Josh Jones at Open Culture looks at the Speyer wine bottle, the oldest (and possibly grossest) unopened bottle of wine. (more…)

Droptree, a video production company in Portland, Oregon, spent two years surreptitiously producing their own music video on their clients' film sets.Or did they?Though, this recent post on their Facebook feed suggests otherwise: Either way, the video's song "HD Delivery," is a lot of fun and a great way to market their services. It's got a Beastie Boys vibe and they've packed in a kajillion industry-specific lyrics, like:

Maker Federico Tobon of WolfCatWorkshop wanted to test out a 24-frame flip box animation he was working on, so he attached his art to a power drill.Here's a closeup:https://youtu.be/t9afE9iEds0Tobon told Doodlers Anonymous that he was inspired by mutoscopes, "old-timey coin-operated machines" that are animated using flipbooks, to test his work out on a drill.

Over the years, Bruce Gardner has mastered the Japanese craft of hikaru dorodango, polished mud balls that literally mean "shiny dumplings." (more…)

Salem Barker's kid isn't afraid of a little hard work. At five, he already knows how to run the hydraulic logsplitter they rigged up at their farm. (more…)

In 2007, Fight Club and Snuff author Chuck Palahniuk sold his home in Portland, Oregon. Recently, the current owner Jolynn Winter was having some work done in a bathroom and when the contractors opened up the ceiling, they found a time capsule that Palahniuk left behind. Inside was a letter he wrote about the house, a signed copy of Fight Club, family photos, and his original renovation drawings for the bathroom. From Winter's post on Facebook:

Our pal Adam Savage visited Jack White's Third Man Records vinyl pressing plant in Detroit and records his Brain Candy song! Then Jack and Adam talk about cutting records and the creative process. (Tested)

The establishment wing of the Democratic Party has spent decades receiving dump-trucks full of money from the insurance industry and then, totally coincidentally, explaining that the time isn't right for single-payer for completely unrelated reasons. (more…)

Braniac75, after trying and failing to replicate the various online recipes for DIY ferrofluid (the consumer stuff is $200+ a liter), figured it out: 1 part iron oxide powder, 1 part "clinging" synthetic motor oil, a stirring stick, and a dangerously powerful magnet to risk your fingers with: "it really is that easy."The result is more of a paste than a liquid, but it works!

In 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services barred nursing homes from forcing their residents into accepting binding arbitration agreements, insisting that nursing homes that engaged in neglect, physical or sexual abuse should be subject to legal consequences: but then the Trump administration killed the rule, giving a sweet gift to the giant nursing-home lobby and the Chamber of Commerce. (more…)

The fourth season of Game of Thrones hits its midpoint, and Boars, Gore, and Swords is here to push you out of the way of "Spoils of War".Ivan and Red discuss the ongoing Stark family reunion, Arya coming into her own as a dual-wielding murder machine, Sansa's incredibly ability to count grain, Daenarys's saviorhood, and Jaime Lannister's attempt to save his raid from wiping.

In 1930, British explorer Augustine Courtauld volunteered to spend the winter alone on the Greenland ice cap, manning a remote weather station. As the snow gradually buried his hut and his supplies steadily dwindled, his relief party failed to arrive. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow Courtauld's increasingly desperate vigil on the ice.We'll also retreat toward George III and puzzle over some unexpected evidence.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and much more.GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit 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…)

Ever since transparent pool tables came on the market, I was curious about how they worked. Elite Innovations' designer Craig Nottage explains. The trick? Vitrik:

National Geographic's Travel Photographer of the Year Contest has announced the 2017 winner, and the grand prize went to Sergio Tapiro Velasco for this otherworldly shot of Mexico's Colima volcano erupting at night. (more…)

For anyone that’s always travelling between their home, office, storage unit, art studio, or any other location that’s behind a locked door, you probably have more keys than you know what to do with. Fortunately, the Extended KeySmart keeps them all in a single, compact place that mitigates the need for a huge janitor key ring.This key holder houses up to 14 keys, including longer and foreign key shapes. Each key folds out of the frame for quick access — you’ll never forget which one is for your front door again. Constructed from lightweight aluminum with durable, stainless-steel hardware, the KeySmart can take a beating without weighing down your bag or pants pockets. It even comes with a handy loop to accommodate your irregularly-sized car key.You can pick up one of these cleverly-designed key containers here for $19.99. But if your dwelling has several separate locks and you want to keep your spare keys in order for houseguests, a 3-pack of KeySmarts is just $39.99, 33% off the usual price.

