and charged with "threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour," with a hearing scheduled at Belfast Magistrates' Court on 14 December.https://twitter.com/Beschizza/status/935868372633489409

Not only is geckopfote's keyboard an amazing work of papercraft, it's one of those bizarre 40%-size ortholinear ones: "Yes, it's a fully functional Planck keyboard, from olkb. And yes, I like the feeling of paper under my fingertips." [via]Adds geckopfote, when asked if they just covered keys in paper: "No it wasn't that easy. It was a long journey of trial and error. I wanted to make DSA style keycaps and so I did some QCad drawings where I tried to fit the right dimensions. Then, in short, print, spray, cut, fold, clue - ready!"It being Reddit, someone was soon along to inform the creator that his work was kirigami, not origami.

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In 1995, Penn and Teller released Desert Bus, the worst game ever made, a "VeriSimulator" that challenged you to keep a bus moving between the white lines on an eight-hour Arizona/Nevada drive. If you made it, you got to spend another 8 hours driving back. The bus had just enough veer in its steering that you had to correct it periodically, so you couldn't just tape the controller button down. (more…)

The latest Humble Bundle features the books of the most excellent Tachyon Press, with a who's who of my favorite SF writers and collections, from Ellen Klages and Jeff Vandermeer, to Bruce Sterling and Peter Watts, to Patricia McKillip and Brandon Sanderson, and even me! (more…)

Epic Games makes the wildly successful multiplayer free-to-play game Fortnite, which is the locus of a pitched battle between players and publisher over game-mods, especially cheat-hacks that give unfair advantage to some players. (more…)

This eBoy-esque procedurally generated city brings to mind short story by J.G. Ballard called "Report on an Unidentified Space Station," which appeared in one of my favorite science fiction anthologies, Semiotext(e) SF which was edited by Rudy Rucker and Robert Anton Wilson.

One of Florida Gov. Rick Scott's consultants swears this photo is not what it seems. Via The Miami New Times:

Sandcastles is a web-based amusement in which you can quickly build clusters of virtual towers and admire them for a few seconds until ocean waves knock them down. My kids and I loved his other, longer creations, like Windosill, Head, and Levers.

Infinitown is a three-dimensional city that lives in your browser, complete with folks going about their business and clouds drifting lazily overhead. It goes on forever, as the name suggests, in endless procedurally-generated loveliness. [via]There's something perfect about it: just enough suggestive detail to get the mind rolling, not so much that its shallows become too obvious, and a clean and colorful animation style. There's no game to it, but the creator, Little Workshop, published a traditional grid-based dungeon crawler with the same random map trickery and visual polish: Keepout.

Why Do Cities Matter? Local Growth and Aggregate Growth is a 2015 paper written by University of Chicago and UC Berkeley economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti, which purports to show that the reasons cities are so expensive is that bourgeois NIMBYism drives affluent people to raise spurious environmental challenges to new developments, stalling growth. (more…)

This essential purchase is only a dollar, but you have to pay shipping: a 1.25" magnet featuring a suave cartoon whale saying "WHALE HELLO." (Amazon) Best buy a dozen, then, just to be sure. We've been arguing all day about whether this is better than the "snailed it" magnet, and, frankly, things are getting kind of heated.

The Mechanics' Institute is one of my favorite places in San Francisco.The full service library is wonderful, as is having a comfortable place downtown to just sit, use the internet, and not be bombarded with life advice from baristas. The MI also puts on wonderful speakers series, writers workshops, and is home to the best chess room ever.Membership is a mere $120 a year. I have an innate resistance to joining things, but this is one heck of a library.This giving Tuesday, please consider the Mechanics' Institute.

https://youtu.be/bZjlz_GqvPQProfessional trencherman Matt Stonie ate 3 pounds of liquid honey in four minutes and lived to tell about it. I got nauseated just watching it.

