On this infuriating video, you'll hear a Delta Airlines flight attendant tell a couple, "You and your wife will be in jail, your kids will be in foster care." What did the parents do to warrant such an ominous threat? They put their 2-year-old child in a seat they paid for.Here's how the father described what happened, in his YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/ZZN-vZU1QcMThese crowdfunded billboards, calling out Congress members who took money from telecoms and then voted to allow the telecoms to sell your web history without your consent, were installed on Wednesday.

Amanda Palmer -- who appears on the audiobook for my novel Walkaway -- and Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pinks Dots have just released a new, patron-funded album: "I Can Spin a Rainbow". (more…)

The Neptune Convertible Art Lens System is designed to recreate a vintage look without being completely terrible wide-open like the old C-mount trash glass you keep buying on eBay.

Martin Shkreli was suspended from Twitter in January after harassing reporter Lauren Duca there, and reported being permanently banned Thursday. He boasted about setting up a new Twitter account to circumvent the ban, but @TrashyTheCat has now been banned too.

When you got it... flaunt it."As we eavesdrop on these odd couples trying to outflaunt each other, we hear everything that has to be said about Braniff (International airlines)," wrote famed designer and adman George Lois of his 1968 campaign for . "We also imply that you might bump into a celebrity or two on a Braniff flight...They are not idealized celebrities—they are famous people who are portrayed as lovable extroverts, combined to radiate a surreal kind of believability."(r/ObscureMedia and Dangerous Minds)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFc00I2asSc

Meet the 19 Republicans who flipped their votes in favor of the ACHA, the bill that effectively repeals Obamacare and allows insurance companies to hike premiums and refuse to sell insurance to people on the basis of "pre-existing conditions" such as being the victim of domestic violence. There's something odd about them. Can't quite put my finger on it.

Here's how's it's done:

On Sunday, I'll be appearing at Chicago's Volumes Books with Max "Cards Against Humanity" Temkin, as part of the Walkaway tour (which includes stops tonight in Chapel Hill at Flyleaf Books with Mur Lafferty; tomorrow in Cincinnati at Joseph Beth; and more dates in Winnipeg, Denver, Austin, Houston, Scottsdale/Phoenix, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, Vancouver and Burbank, before I head to the UK). (more…)

Jeromie Whalen is a technology teacher at Northampton High School who recently took over as the school yearbook advisor (one of the many cool projects he's done at his school); when he stepped into the role, he discovered with mounting horror that the school's yearbook contractor, the field-dominating Jostens Yearbook, was "literally a scam." (more…)

24+ of the Republican lawmakers who voted yesterday to take away healthcare from tens of millions of Americans, including survivors of rape and domestic abuse are in vulnerable districts, having won their seats with less than 50% of the vote. (more…)

Hole Roll is (was? the post dates from 2014 and their website is down) a Ukrainian blind company that published some early designs for blackout curtains cut into intricate nighttime cityscapes that let you create the illusion of being in a skyscraper penthouse after dark in the middle of the day in a suburban tract home. (via Colossal) (more…)

