The popular Tub Shroom, which catches hair before it clogs your tub drain, is on sale on Amazon today for $11. It's got 4.3 stars on Amazon with 9,618 customer reviews.

This incredible finger/hand puppet is puppeteer Barnaby Dixon's latest creation. When it's in action, the glowing bug looks more like an animated Pixar character than it does a puppet. Made from light-weight form-fitting plastic, its movements are very lifelike and nimble (it can even pick things up with its delicate hands). Amazing!!If you like this, here's another one of Dixon's brillant creations:https://youtu.be/-RrBiFI9FZA

These easy to hang LED lanterns are great camping, working under a car, or really anyplace that is dark!Invariably I am searching my tent or van for some small item I critically need, but can not find in the dark. These hanging lanterns make it easy for me to just turn on a light and find what I need.Solidly made, I take one camping wherever I go and have put the spare in my emergency bug out bag.2 Pack E-TRENDS Portable LED Lantern Tent Light Bulb for Camping Hiking Fishing Emergency Light via Amazon

Wikipedia's prediction of far-future events really makes me wish I could stick around to see the red supergiant star Antares go supernova in 10,000 years. "The explosion is expected to be easily visible in daylight." I'm happy I'll miss the 1km asteroid that's likely to hit Earth in the next 500,000 years. Looking farther out, the moon Phobos will collide Mars in 50 million years. Anything alive 2.8 billion years from now will need good air conditions because "Earth's surface temperature, even at the poles," will be 300 °F.This list "Technological Projects" below is just one of the many different tables in the Wikipedia article:

The amazing cast of Moonlighting performed William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew in character. It was wonderful!It has been decades since I've watched Moonlighting seriously, but every year or so I rewatch Atomic Shakespeare.

Japan is already known for being at the forefront of humanoid robots that take over traditionally human jobs (hotel concierge and elderly companions, for instance). Now they can add robot funeral priests to their list.Japan's telecommunications company SoftBank just unveiled "Pepper," its robot priest, dressed in Buddhist robes, that can chant Buddhist scriptures, play the drum, and livestream the ceremony for people who can't attend the funeral in person. The demo took place at Japan's "Life Ending Industry Expo" in Tokyo last Wednesday.According to The Guardian:

The people shooting this video try to warn a truck driver in Texas that the truck's bucket is raised, but the driver is oblivious. And then the truck crashes into a highway sign and takes it out, along with the entire trestle. Never seen anything like this before!Via ABC 13

Instagram's policy on nudity: "We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram."(more…)

India, the world's largest democracy, declares freedom of sexual orientation of fundamental right.

For the uninitiated, dinoflagellates are the single-celled organisms behind the eerie algal bloom known as red tide. But some of these tiny marine creatures are capable of producing a beautiful bioluminescent glow, and you can harness their natural light with a Dino Pet, available now in the Boing Boing Store.This dinoflagellate-filled aquarium is shaped like an apatosaurus to give your home some charming, punny decor that’s also a low-maintenance marine ecosystem. Just give it a shake, and they’ll instantly put on a dazzling blue-green light show that works any time of the day or night. Their reaction is powered only by sunlight, water and the small amount of nutrients included in the Dino Food blend. Just feed your microscopic friends once a week, and you can enjoy their alluring glow for years to come.You can grab a Dino Pet from the Boing Boing Store for $49.99.

If you've had a hankering for 18th-century eel succotash, you'll love the early American cooking and crafts on the James Townsend & Son channel. Aside from the recording gear, they commit completely to old school living. (more…)

Tattoo artist: What you want?

