James B. Comey may once have tried to hide behind curtains to avoid Donald J. Trump, but the former FBI director's investigation could mean curtains for the Trump presidency.(more…)

Given my own penchant in the 1980s for black clothing, black eyeliner, and Bauhaus, I was delighted by Dan Adams's TED-Ed video "A brief history of goths."And if you find yourself in that delightfully dark place, please enjoy these classics:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U1SiIWuZeEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AJjbm96Orwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58XbwXgIcYghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSSlxp0FAS8

It’s not weird to drink milk or orange juice straight from the carton. (Right?) But for some reason, sipping wine right from the bottle is usually met with disapproving glowers. Whether they’re worried about germs, or wanton displays of low-class behavior, you can make those who aren’t attuned to your relative brand of etiquette a bit more comfortable with the Guzzle Buddy.This wine bottle attachment adds a stemless glass to any bottle, letting you sample your beverage in casual style. Although it won’t prevent against the inevitable backwash, the Guzzle Buddy makes it easy to share your drink so you won't have to waste water washing a whole bunch of glasses.It fits on most beer, soda, and cider vessels as well, so you don't have to feel left out if wine isn't your thing. Pick up the Guzzle Buddy here for $19.99.

For 21 years, King Willem-Alexander has been flying unwitting commercial airlines passengers twice a month on the Dutch airline KLM. The 50 year old monarch says being a pilot is a "relaxing" hobby.From Sky:

HoleRole created some nice blackout curtains using an age-old design trick: perforating them with patterns, in this case cities at night. Choose from London, New York, or night sky. (more…)

Colin Morris at The Pudding analyzed the repetitiveness of a dataset of 15,000 songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1958 and 2017. It's true: pop music lyrics are increasingly repetitive. (more…)

Propublica and Gizmodo sent a penetration-testing team to Mar-a-Lago, the Trump resort that has been at the center of series of controversial potential breaches of US military secrecy (for example, loudly discussing sensitive information about the North Korean missile launch in the club's full, public dining room); they discovered that it would be child's play to hack the Mar-a-Lago networks, and that indeed, the networks have almost certainly already been hacked. (more…)

Norwegian designer Asbjørn Lote (aka YouTuber lotsalote) used open-source Blender to create this realistic pool table scene from scratch in about 90 minutes. (more…)

Patrick Cabral is best known for his calligraphy, but he recently created a series of intricate papercraft animal sculptures, with some proceeds going to charity. (more…)

Roger Ailes, the disgraced former Fox News chief and accused sexual harasser, is dead at 77. His wife, Elizabeth Ailes, released a short statement, as published by The Washington Post:

Fox News reports that a girl in Texas nearly choked on a fidget spinner that she had put in her mouth. Her mom looked over to see the child red-faced and drooling, and had to rush her to hospital to get the quarter-sized toy removed from her esophagus.

Games for the Many sends us Put on Your Corbyn Face, "A web game where you are challenged to match the emotions of a photo Jeremy Corbyn. Possibly the first web game you play with empathy and emotion."

FilmSpektakel takes hyperlapse to the next level with A Taste of New York, a frenetic and beautifully shot homage to Manhattan. (more…)

Josie Lewis creates beautiful geometric watercolor paintings. In this video, she shows you how if you're ready to move past adult coloring books. (more…)

Comedian and soothsayer Peter Serafinowicz brings us a new 'Sassy Trump' episode in which Trump addresses young people preparing to serve their country with all the mean things the haters are doing to be mean to him.(more…)

A month before Donald Trump became the 2016 Republican presidential nominee, his ally House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said privately among GOP peers on Capitol Hill that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin makes payments to Trump.(more…)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's annual Pioneer Award honors people who have "contributed substantially to the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications," and the 26th annual awards will be given out this year: nominations are open until May 23.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T1Fjh08pvIA person in Virginia devised a strange-but-effective method to discourage bears from rummaging in the garbage cans. I'm sure the bears will have their revenge.

Washington DC's Union Station officials suspect hackers were involved in causing a pornographic video to play on an advertising kiosk in the station’s main hall on Monday evening.From The Washington Post:

Iconic high fashion house Chanel is now selling a branded boomerang. It's part of a line of lifestyle sport items including a beach racket, tennis racket and balls, and a paddle board. The boomerang is wood and resin and, of course, emblazoned with the Chanel logo. It is $1,325. Chanel Boomerang (via Uncrate)

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band will turn 50 this year. To commemorate The Beatles' landmark album, the BBC has produced a video series about each of the 60+ people on the cover.

The famously spare Hemingway used 80 words ending in -ly per 10,000 words of prose; JK Rowling uses 140 adverbs per 10,000 words, and EL James uses 155. (more…)

Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation, can vouch for Donald Trump's claim that no significant intelligence information was leaked to his foreign minister. This is because he has his own transcript of their meeting, of course, which he's happy to provide to America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqLYhhV7u7YIntralox makes these incredible machines. Excellent material for making perfect-loop GIFs.Previously: Lost and lonely dildo on a conveyor belt

Second Thought takes a brisk stroll through the historical death toll for earth creatures sent into space. Let's just say you didn't want to be a space monkey in the mid-20th century. (more…)

Military ration historian Steve1989 cracked open a real gem: a 1942 World War II K Ration by Doughboy Mills, which contained a package of Chelsea cigarettes. (more…)

Last year, the Thai Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn (who became King of Thailand in December) walked around a Munich shopping center sporting a little yellow crop top, exposing tattoos on his belly and back. He was with a woman who was similarly dressed. They looked like an ordinary couple on a beach vacation.But the new King is not happy that a video surfaced on Facebook last month, posted by Somsak Jeamteerasakul, "a prominent Thai historian and critic of the monarchy who lives in France," according to The New York Times. The King has had the video blocked in Thailand, but today he threatened to sue Facebook if it wasn't immediately removed from the site.