Kim Kardashian's bubble butt is going to explode, Aretha Franklin is "too fat to live," Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner is "days from death," and Kirstie Alley "sacrifices infant to cult," according to this week's 'National Enquirer.'Who needs facts when we have the tabloids? Though it's hard to fault the 'Enquirer' cover branding former Fox TV's Bill O'Reilly a "liar & perv."But let's consider the facts, or lack of them . . .Allie is a Scientologist, but carrying her baby grandson to a street barbecue in Clearwater, Florida, does not constitute sacrificing him, nor serving him up at a feast.Let's start the clock on Hefner's death watch - remember, we're still waiting for Nick Nolte to pop his clogs after the 'Globe' gave him "four weeks to live" almost a year ago.Is Kardashian's derriere "going to burst" as the 'Enquirer' claims? She hasn't been studied by surgeons, but a medical analysis expert who claims to diagnose disease by listening to a patient's voice, has concluded that the reality TV star "is battling an incurable disease - that could lead to her lower limbs exploding in a bloated mass of fat."And speaking of a bloated mass of fat, is it really news that ill O'Reilly is a "liar and perv"? After millions in payouts to sexual harassment accusers, that point seems moot.Soul queen Aretha has reportedly lost 102 pounds, "but it's not enough!" laments the caring, compassionate 'Enquirer,' which claims she must lose more weight "if she wanted to survive." (Why the past tense, I wonder? She's still alive, still dieting, as far as I can tell.)Meanwhile Johnny Depp has reportedly lost 35 pounds, and is "wasting away" according to the 'Globe,' which is happy to speculate wildly that "the party-hearty silver screen pirate has suffered liver damage - or cancer!" Because why would the 'Globe' believe Depp's reps when they say he's slimming down for his new film role?JFK's daughter Caroline Kennedy is "losing her mind" and wanders New York city "looking like a dazed bag lady," claims the 'Globe.' She evidently made the mistake of stepping out in designer leggings and shirt looking like she was heading home from the gym with her hair askew - and that's certifiable madness when you know the paparazzi are lurking. The 'Enquirer' adds that Kennedy walks the streets "muttering to herself." That's what's known to the rest of New York as talking on your smartphone.Singer Janet Jackson is a "baby scamster" claims the 'Globe,' apparently coining a new word because "scammer" just doesn't sound perky enough. The grammatically-challenged report suggests that her "newborn boy isn't 50-year-old singer's biological child," because her baby doesn't appear as dark-skinned as Janet. Their source for this scoop? Social media trolls who rant: "Who is she kidding? That baby is white!" It's good to see the 'Globe' actually finding a reliable source, for a change.The 'Globe' continues its astonishing run of fact-challenged exclusive stories from inside Buckingham Palace, with a report that the Queen "is determined to destroy her murderous son, Prince Charles, and his evil wife Camilla - so they can never inherit the throne." Evidently Her Royal Highness "has secretly ordered investigators" to prove that "Charles' marriage to Camilla is illegal." Good luck with that. Even if the marriage was illegal, Charles is still next in line for the throne, and it would be the work of minutes to legally marry Camilla at a register office.Fortunately we have the intrepid investigative team at 'Us' magazine to tell us that Selena Gomez wore it best, Eva Longoria loves tacos, 'Good Morning America' personality Ginger Zee (who really should live by the Zuiderzee beside the North Sea) carries a thong, briefs and Spanx in her Kate Spade purse because "the most uncomfortable thing is having the wrong undergarment," and that the stars are just like us: they push shopping carts, take their coffee to go, and buy bouquets of flowers. Because the stars are really boring when they're not repeating lines written for them by others."What Really Happened on the Plane," proclaims the 'Us' magazine cover, expecting its celebucated readers to know that "the plane" is the fateful flight taken by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt that ended with the couple filing for divorce. This is notable because the headline isn't followed by a question mark. It's a declaratory statement: 'Us' mag actually believes it knows what went down, for a change. So . . . what happened? 'Us' claims that Brad got drunk, Angelina took the kids and split. Which is the story we've been hearing for months. But now that 'Us' tells us "the untold story" we can all breath easy.'People' magazine devotes its cover to delving "Inside the Life of a Little Princess." That would be Princess Charlotte, the two-year-old daughter of Prince William and wife Kate, so she hasn't had a chance to get drunkenly belligerent on a Royal flight, wander city streets muttering to herself, or to lose 103 pounds - which admittedly could prove challenging to the toddler. But if she starts talking to an imaginary friend, I'm sure the 'Enquirer' will faithfully tell us that Princess Charlotte is "losing her mind."Thankfully our long national nightmare of the soul is over, and Kelly Ripa has found a permanent co-host in Ryan Seacrest, which merits three vacuous pages in 'People.' Ripa reportedly tried working alongside 67 celebrity guests hosts over the past year, and even Ryan Seacrest admits: "I would watch the other cohosts and be like, 'Darn it, they're really good. Maybe everyone can do my job.'" That should be a life-changing realization for Seacrest . . . but I doubt it.We have to turn to the 'National Examiner' for this week's real news: "giants with scaly skin" built an ancient rock wall across California's Diablo Range "after their Pacific continent of Mu was destroyed;" Albert Einstein said that energy cannot be created or destroyed, "proving ghosts are possible;" and the White House is haunted by the ghosts of Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, and Abraham Lincoln. No wonder Melania Trump is reluctant to live there - or perhaps she's just scared of the ghoul in the Oval Office?Onwards and downwards . . .

May the Fourth be with you.