It's been decades since I first discovered my love of science fiction on a school trip to the "Spaced Out Library," the public science fiction reference collection founded by Judith Merril -- that day, I met both Merril (who went on to be a mentor to me) and Lorna Toolis, who has just stepped down as head of the library, which grew in stature and changed names, becoming the Merril Collection of Science Fiction. (more…)

Artist Annie Owens’ exhibition titled “A Place Worth Knowing” will be on display at La Luz De Jesus gallery in LA from August 4th-28th. If you can’t make it to the gallery, you should definitely check out her work on her website here.Annie’s watercolor paintings are delicately haunting. They simultaneously look like antique photographs and scenes out of an eerie fantasy world. Her work features desolate landscapes and floating houses. The women in her paintings are isolated, ghostlike, and almost appear to be translucent. Here is an excerpt from Annie’s artist’s statement about “A Place Worth Knowing”:

Working remotely often means using a full-size laptop, or forcing a tablet to do things it was never intended to do. Depending on your job, each may be a reasonable, if somewhat compromising solution, or an impossibly frustrating one. Either way, you’ll be stuck with a tiny screen and a form factor that will destroy any semblance of good seated posture you may have had.If you are looking for a proper desktop experience wherever you call office, and have zero interest in making a Linux-powered Raspberry Pi your daily driver, the Ockel Sirius B is a complete Windows 10 PC in a package that’s no bigger than a portable hard drive. Just plug it into an external monitor, TV set, or projector, add a keyboard and mouse, and you’re good to go. Whether you frequently work from home, or need to give a presentation in a faraway conference room, this portable PC will work with any standard desktop gear.Since most offices have yet to upgrade to the latest connector standards, the Sirius B’s got a pair of full-sized USB-A ports, HDMI, and even a MicroSD slot for maximum compatibility no matter where you are. In order to run modern desktop software, it has 2GB of RAM, modern integrated Intel graphics, and a quad-core processor. It even includes 32GB of internal flash storage for faster boot-ups and application launches.The Ockel Sirius B Windows 10 Pocket PC is available now from the Boing Boing store for 24% off at $189.

Andy at The Jerx (previously) describes a surprisingly effective tactic for putting a heckler in his place during the performance of a magic trick. (more…)

Ralph Steadman, 81, is best known as the genius social and political cartoonist who famously illustrated Hunter S. Thompson's depraved adventures in Las Vegas, on the campaign trail in 1972, and at the Kentucky Derby. Juxtapoz's Gabe Scott interviewed the "crucial comic" about the insanity of today, his friendship with Hunter, and "let(ting) the paper discover things for you." From Juxtapoz:

Up until now, Russian and other foreign bots have been chummy with Trump and the GOP on social media, with "nearly half of the president’s followers appearing to be fake or spam accounts," according to Newsweek.But over the last 48 hours, these bots have begun to change their tune. According to Newsweek:

In the flurry of obituaries for Sam Shepard, who died last Thursday, at 73, from complications related to Lou Gehrig’s disease, the playwright and actor appears in close up, as an uncompromisingly honest anatomist of family traumas, and in long shot, as the last mythologist of the American West. He grew up “all over the Southwest, really -- Cucamonga, Duarte, California, Texas, New Mexico,” yanked from place to place by his Air Force-pilot dad’s postings, but when he moved to New York in ’62, he seemed oddly at home in the bohemia of the Lower East Side, plunging into the experimental theater scene orbiting around La MaMa. His Gary Cooper features, laconic way with words, and cowboy cool seemed right, somehow, for the post-beat, proto-punk underground that produced Andy Warhol’s 1968 movie, Lonesome Cowboys, and Velvet Underground songs like “Lonesome Cowboy Bill” (1970), both ironic, deadpan jabs at the moribund myth of the American Frontier (at the very moment that John Wayne was performing CPR on it in True Grit). In his early play, Cowboy Mouth (1971), binge-written in the Chelsea Hotel with his then-lover, Patti Smith, Shepard reimagines the high-plains drifter of John Ford legend as a wannabe Keith Richards, “a street angel…with a cowboy mouth.”Coming of age at a moment when the rock guitarslinger was coolness itself, both Shepard and Smith, like many Boomer writers, sublimated their dreams of rock stardom into bravura improvisations on the typewriter. “First off let me tell you that I don’t want to be a playwright,” wrote Shepard, in 1971. “I want to be a rock and roll star. I want that understood right off.”

The United States General Services Administration is auctioning off six lighthouses, one on in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland and five Michigan's Great Lakes. Bidding starts at around $15,000 and there isn't much action yet! From Mental Floss:

Just look at them.(Thanks, Fipi Lele!) (Photo: cropped from a picture by Vincent Tullo for the New York Times)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib9tL_WeZKYIn 2016, CBS/Paramount brought a lawsuit against Axanar, a very successful group of fan-film producers who'd crowdfunding more than $1M to make a kick-ass Star Trek video. (more…)

https://youtu.be/75gf_jGM5J8Sam Kanizay, 16, of Australia stood in the ocean to cool his feet. When he emerged, he was surprised to see that his legs were bleeding profusely. He hurried home, where his father tried in vain to stop the bleeding. He took his son to the hospital emergency room and doctors rushed to help.Later, the father went to the same part of the ocean Sam had been swimming in to find out what had attacked his son. From Washington Post:

Winning an argument is the greatest thing ever. I would argue that having someone change your mind is often a better outcome. Nevertheless, if you are interested in getting someone to agree with you, here are some science-backed tricks (via Relatively Interesting).