I share with you my favorite coffee mug.Years ago my mother gave me this lovely, lovely coffee mug depicting several owls.I searched for another but misread the maker's mark as "Muana."My mother has given me many owl shaped coffee mugs, and doesn't remember giving any specific mug, let alone where she bought it.The maker's mark actually reads "Mara." Mara makes a whole line of animal-themed ceramic mugs.Now I have a set of 4. I mismatched owls as I like the other styles too. All owls tho. Don't mess with other animals.One (1) MARA STONEWARE COLLECTION - 12 Oz Coffee Cup Collectible Square Bottom Dinner Mugs - Night Owl via Amazon

Apparently sexual harassment is a woman's fault when she goes out of her way to make herself attractive, according to actress Angela Lansbury.In an interview with Radio Times, the 92-year-old actress said women need to take at least some of the blame for sexual harassment and rape.“There are two sides to this coin. We have to own up to the fact that women, since time immemorial, have gone out of their way to make themselves attractive. And unfortunately it has backfired on us - and this is where we are today," she said.“We must sometimes take blame, women. I really do think that. Although it’s awful to say we can’t make ourselves look as attractive as possible without being knocked down and raped.”According to Uproxx:

CIPPIC is the University of Ottawa's Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, Canada's public interest digital rights advocates. CIPPIC champions the public interest in Canada's law and technology debates. We bring our legal experience and expertise to bear in Canada's most important battles in copyright, privacy, surveillance, and internet regulation.CIPPIC is in its fifteenth year standing guard for Canadians' digital rights, and our team of public interest technology lawyers need your support. For the past fifteen years, CIPPIC has been advocating for Canadians' digital rights before Parliament, before the courts, and before privacy and telecommunications regulators:* In 2004, CIPPICcs intervention in the music labels' file-sharing lawsuits in the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal led to the inclusion of crucial privacy protections. The labels ultimately dropped the lawsuits.* In 2008, CIPPIC's complaint to Canada's Privacy Commissioner about Facebook led to sweeping changes in how Facebook treats your information, and prompted action by privacy regulators around the globe.* CIPPIC is a champion of net neutrality, arguing before the Canada's regulators in 2009 (net neutrality for ISPs), 2010 (net neutrality for mobile phones), 2011 (fair 'Usage Based Billing' practices) and 2016-17 (differential pricing - charging different prices for different types of Internet traffic).* In 2015, CIPPIC partnered with with Citizen Lab to publish a headline-making report on Canadian law enforcement's use of 'IMSI-catchers' - an eavesdropping tool for intercepting mobile phone traffic and tracking the location of mobile phone users.* In 2017, we intervened in a half dozen court cases addressing issues that ranged from asking whether police should have power to search your mobile phone contents on arrest to inquiring into Canadian courts' powers to make orders with sweeping international effects.* CIPPIC has argued for the public interest in the Supreme Court of Canada over a dozen times in the past decade, starting with an an intervention arguing for consumer e-contracting rights in 2007's Dell Computer Corp. v. Union des consommateurs, 2007 SCC 34, and continuing with an application to intervene in The Queen v. Philip Morris International, Inc., where we will argue for transparency and accountability in the government's use of big data and algorithmic decision-making.As we look forward to our next fifteen years, we don't see Canada's tech policy challenges getting any easier. We are fighting for privacy protections and balanced copyright in international trade negotiations (NAFTA 2.0 and the resurrected TPP), we are seeing challenges to balanced copyright in the courts (appeals on parody and fair dealing decisions and class actions targeting file-sharers), and we are advocating for Canadian's rights as the Canadian law enforcement and security establishment continues to adopt new legal a nd technological tools - with scary implications for privacy and liberty - in the name of security.We also see new issues for Canadians' digital rights on the horizon: we have already done work on autonomous cars and 'smart cities', and are looking at the implications for Canadians' rights as we move to embrace big data, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence tools. There has never been a greater need for CIPPIC's experience and expertise in championing Canadians' digital rights in tech law policy-making.As you consider your annual giving recipients this year, consider giving to CIPPIC to help us fight for your digital rights. Giving to CIPPIC offers some special advantages:* Get a charitable receipt! Housed within the University of Ottawa, your donation to CIPPIC qualifies as a charitable donation.* Each dollar you donate on November 28, Giving Tuesday, will be matched 50 cents to the dollar to a maximum of $500 per donor for the first $150,000 donated to the University of Ottawa.It is said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Fortunately, Canadians have CIPPIC to help in standing guard.