Under The American Health Care Act -- presently the subject of a full-court press by House Republicans -- insurance companies will be allowed to discriminate against customers who have "pre-existing conditions," refusing to pay for problems stemming from them. (more…)

Ascii Cinema is a purely text-based way to record and view, well, text. Whether it's terminal sessions or gorgeous ASCII animations such as those created by MapSCII, this means you get crisp, copy/pastable 1:1 representations of the input and output in a form as easily embedded as a YouTube video.

The greatest thing about technology seems to be its ability to make itself less technical. Ground zero of this phenomena is in website-building, where tools like Dragify make it easy for the less tech-savvy of us to build sites without code. Dragify is a completely visual, drag-and-drop creator that is currently available in the Boing Boing Store.Dragify's interface was designed for laypeople, allowing you to create custom web pages and manage web content without any coding knowledge. You can build a unique layout quickly with Dragify's 44 pre-designed components, including image galleries, text columns, and contact forms. Dragify will even transfer your site to your web host with a single click, letting you update styles, add pages, and modify content easily.If you are more tech-savvy, you can also view the source code of any component of your site, allowing more advanced users to edit HTML directly. Start building a website today with a lifetime subscription to Dragify.

PikieOats posted a remix of a youtube classic.

Mauri Helme (previously) created a 16-bit tribute to King-Size Homer, one of The Simpsons' more surreal turns: "It's a pixel art animation as if there were a 16-bit game starring Homer and his muumuu." (Compare to the "real" 16-bit Simpsons game, which was comparatively sane stuff)

I first encountered the idea of technological "legibility" in the work of Natalie Jeremijenko (previously) who insists on the importance of humans being able to know why a computer is doing what it does. (more…)

A mortar shell exploded during a training exercise in Afghanistan in July 2013, killing four Afghan soldiers and a U.S. Army photographer, Specialist Hilda Clayton. Clayton was training one of them in photojournalism, and both were shooting as the shell exploded.The photos were released by the U.S. Army today. Clayton's is below, the unnamed student's above.

Chicken Tonight wasn't just a bad nightmare, you can still buy it today on Amazon.

Hey, it's new to me! And after a decade living in the U.S. northeast, I feel like I've come to appreciate how it captures Baltimore's unique spirit. [via]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ac7LzckbW0&t=0m22sThe glitched shimmer of a Fort Lauderdale office CCTV feed. A woman long of bone at the machine. A sprinkler head fell on her desk and she gaped up at the pebbledash expanse of the droptile ceiling. The metal thing just sat there on the melamine under the cold flourescent light. Then she took it up and bashed her head with it. I can't tell you what she was thinking but I can tell you what come to pass."Her employer's insurance company got suspicious and brought in Florida's Division of Investigative and Forensic Services." At least that's how Fox 13 out of Tampa put it. God might not see nor care but they had a camera upon her the whole while. They fired her and charged her with insurance fraud. The judge put her on 18 months' probation.They never gave her money so she don't have to repay none.

Austin Ellison is a one-man music making machine, especially when it comes to Beach Boys tunes. He sings lead and background vocals and plays all the instruments.California Girls:https://youtu.be/BGb2iGR-upMWarmth of the Sun:https://youtu.be/C0mbo5sbUZMDon't Worry Baby:https://youtu.be/qwrQpoHp1tE?list=PLEhdf3R-wqfQbQUWzGp_9uZa2D_B-tI5zHe also plays Ray Manzarek style organ!https://youtu.be/2h7onnT-OzUI think Stephen Colbert should book him.

If you want a seat on an overbooked plane, access to a closed part of a museum, or to be able to convince a bouncer to let you into a packed club, adopt the ""kindly brontosaurus pose."From Slate:

Many wireless speakers claim to be "rugged," or "waterproof," but few can match the sonic power and durability of the G-Project's G-DROP. Named one of iLounge's favorite speakers of 2015, this powerful, compact speaker has an IPX7 waterproof rating making it submersible up to three feet. Not that music will sound good when the speaker is three feet underwater, but let's be honest, you're still curious to hear.This aural submariner is a perfect companion at the pool, yes, but its tough construction ensures it's good to go at the beach, a campsite, or anywhere else your wanderlust takes you this summer. Plus, you can safely hang it from trees, mount it on a bicycle, or turn your dog into a four-legged boombox with its integrated metal loop.Feel free to take your music everywhere with the G-DROP Submersible Bluetooth Speaker. You can pick one up here in the Boing Boing Store.

Thin-skinned from the outset and to the end.