The popular Anker SoundCore Bluetooth speaker is on sale today for $27 by using the code code UVQH8VHF. It runs up to 24 hours on a charge and has a 4.6 star rating on Amazon with over 8,000 reviews.

It's a federal crime:

https://youtu.be/8uXwBc0pndkIn Psycho, Norman Bates hinted early on that he killed and taxidermied his mother, when he told Janet Leigh that she was as harmless as one of his stuffed birds. That's one example of 10 foreshadowing scenes presented in this video. Other movies in the video: Skyfall, Total Recall, The Shawshank Redemption, Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects, The Shining, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Jurassic Park, and Shaun of the Dead.

From Futility Closet:

This gorgeous Avionics electric bike prototype mixes modern technology with the classic style of early gas-powered motorcycles. (more…)

Need a little time away to reconnect with nature? Head to France and go off the grid in this delightful wood cabin shaped like three owls. (more…)

You'd be nuts not to watch the trailer for American Vandal, a mockumentary that satirizes Netflix's true crime genre.

Artist Bob Wysocki plays around with homemade lava to create cool experiments that mesh sculpture and geology. Here, he makes a mini shield volcano. (more…)

Bay Area artist Richie Rhombus has been leaving hot meals on the front seat of his unlocked mini-van and quietly hiding in the back. When a food "thief" comes around to eat the home-cooked dinner, Rhombus eats with him, but secretly.He explains:

Idina Menzel, the voice of Elsa from Frozen, closed out her Dallas area concert on July 30th by inviting children to sit on stage. She picked out the one boy in the sea of girls and brought him up to sing the film's hit song, "Let it Go."And sing he did. Wow.The boy, 11-year-old Luke Chacko, owned the stage like a pro. Menzel was so wowed that she demanded an immediate encore. He, of course, got a standing ovation from the audience.In a post-concert news interview, Luke describes Menzel's performance as, "amazing" and furthered, "She talked to the audience. She took people on a journey which is really important to music."He continued, "I know boys don't like 'Let it Go' because it's a girls' song but, I mean, songs are for everyone. It's music. It's art." (A-men.)https://youtu.be/mu7vWSk5YUsI imagine we'll be hearing more of this talented young man in the future.

Dragon Con's Dragon Award ballot was just published and I'm delighted to learn that my novel Walkaway is a finalist in the "Best Apocalyptic Novel" category, along with Daniel Humphreys' A Place Outside the Wild, Omar El Akkad's American War, Declan Finn and Allan Yoskowitz's Codename: Unsub, N.K. Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate, Rick Heinz's The Seventh Age: Dawn, and J.F. Holmes's ZK: Falling. (more…)

Toronto's crazy-insane property prices stayed high even through the 2008 crash and its aftermath, but sales volumes of houses of all types plummeted by 40.4% for July 2017-vs-July 2016, new listings are up by 5% over the same period -- and the average selling price has fallen by 19% since April. (more…)

A U.S. Federal appeals court today threw out the murder conviction of former Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten, who had been sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 2007 massacre of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.Slatten and other former staff of military security contractor Blackwater (renamed Xe Services, now Academi, run by Erik Prince, brother of Trump DOE chief Betsy DeVos) were the focus of a high-profile legal case that has stretched on for a full decade.Dozens of people from Iraq traveled to the United States for the trial, as we reported ten years ago here on Boing Boing. And the judge who sentenced Slatten to life in prison decided he was a nice guy who deserved a break (from the death penalty).From Reuters:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is using at least two grand juries, one in VA and one in D.C., to investigate possible coordination between the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and Russia, USA Today reports, citing a lawyer involved in the case.(more…)

For months, ProPublica has been gathering the disclosure forms that reveal the financial holdings and employment backgrounds of officials in the administration of President Donald Trump.(more…)

It will be the best around!Former teen stars Ralph Macchio and William Zabka will be back in Cobra Kai!, a series that picks up some time after the legendary Miagi taught Daniel to apply wax, and Johnny swept the leg to no avail.

"Pharma bro" Martin Shkreli was found guilty of three felony criminal charges today, including securities fraud.From Washington Post:

Yowza!(more…)

You can't use these plastic lids for canning (they don't form a tight seal and wouldn't survive the high temperature) but they do a fine job for storing food or other things in Mason jars. Amazon sells 16 wide mouth jar lids for $10. And you can buy wide mouth Mason jars in a several different sizes, from a half-pint to a hald-gallon.

Scooby or Spiderman? Gah.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUtziaZlDeE

A stretch limousine got high-centered on a railway crossing. As luck would have it, a train was barreling down the tracks. The driver got out the car and waved his handkerchief a couple of times before realizing it wasn't going to achieve the desired effect, so he got out of the way and let momentum and do its work.