Wells Fargo didn't limit its fraud to robbing 2,000,000 ordinary depositors, struggling mortgage borrowers, 800,000 car loan borrowers, mom and pop businesses, and home owners -- the bank's top foreign-exchange desk bankers robbed hundreds of the company's large business customers, in a move that inflated the Fargo execs' annual bonuses. (more…)

https://youtu.be/8pffcngJJq0These thieves look like they know what they are doing. They are dressed head to toe in while coveralls and their faces appear to be obscured as well. They park their car in a suburban neighborhood and park next to a new Mercedes in a driveway. They calmly get out of their car and use a wireless device to get the Mercedes's key code from the fob inside the house. Then one of the men gets in the Mercedes and drives away. No broken glass, no alarms. Time elapsed - less than 60 seconds.[via Gizmodo]

The Casa Jasmina project (previously) is an automated smart house designed to be made of open source hardware, with the needs of the people who live there -- not the corporations who extract rent from them -- in mind. (more…)

James O'Keefe, a right-wing troll with a criminal record, tried to trick the Washington Post by directing a female associate to falsely tell a reporter from the newspaper that Alabama Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore raped her when she was 15 then forced her to get an abortion. O'Keefe's organization secretly recorded the woman telling the lie to a Washington Post reporter, most likely because O'Keefe was hoping the reporter would say that the paper would use this information to prevent Moore from being elected. The Washington Post didn't fall for it.Via CBS News:

A baby elephant is trapped in a ditch in Kerala, India until a group of people rescue it with an earth mover. Watch the magical moment when, after the baby elephant makes its way back to its family, who is waiting for it by a river, one of the adult elephants (its mother or father?) turns to the humans and twice gives them a thankful salute.

Marco Arment offers a review of things that make recent MacBook Pros a hard sell: unreliable keyboards, the neglected wasteland of USB-C, and (of course) the TouchBar.

Instafired White House mistake Anthony Scaramucci took exception to being insulted in an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper. So he threatened to sue its author, bringing upon himself instant if entirely predictable injury.

"Parasitic endeavours" is a short NSFW animation by Simon Christoph Krenn, with sound design by Matthias Urban, an entry in the emergent genre of ultra-realistic CGI human bodies behaving like unusual materials. [via Sploid]

Something nice, perhaps even wonderful, is going viral! Are birdcalls "slowed down", or lowered several octaves, examples of what the dinosaurs would have sounded like?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj36koXYJLs&feature=youtu.be&t=21shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNk-c_83JVohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lORidVdCYssA reddit user debunks the speculation, but substitutes an experimental effort to recreate dino song, by sound artist Courtney Brown.

In Sharing Things, Cookie Monster stars as Cookiegorgon, a monster who eats all the treats in town. Lots of inside jokes for those who love the series, including barfing up gummy worms and bad Eleven-themed puns. (more…)

On Monday, redditor smulz shared this video of himself as a child receiving a Nintendo Entertainment System as a gift in May of 1988.He writes, "I present to you my greatest shame. When my parents surprised me with a new Nintendo."Whoa, whoa, hold up. There's nothing to be ashamed of here, sir. Your video is an amazing glimpse into suburban eighties life, from the guinea pig cages to that giant TV on wheels to your striped alligator shirt and thick glasses to your kid brother repeating, "I don't want to play with it." That part where you freak out and cry over getting an NES? Pure gold.Please thank your mom for us for pulling out the camcorder to mark this important moment in your childhood, if for no other reason that we can enjoy it some nearly 30 years later.