Bacteria are extremely adept at building biofilm cities, often in places humans don't want them: catheters, sewer lines, and our teeth, to name a few. Now scientists are working to unlock the structural mysteries in order to eradicate unwanted bacterial buildup. (more…)

Animal collective behavior is not well understood, but thanks to new technologies, it's possible to isolate individual animals in order to understand how flocks, swarms, herds, and schools move as a group. (more…)

Former CIA Director John Brennan sent an internal memo to CIA employees last December in which he said some of the members of Congress he'd briefed on the CIA's conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections did not “understand and appreciate the importance and gravity of the issue.”(more…)

#HurricaneHarvey could hit landfall late Friday night along the Texas coast as a Category 3 hurricane.(more…)

Below you’ll find an unhurried interview with Autodesk Distinguished Researcher Andy Hessel. Andy is a prime instigator behind GP-Write – which is, on some levels, heir to the Human Genome Project – and a co-founder of Humane Genomics, which is developing virus-based therapies for cancer.It’s the fourth episode of my podcast series (co-hosted by Tom Merritt), which launched here on Boing Boing three weeks ago. The series goes deep into the science, tech, and sociological issues explored in my present-day science fiction novel After On – but no familiarity with the novel is necessary to listen to it.The upside and the downside of synthetic biology are vast and Andy is deeply versed in both. He co-wrote a chilling fictive scenario about a bioterror plot for the Atlantic – but he tends toward relentless optimism when contemplating synthetic biology’s future.Synbio newbies should find our wide-ranging discussion to be a robust introduction to the field. But Andy’s sophisticated commentary will give expert listeners plenty to chew on. After considering the astounding decades-long drop in the cost of reading DNA (which makes price/performance gains in computing look trivial), we discuss the sudden and accelerating plunge in the cost of writing DNA that does not exist in nature.Andy explains how this is enabling the explosive rise of a market for metabolic circuits – clusters of genes designed to churn out industrial enzymes and other chemically complex output. This is a giant step down a path toward bioprinting an immense array of tissues (new skin for burn victims, cow-free steaks that could fool a cattleman, and much more), and then onward to boundless breeds of wholly synthetic critters.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

Interviewed by Fox and Friends, Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conway had thoughts on the general response to his rally rage meltdown in Arizona. The media, she says, aren't "afraid enough here."(more…)

This is insane. RELEASE THE BIRDS!KFC has given us a lot of really odd advertising, but this really something.

A few years ago, I started seeing evidence of the beginning swells of a nostalgia wave for the iconic 90s "cyberdelic" magazine Mondo 2000 and all things early 90s cyberpunk/cyberculture. One person on Facebook unearthed an old copy of Mondo, photographed it, and gushed all over it in a post. They asked (something like): "What could be cooler than a slick art magazine about virtual reality and cyberpunk, hacking, drugs and mind-alteration, weird art and high-weirdness?" I loved being able to respond: "Writing for it."[caption id="attachment_542988" align="alignright" width="750"] Original Mondo 2000 t-shirt design.[/caption]I also noticed, in 2014, when I published my writing collection, Borg Like Me, a lot of the focus in reviews was on the pieces reprinted from that era, from Mondo, bOING bOING (print), and my own zine, Going Gaga. People waxed nostalgic about that birth-of-cyberculture era, the creativity and promise that infused it, and the revolutionary dreams it inspired. Several reviews said: We need to bring some of this back. Stat!It is perhaps that rising sentiment that has prompted Mondo's equally iconoclastic creator, RU Sirius, to resurface Mondo 2000 as an online blogazine. RU tells Boing Boing about the launch:

I bought this small travel case in 2011 for $14 and use it whenever I travel. Here's an article I wrote for Cool Tools a few years ago about the stuff I carry in it. It's still in great condition. Amazon has it at an all-time low price of $7.10.

The Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) filed a Freedom of Information Act requesting "the justification for [Treasury] Secretary Mnuchin's use of a government plane, rather than a commercial flight, for a trip that seems to have been planned around the solar eclipse and to enable the secretary [and his white savior memoirist spouse Louise Linton] to secure a viewpoint in the path of the eclipse's totality."(more…)

Perhaps this is the chair Socrates was talking about.

https://youtu.be/JYpt3_sDjgE71-year-old Carol Rose thought it was a good idea to drink alcohol until she was twice the legal limit, and then get into her car. Oh, and according to the Daily Mail, she claimed she has problems with her sight. Her dash cam took this video of her side-smashing a bunch of cars, destroying parts of them along the way, and passing strolling kids and adults who were fortunate not to get in her way. For the grand finale, she crashes into what looks like a delivery truck, which causes her car to roll. The drunk driver, from Ainsdale, England, got eight months in prison and is banned from driving for three years.

You can find me at beschizza.com, but Martin Shkreli registered "robbeschizza.com" as part of what seems to be a quixotic effort to bother people who write about him. Cyrus Farivar reports that I'm in his Godaddy grab bag.

KFC is the coolest when it comes to their training program. New employees are given an Oculus Rift headset and asked to complete an eerie escape room, which is narrated by a sinister-sounding Colonel Sanders. The mission is to make the Original Recipe fried chicken from beginning (cutting open a bag of frozen chicken) to the end (picking up a pressure-fried drumstick), all in a futuristic kitchen that feels like the entrance room of Disneyland's Haunted House. "Only one step left. Will you escape or be trapped with me foreeeveeer," Sanders asks when the game is almost finished.According to Eater:

Anker's PowerHouse is the beefiest portable battery I've owned, with 120,000mAh coming though four USB ports, 110V AC and 12v DC. At $500 and weighing in at 9 pounds, though, it's also an big expensive box with a thin range of practical uses, aimed sharply at people willing to pay high premium for a user-friendly appliance that replaces buckets of lead and bagfuls of power bricks.Anker pitches it as a general-purpose multi-device charger, or for keeping a specific power-hungry appliance online for a day at a time. CPAP machines, PA systems and mini-fridges are among bullet-list examples. It can run a 15V lamp for almost a week, Anker claims, and reader-reviewers have found many interesting street uses.The downside is that it's way too heavy and bulky for any kind of casual portable use, and it's a gadget, not a tool. You won't be servicing it (as you might a similarly-priced generator), and the 18-month warranty is unnervingly suggestive of a lifespan under regular use.But the upside is that whatever needs you bring to it, it can likely handle them.For example, I found it useful as a tripod weight, keeping energy-hungry video cameras (such as the Blackmagic Cinema Camera) continuosly charged in the wilds of Pittsburgh.It also kept an all-in-one workstation on its feet during a blackout. These are great if you're working somewhere with intermittent power, where a noisy generator is out of the question.It took about 6-8 hours to charge from empty. It came with a five-inch power brick of its own, a 10m cord, and a USB cable. The battery display can be read a mile away and it worked without problem over a month of lightweight general use.The feature list poses a 120W maximum draw, the spec sheet 160W, but either means no heaters or AC, cooking appliances, serious gaming computers, big TVs, laser printers or heavy motorized tools. It can't jump a car, though you could use it to charge up something that can. It outputs 110V only; you can charge it in Europe, but don't expect to run local equipment with it.All in all, it's a blandly useful power appliance for those looking to avoid bigger, uglier worksite battery boxes like it. Anker found a sweet spot--the limit of what's reasonable to just leave lying around in an RV kitchen or stuff in a backpack--and stuck a just-works gadget in it.Anker PowerHouse [Amazon]

In an astonishing step forward in biomolecular computing, Harvard researchers encoded a 19th century film clip in DNA and stored it inside living bacteria. Later, they sequenced the bacterium's genome and decoded the film. From IEEE Spectrum:

A bunch of racist bigots billing themselves as "Alt-Right" demonstrators plan to invade San Francisco's Crissy Field this weekend. Locals are planning to leave their dog poop all over the field, just like it was Paris.Don't worry, oh ye concern troll! The counter-protestors plan to return and clean up the fecal detritus shortly after the neo-Nazi fuckers are done marching in crap.If you've got a dog who needs to poop, and you are close to Crissy Field...Nazis, I hate these guys.

