The nicest thing John Oliver could find to say about racist criminal Joe Arpaio was that he's "a man who answers the question, 'What if a decaying rotted potato somehow hated Mexicans?'"The nicest thing I can find to say about Arpaio is that he's a much better singer than he was a sheriff.

These NASA images of Hurricane Irma churning across the Atlantic Ocean show “widespread browning of the landscape,” as winds devastated several Caribbean islands before moving on to the Florida Keys and the U.S. mainland. (more…)

On September 11, 2001, this was astronaut Frank Culbertson's view of New York City from the International Space Station."The world changed today," Station Commander Culbertson wrote the next day. "What I say or do is very minor compared to the significance of what happened to our country today when it was attacked..."It's horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are."(NASA)

A great white shark washed up today on a popular Sydney, Australia beach. Manly Sea Life Sanctuary transferred the juvenile shark to a nearby swimming pool to recover before they release it into the ocean in the next couple days. According to The Independent, "The pool will remain closed until the shark is released."

As a friend of (the now-late) "King of the Kustomizers' George Barris, automobile aficionado Ken Roberts of Arizona knew he wanted a "movie car" for himself. So, in 2013, he started building a replica of the iconic black Jaguar hearse from the 1971 cult classic Harold and Maude.In an interview with Petrolicious, Roberts shares the inspiration behind his custom ride:

Officials from Japan's Miyazaki Prefectural Government brought a live tick for a photo opp at a press conference about the dangers of thrombocytopenia syndrome, a tick-born disease that's recently infected some citizens there. Problem is, the tick escaped when someone tried picking it up with tweezers.(more…)

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was part of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, a period of intense exploration during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. He died in 1921 while on an Antarctic expedition. The Royal Scottish Geographical Society's writer-in-residence Jo Woolf uncovered a copy of Shackleton's CV when he was applying for the Secretary job. Scrawled in the margin is a shorthand note of some kind. Can you help the RSGS figure out what it says?From The Courier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTLQ4h4yKSk&feature=youtu.beEverything is a Remix (previously) is an important, entertaining series of short videos that trace the ways the creation is built on earlier creation -- that "originality" is just mixing existing things in new ways. (more…)

Sarinee Achavanuntakul's Home of the Underdogs was the best abandonware site on the early web, introducing a new generation to countless brilliant games and helping spark the retrogaming boom of the aughts. A vast and well-organized library of obscurities, wonders and wrecks, it applied the archivist's exhaustive eye to the 1990s ramshackle abandonware scene. Alex Walker:

When the 9/11 commission reported back on the intelligence failures that led to the attacks 16 years ago, they identified a key problem: America's spy agencies had collected so much useless, indiscriminate information (haystacks) that they couldn't find the useful, salient facts (needles) buried there. (more…)

Comcast enjoys an effective monopoly over internet service in Vermont and it's about to get an 11-year extension to its permit to use billions of dollars' worth of public rights of way in the state, and in return, the state has asked Comcast to roll out at least 550 miles of new cable for "under-served" Vermonters over the 11 years. (more…)

Conservative christian TV star Josh Duggar (previously) was ditched by television after he admitted sexually abusing kids as an adolescent. Now he's being sued by a guy whose photo he allegedly stole and used on hookup sites. [via]

"Oooooo, well done! Well done. What happened there?"

A/NES is a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator for the classic Commodore Amiga. You'll need an enhanced chipset (too bad, A500 owners!) and you'll want a good joypad to enjoy those old console games. It was coded by Morgan Johansson (me) and Fredrik Schultz. The emulator is entirely coded in 680x0 assembler and optimized for classic Amiga hardware.

The ocean has been featured prominently in a lot of bad news lately. Here's Morgan Maassen's reminder of how lovely it can be, featuring surfer Stephanie Gilmore. (more…)

A new study in the International Journal of Astrobiology posits that beached whales may sometimes be influenced by solar storms. (more…)

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox nails this faux US presidential campaign ad doing what he does best – poking fun at Trump. And this one is packed with lots of laugh-out-loud fun.

The School of Game Design offers a deep introduction to Unity 3D and other essential game design elements and it is now available in the Boing Boing Store.Throughout 120 hours of video content, you’ll go from modeling simple characters and animating sprites to programming game logic. Since you’ll be working with Unity, you can develop on Windows or MacOS, and your games can be published for almost any platform.All lessons are taught by game industry veterans, and are kept up to date with the newest versions of Unity 3D. By building your digital design and coding skills in tandem, you’ll have everything you need to create your first solo project, or prepare for a career in games. For the less artistically inclined, it also includes perpetual access to hundreds of royalty-free assets for you to use as you please.You can get a lifetime membership to the School of Game Design here for $69.

