Kingdrippa makes and sells these fabulously trenchant mouse pins. It's $11. In fact, there's so many cool things in this store I might have to blog the lot.

Think you're shopping boutique, albeit decently-priced, groceries by shopping at Trader Joe's? Well, think again.According to this Eater article, much of the packaged foods you're buying at the grocery chain is (disappointingly, imo) mass-produced at third-party manufacturing behemoths like ConAgra, Snyder’s-Lance, and Pepsi (and its subsidiary, Frito-Lay Inc):

Helen Keller became deaf, blind and mute at the age of 19 months old due to an illness. Later in life, she remarkably learned to speak, though not as clearly as she would have liked, according to her own words in this video from 1954:

On August 8, the Prince Estate and Pantone revealed a new color to honor the Purple One. Naturally, it's a shade of purple.This official shade -- named "Love Symbol #2" -- was inspired by the specific color of Prince's custom-made Yamaha purple piano which was, according to the press release, "originally scheduled to go on tour with the performer before his untimely passing at the age of 57."

Brown Girl Magazine recently featured the work of my friend Tasneem Nanji, whose photographs of Muslim women in London and New York illuminate the lives of individuals consistently portrayed as one-dimensional "others" in media.(more…)

This 0.01g division digital scale is on sale for $7.64 if you use code GEMBEN15. I used it to weigh supplement powders, loose leaf tea, and coffee beans. It's about the size of an iPhone. It measures up to a limit of 100 grams in 0.01 gram increments. (more…)

REM performed on October 10, 1982 at North Carolina's Raleigh Underground less than two months after releasing their debut EP, Chronic Town. This is thought to be the first pro footage of R.E.M. playing live. Posted by zararity on YouTube:

Twilight Zone veteran Richard Matheson wrote the screenplay for Trilogy of Terror, a 1975 NBC network Movie of the Week that was a lot creepier than TV audiences were used to watching. The third story in the 40-year-old trilogy, "Amelia," is still profoundly terrifying. Mental Floss has a remembrance:

Tom Cruise, who does his own stunts, means to jump from one building to another, but misses his mark and slams into the side of a building, twice. This is during the shooting of Mission Impossible 6. The extent of his injuries are unknown as of Monday morning, according to The Los Angeles Times.

"My husband learning to speak without a southern accent," wrote Stephanie Shadrick on YouTube a couple years ago. "Absolutely hilarious!"The fun they're having is infectious.

"We found that people who habitually accept their negative emotions experience fewer negative emotions, which adds up to better psychological health," says Iris Mauss, associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.(more…)

Last night, NBC Nightly News aired the wonderful video below about the Voyager Golden Record vinyl box set I produced with my friends Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad! Forty years ago this month, NASA launched two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, on a grand tour of the solar system and beyond, into the mysteries of interstellar space. Mounted to each spacecraft is a golden phonograph record, a message to introduce our civilization to extraterrestrials, perhaps billions of years from now. The Voyager Golden Record tells a story of our planet expressed in sounds, images, and science. As Lawrence said in the video, "it's a lovely reminder of what it means to be a human." Thank you to NBC Nightly News!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TR3Se4XZpk&feature=youtu.beJose writes, "I was offended by Trump's speech to the Boy Scouts. It's a slippery slope and seemed so reminiscent of the past. I synchronized Adolf to deliver Trump's remarks to show how close we are to repeating the past. It's an ode to Chaplin's City Lights and The Great Dictator." (more…)

In 1943 Sandoz chemist Albert Hofmann became the first person to synthesize (and take) LSD. He was also the first person to isolate and identify psilocybin, the main psychedelic component in magic mushrooms, almost 60 years ago. "Yet no one has been able to unravel the enzymatic pathway the mushrooms use to make psilocybin, until now," reports Stephen K. Ritter of Chemical and Engineering News:

Yesterday Adam Savage tweeted: "Doing some mechanical drawing in the house, but I didn't have a compass. So I made my own using a coat hanger in a paperclip!"

Enter a zipcode into Time's animated doohickey to find out how much of the sun will be blocked by the moon on August 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfPx3_u7moMIt's fun seeing him forced to denounce his base after taking so long to get to it that no-one (least of all them) will be fooled. He didn't enjoy it one bit, slinking off immediately without taking questions.

Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler tried to hold a press conference yesterday in Charlottesville, VA but chaos broke out. He was punched, swarmed, and then chased down the street by an angry mob who was shouting "shame" and "murderer." This follows the violent protest on Saturday, organized by Unite the Right, that led to the death of 32-year-old protestor Heather Heyer and two helicopter pilots. https://youtu.be/HLXcrad-qHUhttps://youtu.be/DwcfvNP3jOg

Chimpanzees at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute have learned to play the game rock-paper-scissors. From Phys.org:

Whether you are diagnosing strange noises from home appliances, or inspecting computer equipment for dust, or god forbid, nests of vermin, a small camera is an indispensable tool. This Endoscopic Android Camera uses your device as a handy video display, and is going for $17.50 in our store.This posable camera is totally waterproof, making it perfect for inspecting all manner of household nooks. You can use it to get a better view of your car’s engine, or explore the source of clogged waterways. Its flexible neck is a meter long to give you ample reach inside compact machinery. It’s compatible with desktop PCs as well as Android devices, and provides a crisp image up to 720p HD.Usually $139.99, pick up this Endoscopic Android Camera here for 87% off — just $17.50.