Seems we always have tick season at Muir Beach. This Tick Twister yanks them without leaving bits behind!Ticks carry all sorts of diseases, and in wet wooded environments, we get a lot of them. A LOT. I feed my dogs an ingested tick killer, but my Great Pyrenees Nemo is so large we have a hard time getting a dosage that lasts. Sometimes I find ticks on his face, clearly upsetting the guy who plays the Sundance Kid to my Butch Cassidy! Intolerable! Tweezers tend to destroy our local ticks and leave bits in the wound, not so with the Tick Twister!If you have a dog, or an outdoor cat, its a good idea to have a set of these around.Tick Twister Tick Remover Set with Small and Large Tick Twister via Amazon

Eclectic Method writes:

Wow. Check out this latest cover of German magazine Stern, that depicts Trump draped in the American flag, giving a Nazi salute.From Mashable:

The always-excellent maker of animated explainer videos, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell just released a new video that explains what black holes are, explains what information is, and then goes into the way that black holes are the cause of something called "The Information Paradox." The takeaway: we all might be stretched on a flat screen, just imagining that we are in three dimensions.

Psychology is working on the hardest problems in all of science. Physics, astronomy, geology — those are easy, by comparison. Understanding consciousness, willpower, ideology, social change – there’s a larger-than-Large-Hadron-Collider level of difficulty to each one of these, but since these are more relatable ideas than quarks and bosons and mass coronal ejections — this a science about our minds and selves — it’s easier to create eye-catching headlines and, well, to make podcasts about them.This is the problem. Because the system for distributing the findings of science is based on publication within journals, which themselves are often depend on the interest of the general media, all the biases that come with that system and media consumption in general are now causing the sciences that are most interesting to the public to get tainted by that interest.As you will hear in this episode, one of the most famous and most talked-about phenomena in recent psychological history, ego depletion, hasn’t been doing so well in replication attempts.In the show, journalist Daniel Engber who wrote an article for Slate about the failure to replicate many of the famous ego depletion experiments will detail what this means for the science and the scientists involved.Also, you’ll hear from psychologist Brain Nosek, who says, “Science is wrong about everything, but you can trust it more than anything.”Nosek is director of the Center for Open Science, an organization working to correct what they see as the temporarily wayward path of psychology.Nosek recently lead a project in which 270 scientists sought to replicate 100 different studies in psychology, all published in 2008 — 97 of which claimed to have found significant results — and in the end, two-thirds failed to replicate.Clearly, some sort of course correction is in order. There is now a massive effort underway sort out what is being called the replication crisis. Much of the most headline-producing research in the last 20 years isn’t standing up to attempts to reproduce its findings. Nosek wants to clean up the processes that have lead to this situation, and in this episode, you’ll learn how he and others plan to do so.Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudThis episode is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus. Get unlimited access to a huge library of The Great Courses lecture series on many fascinating subjects. Start FOR FREE with Your Deceptive Mind taught by neurologist Steven Novella. Learn about how your mind makes sense of the world by lying to itself and others. Click here for a FREE TRIAL.There is no better way to create a website than with Squarespace. Creating your website with Squarespace is a simple, intuitive process. You can add and arrange your content and features with the click of a mouse. Squarespace makes adding a domain to your site simple; if you sign up for a year you’ll receive a custom domain for free for a year. Start your free trial today, at Squarespace.com and enter offer code SOSMART to get 10% off your first

There should be a giant eclipse photo contest for all the wonderful images, with a $700 million prize and everyone gets to vote. Until then, here's a terrific NASA compilation of some of the coolest shots from professional and amateur alike. (more…)

