Armando Iannucci's new movie, "The Death of Stalin", presents the Soviet leader's demise and its chaotic aftermath in a darkly-comic mockumentary style. Iannucci's use of that format to illustrate the mundane nastiness of British and American politics is already legendary; its transposition to mid-century Moscow (complete with the comically inappropriate but oddly convincing use of British accents to illustrate class and regional signifiers at the high end of Soviet politics) is so bizarre and unexpected I think it'll either fail and become a cult classic, or be the biggest movie of the year and hated by everyone forever.https://twitter.com/Death_of_Stalin/status/905840644542881792Wouldn't it be amazing if the whole actual movie censored out Steve Buscemi's head?Anyway, here's the "uncensored" trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukJ5dMYx2no

The FDA's Sept 6 warning letter to Epipen manufacturer Meridian (a division of Pfizer) condemns the company for knowingly shipping out defective products that led to the death of the customers who paid hyper-inflated prices for the devices, which Meridian manufactured for notorious pharma profiteers Mylan. (more…)

From mid-May to July 2017, Equifax exposed the financial and personal identifying information of 143 million Americans -- 44% of the country -- to hackers, who made off with credit-card details, Social Security Numbers, sensitive credit history data, driver's license numbers, birth dates, addresses, and then, in the five weeks between discovering the breach and disclosing it, the company allowed its top execs to sell millions of dollars' worth of stock in the company, while preparing a risibly defective and ineffective website that provides no useful information to the people whom Equifax has put in grave financial and personal danger through their recklessness. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PgTjhx1VLw&feature=youtu.beBut wait, there's more!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECoyIiLtGYM&feature=youtu.beLet's trawl the old inspirations, the long-ago internet moments whose memetic descendants are million-dollar TV ad campaigns for loan aggregators. When it comes to Skeletor, there are many to pick from. But one always comes back to CKY ft. Gnarkill's Skeletor vs Beastman, a NSFW wonder that was once part of the Internet's collective subconscious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4pfZzck-GQI'd chance that for many readers it will be unfamiliar. It's something long-displaced by cleaner and more consumer-friendly regurgitations of 80s trash culture. And perhaps quite repulsive. Is it queer, or homophobic? I always assumed the former, in which context the new ad seems a heteronomalized echo of something subversive. But now, after another 15 years of internet, I'm not sure. Perhaps the commercial is a better subversion.[via Metafilter]

Much of the UK's system of laws and "unwritten constitution" derives from EU law, so with Brexit inexorably advancing, the UK has to pass a whole raft of parallel legislation that will replace the EU laws with UK versions, lest there be a "legal black hole" the day after Brexit. (more…)

South Park's an easy target for anyone smarter than a cartoon frog, but sometimes not giving a shit is a good policy. The usual suspects are upset about this development and talking of boycotting the game, but I'm sure they'll find some comforting four-dimensional satire of social justice in it once they've heard a few reassuringly racist remarks from Cartman. [via]John Scalzi, author of the famous metaphor, is...

On their website, Los Angeles-based Koi Division proclaims they are the "only Fish Goth Joy Division parody cover band that matters."I'm no expert, but I'm inclined to believe them.Each band member not only dons a plastic fish mask but has also been given an appropriately-fishy moniker. The band is: Ian Clownfish, Hook, Bernard Salmon, and Steve Moray. Their song titles are also on punny point. For example, "Love will tear us apart" becomes "Lures will catch us a carp."LAWeekly reports:

I tried to count exactly how many spins this dancer, found on Reddit, completes but couldn't keep track – at one point she picks up so much speed she's just a blur. But I definitely counted over 100. The most incredible part, besides the fact that she spins so many times with such grace, is that when she stops she doesn't lose her balance with dizziness.

Emily Mueller and her husband have a business relocating bees from areas where they might be exterminated. So when she hired Kendrah Damis to snap some photos of her third trimester, Emily wanted to include 20,0000 of their closest friends in the pics. (more…)

Nature Photographers Ltd and the British Trust for Ornithology have announced the 2017 Bird Photographer of the Year Award winners. Above: Great Snipe silhouette by Torsten Green-Petersen, Honourable Mention in the Bird Behaviour category. (more…)

Calling cards were popular among a number of 1970s subcultures, including street gangs (previously) and CB radio enthusiasts. When two operators met off the airwaves and in real life, they called it "eyeballing." William Hogan and David Titlow collected these fun cards for their new book Eyeball! Cards, out next week. (more…)

Collin Lynch at Essarai Ceramics creates these delightfully pointy coffee mugs, teacups, and other tableware in his Albuquerque studio. (more…)

This week on Maker Update, an enchanted talking tiki totem pole, Donald Bell's trip to OSH Park and Metrix Makerspace, a retro lightbox, and why you need flush cutters. This week’s Cool Tool is the $5 Hakko CHP-170 Flush Cutter.

Haha! Here's a feisty girl who tells an InfoWars reporter that he's "a fucking idiot" after he approaches her and asks, "How are you young man."He then gets all prim on us. "Wow, who taught you that language?""My mother," she responds."So your mother taught you that foul language?" (Oh brother.)She nods. "In the car," she says, then flips him the bird and walks away, to which he responds, "Oh wow, oh my gosh."

This bird wants to leave the store, so it hovers in front of the motion detector until the door opens.

Wow! I want to see how this Halo Top ice cream story began and how it ends – more please! Here's a commercial that feels more like you're in the middle of a Terry Gilliam (Brazil Part 2) movie than an ice cream ad. According to Time magazine on August 3rd, "Earlier this week, Halo Top became the best-selling ice cream pint in the U.S., surpassing longtime popular brands like Ben & Jerry's and Haagen Dazs." When it comes to marketing, looks like scaring the bejeezus out of customers might be the way to go.

US infrastructure spending as a proportion of GDP is at a low not seen since WWII, and that's why America's bridges, dams, roads, power plants and other key infrastructure are such easy fodder for Hurricane Harvey (and the impending Irma devastation). Trump's plan for infrastructure spending is a "ludicrous patchwork of tax breaks and privatizations" that will do nothing to solve the problem. (more…)

In 2013, DOJ lawyers showed JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon a draft of a 92-page complaint against his bank. Dimon coughed up $13B to settle the case, and the complaint was sealed, leaving us all to wonder exactly what kind of red-handed fraud convinced Dimon to part with what was then the largest financial misconduct settlement in US history. (more…)

He attended the bull run for thrills, and got his money's worth.

Having plenty of water is essential for any outdoor adventure, but carrying multiple liters of fluids gets old after a few miles. This water bottle comes with a built-in filter, so you can safely drink from natural streams whenever you can't find any water infrastructure nearby.The 1HYDRO gets its filtration from activated carbon and antibacterial beads to remove 99.9% of harmful bacteria from any water source. Since no chemicals are used, you get clean, filtered water without the funky taste. The vessel holds up to 650ml of liquid, and is completely BPA-free. The straw is replaceable, and each one of its removable filters has a lifetime of 1,500 liters.For a touch of hiker utility, there’s also a compass integrated into the bottle cap. You can pick up the 1HYDRO Series Filtration Bottle in the Boing Boing Store for $29.99.

Dennis Rodman, two-time NBA All Star and possibly the last man who can stop the North Korean nuclear threat, is offering President Donald Trump his diplomatic services to ease tensions.During a Wednesday interview with “Good Morning Britain,” Rodman expressed his concern with Trump’s personality interfering with solutions between Washington and Pyongyang.“Donald can be a little crazy sometimes,” said the former Celebrity Apprentice contestant, while also expressing his love for the president, according to Reuters.Rodman, who admitted to skiing and singing karaoke with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, also says Trump needs to engage in dialogue with Kim.[via Reuters]

Mat Ricardo (previously) writes, "After 30 years of being the undisputed go-to guy for performing feats of dexterity live on stage, I've got a problem - I think I've done all the tricks I can think of. So, in what could be the dumbest move of my career, or the most fun, I'm issuing an open challenge for my next one man show." (more…)

The driver, Richard Poirier, is fine. But he was charged with careless driving after his erratic driving in Carleton Place, Ontario, ended in what I timed as 1.67 seconds of excellent air.

Scotty from Strange Parts famously built a fully-functioning iPhone from replacement parts sourced in Chinese electronic wholesale markets. Now he's gone a step further, and upgraded one to have a headphone jack: "Is it possible? I'm headed to Shenzhen to find out!"

In March 1913, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson threw the most beautiful typeface in the world off of London's Hammersmith Bridge to keep it out of the hands of his estranged printing partner. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll explore what would lead a man to destroy the culmination of his life's work -- and what led one modern admirer to try to revive it.We'll also scrutinize a housekeeper and puzzle over a slumped child.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

$10 for this Wicked Audio bundle: a bluetooth speaker, closed headphones, and ear buds is pretty unbeatable.You will not mind listening to or losing these headphones! Moderately bass-y and certainly good enough for airplane or automotive listening both these closed ear and in-ear buds are plenty better than I'd expect for $9 each, packaged together I'm totally impressed.The speaker is a bit underpowered but is nice to have when you want a bluetooth speaker.My kid loses headphones like they were sunglasses. I'll likely order more than a few of these sets.There is also an audio cable that technically makes this a 4pc bundle.Wicked Audio The Triad 4 pc Set: Headphones, Ear Buds, Speaker & Audio Cable Limited via Amazon

Humble Bundle has a great pay-what-you want deal on MAKE electronics and programming instructional books. Even $1 gets you a nice collection. $15 gets you Charles Platt's essential electronics books and a bunch of others. I have most of these books in print editions but I bought this ebook set for convenience.

Hit Play, below, to hear a wide-ranging interview with venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, whose shrewd bets include backing Elon Musk in ventures like Tesla and SpaceX. Steve and I talk a bit about Elon in our interview. But we mainly focus on quantum computing - a subject he knows cold from his decade and a half on the board of D-Wave Systems, the world’s largest quantum computing company.This is the fifth 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.Quantum computing’s potential to reshuffle the technological deck has long fascinated me as a science fiction writer. Its maximum potential is immense – and indeed, rather terrifying (after conferring with quantum computing’s brainfather, David Deutsch, the New Yorker famously decreed that “With one millionth of the hardware of an ordinary laptop, a quantum computer could store as many bits of information as there are particles in the universe.”)That potential is also almost completely unfulfilled for now. Major breakthroughs in the field could therefore impact our capabilities in highly volatile ways. And sudden, discontinuous change is catnip to anyone whose job involves setting tech-driven tales in the present day.In our interview, Steve and I discuss the fundamental weirdness behind quantum computing’s potentially awesome power. When asked about that power’s source, physicists generally offer one of two answers, according to Steve. One is that vast sets of identical sister computers in parallel universes team up with our local quantum computer to crunch numbers. The other is to shudder and say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”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/rss

The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman have a story about Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election:

Loch Ness Monster researcher Mikko Takala presents Nessie on the Net livestreams from cameras on Scotland's famed loch. Did I just see a tree branch or was it a plesiosaur?Remember, what you're seeking may look something like this, the hoaxed "Surgeon's photograph" (1934):

With Donald Trump reversing Obama's ban on the use of private prisons for federal prisoners and vowing to deport 11 million people; and Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructing prosecutors to seek long prison sentences for minor offenses, the investor community could not be more bullish on the private prison sector. (more…)

Hugo Cornellier took a selfie every day from the age of 12 until his recent wedding day. Why stop now though?

In the crystal blue waters of the Greek island of Zakynthos hundreds of loggerhead turtles use isolated rocks to scrape barnacles off their shells and generally spruce up. Biologists collected video evidence of the behavior in a recently published study. (more…)

Leah Rothman was a segment director on the Dr Phil show for 12 years, until (she says) she and her co-workers were locked in a room by Dr Phil and screamed at and threatened by the show's host, who was upset by leaks from the show's staff. (more…)

In 1979, Hüsker Dü played their first show, paving the way for Nirvana, The Pixies, Foo Fighters, and really the entire realm of alternative rock. I have a special love for the band as they were my first club show, back in 1985 or so. (My first concert was Styx and, yes, that was amazing too.) Over the years I've become friends with Bob Mould who is a very warm, funny, earnest, and mellow gentleman. Of course Bob didn't sound mellow back when he, Grant Hart, and Greg Norton were making the ferocious music heard on this new 4xLP box set (and CD set) of Hüsker Dü's early material.From the Numero Group label, Savage Young Dü contains 69 tracks, 47 of which have never been issued, and 108-page hardbound book of photos, flyers, session details, and deep liner notes. Yes, Bob, Grant, and Greg were all on board with this release. No, they absolutely will not reunite for any live shows.And in case you missed it, here's a classic Boing Boing Video/Remedy Editorial performance and interview from 2014: "Bob Mould: An Old Punk Kicks New Ass"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffVNz1Mc60A

Nukazooka's latest video brings Grand Theft Auto's disconcerting brand of vehicular violence into the Lego realm.

This truck supports pieces of a tunnel arch as they are lowered from a crane. The body of the truck is covered with rollers so it can drive out of the tunnel and let the pieces fall into place.

Justin Roiland of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, and voice behind the hit cartoon’s leading characters, calls up Joel Osteen’s megachurch prayer line as Rick Sanchez during a hurricane relief livestream with H3 Podcast.An apparently kindhearted church lady picks up the line to a remorseful Rick wanting to send a prayer to Osteen.The gesture soon leads to a battle of biblical tongues and Rick berating the televangelist over reports his Houston church wasn’t initially opened to victims of Hurricane Harvey.Maybe a Rick from a different dimension will get taken off hold.

A gentleman cut in line at an ATM, which turned out to be a mistake. Whether or not this is real, it's high comedy on the level of The Three Stooges.

Deer, elk, antelope, and moose shed their antlers once a year. Jim Phillips of Montana has been collecting them for 59 years, amassing 16,000 antlers so far. His arrangements are spellbinding, almost putting the Paris catacombs ossuary to shame.

Washington and Lee law professor Joshua Fairfield is the author of a recent book called Owned: Property, Privacy, and the New Digital Serfdom, which takes up the argument that DRM and license agreements mean that we have no real property rights anymore, just a kind of feudal tenancy in which distant aristocrats (corporations) dictate how we may and may not use the things we "buy," backed by the power of the state to fine or jail us if we fail to arrange our affairs to the company's shareholders. (more…)

Pedra Que Engole means "swallowing rock," an accurate name for a small Brazilian cave accessible only via waterfall. (more…)

YOU CAN follow @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.AND INDEED if you do not join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and much more, you will regret it now and forever.MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE, you must obtain Ruben Bolling’s new hit, bestselling book series for kids, 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…)

For the past two years, Adrian Crook's four eldest kids (aged 7-11) have ridden Vancouver's public transit to school together, traveling as a group from the bus stop in front of his condo to the bus stop in front of their school. (more…)

The TS100 was already an incredible gadget, a miniature precision soldering iron, a cult product whose magical powers I toyed with upon discovering the wonderful world of assembly-required mechanical keyboards. And now you can play Tetris on it, proving not only that God exists but that He loves us. [via]

The PainStation is a cocktail-style Pong game that provides "sensory feedback" to players. Which is to say: pain. Physical pain.

Colin Trevorrow will no longer be the director of Star Wars: Episode IX. From the Hollywood Reporter:

It seems like yesterday, but Trololo — the internet-fueled renaissance of a perfectly demented Soviet echo of midcentury western light-entertainment bullshit — is almost a decade old. And the savant behind it, Eduard Khil, was born this day in 1934 and died a little more than five (!) years ago, after too-briefly enjoying his sudden international fame. Google made an animated doodle in his honor:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaCz_SFrTaUI can't decide what was the last gasp of the web's aughts-era wonder: Trololo or Rammstein feat. Cookie Monster.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZeciX-3wfs

In the Internet of Shit, Grosseries Department, a colleague and friend of this reporter who requested anonymity for themselves and their client relayed a story of a Samsung fridge that had a distinct odor about it — not of rotten food, but of a subverted Internet-connected Family Hub.Samsung envisioned this $3,200 refrigerator as a kind of dashboard for families — even though every individual might have their own devices — that could share information, calendars, notes, and drawings, and surf the Web. This is part of the practice of turning a family into a kind of little corporation.What Samsung may not have thought of is how to advise people setting up the Family Hub in a shared area. In which many unrelated people pass through. At different times of the day. Without anyone else being there.My friend, who dealt with the clean-up, says that it might have been construction workers or other folks who were responsible, but somebody — somebody! — drew dicks all over virtual sticky notes across all the swipe-through screens. This was discovered when the organization’s head toured a visitor through the office, and wanted to show off a streaming feature on the Samsung fridge. My friend writes: