The NRA would have you believe gun control is an us-vs-them situation. It's closer to being an us-and-them-vs-NRA-and-the-politicians-they-own situation.From a PEW research poll via CNN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urm16MTDi6AMore guns is clearly the answer! Texas attorney general Ken Paxton appeared on FoxNews to urge folks to carry guns in church. Regardless how odd or uncomfortable it might feel, someone has to be there to stop the next attacker!Via ThinkProgress:

The original, iconic and much replicated Robby the Robot suit is up for auction.Via Bonhams:

City of Miami firefighters William Bryson, Kevin Meizoso, David Rivera, Justin Rumbaugh, Harold Santana, and Alejandro Sese (pictured above) were fired over an incident in which a black lieutenant’s family photos were vandalized inside a fire station.The City of Miami apparently mistakenly released the above photographs of the former firefighters, and would like media outlets to stop sharing them.Via the Miami Herald:

Lance Braithwaite, 81, is a gadget writer par excellence, with a keen mind for technology and a deep faith in the utility and virtue of manuals. He is now seldom-published; he roamed the magazines in the pre-Internet era, a time of long, technical reviews. “My biggest problem with many of the reviews you get, especially online,” he writes, “is that every schmuck with a computer figures he's a journalist.”

Boing Boing is proud to welcome Wellbots as a sponsor!DJI Spark is the best and most affordable drone on the market. It has a sophisticated design, latest technology and can serve all of your amateur or consumer based purposes. Spark is super easy to fly and shoot incredible videos. Check it out right there! (link: https://www.wellbots.com/dji-spark-mini-drone/)Don’t forget to look at the combo pack to get the full range of accessories: smart flight battery, charging hub, propeller guards…If you’re feeling like flying, let us help with a $30 coupon using the code BOING30.For the DJI Spark Fly More Combo, with the code BOING40, users get $40 off.

Single image super-resolution (SISR) is an emerging technology that uses automated texture synthesis to enhance dithered and blurry photos to nearly pristine resolution. This example from EnhanceNet-PAT shows one type. There's even a free website called Let's Enhance where you can up-res your own images. (more…)

iFixit Video always does informative overviews of new gadgets, like this nifty look at how Face ID works. (more…)

Jay Carlson, an electrical engineer, takes a deep dive into the world of cheap hardware: “The Amazing $1 Microcontroller”.

I can't believe we've not posted this before! I searched high and low, but the closest thing I could find was this post from Mark featuring a camel biting a reporter's hair.Dance like it's still 2013 on the web:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMuVajp1RRo&feature=youtu.be

Just one of those odd internetal coincidences: the meeting of The Godfather of Soul, Cup Noodles, and a big-bucks doodad for wealthy folks in Japan.Let’s start with the show, with Mr. James Brown shilling for Cup Noodle in a Japanese TV commercial to the tune of his hit “Get Up.” Though he is often hard to understand, here there is a reason: he’s shouting in Japanese, and it’s not about being a sex machine.https://youtu.be/s5QSkgYttS4Of course you all know what Cup Noodles are. Large cups of salt with a few noodles and bits of dried veggies and some sort of meat. But they are delicious, reliable, and convenient as hell. I once took a trip to a country which shall remain unidentified, whose food I was warned in advance was “speculative,” and traveled with an entire suitcase of Cup Noodle. Ate it lunch and dinner for two weeks using the little tea maker in my hotel room to boil water. Compared to the offal, slugs, dog, and horse my friends were stuck eating I felt quite pleased with myself.The Japanese company Nissin has been making numerous varieties of instant noodles for many decades. Instant ramen (the noodly stuff) was invented in 1958 by Momofuku Ando. His secret was to flash fry the noodles. The idea of putting them in a cup came later, in 1971. In Japan, the different types of instant noodle dishes sold in cups and bowls, ready for hot water, takes up an entire aisle in the supermarket—you can’t imagine the huge number of varieties and different dishes. Japanese folks wolf this stuff down with a hearty slurp, the Chinese even more so. Wikipedia states that 96 billion servings of instant ramen are consumed around the world each year.According to Sora News 24 :

Silicon Valley has reinvented the pay toilet. But this time, you have to use an app to get in, yielding metadata (foeterdata?) to the powers that be. Yield the who, what, when and where of your bowel movements with Good2Go, the shittiest valley startup yet. Their turd-key solution is free now, but you'll have to spend a penny later.As photographed above by Christopher Kennedy (website), a developer from San Francisco: "Welcome to app hell. You need an app or a printed QR code to use the bathroom here. The app is “free for a limited time” so after that, I imagine they plan to disrupt pay toilets. Silicon Valley is a parody unto itself. You cannot democratize access to utilities by making a gated community of smartphone and subscriber users."