Behold, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!https://youtu.be/EJp7tFGGRAwThe original Japanese version of the film, Gojira (which few Americans saw until a decade and a half ago when it first appeared on DVD), was produced in 1954, just nine years after we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. When the heavily Americanized version of the film came out in 1956 it had been retitled, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!About the Japanese version, Gojira, film scholar Tim Lucas writes [the film is] “dark, melancholy, crushing, and relentless” in his late lamented magazine Video Watchdog (Special Issue 2, 1995/96).On Wikipedia, Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka is quoted as saying, “The theme of the film, from the beginning, was the terror of the bomb. Mankind had created the bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind.” Thus Gojira is a dramatic embodiment of the earth’s rebellion against man’s stupidity: a blow-torched stomping rumination on the horrors of the atomic age,The idea of a big rubbery monster emerging from the ocean sounds silly, however Gojira is anything but. The destruction it causes, though the special effects are primitive by today’s standards, is genuinely horrific. You might be one of those folks who chuckle at the marvelously-crafted miniature cities being destroyed by what is obviously a guy in a monster suit, but if you think about what it really means, your laughter should catch in your throat. The film has a prominent anti-nuclear message and is one of the earlier films to shove it right in your face.Lucas’s description of “dark, melancholy, crushing, and relentless” perfectly describes the savage devastation caused by the seemingly unstoppable monster. From hell it came. Few seem to escape: either you are crushed or roasted alive. Survivors who witnessed the actual effects of the atomic bombs in both Japanese cities describe peoples’ flesh melting from their bodies.When an American distributor bought the rights to release the film in the U.S., the anti-nuclear message was mostly deleted (go America!) and the film was dubbed into English with dialogue being changed in the process. The original Japanese film runs 96 minutes; the American version cuts 16 minutes of the original and runs approximately 80 minutes. It’s also padded with scenes of Raymond Burr as a reporter filing dispatches throughout the film. So, if you remove all the scenes of Raymond Burr even less of the original film exists in the English version. Cut were scenes of Japanese social culture and politics, and the bulk of the anti-nuclear message, leaving a mostly solemn film that still works, albeit with more focus on the monster and less on the reason it exists and the country which it terrorizes.Both films are worth experiencing, and quite different. The segments with Raymond Burr are surprisingly well integrated in the U.S. version, with recreated sets and doubles standing in for the Japanese actors, and his narration adds even greater solemnity to the horror. He is the perfect messenger of doom. But it is the Japanese version that fully reveals the insanity of nuclear weapons. If you haven’t seen it you’re in for a surprise, and as a warning against the use of nuclear arms, it ranks with The Day After, a 1983 telefilm from which scared the hell out of most of America—43 million people watched its original broadcast and saw a radiation-burned Jason Robards wandering through a United States in ruins after a nuclear holocaust.The best way to watch both versions of Godzilla is the Criterion Blu-ray, which has excellent transfers of the films and ample extra features.The terror embodied in Gojira now seems more real than at any time in the last quarter century. North Korea is engaged in a mad race to build and launch nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Misses. It is likely the country could annihilate most of South Korea and Japan before other nuclear-ready countries could retaliate. And it only gets worse from there. World leaders don’t know how to cope with this. There is a sense of rational destabilization that makes Godzilla more timely than ever.

The coal CEOs who are leading their companies to bankruptcy are pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses, with average coal exec wages rising five times as fast as wages for miners since 2004: execs take home an average of $200K (up 60%!) while tractor/truck drivers average $43,770 (up 15%, a real-terms pay-cut) and mining construction workers average $31,470 (up 11%, another real-terms cut). (more…)

Cloudflare presents a primer on "anti-patterns" that have transformed IoT devices into ghastly security nightmares. (more…)

The 2016 Panama Papers story confirmed that many world leaders were availing themselves of money-laundries to secretly funnel their wealth offshore, with results ranging from severe embarrassment to radical changes in governments. (more…)

I'm in New York City today for the Walkaway tour and the event -- an onstage conversation with Edward Snowden -- is sold out (you can watch the livestream free, starting 7PM eastern), but there's still space at my upcoming events. (more…)

At $300 a person, the Pan Am Experience in Los Angeles costs more than many round trip plane flights. But the food is better and they won't knock your teeth out or kill your rabbit.

In this masterfully edited "interview" Stephen Colbert talks with Trump about his mental health, nuclear war with North Korea, and other fun subjects.

