One approach to fight mosquito-borne diseases is to introduce huge numbers of sterilized male mosquitos to beat out the wild males in competition for female mosquitos. The challenge is that it's expensive to airdrop the mosquitos from airplanes and often difficult to traverse developing nations by ground. Now, WeRobotics has prototyped a drone that carries hundreds of thousands of mosquitos and releases them at just the right moment. The first experiments in South or Central America will take place in the next few months. From IEEE Spectrum:

I don't doubt this guy knows what he's doing. But every once in awhile, non-living things like to show living things who is really in charge.

A majority of the UK's members of parliament somehow know that non-human animals are incapable feeling pain or experiencing emotions. I guess that means when you see an animal suffering, it's just faking it. From the UK's Independent:

Mark writes, "Nothing marks the holidays like the predictability of a formulaic chestnut featuring '90s stars, magical religious holidays, SFW romance, good hair, and reliable stable camera work. For all those who need a bit more than TV can deliver, my kids and I created the Hallmark Holiday Movie Bot, which generates one feel-good Chrismukkah hit after another for your seasonal celebration!"

BBC News attended this month's Flat Earth International Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. I especially appreciate the fine craftsmanship of Chris Pontius, the "professional 'Flat Earth' model artist."

The yoga pants are $42, and the swim shorts are $45; either one will turn you into a Renaissance hunk. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) (more…)

The crackdown on "influencers" engaging in undisclosed paid endorsement roiled Instagram last year, but now the crackdown on sexual misconduct on influencers is affecting readership at Mic, Upworthy, GOOD, and Slate, who quietly paid influencers like George Takei to promote their articles on their personal accounts. (more…)

By day, "Olivia Doll" sits on the boards of seven academic journals; by night, she's a Staffordshire terrier named Ollie, owned by Mike Daube, a public health expert in Perth, Australia. (more…)

Disaster capitalism depends on the idea that "There is No Alternative" and that the populace can only sit by passively while their infrastructure, government, homes and schools are hijacked and sold off to low-bidder corporations to financially engineer and then extract rent from. (more…)

Charles Manson, despite (or rather because of) his infamy as a charismatic cult leader and vicarious spree-killer, is often posed as a serious and influential musician. His fleeting connections to late-60s artists of repute are threaded into music history as metaphors for the dangerous genius and subversion of rock itself, a flame occasionally nursed by covers released by popular artists. But Manson wasn't a genius and his music is crazy trash. People only say otherwise because of the murders.The BBC reviews his oevre: (more…)

"Clouds?"Now I'll be spending all day seeing what other divine nightmares await in the kingdom of KoTH YouTube poop.

Thinkgeek's $120 Darth Vader Blazer has lovely touches like satin lapels and shoulder-stripes, vaderish control panel lights embroidered over the breast, and Death Star themed buttons and lining. (more…)

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It works surprisingly well, giving every scene so enhanced the superficial intensity of a church-mandated declaration of love.

In these spin-filled times, the documentary PsyWar feels as relevant as when it was released. Metanoia Films has made it available for free to all, so check it out.Via a review on PR Watch:

Nothing like going to a tropical dive spot known to be "untouched" by humans, only to find a giant plastic garbage patch stretching as far as the eye can see. The Doobie Brothers music adds a nice touch. (more…)

Numberpile looks at an interesting phenomenon using a common Japanese toy: a small paper balloon that can be crushed and re-inflated. What's the science behind it? (more…)

In some parts of America's hinterlands, older folks call green peppers "mangoes." Turns out it goes back to a recipe substitution from the 1700s. (more…)

Charles Manson, the infamous cult leader whose followers killed 9 people in 1969, died today at age 83.

Threatening to sue journalists who paint you in an unflattering light has been a pretty effective tactic for the Trump crowd -- hell, Trump's special advisor Peter Thiel managed to destroy an entire media company in retaliation for their coverage of him, by secretly fronting legal fees for a clownish wrestler who had sex with his friend's wife -- but multiply accused child molestor and Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore isn't very good at it. (more…)

Jeweler Camille "Tin Man" Walton features this gorgeous "ghost ring" on her Tumblr; no sign of it in her store, but fwoar. (via Super Punch)

Today a high-tech shirt came into my life. The shirt is made by Ably, and you can supposedly wear it for months on end and it will stay clean. Ably’s garments are made with something called Filium, a non-toxic product that makes the material resistant to liquid and odor. I wore the shirt for the first time today, and the way it interacts with water is pretty cool. I purposely flicked a little water on the shirt’s sleeve, and the water just beaded up into droplets and slid right off the shirt at high speed.I played with the shirt in my sink for a while, watching water droplets roll around the fabric before sliding off. I swear, it’s as fun to play with as it is to wear. But I got a little over-zealous and found that it does get wet if you submerge it into water.I also experimented with ketchup, squirting a couple of drops onto the shirt. Unbelievably, the ketchup drops, like the water, rolled off the shirt. There was no trace of ketchup to be seen. Unfortunately I then tried Tabasco sauce, and used my finger to help push the tiny drops off of it, which caused the sauce to sink into the material. It took a bit of scrubbing with soap and water to clean off the stain. I wondered if touching the beaded sauce had something to do with it staining the shirt, so I hesitantly sprinkled more Tobasco sauce on the fabric, this time keeping my hands far away from the beaded liquid. This time the sauce rolled off the shirt just like the ketchup and water did. Lesson learned: don’t use your fingers to nudge off a spill - just let it do its thing.When I first heard about this shirt I was a bit skeptical about its comfort, thinking it would feel too synthetic, but it’s surprisingly very soft and feels like a regular cotton tee. It’s a great shirt to have for travelers or people who are sloppy. https://youtu.be/LHPplZE7_p4