During the five weeks after hackers stole 143 million Americans' data from Equifax, and while its execs were selling off their stock by the millions, the company sprang into action, producing an insecure site for checking whether your own data was breached that produces the same output no matter what name and SSN you input. (more…)

Tesla sells both 60kWh and 75kWh versions of its Model S and Model X cars; but these cars have identical batteries -- the 60kWh version runs software that simply misreports the capacity of the battery to the charging apparatus and the car's owner. (more…)

In a time when many popular films are not very imaginative in choice of shots, this look at staging and blocking in 12 Angry Men is a wonderful reminder of the possibilities for more. (more…)

After more than 40 years on the job, 10th generation lobsterman Alex Todd of Chebeague Island, Maine recently pulled in a crustacean even he had never seen: a translucent lobster.He's quoted in the Guardian as saying, “I was definitely surprised," and "It was like it was clear but with white under the clearness and a blue tint, but you couldn’t see organs or anything under the shell, it wasn’t to that level.”The Maine Coast Fishermen's Association shared a little info about the lobster's unusual pearly look, on their Facebook page:

[UPDATE: 9/9/2017 2:25pm PT US evacuates 500 Americans trapped on St. Maarten by Hurricane Irma][UPDATE: 9/9/2017 12:00pm PT Just received a dire message from our friend, Mitch, who has been stranded on St. Martin with his wife and daughter: "Just connected school management with my [redacted] security guys. Can't get anything done. We now have security issues. French side of island is in civil war with gangs overpowering military and local police. Dutch soldiers at borders but at our gates have been threatened. We have Blackwater type team ready to heli in from Virgin Islands but Dutch and locals won't let them land. Same for charters. We are alone."]St. Martin was one of the islands hardest hit by Hurricane Irma, and days later 6,000 Americans are still stranded on the French-Dutch island, with no phones, no Internet, or any kind of infrastructure. Cell phone communication is spotty, but some calls and texts manage to get through. Now there are looters and people roaming the streets with guns and machetes, according to my friends who are among the stranded.Stacy and Mitch, from Los Angeles, left for St. Martin over a week ago to drop their daughter off at American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine (AUC). They were staying at a hotel, but it was completely destroyed by Irma, so they are staying at the AUC, which is sheltering 600 people as they wait to be evacuated. The only problem is, no one knows when an evacuation is going to happen.They were told days ago that they were about to be evacuated by the military. Stacy wrote this on September 7th: "They are having us walk 2 miles to airport. Then waiting, boarding groups when planes arrive. They haven't given us green light yet. Hurricane Jose is an issue possibly. This is horrible. I have nothing left but my electronics And my medication. Our hotel was destroyed and lots of fatalies...Internet is gone. Inconsistent cell signals. I can get texts randomly..."The planes never arrived.Then this from Mitch: "Military now not an option. Supposedly charter planes have been contracted thru Dutch government. Now it's about the weather. Jose will hit tonight. Depends on how bad but we are officially in first fly group and might be heading for Chicago tomorrow late afternoon."The charter planes never arrived.Now they are back to talking about military planes. I'm assuming Stacy means the US military. They are in a meeting to find out what the latest plan is. She says this morning at 5:30am a plane did come and evacuated a group of women and children, but according to Stacy, it's rumored to be returning. According to 9News:

The skeleton of a Viking originally believed to be a man is now being classified as high-ranking female warrior after examining DNA samples taken from her arm and teeth.Researchers believed the skeleton had been male since it was discovered in Sweden during the 1880s -- mostly based on assumptions, The Independent reports.Since she was buried with arrows, a sword, two horses and other materials designating the skeleton as a “professional warrior,” researchers never considered they were stumbling upon the first female warrior of its kind.Image: YouTube/History

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh seems to be turning against his own advice when it comes to heeding the warnings of Hurricane Irma after saying the “hyped” coverage is only to push the “climate change agenda.”Limbaugh, who has been telling listeners that news media and retailers are just trying to boost profits, indicated he would be evacuating his Florida home, according to CNN."May as well announce this. I'm not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow," Limbaugh said during his Thursday show. "We'll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown."His listeners in Florida may want to follow his hidden caution.Via CNN:

A classic Christmas tale about family, love, and hunting down machine gun-wielding terrorists one by one, while shoeless, is finally being turned into a children’s book.Written by comedian Doogie Horner and illustrated by JJ Harrison, A Die Hard Christmas: The Illustrated Holiday Classic is sure to bring the Christmas spirit to any child or adult interested in single handedly diffusing a hostage situation.Delightful illustrations of John McClane jumping off the Nakatomi Plaza is complemented by the original plot of the 1988 film imitating the poem commonly referred to as “The Night Before Christmas.”"The explosives were wired to the rooftop with car, in hopes that the hostages soon would be there," reads one of the 32 pages.

Equifax dumped dox on 143 million Americans (as well as lucky Britons and Canadians!), sat on the news for five weeks, let its execs sell millions in stock, and then unveiled an unpatched, insecure Wordpress site with an abusive license agreement where you could sign up for "free" credit monitoring for a year, in case someone used the immortal, immutable Social Security Number that Equifax lost control over to defraud you. (more…)

Deadcoins (by matixmatix) is a list of, well, dead coins: the Bitcoin-esque cryptocurrencies that failed to take off, which were scams or experiments, or which otherwise are now deceased. Or, perhaps they're all dead, the new Bitcoin boom notwithstanding. Speaking of which, Bitcoin is dead, long live Bitcoin. If you want something truly, permanent, though, you can get a commemorative gold-plated bitcoin for... the grand sum of $7.88.

Woodworker Matt Thompson has been making Adirondack chairs in the shape of Michigan, the lower peninsula at least, for a few years. Recently, he added the state's upper peninsula to the chair's overall design in the form of a beer/soda can cooler and dispenser.From Michigan-based site Mlive:

In space hacker Ariel Waldman's latest video, she introduces "The 5 Farthest Space Probes in 5 Minutes!" Of course my favorite space probe is the farthest from Earth, Voyager 1, that launched this week back in 1977 carrying the Golden Record!

Heather Dockray and a band of amateur queer ghost hunters rented Trump's childhood home on Airbnb and found some creepy stuff, which of course begs the question: were they non-professionals seeking queer ghosts, or were they seeking queer non-professional ghosts? (more…)

I needed to replace my bbq's thermometer and the manufacturer wanted an insane amount of money. This stylish replacement is a mere $7.Like many specialty parts industries, grilling supply shops are probably feeling Amazon's wrath. I needed a replacement thermometer. They wanted $30. Ha. Ha. Ha.This thermometer indicates temperature in what I assume is generally the same general way the prior one did when it was functional.Includes a washer that blocks the hole and allows solid mounting if the thermometer shaft size is not exact.Hongso TG549 (1-PACK) new Replacement Lid Thermometer Gas Grill Stainless Steel Heat Indicator For Aussie, BBQ Grillware, Brinkmann, Uniflame and Other gas grill Models via Amazon

Greg Escalante, a pioneer in the lowbrow and pop surrealist art scene, respected gallerist, and co-founder of Juxtapoz magazine, has died. He was 62. From the OC Weekly:

Harlem Rapper A$AP Ferg has collaborated with Adidas to design the Adidas Skateboarding x Trap Lord Collection, which was released on September 1st. At the release party for the new collection, skaters were invited to participate in the Adidas Skateboarding “Skate Copa Court” competition to win cash prizes and giveaways. Adults and kids skated together and put on an awesome show for the people watching. Following the skate competition, A$AP Ferg performed, which was the highlight of the night. He even got off stage and moshed with the audience for a bit, which made everyone go wild. It was so cool to see a musician having fun with his fans like this during a performance. Both Adidas and A$AP Ferg made the release party a super fun experience.The Adidas skateboarding x Trap Lord collection serves as a bridge between hip-hop and skate culture. The collection features classic adidas pieces with designs by A$AP Ferg. It consists of a pair of customized Matchcourts, a windbreaker jacket, a pair of fleece pants, a jersey, a t-shirt, and a cap. A$AP Ferg’s music video for Nandos was also released along with the collection, and features the new Adidas pieces in it.I spoke with A$AP Ferg at the event about his collaboration with Adidas. He told me that one source of inspiration for the collection was the film Children Underground, which is about “mole kids” who live in underground tunnels and wear mismatched, vintage-looking clothing.I asked him what his connection to skating and fashion was while growing up in New York, and he told me that the A$AP mob is a “whole crew of different elements. You have the trappers, you have the rappers, you have the fashion designers, you have the skaters.” He told me that they all partied at the same parties and wore the same type of clothes.When asked how he thinks streetwear has changed over time, he said streetwear has become more accepted and popular, even within high end fashion. He and his friends are part of this progression in the fashion world because they “mixed the high end with the streetwear.” Because streetwear is becoming more fashionable, high fashion designers “gotta come visit us now, they gotta come to the streets...the upscale is coming down a notch...they gotta fuck wih the streets to live.”In addition to being able to call up people like Drake and get free clothes, Ferg says Adidas is “a really good family to work with. I’ve been working with them for years. They listen to a lot of my ideas, they never say no, they always try to figure it out, and I love them”. In 5 years he would like to be doing more philanthropy, still touring, and enjoying life to the max... with a house in Jamaica.Photos: Jeff Landi, Kyle Hannon

Peter Serafinowicz brings us the latest installment of Sassy Trump and his wise insight on Hurricane Irma, headed toward Florida. In Sassy's own words, "There seems to be a new record-breaking hurricane heading right toward Florida...it looks like it could be something that will be, uh, not good. Believe me, not good. We have many many things, on the plate, and hopefully we can solve them in a rational way, and maybe we won't be able to."And that, from the president of the United States, folks!

What does it look like when over 500,000 people are ordered to evacuate South Florida in anticipation of Hurricane Irma? Not good. Even those trying to beat traffic by leaving at 1:30 AM this morning were stuck in standstill gridlock, such as Larry Aydlette of the Palm Beach Post. He says what would normally be a 2-hour drive took 8 hours, and this was driving in the dark hours of the morning.

Bungie's second installment in their Destiny series is a fun, vastly improved, next chapter in a video game we're well familiar with. (more…)

Earlier this year Techdirt was sued for $15M by Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email in 1978, eight years after Ray Tomlinson sent an email over ARPANET. Ayyadurai was represented by Charles Harder, the lawyer who was paid by Peter Thiel to kill Gawker Media through Hulk Hogan's lawsuit. (more…)

Tenants in Colony Park in West Palm Beach, Florida have been warned by their property management company Services Taylor Made ((407) 732-6850) that they are prohibited from putting shutters on their windows as a safety measure against the approaching Hurricane Irma. (more…)

It's been a year since the Ugandan government placed an order with a South Korean company for a "censor gadget or machine" that would "detect homos and porn actors, especially those misusing applications like Whatsapp with sex acts." Now, they've taken delivery of same. (more…)

Before 28-year-old Trump supporter Rupert Tarsey was the freshly minted secretary of the Broward County GOP, he was Rupert Ditsworth, a student at the exclusive, high-priced LA Harvard-Westlake School, where he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor after taking a fellow student out in car, then hitting her over the head more than 40 times with a claw hammer and then choking her and dragging her out of the car, leaving her by the road with her skull split open. (more…)

Redditor Pirate_Redbeard posted this video of an ice-cream robot vending machine in Japan: an anthropomorphic robot that plucks a cone, holds it under a soft-serve machine, pulls a perfect poop-emoji swirl, passes it through a one-way bank-teller window, and then does a dance of delight once you pluck it up. (more…)

In July 2016, Andrew "bunnie" Huang and Edward Snowden presented their research on journalist-friendly mobile surveillance resistance at the first MIT Media Lab Forbidden Research conference; a little over a year later, they have published an extensive scholarly paper laying out the problems of detecting and interdicting malware in a mobile device, and presenting a gorgeously engineered hardware overlay that can be installed in an Iphone to physically monitor the networking components and report on their activity via a screen on a slim external case. (more…)

While digging into Kurt Vonnegut's archives at Indiana University, Dan Wakefield and Jerome Klinkowitz found five short stories that had never been published before. The Atlantic has posted one of them, The Drone King, in its entirety. The others are included in a new collection, Kurt Vonnegut: Complete Stories. From Kurt Vonnegut's "The Drone King:"

Forty years ago, serial killer David Berkowitz, aka the "Son of Sam," was thought to be targeting women in New York City who had long, dark hair. (In reality, Berkowitz thought he was following orders from his neighbor Sam's demon dog Harvey.) The very real fear of being a target led many women to cut their hair short, dye it, or wear wigs. Above, a reporter's on-the-street interviews with women at the time.

It can be extremely difficult to extract data from your computer after it’s suffered a fatal crash, especially when you don’t have an up-to-date backup. Instead of sacrificing your files, photos, and documents to the void, Data Rescue 4 helps you get them back from your unmountable disk. A single license recovers up to 5 drives, and is now available for $49 in the Boing Boing Store.Aside from peering into your unmountable drives and RAID arrays, Data Rescue can also be used to save mistakenly deleted files. Depending on the level of damage, it offers several different types of scans to ensure that you won’t lose everything for good. Additionally, its Bootwell feature automatically creates a secondary partition to use if your main drive dies, so you still have access to its recovery features in case of an emergency.Bring your files back from the dead, make clones of startup disks, and maintain your data integrity on both Windows and MacOS with Data Rescue 4. Pick it up here for $49.

Denver Health Medical Center suspended five nurses who apparently opened a body bag to admire a dead man's genitals."Multiple staff members viewed the victim while he was incapacitated, including after he was deceased," according to a Denver Police report.Four of the nurses have returned to work after their three week suspension while a fifth is no longer employed by the hospital for reasons unrelated to the penis-gazing incident.(CBS News)

"Whoa my nipples!" (Jake Alewel)

Take one nickel ball, a half liter of liquid nitrogen, and a bowl of mercury, and watch what happens when the supercooled nickel sits in the bowl of mercury for a while. (more…)