The winers of the 2017 Ig Nobel awards, "for achievements that first make people laugh then make them think," were announced at Harvard last night. From Phys.org:

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli has performed with some of music’s greatest artists, but his latest collaboration requires a little more coding.YuMi, a dual-armed robot, led Bocelli and the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra during an Italian robotics festival Tuesday, according the Associated Press.The robot gracefully guided its baton for a group of subordinate humans to follow its instruction to Giuseppe Verdi's "La Donna e Mobile." The orchestra's human conductor praised the musically gifted bot, but said it is still not able to stop should the orchestra make a mistake.https://youtu.be/fohc1Qg-rQU?t=2m8s

In 1961 artist Piero Manzoni preserved his excrement in 90 signed cans, each containing 30 grams of his solid waste. The “Merda d’Artista” are becoming more valuable over time.Via Oddity Central: In 2007, the Tate art gallery in London, bought one of Manzoni’s 90 cans for £22,350 ($30,000), and while that may seem like a lot for what is literally just canned crap, they actually got a great deal. In 2007, another can of “Merda d’Artista” was auctioned off in Milan, for a whopping £81,000 ($108,000). Crazy, right? Not really, just another good deal, because Manzoni’s cans of poop are currently worth around $300,000 apiece. Last year, someone bought can no. 54 for £182,500 ($242,000).

Miguel Marquez Outside chronicles Australian artist Michael Pederson's clever and cute installations of small artworks. (more…)

On Jimmy Kimmel Live, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer talked about his work with the Trump administration. In this 20-minute long interview, Kimmel gets Spicer to talk about how he got the job in the first place, his thoughts on Donald Trump's tweets, how he felt about Melissa McCarthy's portrayal of him, and more.

In early June, conservation rangers with the Hirola Conservation Program in Kenya first spotted a white female and baby giraffe. In early August, they were able to capture this footage of the elusive pair.Like that translucent-shelled lobster that was recently pulled in, these giraffes are not albino but have a genetic condition called Leucism. That means they a partial loss of pigmentation in their skin cells. If you look closely, you can see a familiar, though faded, reticulation on the calf's neck.A blogger for Hirola writes:

This video by YouTuber Alex Berman lays out how retailers like Walmart profit even when they are pricing goods, like milk and eggs, well below cost. It comes down to volume and convenience. If they get enough customers buying items with a high profit margin for convenience sake, they can afford to price many items below cost to lure them into the store.(reddit)

In March 2016, HP sent millions of Inkjet and Inkject Pro owners a fake "security update" that was really a timebomb: six months later, in September 2016 (one year ago!), the "security update" code started rejecting third party ink, prompting nearly 15,000 complaints from HP owners. (more…)

Facebook released a statement regarding ProPublica's expose of the company offering antisemitic ad targeting options (previously).

Ami Baio's debut card game is "You Think You Know Me," a "game to deepen the relationships around us." (more…)

Noted white supremacist and current President of the United States Donald Trump said something colossally and freshly stupid today. In other news, it's a day ending in 'Y', and yes, wouldn't we all like to know why why why.(more…)

Hit play, below, to hear an unhurried interview with author, podcaster and neuroscientist Sam Harris. Few have denounced President Trump at greater length, or on more certain terms than Sam. He is equally denunciatory about political correctness – which, he believes, threatens free speech – and anyone he deems soft on Islamic terrorism. All this triggers gales of outrage on the left and the right alike – making Sam, in his way, a unifying figure. I should note his fans also span the spectrum.This is the sixth episode of my podcast series (co-hosted by Tom Merritt), which launched here on Boing Boing last month. The series goes deep into the science, tech, and sociological issues explored in my novel After On – but no familiarity with the novel is necessary to listen to it.In our interview, Sam and I have a deep discussion about nihilistic terrorism – a major preoccupation of his, and of my novel. We also spend about an hour discussing the journey that shaped his unusual worldview.Oddly for a strong student at a top school (Stanford), Sam dropped out of college for ten years. Oddly for a 10-year dropout, he suddenly returned to finish his philosophy degree with honors. Oddly for a philosophy major, he then got a Ph.D. in neuroscience, while – flat-out bizarrely for a neuroscientist – writing a bestselling geopolitical book (The End of Faith). Yes, drugs were involved. As were entire years spent in silent meditation, plus boundless hours steeping in spirituality. Which (to give the lifeless colt a parting thwack) is a rather odd pastime for an atheist.Although he’s written five bestsellers, Sam’s podcast now reaches more people in a week than his books have reached over the past decade and a half. Our interview won’t have that reach! But it’s a thorough exploration of Sam’s history, and of much of his philosophy.You can subscribe to the podcast within any podcast app. Simply use your app's search function (type in "After On") to find and subscribe. To subscribe via your computer on iTunes, just click here, then click the blue “View on iTunes” button (on the left side of the page), then click “Subscribe” (in a similar location) in the iTunes window. Or follow the feed http://afteron.libsyn.com/rssPhotograph of Sam Harris by Christopher Michel

Facebook removed several antisemitic ad categories after ProPublica asked about them and "promised to improve monitoring."