8bitdo's Zero is a wee, well-made and thoroughly wonderful bluetooth game controller. I bought it by accident, thinking I'd found a surprisingly cheap wireless pad, only to learn (to my shrieking amusement) that its low price is caused by its low volume.It really is tiny, at about 2.75" long and 1.5" high. It comes with a keychain ring and is by no means unreasonably large for this purpose:There's a D-pad, four buttons under the right thumb, two trigger buttons and, in the middle, a start and select button. A short USB cable is provided for recharging, but it doesn't function as a USB controller. Just wireless.It comes in white with a blue or red back; the red one has a vaguely Nintendo-esque stripe across the front, too.That is not only works but is well-made and durable makes it an absolutely fabulous stocking stuffer for people who play games -- especially given that it's compatible with virtually everything that hosts bluetooth, including Android, iOS, Windows and MacOS, and Linux/RetroPi. There's even a remote shutter mode for cameras, though I didn't test it.It's not plain sailing all the way, though. Pairing it with my MacBook was easy, but it took a couple of attempts on my Windows 10 Zotac ZBox. Moreover, it lost its connection twice in a month, requiring unpairing and re-pairing to get working again.Part of the problem is the inadequate instructions for shifting it between compatibility modes that apply to each system. Use the wrong sequence of presses and it'll show up as a keyboard instead of a joypad, or as some random zalgo gadget that does nothing except stay rudely paired with your PC.Oddly, there's no button 3 in Windows joystick mode. It jumps from 2 to 4. So anything that expects it (e.g. MAME) will need to be configured likewise.Finally, it is perhaps too small, at least for twitchy arcade play. I tended to find myself holding it like a harmonica to get precise control -- but in that position, the triggers are much harder to hit.At about $17, though, who's complaining?PROS: Tiny but well-made; Cheap; Works on everything. Tiny USB cable.

Bob Marshall, the anti-trans bigot who just lost his delegate seat to transgender delegate-elect Danica Roem, wrote an angry letter to the Washington Post, misgendering his successor. WaPo corrected his insults, which did not sit well with him. (more…)

Spoiler: it's Flesh Jenga. Wes Goodman, a Republican representative in the Ohio state house who championed anti-gay causes, quit Friday after being caught having sex with another man in his office. Moreover, he reportedly was known for making unwelcome advances toward younger men, reports Cleveland.com.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (previously) is practically the only US regulator we can be proud of -- founded by Elizabeth Warren before she ran for the Senate, the CFRB is a consumer protection agency that has been at the forefront of reining in criminal activities like Wells Fargo's nationwide frauds and Equifax's dox attack on the USA, as well as being the best defense Americans have against predatory loan-sharks masquerading as "payday lenders," abusive debt-collectors, racial discrimination in lending, and the student loan racket. (more…)

Thalia Holmes summarizes the "Exposing Human Trafficking and Forced Labor" panel at the 10th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Johannesburg, where veteran reporters who've broken major modern slavery stories discussed their methods and offered advice for others pursuing similar stories. (more…)

In 1936, John Maynard Keynes suggested that a fair economic system would lead to "the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital" -- implying that we have a choice between fairness and extreme wealth, and that the two couldn't peacefully co-exist. (more…)

Peter Thiel was always a controversial figure in tech, known as an acerbic doctrinaire libertarian who'd publicly declared that "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," a situation he blamed in part on "the extension of the franchise to women," -- but people still took his money and sought his help in part because he was viewed as a mostly harmless crank and in part because he had a titanic amount of money and connections to throw at organizations that legitimized him by affiliating themselves with him. (more…)

The Ultimate DevOps and Cloud Computing Bundle will familiarize you with Amazon Web Services infrastructure management, as well as continuous integration and delivery practices. It’s being offered in the Boing Boing Store now for $49.Even with Amazon’s developer-friendly tools, rolling out changes to thousands (or millions) of users is no easy task. That's why DevOps engineers are so valuable — they make software updates happen, and ensure that added features won’t sink the ship. To teach you the tricks of this essential tech trade, this collection includes the following seven courses:

https://youtu.be/LI87E9m4YoQWhen I was a teen, I traded the first nickle ($5) bag of weed I'd ever acquired for a friend's copy of the 1971 Whole Earth Catalog. I traded intoxication for knowledge, for "access to tools," and I have never looked back. That 1971 catalog set me onto the DIY path and I have never wavered from it.In this wonderful video, by way of Kevin Kelly's Facebook feed, another hero of mine from that era, Lloyd Kahn (of the amazing Shelter books) thumbs through his copy of the very first Whole Earth Catalog, the 64-page, fall of 1968 edition. Lloyd claims in the video that not even Stewart Brand has a copy of this edition.I love how Lloyd's copy is all marked up. I recently found my 1971 edition in the attic. I too had marked, circled, checked, and made notes to the entries where I'd sent off for books, magazines, and other resources. It's so surreal to be able to lay my eyes upon the moment I discovered books, tools, places, and people that would go on to become hugely important in my life.BTW: If you want to learn more about the history of the Catalog and read some of its seminal essays, check out The Whole Earth Field Guide from MIT which I reviewed here on Boing Boing earlier this year.

Cigar box guitar maker and player Shane Speal made a 2-string cigar box guitar and took it for a spin. Sounds great! He says: "27.5" baritone scale. Strung with E and A strings. Not sure what it's tuned to...some sort of power chord. I just tightened the strings and hit record."

Emily James (previously) writes, "The air in Delhi is so polluted the government’s instruments can't measure it but they are still going to run a half marathon on Sunday!" (more…)

A spokesman from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Ault Field, WA, said of the unnamed crew behind the giant sky-dong, "we find this absolutely unacceptable, of zero training value and we are holding the crew accountable." (more…)

An 81-year-old gentleman from Tennessee was showing off his gun in a Tennessee church during a "gun-violence at houses of worship" chat, when he accidentally shot himself and his wife. A woman in the church kitchen heard the gunshot and called the police thinking they were under attack, causing local schools nearby to go into lockdown.According to Reuters:

Cleveland games developer Max Sledroom went on a Twitter tear about the amazing, surreal, awful design experience that is The Cheesecake Factory, a place whose calorie bombs rank among America's deadliest, and whose strange religious projects have made headlines. (more…)

Kate Beaton (previously) is the creator of the astoundingly great Hark! A Vagrant webcomic) and is a bona fide Canadian culture hero; she is also in the midst of a terrible family crisis and wants our help. (more…)

EFF has just launched its new Announcing the Security Education Companion, a beautifully organized, clearly written set of materials to help "people who would like to help their communities learn about digital security but are new to the art of security training." (more…)

https://youtu.be/ar2UyGn27RUCool 3D World's "Earth and Moon" is just over 2 minutes' worth of goopy, poopy, sexy, planetary, grotesque and wonderful experimental 3D animation; it's like a hand-turned, grownup version of those super-weird algorithmically generated Youtube Kids spam videos, but in a really, really good way. (via JWZ)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TawqlKebBOsSparrows Lockpicks (previously) has just released an extremely clever practice lock called "The Revolver" that makes four locks out of a single core: "Pinning configuration starts with Standard pins at 12 o'clock (Marked with a small arrow) and then moves clockwise to Spool, Serrated and finally Mushroom pins. The end result is a lock that gets progressively harder to pick open." (more…)

On Strange Horizons, Rachel Cordasco reviews the latest Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, the third such volume, and makes a compelling case for exploring the amazing world of Tamil pulp, expertly translated into English. (more…)

40% of Detroiters have no internet access. The Detroit Community Technology Project and similar projects across the city are skipping over the telcos altogether and wiring up their own mesh broadband networks, where gigabit connections are transmitted by line-of-site wireless across neighborhoods from the tops of tall buildings; it's called the Equitable Internet Initiative. (more…)

Trump's FCC is gutting the Lifeline service, which gives poor families a $9.25/month subsidy for fixed or mobile broadband; under the new rules, poor people will have to buy their connections from major carriers (who often don't offer Lifeline plans), and will no longer be able to use the resellers who presently constitute 70% of the Lifeline connections. (more…)

Criminal televangelist cum soup bucket peddler Jim Bakker told his infomercial fans that the government had banned the phrase "Merry Christmas," but it's OK to say it again because Christian fought long and hard to reclaim the right.From Yahoo:

Trace Lysette plays Shea on Amazon Studios' Transparent, one of my favorite shows. Lysette says the star of the show, Jeffrey Tambor, sexually harassed and assaulted her during the second season.From The Hollywood Reporter:

Electricity here in Los Angeles is 17.8 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). Not far away, Mexicans get solar electric for one-tenth the price. And by 2019, the price could drop to 1¢/kWh.From Electrek:

A police officer tries to get a group of boys to stop hanging out in an alley. The boys argue and argue, until one says, "Fuck you," while flipping him the bird. What the cop does next is surprising and a bit bizarre. Too good to be true!

An NBC News and Reuters joint investigation found deep ties between investors of the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City and the Russian mafia, organized crime, and drug traffickers. The Trump Organization issued a statement disavowing any knowledge or involvement with the criminals who financed the property. Even if that's true, it doesn't meant they are innocent, however.

Watching Natas Kaupas, inventor of the "wollie" and Santa Monica Airlines great, skate the streets is sheer poetry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1Vb8SB2HJ0I have no idea what the fellow is saying about this tribe of capybaras invading a warehouse in Brazil, I'm just glad that they did so and that he was there to record it for posterity.