Acorn woodpeckers create acorn granaries that hold tens of thousands of acorns. Scientists are especially interested in their living arrangements, once described by Cold War ornithologists as communism. (more…)

Musical theatre student Evan W. Gadda has heard stories about Burning Man but hasn't made the journey himself. He is asthmatic. and because of cerebral palsy, paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, so making the trip to Black Rock City has been deemed impossible, until now. Through a HTC Vive VR headset, he has been able to attend the desert event virtually.His response? "Oh my God."The team at University of Nevada, Reno who created the experience for Gadda, also sent him to Squaw Valley to (virtually) ski, something he hasn't done since he was 15 years old. It brought him to tears.Here are the two videos he watched:https://youtu.be/pJfOygyaV0ohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtneuZxgtzcThanks, Andie!

I haven't read a novel in ages and the internet, in its succession of increasingly short content forms, reduced my attention span to the first sentence of a tweet. But what more do I need to read in order to know what I have felt? From beyond the semiotic grave claws Umberto Eco, offering (via a review of Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read ) barbed comfort to those of us who suffer reference anxiety. On Unread Books.

It's not just the underlying silver: per the sales copy, this $1000 "everyday object" is worth so much because "the signature Tiffany Blue® hue of this design’s enamel accent has been as iconic as the brand itself since its founding in 1837." (via Late Stage Capitalism)

After running Daniel Miller's long, excellent features about the many ways in which Disney has manipulated the local politics of Anaheim (home of Disneyland) to extract huge subsidies from the cash-strapped city, the company retaliated by barring its film critic from future press screenings of its films, a move that the company confirmed, calling the coverage "unfair." (more…)

Senator Rand Paul, architect of some of the most extreme policies of the Republican Party, had five of his ribs fractured (three were "displacement fractures") and suffered lung bruising after being beaten at his Kentucky home; his next-door neighbor, Rene Boucher (59), an anesthesiologist/inventor who is thought to have worked at a nearby hospital with Rand Paul, was arrested and bailed for fourth-degree assault. (more…)

Turkish purchasers of clothing from fast fashion brand Zara have discovered notes slipped into pockets of their clothes by workers begging for support in their struggle to get long-overdue wages. (more…)

Breaking news from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP): "A trove of 13.4 million records exposes ties between Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump’s billionaire commerce secretary, the secret dealings of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief fundraiser and the offshore interests of the queen of England and more than 120 politicians around the world."Of note is the revelation that Wilbur Ross, Trump's commerce secretary, has massive financial ties to Russians under US sanctions.

Getting a good view inside tight spaces usually involves some significant discomfort, or unqualified appliance disassembly. If you want to see what’s living in your crawlspace, or making noises in your car’s engine, you can pick up an Endoscopic Android Camera from the Boing Boing Store for $18.99.This flexible camera snake uses your PC or any OTG- and UVC-capable Android device as a view screen. The cable is 1m long and totally waterproof, so you’ll be able to reach inside a wide variety of hard-to-reach spots. With resolution up to 720p HD, you can use it to monitor underwater, or set it up as a discreet security camera.Grab an Endoscopic Android Camera form the Boing Boing Store for $18.99 today.

Teun van der Zalm developed an algorithm for creating nebulae in games, VR, and film. This showcase of the results, set to a lovely free track by Lee Rosevere, hints at the beauty that emerges from math. (more…)

Someone should get a large tattoo that says "Don't get tattoos of living celebrities unless you have the money for a cover-up." Behold, a gallery of suddenly recontextualized ink: (more…)

In Thursday's Paris Masters match against Rafael Nadal, Argentine-born Uruguayan tennis pro Pablo Cuevas impressed the crowds by volleying a between-the-legs shot, aka a "tweener." Wow, jaw officially dropped.(Digg)

Our friend John Park, maker of delightful electronic curiosities, has just posted a new tutorial. This time, he shows you how make a beverage cooler using using a thermoelectric cooling assembly.

Today is the Fifth Annual Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon Weekend, and for the first time, the speakers will be webcast, starting at 1PM Pacific: (more…)

Centuries of stodgy, numbing translations of The Odyssey have left it a bad classroom memory for generations, a classic enjoyed mostly through modernized retellings of one kind or another. But Emily Wilson isn't just the first woman classicist to publish a translation: hers is both radically contemporary and sharply attuned to the spirit and subtleties of the text.