Blacknoise is the opposite of a white noise generator: you leave it running and it produces annoying, aggravating sounds that go right through you.

A 2014 survey of 175 US law enforcement agencies found that they ranked "sovereign citizens" as the top domestic terror threat, and with good reason: members of the heavily armed, white-supremacist-adjacent movement regularly kill cops during routine traffic stops and other interactions. (more…)

If you are an aspiring developer who wants to learn how services are deployed and maintained in production environments, this collection of online courses will help you get a grip on the fundamentals of systems administration. Over the 95 hours of included content, you’ll learn how to manage Windows and Linux servers, explore powerful new software deployment tools like Docker and Vagrant, and discover how applications can scale dynamically with Amazon’s AWS cloud platform.The following courses are included in this comprehensive bundle:

Looking for an appetite suppressant? The U.S. Food & Drug Administration can help. Just stop by FDA's Defect Levels Handbook to learn how many insect legs and rodent hairs are acceptable in various foods sold to the American public. (more…)

Watch this expertly edited look back at the many times Donald Trump has been caught on video condemning Hillary Clinton's competence in handling classified information.(more…)

“The self-spreading ‘WannaCry’ internet worm, which ripped through 160,000 computers and crippled hospitals and other businesses, is now being linked to a North Korean cyber gang,” reports Kevin Poulsen at Daily Beast.(more…)

But Her Emails.(more…)

https://youtu.be/1cHjMzqhJ4IThis baby hippo, Fiona, is getting her teeth checked at The Cincinnati Zoo, and from the looks of it, you'd think she was enjoying a day at the spa. If only human dental visits could be so pleasurable!

Not sure if people are still taking ex-convict, sex scandalist, and TV evangelist Jim Bakker seriously, but here's his latest charade.“These people mocking the president, the words they use, the speech they use… that’s the spirit of antichrist,” says the conman, who was convicted in 1989 of mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy, and sentenced to 45 years in prison (but was able to have his sentence voided a couple of years later).This is from his desperate The Jim Bakker Show, where he pretends to be a minister once again. Thanks Right Wing Watch!

In 1974 a man with a communications disorder made history when he ordered a pizza over the phone with a talking computer built by Michigan State University's Artificial Language Laboratory. He tried calling Dominoes four times, but they thought it was a prank and hung up on him. But another pizza delivery service took the order.[via]

Here's a bunch of video clips of Kellyanne Conway being highly critical of Trump when he was running for president. She took Trump to task for hurting the "little guy," not paying contractors, ripping off "Trump University" students, and much more. Why did she change her tune?Image: Gage Skidmore

Not Hotdog by SeeFood Technologies is an iPhone app that lets you know if the think you have is a hotdog or not a hotdog. If you watch Silicon Valley, you will understand the significance of this.

Adorable. An aside: note how this video includes all the features of pre-internet animal video shows, where music and other anthropomorphizing cues bully you into the proper mindset to appreciate the humor. The only thing missing is a voiceover literally telling you that it's funny. It's not ironic, so either (a) someone trained a neural network on the career of Arsenio Hall or (b) the web, instead of dying, is completing its final metamorphosis to a box of VHS tapes at an estate sale.

Friday's edition of German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel; this shot was everywhere this weekend, sadly unsourced!

Yesterday's report of a Wcry ransomware version that didn't have the killswitch that halted the worm's spread was retracted by Motherboard and Kaspersky Lab -- but today, France's Benkow computing document a new Wcry strain that has a different killswitch -- one that has already been registered, stopping the new strain. (more…)

Bruce Sterling's been playing with a stack of hand-punched cardboard cards created in 1840 by Charles Babbage as a kind of vaporware app for his never-built Analytical Engine; they were intended to placed in a revolving "six-sided prism." (more…)

O.Z.O.R.A. Festival is billed as a psychedelic tribal gathering in Dádpuszta, Hungary. Their website splash page is a gorgeous infinite gif that you can set to trance or chill music. (more…)

Last week, I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly uninsurable. While tracking the Trumpcare vote (AHCA), I felt like Princess Leia, helplessly watching the Empire destroy her home planet. Yes, the Senate still has to vote on it, and no, I’m not saying that Republicans are evil. But for me and so many Americans, Obamacare (ACA) got rid of the terror and carnage of being denied or unable to afford healthcare coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Watching it dismantled was disturbing.Obamacare also did away with the false separation of mental health from physical health. Trumpcare does the opposite, classifying mental health care as non-essential, meaning that states, employers, or insurers will decide if the 1 in 5 Americans who struggle with mental illness will be covered at all. May is Mental Health Awareness Month , so here’s one fact to be aware of:“The World Health Organization determined that depression is presently the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease.” - World Health Organization That’s just ONE KIND of mental illness. How will Trumpcare affect you, your friends or family with mental health issues? Like this:The House bill allows states to let health plans:

As the Wcry ransomware burned across the globe yesterday, spreading to more than 80 countries thanks to a bug in Windows that the NSA deliberately kept secret in order to weaponize it, it seemed unstoppable. (more…)

On Tuesday, a crane carrying a concrete aqueduct section tipped over. The driver was able to jump out of the cab in the nick of time. The accident is followed by cries of astonished disappointment.If you find this as sickly fascinating as I do, here are 40 minutes of crane and heavy construction fails (turn off the volume to avoid the atrocious music):https://youtu.be/pN5sK8uTwFUhttps://youtu.be/TgxVfdjMa4Qhttps://youtu.be/6ydQsJo9ADk