Sanduhruh is a clown who wrote a twitter thread about her experience painting faces at a picnic. When little boys wanted butterflies painted on their faces, the parents objected. When girls wanted skulls and sharks "the parents shrug and laugh like 'haha she's a kooky kid!"' Because maleness and masculinity isn't a sin."(more…)

Semihandmade started out as a Los Angeles cabinetmaker called "Handmade," but when they got a commission to design aftermarket doors for a cheap and surprisingly robust set of Ikea kitchen cabinets, they realized that they could supply excellent-looking, high-spec kitchens at a tiny price by just manufacturing replacement doors for Ikea's ubiquitous cabinetry. (more…)

Indiana U is selling off a huge lot of lab equipment, including these space-pod-looking gantries. Winning bidder is responsible for dismantling and shipping. "To give someone an idea of how large these are, there are two pits that they sit in. Each of the pits are 28'x35'x10' deep." (more…)

The Southern Poverty Law Center's guide, The Alt-Right on Campus: What Students Need to Know basically advises you to network with everyone on your campus who isn't a closet Nazi, meet with the Young Republicans (or whatever) and remind them that they're inviting Nazis to come speak, and then to throw a big, fun event far from whatever Nazi is addressing your school and starve them of publicity and attention. (more…)

Ricky from Inside the Magic writes, "Two classic Walt Disney World attractions closed permanently this weekend: The Great Movie Ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios and the Universe of Energy/Ellen's Energy Adventure at Epcot. The Great Movie Ride had a bittersweet finale, as enthusiastic cast members received a thunderous round of applause as the experience ended its 28 year run. The Universe of Energy, unfortunately, suffered a few technical difficulties on its final day of operation and unexpectedly shut down early." (more…)

Earlier this month, UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd idiotically insisted that "real people" don't need encrypted messaging apps; but as foolish a statement as that was, there was a kernel of truth to it. (more…)

Ken Frazier, CEO of pharma giant Merck, figured out that Trump is bad for business.https://twitter.com/Merck/status/897065338566791169Trump immediately took to Twitter to insult him and accuse him of ripping American patients off.https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/897079051277537280The full text of Frazier's statement:

The $469 LockState RemoteLock 6i is a "smart lock" that is sold to Airbnb operators through a partnership with the company, allowing Airbnb hosts to generate and expire unique, per-tenant unlock codes. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzEBp9EV2pgIt was there yesterday, but it isn't there today — the best YouTube cut of the U.S. Army demolishing symbols of Nazi oppression went viral following the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, then went into the memory hole. Perhaps some algorithmic process took it down, triggered by complaints. Fortunately, there are other copies on the service, though the quality is poor:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFdoGlUmBSohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CYTcQUKTVYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzEBp9EV2pghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzEBp9EV2pgHopefully this will be rectified. If you can fire a sexist human, Google, you can fix a Nazi algorithm.

A 32-year old man from Freeport, Florida, is in custody after a weekend rampage at the liquor store. But this was a liquor store rampage with a difference, reports WKRG: it was under construction, and he inflicted $100,000 damage with a forklift left on-site.

Donald Trump represents the eminently foreseeable outcome of Reagan's Republican bargain: welding together a coalition of racists and religious fanatics with the finance sector and its lobbyists, making two groups who had spent a century cordially loathing each other into one. (more…)

This cover illustration may not be striking enough to pull your attention from across the room. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, it just isn't an overwhelmingly dynamic composition or subject matter.There's a guy patching a hole in what appears to be a giant space balloon holding atmosphere for people inside. Not horrible, but not inspiring. As usual when this is the case, I start to look around at what was happening in the world.As it turns out, 1964 brings us some amazing space stories, such as the "Afronauts".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Do3dz9TR0The US and the Soviet Union were deep in competition at this point, pushing further and further outward, with sights set on the moon. A Zambian school teacher named Edward Makuka Nikoloso, inspired by Zambia's recent independence, created the space program that he dubbed the "Afronauts" and claimed that they would be the first to the moon, beating the two super powers.To put it simply, they didn't have the technology, training, or funding to do anything of the sort. They lacked support from their local government and ultimately dropped their plans after the pilot of their ship, 17 year old Matha Mwambwa, became pregnant.Publication: Worlds of IF Science Fiction

This year's Hugo Award winners have been announced, and the prizes overwhelmingly went to brilliant women like NK Jemisin and Seanan McGuire, to the eminent satisfaction of all those who saw the right-wing, misogynist, racist campaign to make science fiction inhospitable to brown people and women, took countermeasures, and for two years in a row, demonstrated the field's inclusiveness and commitment to quality, rather than pandering to reactionary panic over the prospect of a future that breaks with the shameful past. (more…)

Robot law pioneer Ryan Calo (previously) has published a "roadmap" for an "artificial intelligence policy...to help policymakers, investors, technologists, scholars, and students understand the contemporary policy environment around AI at least well enough to initiative their own exploration." (more…)

Choppers are now associated mostly with militaries, hospitals, news reporting and other institutional uses. But they were once seriously touted as mass transit vehicles, the original flying car. It all came to an end in 1977, when four passengers were killed in the spectacularly nasty Panam rooftop disaster. Efforts to revive scheduled passenger helicopter service is periodically revived, but everyone's failed at it -- including future president Donald Trump.