The Dying Of The Light is a project shot by sfdrones.tv in the nighttime desert, but with a spotlight so bright that it reaches the intensity of daylight. (more…)

Roman De Giuli created MATEREALITY, his latest in series of abstract films of chemical and physical reactions shot in extreme closeup. (more…)

In 1999, 60 Minutes "wangled an invitation" to visit Jeff Bezos at his humble Seattle office. Amazon was just five years old at the time but already had a stock market value of $30B. They sent correspondent Bob Simon to Amazon's headquarters which was located near a pawn shop and a "porno parlor." Simon likened the space to a "college dorm" and gave billionaire Bezos a hard time about his desk (a door with 4x4 legs) and his car (a modest Honda sedan).Is it me or does Simon seem to be mocking Bezos?(reddit)

An article published on Fox News’ website incorrectly stated former President Jimmy Carter died at the age of 93 in a story about George H.W. Bush becoming the longest living president in U.S. history.The article originally claimed Carter and Ronald Reagan died at the same age, according to Snopes. As much as some Fox News fans might wish that alternative history were the case, Carter is still alive and celebrated his 93rd birthday Oct. 1.To be fair, gross factual errors are an inexcusable and unfortunate part of reporting and handling multiple facts — I’ve probably already made several of them in this article — but this particular gem seems to suggest a more over-eager attitude from Fox News. The Fox News article wasn’t even an inaccurate death story about Carter, but a casual error that someone should have easily avoided when looking up his age. No one knows how old Jimmy Carter is off the top of their head.These strange slips aren’t uncommon to Fox News' cable channel either. Sean Hannity referred to Hillary as “President Clinton” during a monologue on his show in October.Fox News has since corrected the article and apologized for the error.Image: Mark Turner

Here’s a throwback to a small kid in oversized glasses freaking out about receiving an NES for Christmas. Yes! It even comes with a gun. This adorable little wreck cries as he hugs and thanks his father for the gift. He then goes to his room to find money to pay his dad back. Reddit user “smulz” posted the video saying it was from Christmas 1988. A then-farsighted “smulz” waited two whole months for the gift of a lifetime, his mother says in the video. More euphoric “oohs” are squealed out as he unboxes his new system to the Ghostbusters theme playing on the tv in the background. Oh the number of elves I would sacrifice to ever experience that type of joy.

M.A.Di. is a fully functional house that comes as a flat pack. You can unfold and assemble it in six hours – about as long as some IKEA furniture takes (at least when I'm building it). You don't need a concrete base, just a level ground, so finding a place to set it isn't difficult. If you want to move, just fold it up back up, ship it to your next location, and reassemble.Designed by Renato Vidal from Italy, the house is earthquake resistant and ranges in price from $32,800 – $72,650. It comes in five sizes, ranging from "Single Module" at 27 sqm (290 sqft) to "Triple Module" at 84 sqm (904 sqft).Here are some images from the M.A.Di. site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O17hWSQhyxsBack in July, I blogged the Kickstarter campaign for Technology Will Save Us's Dough Universe kits: kits for 4-7 year olds that use conductive dough to make squishy circuits that can power all kinds of electronics projects. (more…)

A United Airlines flight traveling from Munich, Germany to Newark, NJ had to make an emergency landing at London Heathrow Airport after several passengers complained of feeling light-headed and nauseous after food was served. Paramedics came on board and took one passenger off the plane.According to American Council on Science and Health:

In lieu of the ubiquity of online shopping, Cyber Monday is basically just Black Friday 2. But that means you get a second chance to get some great deals on some of our favorites from the Boing Boing Store. Check out some of our top picks below:MIM Hybrid Smart WatchesThis smartwatch from MIM offer something different than WatchOS and Android Wear: an actual, physical timepiece. It uses the 123 G0 app for simple notification forwarding and fitness tracking, and complements the watch's simplicity with a 730-day battery life. As an added bonus, it can even be used as a wireless remote for your smartphone camera. We usually have it for $30 off it’s $99 retail price, but you can get one on Cyber Monday for just $49.SHEEX Performance Cooling Duvet CoverIf you have trouble finding a balance between freezing cold and dripping with sweat while you sleep, this SHEEX duvet cover might do the trick. it snugly fits your existing bedding and gives you a comfortable cover that’s cool to the touch. Your duvet won’t ball up in one of the corners either — it features some clever interior ties to keep it in place. This SHEEX Performance Cooling Duvet Cover normally goes for $190, our store carries it for $151.99, and the Cyber Monday price is only $139.99.Pay What You Want: Black Friday Windows Bundle ft. Disk Drill PROSpruce up your PC with these 10 productivity tools. The main highlight is Disk Drill PRO, which provides you with a comprehensive data recovery solution. Other useful tools include WALTR 2, a utility for transferring files to iOS devices without iTunes, and Corel PaintShop Pro 2018, a worthy stand-in for Photoshop. To celebrate the giving season, you can pay what you want for 10-app collection.FRESHeBUDS Pro Magnetic Bluetooth EarbudsCatching up to the industry trend of headphone jack removal has definitely been a pain, but these FRESHeBUDS Bluetooth earbuds might change your mind. They get up to six hours of battery life, and help conserve power by only pairing with your device when their magnetic link is broken. These buds are also resistant against water and sweat, and won’t fly out of your ears mid-stride. The MSRP is 119.95, but we’ve got them for $23.95 on Cyber Monday — $6 off our normal price.TRNDlabs Spectre DroneThis drone makes it easy for novice pilots to start flying instantly. It offers superior control for easy stunts, and can fly farther than most with its 50 meter range. The Spectre also comes equipped with an impressive HD camera for aerial videography, and is capable of FPV flight with a separate VR headset. Our typical $99 price is 50% off retail, and you can pick one up for just $79.99 with coupon code CYBER20.Ellusionist Pyro Mini FireshooterPull off some fiery illusions with this wrist-mounted Pyro Mini Fireshooter. At the press of a button, It launches a small bundle of flammable material up to 30 feet. It’s totally safe to use indoors, and you get 600 fireballs with a single battery charge. Get your pyromaniac hands on this accessory for only $109.99 on Cyber Monday, $15 less than our standard price, and $40 off retail value.The Complete Computer Science BundleGet a comprehensive computer science education with this 8-course bundle. Aside from learning 4 different languages, you’ll get introduced to fundamental concepts in algorithms, data structures, object-oriented programming, and database management. These materials are worth $367, but the Cyber Monday price is $25, $14 off our usual offer.Windscribe VPN: 5-Yr Pro SubscriptionProtect all of your online activity with a subscription to Windscribe. This VPN provides strong encryption for unlimited mobile and desktop devices, and prevents against invasive geolocation, ad tracking, and ISP traffic monitoring. We normally have sell a 5-year subscription for $39.99, and it’s $29.99 on Cyber Monday (use code WINDSCRIBESD20).

This is the lowest price I've seen for the Amazon Fire 7 Tablet - $30. I've had one for a year or so, and bought a second one for my wife. It has Alexa built-in, and works well as a video streamer and Web browser. I keep mine on my desk and use it to look at my outdoor Nest camera feed, the changing price of Bitcoin, and Boing Boing's live traffic stats.

An exterminator had a helluva job with a massive wasp nest in a Louisiana shed. This video shows an edited version of what what it means to be "mad as a hornet" – these critters did not take kindly to the exterminator being in their presence. You can hear the constant pings as they shell his camera, but it didn't deter professional beekeeper Jude Verret, who's been an exterminator for 12 years. He says he's seen wasp nests that were almost this big before but this one "was really huge." The job surprisingly took him only 45 minutes, and he finished without a sting.Via Science Alert