As more industries either embrace technology or become completely subsumed by it, digital literacy is increasingly critical for successful professional development. To help you explore the different types of skills needed to thrive in the growing tech landscape, we’ve collected five online course packages to help you thrive wherever you land:The Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence Introductory BundleDeep Learning algorithms are capable of exploring and extracting meaningful information from complex data sets. It’s the secret behind computer vision, voice recognition, and self-diving cars, and is poised to fundamentally change the way we interact with machines. To get in on the ground floor of this exciting subset of Artificial Intelligence, this bundle features five comprehensive courses. You’ll learn basic Python programming to perform linear and logistic regression, and how to use advanced tools like Theano and TensorFlow. This course collection is available here for $39.The Ultimate Learn to Code 2017 BundleThe internet is the glue that holds everything together in our hyper-connected world, and learning how to make it work isn’t easy. The Ultimate Learn to Code Bundle will give you a solid background in how to code for the web. In this extensive bundle, you’ll get introduced to full-stack development by building rich front-end interfaces with HTML5 and Javascript, as well as back-end data storage and retrieval systems. It also features two full courses on native mobile app development using Apple’s Xcode, and Xamarin for cross-platform releases. Get this collection for $49 here.The Complete iOS 11 & Swift Developer Course: Build 20 AppsThe iPhone is one of most ubiquitous computing devices in the world, and knowing how to build applications for it will continue to be an invaluable asset. Fortunately, Apple provides iOS developers with high-quality tools, and the Complete iOS 11 & Swift Developer Course offers a deep dive into all things mobile. These lessons are taught by acclaimed instructor Rob Percival, and will help you master iOS by building 20 unique apps. You can pick up this course for $15 here.Social Media Management Pro BundleIf programming isn’t in your wheelhouse, you can hone your social marketing faculties with the Social Media Management Pro Bundle. Throughout six sections, you’ll discover how to navigate the advertising platforms on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Using Google Analytics and targeted email campaigns, you can build a self-sustaining online brand from the ground up. This training can be had for $34.Graphic Design Certification School: Lifetime SubscriptionDespite the so-called death of print media, the field of graphic design is still a flourishing outlet for creative professionals. You can refine your visual skills and harness the power of the Adobe Creative Cloud. In the Photoshop course, you’ll get introduced a host of image manipulation and production techniques. Get a crash-course in print layout for posters and books in the InDesign section, and make infinitely scalable vector graphics using Illustrator. Grab access to the Graphic Design Certification School for $39.

Enjoy this website that works only in airplane mode or when no network can otherwise be found: "You must go offline to view this page".

SpaceX has been hard at work designing a stylish and comfortable working spacesuit. Following testing of the suit prototypes, Elon Musk has unveiled a first look. (more…)

"Pickup artist" YouTube channel MattHossZone (previously) has lost his copyright case against a reaction video posted by YouTube channel h3h3Productions. The closely-watched case is a big victory for fair use commentary on video platforms. (more…)

Last year artist Brandon Bird crowdfunded the creation of the Jerry Orbach Memorial Art Car, bringing in over $23,000.In this Super Deluxe video, Bird shares why he was inspired to create this badass "rolling memorial" of the Law & Order actor.He says:

This week’s tabloids may not be entirely divorced from reality, but they are permanently estranged and consulting lawyers.Many celebrities are horse lovers, but not Star Trek’s William Shatner. He has a “bizarre horse obsession” according to the ‘Globe.’ He rides and breeds horses, but the ‘Globe’ has found an “expert” who warns: “equine lovers get sexy kicks out of dominating powerful animals!” Don’t we all?The ‘Globe’ also airs its “Ryan O’Neal Cancer Fears!” In other words, he’s lost weight lately.Ellen DeGeneres is suffering a “mental health crisis,” reports the ‘Globe.’ Its evidence? She admitted suffering depression back in 1998 when her TV series was axed. So she’s still depressed?Clint Eastwood has given “Bride No. 3 wedding ring” claims the ‘National Enquirer.’ Or maybe his girlfriend Christina Sandera is just wearing a ring?Jack Nicholson is battling an “Alzheimer’s Nightmare!” alleges the ‘Globe.” At least, that’s what unnamed “friends fear,” because the 80-year-old is occasionally forgetful. "The rumor is he has the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease,” a “pal” says. Because that’s what pals are for. And where’s the fun in owning a tabloid if you can’t publish rumors?“I killed Elvis!” states Priscilla Presley’s “shocking confession!” in the ‘Globe.’ As if. Priscilla supposedly “blames herself” for The King’s death “because she rejected his plea to get married again.”Just like I blame myself for Michael Jackson’s death because I planned to attend his concert appearances and made him work himself to death. My bad.And now Jacko’s “tomb is empty” according to the ‘Globe.’ Not taken by body-snatchers, but secretly cremated by his family, it seems. This story not only bears a remarkable resemblance to the recent tabloid story claiming that Princess Diana’s tomb is empty (it’s not) but also echoes wild rumors that ran rampant when the gloved one was interred in 2009. Invasion of the story-snatchers.The ‘Enquirer’ claims a “World Exclusive” and the ‘Globe’ claims a “Royal Exclusive” as both identically report that Queen Elizabeth II has named son Charles as her heir. If they both report this, it must be true, which will come as a shock to absolutely no-one, as Charles has always been her heir apparent since his birth at 9.14 p.m. GMT on November 14, 1948. It’s true that the tabloids have repeatedly floated the fantasy that the Queen would by-pass Charles and donate the crown to grandson William - a constitutional impossibility. But the ‘Enquirer,’ not happy with actually getting a story right by default for a change, can’t help itself by adding that the “Queen Quits!” - an abdication which appears to have been missed by the mass ranks of Fleet Street’s finest. You'd think that might have made a paragraph or two in the British press, but apparently not.The ‘Enquirer’ goes on to reveal that the Queen has ruled that Charles’ wife Camilla “can NEVER be queen!” Not exactly revelatory, since the official Royal spokesman at Clarence House said publicly before Charles wed Camilla in 2005 that she had no desire to ever be named queen. As the official announcement stated: “It is intended that Mrs. Parker Bowles should use the title HRH the Princess Consort when the Prince of Wales accedes to the throne.” But who remembers what the Palace said 12 years ago, right?“Hollywood Pushers Tell All!” screams the headline in a ‘Globe’ exposé of celebrity drug abuse, as reliably narrated by "four of Hollywood’s top drug dealers.” Like the one who recalls allegedly selling cocaine to a morning TV show host (who I’ll refrain from naming here) 25 years ago when he worked at a local Rhode Island TV station. If you’re pushing coke in Rhode Island, are you really one of “Hollywood’s top drug dealers” . . ?The celebrity magazines continue their headlong plunge toward irrelevance with cover stories that are vacuous even by their own airless standards: ‘People’ mag features HGTV’s ‘Property Brothers’ Drew and Jonathan Scott on “Fame, Family & Finding Love!” while ‘Us’ mag’s cover reveals that former 'Real Housewives of New Jersey’ stars Teresa and Joe Giudici are to “Divorce!” - except, the story inside quickly backpedals away from the cover’s claim, saying just that Teresa is “fed up” with her husband - not entirely surprising since he recently began serving a 41-month prison sentence for conspiracy and bankruptcy fraud. She is “considering leaving,” the increasingly timid report states.The "Scientology battle gets ugly” between Leah Remini and Tom Cruise, as ‘Us’ mag declares: “It’s War!” But it’s not even a war of words - Remini slammed Cruise by saying that his public persona is different from “the person behind the mask,” while Tom hit back by saying . . . nothing.‘Us’ addresses the Royal love story of the year, asking of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle: “Did he propose?” It’s unfortunate that the mag doesn’t have the answer. Not a clue.Fortunately we have the crack investigative squad at ‘Us’ mag to tell us that Jenna Dewan Tatum wore it best, that Brooklyn Decker suffers “a crazy, unreasonable fear of toads” (but not frogs?), that ‘Vanderpump Rules’ star Stassi Schroeder (have they really run out of celebrities?) carries a “friendship crystal,” a Bytox hangover patch, and lip balm for her “permanently chapped lips” in her Chanel purse, and that the stars are just like us: they browse clothes, withdrew cash from ATMs, and “chow down.” Wait - the stars eat food just like us! Who knew?Onwards and downwards . . .