Shipping containers have been used to make interesting homes for some time, but this spiky white cluster of containers jutting out of the California desert will be quite a sight to behold upon completion. (more…)

Flautist Youkie Ota thought she was going to nail Pierre Sancan's minimalist arrangement for flute and piano at the Carl Nielsen International competition in Odense, but hadn't planned on a butterfly swooping in to try and fuck her up! During the sonatina's second movement, it just totally landed on her face right there in the middle of the concert hall. Ota forged on through the Andante Espressivo, though, overcoming the insect in a long and brutal battle of wills, waiting until a quiet moment to fling her foe to one side. Only when the cameras were off did Ota get a chance to give her vanquished enemy a free ride home—on her bootheel.

For connoisseurs of rare film, few experiences could top Oddball Films' meticulously curated one-time-only screenings from their extensive rare film collection. This short documentary looks at founder Stephen Parr, who died October 24. (more…)

Stormchaser Mike Olbinski chased massive storms across the American southwest to create the latest installment of his Monsoon series. (more…)

Illustrator Jacopo Rosati of Venice, Italy has designed tarot cards based on internet culture instead of the occult. His Social Network Tarots' "major arcana" includes The Russian Hacker, Dick Pics, and Fake News, not the usuals like The Fool, Lovers, and Death.The cards are not meant to be played it seems, as the artist only presents them as beautifully silkscreened posters. It's unclear whether Rosati is selling them but if you were interested in getting one, you could try reaching out to him through his site. (Dangerous Minds)

Sculptor Jud Turner (previously) shows off three of his newest sculptures: the latest in my Oblivion Factory series, "Solitarium", a full sized California Condor (8+ foot wingspan) fabricated in welded steel and found objects (including 70 of Walmart's finest butter knives, and various pistol parts):, and another in my series of mechanized fossil fish, The GreedEaters. (more…)

Trump is probably tempted to pardon everyone that Mueller indicts. But Mueller has set things up so that it won't help if he does. It also won't help if he fires Mueller. Why not? Because the State of New York can pick up where Mueller left off, and Trump will be unable to do anything about it other than whine on Twitter to his audience of Russian Twitter bots.From Jed Handelsman Shugerman's piece reprinted in Slate:

Salem Chapel BME in St Catharines, Ontario, built by slaves who settled in the area after escaping the United States of America, is in desperate shape.A GoFundMe has been created to help preserve this important piece of actual North American heritage.Via the Grio:

The Washington D.C. restaurant The Bird is serving a $5 “Moscow Mueller” every time a Trump associate is indicted during Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election“The grand jury may still be out, but when @bobsmueller indicts a Trump associate, we’ll be serving up $5 Moscow Muellers #muellertime,” The Bird’s twitter account posted Wednesday.The restaurant said the politically twisted version of a Moscow Mule is made of Turmeric infused Belle Isle Shine, Lime, simple syrup, and ginger beer over ice.

Praying is boring and Pope Francis is sparing us some of the Catholic guilt for dozing off while prostrating ourselves before God.The Pope admitted to occasionally sleeping on the job while he prays.“When I go to pray, a few times I fall asleep,” he said during an interview for TV2000 published Tuesday. Pope Francis also cited St. Therese’s belief that God appreciates it when people fall asleep while praying.The Guardian reports His Holiness gets around seven hours of sleep each night, along with a nap after lunch.Image: Benhur Arcayan

After being cheated for many years at Marvel (where he created and/or wrote and drew Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, The Fantastic Four, The Silver Surfer, the Black Panther, Dr. Doom, and many other iconic characters) Jack Kirby went to DC in the early 1970s with more creative control and some of the wildest ideas in the history of comics. This Jack Kirby Fourth World Omnibus, coming out in December, has the complete run of his Fourth World series: Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle, and the graphic novel, The Hunger Dogs.It is 1,536 pages long!In 2008, John Hodgman reviewed an earlier edition of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus for the New York Times. Excerpt:

After a nine-week battle (previously), London's sewer heroes have vanquished a 130-tonne (143 ton) fatberg lurking beneath the city. The congealed mass of fat, trash, wet wipes, diapers, condoms, excrement and death had formed a glistening wall of pale horror that presented "the most gut-wrenching work" waste manager Alex Stephens had ever seen. But the "beast is finally defeated".