Babylon 5, even during its original run, was never particularly easy to watch when it first aired. The changing TV landscape of the time, as well as the failure of B5's original network PTEN and subsequent re-emergence on the TNT network, meant that timeslots and airdates shifted several times during the show's original five-year run.Show creator Joe Michael Sraczynski's "B5 books" site is reporting that Go90.com now has the entire show available to stream for free for the first time, along with several other recent series.I've always believed that B5 represented one of the better Sci-Fi "space opera" TV shows in history, and one that many people were never able to watch during its run on television. The story and effects hold up extremely well for a show that recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Now's your chance to see it in its entirety, for free, on your own terms.Unfortunately, the site is US-only.

https://youtu.be/TUXyx_-9bFsThe zippo factory of Bradford, Pennsylvania makes 28,000 lighters a day. This video presents an inside look at how they and made and who makes them, including Beth, in the case assembly department, and Betsy the buffer.

If you don't have one of these headlamps, now is your chance, because Amazon has it on sale for $6.39. I use it for barbecuing, walking in our no-street-light neighborhood at night, repairs, and even reading in bed (on the lowest of 3 brightness levels). It's lightweight and comfortable, and comes with 3 AAA batteries.

In 1949, stop motion animation legend Ray Harryhausen, director of classics like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), brought his developing SFX wizardry to the story of Little Red Riding Hood. (via /r/ObscureMedia)

For decades, people have wondered about the mysterious "sailing stones" of Death Valley, California. Though no one had seen them actually move, it was clear that they had, because they left behind furrows in the dry, cracked mud. It was hypothesized that the rocks were pushed by the wind, or that ice on the rocks made them float across the playa.But in 2014 Richard Norris, an oceanographer at University of California San Diego, figured it out. He attached GPS units to some rocks, and then waited. It took two years, but he finally conclusively solved the mystery.From Motherboard:

It's been 20 years since Radiohead released their masterpiece OK Computer and they've just announced a lavish new remastered* edition with three unreleased tracks, eight b-sides, assorted bonus tracks, and, in the boxed edition, a hardcover book. The band aims to please with the deluxe box set by including vinyl, a cassette, and digital downloads in various formats.

Mike Armstrong had just walked over a grate in downtown Toronto when this happened:

Marine Le Pen, leader of France's nationalist movement and one of two candidates remaining in the country's presidential race, is a plagiarist—or at least one of her speechwriters is. The BBC reports that a speech of hers "seems to repeat one by beaten rival François Fillon" all but word-for-word.

Someone has beaten me to it: a fidget toy make of clicky keyboard switches. Clickeybits is a polyhedron into which six keycaps will go, and you can peck away at them individually or just roll it around for an orgasmic deluge of clicks. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o4mwFv71-c&feature=youtu.beAdmiral, your fleet awaits! I don't fancy your chance against the Unicode Menace, but do what you can.The game/generator is called Vortex, but apart from this Reddit thread where creator Huw Millward linked to the video, it doesn't seem to have a homepage. He's got other similar projects, too: I like the look of Feud, a seriously old-school text-based sim set in 13th-century England.

Felix Semper paid tribute to the Notorious B.I.G. in the only way he knew how: by sculpting a slinky-esque coil of flexible paper into a remakably lifelike work of art. (more…)

"This is why aliens will never want to be friends with us," says a loud NSFW Australian. [via]

Crows are smart, and they can be kind of jerks sometimes. To wit: this series of crows perched or riding on top of other birds. Their victims range from indifferent to grumpy. (more…)

The New York Times' new columnist, Bret Stephens, is an everyday conservative: he thinks institutional racism is imaginary, that campus rape is a big lie, and that the "Arab Mind" is "diseased". But these are just opinions, and common ones on the right. It is his anti-science positions, on display in his first fact-mangled column about climate change, that has galvanized disgust.Much has been said about him, but it is the Times itself that has committed a "jaw-dropping error" and whose warped motives promise that it will be repeated.Ryan Cooper in The Week directs particular ire at the Times' claim about wanting a diversity of voices, where the agreement of millions is enough to justify a hire. This allows so many possibilities that it betrays the excuse.

My US/Canadian tour for my novel Walkaway continues tomorrow with a 7PM event at Politics & Prose; I'm in NYC the next night (with Edward Snowden) and it's sold out but you might be able to get some rush tickets; then on to Fountain Books in Richmond, VA; then Flyleaf in Chapel Hill. (more…)