Yours for $695, though sold out at the moment, are the Natasha Zinko High Waist Double Jeans.

President Flip Flops are cheap footwear emblazoned with Trump tweets, one foot contradicting the other. There are several "editions", each as revolting and transfixing as the other.

Every three years, the US Copyright Office has to ask America about all the ways in which Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which bans bypassing DRM, even for legitimate reasons) interferes with our lives, and then it grants limited exemptions based on the results. (more…)

Four fans were kicked out of Boston's Fenway Park during a baseball game yesterday after unfurling a banner reading: "Racism Is As American As Baseball."Here's what one of the planners of the stunt had to say:

Preeti Desai of the National Audubon Society came across a dead creature on the beach in Texas City, Texas. She took photos and tweeted: "Okay, biology twitter, what the heck is this?? Found on a beach in Texas City, TX. #wildlifeid."(more…)

DIYer Chris Notap filtered a pack's worth of cigarette smoke through a bag of cotton balls. They turned brown. He's upset by how much his tools and components stink now.

There are more than 500,000 pieces of dangerous space junk orbiting the Earth, not including paint flecks and other tiny bits flying around at 17,500 miles per hour that put spacecraft at risk. The Brane Craft, in the conceptual phase at Aerospace Corporation, is a bulletproof "blanket," one yard across and thinner than a human hair, that the company thinks could wrap around space junk and pull it into the atmosphere where it will safely burn up. The project just received another grant from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program that funds radical concepts that may never work but would have great impact if they do. From Space.com:

EVE Online ("spreadsheets in space") is an empire-building game that allows players to move real cash in and out of the game, a wrinkle that's spawned massive Ponzi schemes, a profitable espionage industry, and massive in-game wars, but even by the game's own bizarre standards, this week's "Judgement Day" attack is world-beating. (more…)

John Brownlee lost his father to a heart attack. But it was Bruce Brownlee's depression that slowly killed him: My Father The Werewolf.

Chelsea Manning spent seven years in federal prison for blowing the whistle on illegal actions by the US in Iraq and around the world; while imprisoned, she transitioned her gender and changed her name, and, on her release, found herself unpersoned, unable to identify herself to the satisfaction of the state, despite being one of the most famous people in America and despite the state's unquenchable thirst for our personal data (and her's especially). (more…)

In 2009, Arby's commissioned Phil Hansen to paint the Mona Lisa using grease from its fast food competitors. The piece is called "Mona Greasa."(via Weird Universe)

Multimedia artist Andy Thomas translated the soundscapes of the Amazon rainforest into a mesmerizing 3D animation titled the Visual Sounds of the Amazon. He and Reynier Omena Junior made their field recordings in 2016 around Presidente Figueiredo in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. The result, he says, is "a symbolic representation of nature’s collision with technology.”"What I've realized is that people have compassion fatigue these days," Thomas says. "They hear about the destruction of rainforests and decimation of species across the world, and they become numb to it."From Smithsonian:

Point created an obviously fake company with tons of alarm-raising inconsistencies, allocated it $25, and then used their budget to target Facebook users based on race and sexual orientation, a move that, depending on the ad's content, can violate US civil rights law. (more…)

Artist Makoto Azuma thought to himself, “if flowers symbolize Earthly beauty, how can I push nature’s boundaries? How can I transport beauty to where it doesn’t currently exist?” Answer: By tying them to balloons!

Paul Brown writes, "The FSFE's 'Public Money? Public Code!' campaign wants to convincelawmakers that software created with public funds should be madeavailable to the public under Free Software licences. (more…)

Mariano Gómez is a 23 year old Tseltal from Abasolo, Chiapas, and a member of the Ikta K’op Collective; he is being given an award by the prestigious Internet Society for his work creating "a wireless Internet and Intranet network that provided connectivity and access to information to his community, which has no telephone or radio service," but will not be able to attend the awards in Los Angeles because the US embassy has denied him a tourist visa. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfmL6l128JUThere's not much nostalgia for Magnavox's Odyssey, the game console that launched the industry. But Al Williams writes that it lost out thanks to a sales strategy that guaranteed it a market but sharply limited its appeal.

The "Camperforce" is a 2000+ strong army of retirees in RVs, a choice most were forced into when the value of their homes and pensions was wiped out in the 2008 crisis -- as many of them neared literal starvation and destitution, they began to travel from Amazon warehouse to Amazon warehouse, serving as a seasonal workforce of elderly, frail but diligent workers who put their bodies in harm's way to pack our Christmas supplies. (more…)

Aynor mayor John Gardner, driving a lawnmower with a beer at his side, was pulled over by cops. But they let him go without so much as a warning. I wonder if it's because he's an important fellow and can do as he pleases.

These bags of Tetris-branded magnetic tetrominoes don't look much good (it's obviously just a rubbery sheet with the shapes stamped out) but they are dirt cheap (49 for $9) and the street (you) will find its own uses. (very previously)Are there any good magnetic tetrominoes? As in: each "pixel" a cube rather than millimeter-thick.

This is one smart squirrel! Someone taped down five slinky toys and filled them with peanut butter for the backyard squirrels to eat. While a squirrel is gorging itself, along comes a chipmunk, trying to get in on the feast. But the squirrel isn't about to share. It takes a slinky, stretches it out about two feet, and wham! Knocks the chipmunk away from the its treats. Chipmunk, go find your own slinky!

MIT and Amherst material science researchers have published a paper in ACS Applied Material & Interfaces that describes an untouched-by-human-hands method for making self-folding circuits with a 3D printer; the materials are laid down precisely so that as it cools, differential rates of contraction cause it to bend into dimensional forms that are ready for use in a finished device. (more…)

From JeffHK, 80,000 photos over 30 days:

Equifax's world-beating breach of 143 million Americans' sensitive personal and financial information was the result of the company's failure to patch a two-month-old bug in Apache Struts, despite multiple reports of the bug being exploited in the wild. (more…)

Star Trek episode top lists generally center on highlights from the original series (The City on the Edge of Forever) and Next Generation (The Inner Light). But it is episodes of Star Trek: Voyager that occupy six of the top ten slots in Netflix's list of most-rewatched episodes‐and the most rewatched episode of Star Trek is the spinoff's terrible finale!

Three CBP officers are facing criminal charges stemming from 2016 and 2017 incidents in which two newly hired CBP employees were locked in a small room, thrown on a table referred to as a "rape table" and then forced to endure a "simulated sex act" in which the senior officers ground their genitals against them. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcNGa63WdCU&feature=shareA lovely song from Hot Dad; but I Really, Really, Really Like This Image is even better.Welcome to the new world order, !

Julie Jackson of Subversive Cross Stitch is creating cross-stitch magic again. This time she's put together a special 3D cross-stitch kit that reads "Don't Freak Out."She writes, "It's SO much better in person..."The kit is available for $24 and comes with a pair of 3D glasses, naturally.Previously: How to create impressive red and blue 3D effects in Photoshop

The title of Fast Company's story is "Two Ex-Googlers Want To Make Bodegas And Mom-And-Pop Corner Stores Obsolete" and that's exactly what Paul McDonald and Ashwath Rajan intend to do. "Bodega"—an internet-of-shit vending machine designed to replace small businesses, is so comically sociopathic it would be too on-the-nose for HBO's Silicon Valley.

Swedish street artist Huge creates a lot of cool stuff, but he's best know for his balloon art that looks like those novelty letter-shaped mylar balloons in various levels of inflation. (more…)

It's never too early to get your little ones started on the road to success.Luckily for us, New Jersey-based Becky Rodriguez of Etsy store dirtsa studio has created some badass baby bibs which are perfect for getting them off on the right path.They are fashioned after two of the most beloved jabots, aka collars, of the "most fashionable U.S. Supreme Court Justice," Ruth Bader Ginsburg.The first one is inspired by her all-time favorite, a woven lace one with white beads from Capetown, South Africa. The second is modeled after her golden, armorlike collar, the one she wears when issuing dissents.Rodriguez calls her cotton screen-printed creations "Ruth Baby Ginsburg" and they are available for $16 each or both for $28.(Cool Mom Picks)

Tom Fletcher (of McFly music fame) shared this video of his then infant son, Buzz Fletcher, seeing dandelions flowers for the first time in his new little life.(more…)

Impressive.(more…)

Who's a good girl? This dog.(more…)

Grand Guignol was a French theater from the late 19th century that specialized in hosting graphic horror performances. A typical show would involve insane or hysterical characters, gory special effects, and a very bloody ending.This month Corey Helford Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles presented three plays of Theater du Grand Guignol and two adult entertainments inspired by Oh! Calcutta!. With barf-bag and playbill in hand, audience members enjoyed very intimate showings of the one-act plays "Final Kiss," "Laboratory of Hallucinations," and "The Old Women."Schuyler Helford, the director, said that working with these translated French plays was a wonderful experience since they are relatively unknown and include a good amount of comedy, an element that made the horror even more chilling. Gasps and laughter were constant throughout "Laboratory of Hallucinations," a play about a mad doctor who performs a controversial operation on his wife’s lover. When the adulterer, now insane, awakens in an unfamiliar laboratory, he turns on the doctor and things get bloody.The two adult entertainments, shown between the one-act horrors, were Suite for Five Letters and Jack and Jill, which are based on the sex-ridden revue of 1969, Oh! Calcutta! Again, the combination of horror and comedy intensified the mood of the night. The actors, props, special effects, and dialogue were all believable, and the intimacy of the gallery setting helped make these acts absorbing. The final act of the night, "The Old Women," focused on a group of women in an insane asylum who plotted, out of jealousy, to blind another, more attractive resident. The curtain came down as bright-red fake blood splattered across a window.Tickets for this event sold out quickly, but more plays and gallery information will be announced on the Corey Helford Gallery website and social media.Photo Credit: Gerard SandovalOld posters for the original Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol:

No single GIF better represents my days than Mr. Roger's throwing the double bird with a giant smile on his face. I never once bothered to doubt its legitimacy, but a friend asked me if it was real. Of course it is. (more…)