I'm constantly being surprised by what people are making with Scratch, a kid's programming language that lets you make games, cartoons, and other programs by connecting different color-coded blocks together. Code Your Own Games!, by Max Wainewright, is an excellent tutorial that shows you how to write fun games, including breakout and snake. Kids will learn about sound effects, collision detection, animation, and more from using this book, and come away with a better understanding of computer programming.

Before Cathy Lee Crosby (1974), Lynda Carter (1975), and Gal Gadot (2017), Ellie Wood Walker was Wonder Woman! In 1967, Batman producer William Dozier created this short film as a pitch to Warner Brothers. From IMDB:

Martha O’Donovan, a 25-year-old woman from New Jersey who now lives in Zimbabwe, was arrested today for tweeting insults about President Robert Mugabe. She now faces up to 20 years in prison.O'Donovan worked at the satirical social media outlet Magamba TV, in the capital Harare, where she apparently tweeted a couple of things under the Twitter handle @matigary that hurt the president's feelings.According to AP, the offending tweet was: “We are being led by a selfish and sick man," along with an image of 93-year-old Mugabe with a catheter.And according to The Guardian, "the offending tweet referred to a 'goblin whose wife and stepson bought a Rolls Royce.'"She has been charged with "undermining the authority of or insulting the president" and "subverting a constitutionally elected government," says AP. O'Donovan denies the allegations as "baseless and malicious."Image: Tech. Sgt. Jeremy Lock (USAF)

Hamish & Andy put three people in separate isolated storage units and asked them to hit a button when they felt like one hour had passed. I would do poorly. Even if I started counting, I'd become too distracted by the noise in my head.

Alt-right blogger Jenna Abrams (@Jenn_Abrams) enjoyed a large following in Twitter, and her tweets were cited by Buzzfeed, the NY Times, and other news agencies. It turned out "she" was another creation of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian government-funded troll farm in St. Petersburg.From The Daily Beast:

The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshop is the oldest workshop in the field, run by a nonprofit (I volunteer on its board), and much-loved by its many grads; the Clarion Class of 2012 (who call themselves "The Awkward Robots") periodically release volumes of their fiction to benefit the nonprofit foundation and pay forward to future classes (previously). (more…)

My friend JoAnne Yada shared this quirky collection of Muppets shoes the other night on Facebook and I nearly jumped out of my seat. They're so wild and creative, just like a brand for (a certain type of) inner children should be!Here's a look at some of them:This pair of heeled boots is aptly named "She's Hip He's Hop" because it features both Miss Piggy and Kermit...These "Super Couple" heels also feature the famous pig and frog duo...Then there's "The Great Gonzo" style, stars and all...And Kerm-y flats...These "foot stomping vixen heeled boots" are called "Fierce Piggy"...While these pig-pink satin heels are called, "All About Moi,"The next three pairs really crack me up. First Statler and Waldorf get their mugs on a pair with these "Boo Hiss" flats...Folks who identify with Animal may be drawn to these "Louder Louder" red fake-furried heels...And the best for last... the "Mahna Mahna" shoes, if for no other reason that they'll implant that earworm in people's head...The collection is by UK-based Irregular Choice and the shoes range in price from £129.00 to £220.00.And yes, there are more shoes, as well as matching purses and tights.Star Wars more your thing? Go here. Crazy heel aficionado? Here.

Scotty of Strange Parts (who has made a couple of great videos about the electronics markets in China) takes us on a tour of the world's largest gold market, in Dubai, which houses 10 tons of gold.

Who said LEGO® had to be ground bound? With The Force Flyers DIY Building Block Fly 'n Drive Drone, you can turn LEGO® and other building-block creations into fully-functional flying machines. It's available now in the Boing Boing Store for $32.99.This kit comes with everything you need for remote-controlled long distance flight, including a 6-axis gyroscope, a 2.4 GHz wireless transmitter, and extra rotors for when you inevitably crash. Its plastic frame is covered in studs that are compatible with most brick-building toys, so you can get creative with your quadcopter’s design. Once assembled, you can precisely pilot your flyer through all kinds of tight spaces with the bundled digital proportional controller.Children of all ages will have fun learning about the physics of flight with this hands-on project. Pick up the Force Flyers DIY Building Block Fly 'n Drive Drone here for $32.99.

Most Michelin-starred restaurants are on the pricey side, although you do hear of the occasional food truck that earns a star. But this food cart in Singapore, Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice, run by 52-year-old master chef Chan Hon Meng, serves the "cheapest Michelin-starred meal in the world," at just $1.50. Now, if I can just afford a ticket to Singapore.