LIRNEasia ("a pro-poor, pro-market think tank" in Malaysia) partnered with Mozilla to study the effect of zero-rating through which companies like Facebook offer bribes to wireless companies in poor countries to exempt an AOL-like walled garden managed by Facebook from their data-caps. (more…)

Ah, that classic party trick! Can you punch a bear trap and withdraw your hand before it closes? A video of one fellow successfully executing this maneuver is going viral this fine Saturday morning, but this video is superior.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEJ_59hVPgwAfter years of buzz, the USC Game Innovation Lab finally released Walden: The Game earlier this month, allowing players to immerse themselves in a six-hour experience in which they play Henry David Thoreau on his gripping quest for solitude and mental clarity. (more…)

Like something you'd find at a genteel wedding or vicarage orgy, this sedimentary sandwich caught the eye of Redditor ibleedcarrots. Suspicion abounds that it may in truth be a beachworn slice of ceramic tile.

Ziemowit Pierzycki bought a $1500 used lens from an Amazon seller who turned out to be a scammer with an ingenious trick: the crook researched a recently widowed person across town and sent them a parcel with a couple of baking mats addressed to the deceased "or current resident." (more…)

In this Atlantic video, organizational psychologist and dad of three Adam Grant shares why helicopter parenting isn't helping our kids in the long run (duh) and shares advice on raising more resilient kids. I think his advice is spot-on, even if you aren't a parent. It's a good reminder of how we all can weather life's setbacks and "bounce back" stronger.Related: Late last year, Grant gave a TED Talk that asked the question, "Are you a Giver or a Taker?" that's really worth a watch. It inspired me to read his 2013 book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, which validated my lifelong love of being a "giver."

Wouldn't it be nice if we could hear just the vocals on the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't it Be Nice" track? We wouldn't have to wait so long because someone has already removed the tunes and made a video of this a cappella version of their iconic song.You may even give thanks for the happy times together we've been spending after hearing it.Thanks, Mable!Previously: Listen to isolated vocals on "God Only Knows"

Guaranteeing your privacy online goes way beyond checking the “Do Not Track” option in your browser’s settings. To ensure that your internet activity is totally hidden from Internet Service Providers, advertisers, and other prying eyes, take a look at Windscribe’s VPN protection. It usually costs $7.50 per month, but you can get a 3-year subscription for $22.49 from the Boing Boing Store.Windscribe offers the usual collection of VPN capabilities: encrypted browsing over a secure tunnel, and location masking by spoofing your IP address. You can freely download torrents and access region-locked content, but its extra privacy features set it apart from other VPN offerings available. It has a dedicated firewall to protect all of your devices from malware and unauthorized connections, and it actively blocks ads and ad trackers to keep your personal information away from indiscriminate data collection.You can pick up a 3-year subscription to Windscribe VPN here for $22.49.

Grant Stinchfield thought his call for North Korea to incinerate millions of human beings was a real knee-slapper. He's sorry some people didn't find it as funny as he did.“Let's send a note to North Korea that Sacramento changed its name to Guam!," he tweeted.From The New York Daily News:

On Reddit, the question was asked, "Why do porn sites have social media sharing buttons?" It's a good question!The Next Web presented some of the most plausible answers:

Looks like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have been working with the government of China to discreetly roll out a photo sharing service that's basically 'Moments' lite. Just one thing. It carries absolutely zero Facebook branding. And another. It appears designed not to piss China's internet censors off.(more…)

That's wild, you can't even see all the new listening devices.(more…)

“Do not try this at home!! or at anywhere else!!”(more…)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been a supporter of Trump, but when it comes to Trump's recent attacks on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Gingrich seems pretty frustrated with the president.When talking on the Laura Ingraham Show today on CNN about Trump's criticism over the Senate's failure to pass the repeal of Obamacare, Gingrich said, ""I think it's totally misplaced...And furthermore, McConnell's going to still be there. You don't pick a fight with a guy you need as a teammate, and they're not going to replace McConnell. And so, I don't understand what the President thinks he's accomplishing."When asked if Trump has a strategy, Gingrich replied:"I don't think there is one...I think the President has his instinct for being aggressive and he's unhappy, but he also he doesn't want to take responsibility. He talks about how Mitch has to get this done. Well, this is a team. The President is a key member of the team. You could argue he's the leader of the team, so if things aren't working, maybe, he needs to take part of the ownership here."And:"I look at this and I don't get it, maybe I just lack strategic cleverness, but this is not how I would try to tackle this," Gingrich told CNN. "I think that it doesn't do the President any good. It doesn't advance the game, it puts us in a situation where we have great difficulties, not less difficulties. Why would you think that's to your advantage?"Image: Gage Skidmore