Tomorrow, I'm turning off my email and hitting the road for Burning Man, where I'll be giving three talks, and I hope to see you there: at 4PM on Weds, Aug 20, I'm speaking at Palenque Norte at Camp Soft Landing; at noon on Thursday, Aug 31, I'll be speaking at my home camp, Liminal Labs (6:15 and Rod's Road); at 4:30PM on Friday, September 1, I'm speaking at the Center Camp Cafe stage. See you there -- or back here after Labor Day!

Yesterday, we learned that President Donald Trump chewed out Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell over matters related to the open investigation into Russia, and Trump. Today, we learn from a Politico report that Trump also “clashed with multiple GOP senators,” not just McConnell, over Russia.(more…)

I was surprised to hear people suggest that removing statues of Confederate traitors would somehow lead to us tearing down the Jefferson Memorial. That is patent bullshit.Arguments attempting to equate slave owning founding fathers of the United States, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and their resultant memorials, with statues of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that are currently being removed across the nation are ridiculous. This fantastic article at Smithsonian.com describes how Arlington National Cemetery came to be, and why it is the perfect monument to the traitorous general who led an invasion of Pennsylvania in an attempt to preserve slavery on American soil.

It was supposed to be Infrastructure Week, but neo-Nazis and Charlottesville happened. Sassy Trump was in a real pickle.(more…)

Nicoletta Ceccoli is a pop surrealist painter/illustrator from the Republic of San Marino (a microstate within north-central Italy). Nicoletta has an animation degree from the State Institute of Art in Urbino and has illustrated over 30 children’s books since 1995. She does both commercial and personal work, and has exhibited her artwork all over the world. Among many other awards, she has received a silver medal from the Society of Illustrators in New York and the Andersen Prize, “honoring her as the best children’s book illustrator in Italy.”Ceccoli’s work depicts a world of delicate, feminine girls alongside freaky creatures in strange situations. This duality of imagery in her work is reminiscent of the out-of-this-reality type of nightmares a young child might have. Each piece of Ceccoli’s work tells its story with a cloud of mystery around it, which is up to the viewer to interpret. The titles to her work suc,h as “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free” and “Ready Or Not Here I Come” pull us even deeper into the world of make-belief. In an interview with WOW X WOW, Ceccoli explains that “Growing up I simply never stopped loving the children’s universe. Childhood remains the only magically joyful and free condition, and as adults we end up losing that. In my opinion it can only be regained through imagination.”. This love of the “children’s universe” is apparent through Ceccoli’s ability to pull the viewer into a childlike realm of wildly imaginatory situations.Ceccoli’s exhibit titles “Hide and Seek” is now being displayed at the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles. Be sure to check it out if you’re nearby.

Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun. Lister, Rimmer, Kryton and the show stealing Cat are back this October on Dave.From the Red Dwarf blog:

Talking of Trump's beliefs is pointless, because there are none. The barking comedy of his speeches and statements goes nowhere because "he cannot understand anyone’s response to them except as it relates to him."David Roth in The Baffler:

Here's how the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) uses your tax dollars - to pay a creep to pretend he loves a woman, play with her children, and persuade her to break the law for him so that the agents can swoop in and arrest her. That's what happened to Jennifer Padilla, who met a federally paid professional snitch known as Informant No. 9097.From the Santa Fe Reporter:

Philip Goff, associate professor in philosophy at Central European University in Budapest, argues that the idea of panpsychism ("mind is everywhere") shouldn't be dismissed just because it sounds crazy.Excerpt from Philosophy Now: