This 15" long crocodile model has 26 detachable organ and body parts, and see-through skin to let you inspect its innards. It's on sale for $20 on Amazon.

Melbourne, Florida people reported that 9,000 people went to President Trump's campaign rally on Saturday.Via The Hill:

Graphcore produced a series of striking images of computational graphs mapped to its "Intelligent Processing Unit."

In the poor, remote island nations of the South Pacific, the Type-II diabetes rate ranges from 19% to 34%, a devastating health statistic that is challenging the countries' economies and wellbeing. (more…)

Belurusian leader Alexander Lukashenko calls himself "Europe's last dictator": he's a thug who steals elections and sends opposition politicians to forced labor camps, the kind of guy who can get away with arresting a one-armed man for clapping -- but when he imposed a "social parasite tax" on unemployed people in the recession-devastated country, it proved too much. (more…)

The object of the Eureka puzzle is to remove the brass ring. As usual with Fleb's videos, there's a pause in the video if you don't want to see the solution.

Since the astounding success of the Fidget Cube, clones have sprung up everywhere. The one with the best reviews is the $3.78 Chirisen cube, and I can report that it has lasted the weekend without springing an anxiety leak. A pack of six is $13.39, just two bucks and change for each one.

It's one thing to set up an "anonymous" Twitter Hulk account whose anonymity your friends and colleagues can't pierce, because the combination of your care not to tweet identifying details, the stilted Hulk syntax, and your friends' inability to surveil the global internet and compel phone companies to give up their caller records suffice for that purpose. (more…)

Susan J. Fowler joined Uber as a site reliability engineer in November 2015. She was sexually harassed at work and Uber's human resources punished her for reporting it. She says other women at Uber have had similar experiences and that many have quit in disgust.

Interesting exchange between Fox's Chris Wallace and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (who went on Fox on Sunday to complain about the "fake news" coverage of Trump's Russian connections.""But you don't get to tell us what to do, Reince, any more than that Barack Obama did. Barack Obama whined about Fox News all the time, but I gotta say, he never said that we were an enemy of the people."Priebus looked stunned that someone from Fox had harsh words for his boss.

Doesn't look like they thought they were pranking him. (more…)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN THE "ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE": Sign up for Tom the Dancing Bug's email service, the INNER HIVE for Fake News, Fake Comics and Fake Fakeries!GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”A book for the curious and adventurous!” -Cory Doctorow) Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

There's something so uncanny and futuristic about Falcon 9 landing that it triggers the part of our brains trained to be on the lookout for computer graphics. The overcast sky and haze of fog gives it a Simon Stålenhag vibe.

It's easy to generate random words, or even ones that seem patterned on a particular language. But there's something just right about the words that emerge from Soybomb.com's Nonsense Word Generator: each is marvelously silly, yet seems to have meaning and history.

Josh Jacobson is a Nintendo cartridge hacker who makes homebrew cartridges for games that were never released for NES/SNES, complete with label art and colored plastic cases that makes them look like they came from an alternate universe where (for example), there was a Nintendo version of Sonic the Hedgehog. (more…)

Updated with response from Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, below.Susan Fowler Rigetti, a former engineer at Uber, describes in a blog post her experience in a workplace where sexual harassment takes place with impunity, and people who are abused at work are further abused by the organization for which they work.(more…)

Get the Recomendo weekly newsletter (written by Kevin Kelly, Claudia Dawson, and me) a week early by email.Enjoyment:If the Found Footage Festival tour ever comes your way, I highly recommend you check it out. The two guys who host the events scour thrift stores and yard sales for the most obscure and awkward infomercials, public access shows, training tapes and home videos to showcase. I’ve been to four of their shows and I always laugh so hard it hurts. They currently have 8 volumes available on DVD. You can watch videos of some of their findings on the website. — CDCulture:The US is basically the only country in the world not using metric. It’s not that hard to learn a rough sense of how many kilometers in a mile, or pounds in a kilo. But it is very hard to convert temperatures between Centigrade and Fahrenheit. The solution is to convert all your thermometers to Centigrade: on your phone, in or outside of your house, on websites. Have any digital device display only Celsius, so you can’t cheat. In about a year, you’ll have a reliable and native sense of what’s cool and warm in degrees C. This is supremely handy if you travel anywhere outside of the US. — KKReadable:I feel like an idiot for not discovering OverDrive sooner. It’s a free mobile app that lets you check out ebooks, audiobooks, and videos from your local public library. To use it, you need a a library card from your town or county. I got an Los Angeles Library e-card by signing up online and a couple of minutes later I was reading A Burglar’s Guide to the City. — MFDestination:Since I live in the San Francisco metro area, I get a lot of out-of-town visitors. My favorite place to take them is the Exploratorium along the bayside waterfront. It is the original hands-on science museum, and still the world’s best hands-on learning experience. Many of the interactive exhibits now common at science museums around the world began here; the Exploratorium has all of them and many more found nowhere else. This sprawling temple of innovation and maker-goodness can easily occupy me — even after my 50th visit — for four hours or more. (I normally get saturated after only one hour in other museums.) Of course while it is perfect for kids of all ages, every Thursday evening it’s reserved for adults, and crowded with innovators and artists of all types. — KKWearable:I spent the last year buying and returning boots in search of a pair that come close to Lucky Brand Basel boots in comfort and style. I’ve gone through two pairs of them in black in the last 5 years and I finally gave up searching and bought an additional pair in brown. I love these because they’re stylish enough to solicit compliments, and they’re so comfortable that I can literally walk miles in them every day. — CDTravel:Would you like to improve your chance of having an empty middle seat when you fly on Southwest? Here’s a trick I’ve started to use that works. When I board, I look for a 3-seat row of chairs where a very large person is sitting in the window or aisle set. I will sit in that row, either in the aisle seat or window seat. As the plane starts to get full, passengers will be reluctant to sit in the middle seat because the big person is encroaching on the space. One time when I did this, the guy sitting in the seat (he was probably 6’5” and weighed 300 pounds) leaned over and said conspiratorially, “No one will sit here. It’s always the last seat they take.“ — MF

This week I got a chance to un-pack this collection. I've had it for about 10 years now and it has been in boxes the whole time.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peVuqpuI36gI absolutely love this cover. It is unabashedly silly. What is that boy even doing with that dog? Why lug that iron lung so far from your home-dome if the dog can't even walk around? That thing has to weigh a ton. All joking aside, there's something delightful about all the space covers from before 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. Interestingly though, the first dog in space was Laika, in 1951, so I guess they really have no excuse! (more…)

Le Bouche à Oreille is a perfectly decent working class diner in Bourges that'll feed you a slap-up meal for €10. La Bouche à Oreille, though, is a brilliant €48-course restaurant in Paris. Only one of them should have been awarded a Michelin star, but don't tell that to the posh sorts descending en masse upon an overwhelmed greasy spoon.

Norma McCorvey, the anonymous "Jane Roe" in the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, has died. (more…)

Via John Aravosis: "Does no one in that White House do any advance work at all? Look closely. They're just sloppy."

I came to the Grateful Dead late by some standards, and left its orbit early by most. My first album was the band’s third, “Aoxomoxoa,” which I purchased shortly after its release in 1969, and I didn’t experience the Dead live until 1970. From then until 1973, I saw them a lot, mostly at Winterland in San Francisco, but by 1974, with a few memorable exceptions, I was pretty much done. My blind spot then, is the bulk of the band’s 30-year career, which also happens to be the years when the Grateful Dead was at its most famous and popular, becoming one of the highest-grossing arena and stadium acts of its day. That’s probably why Alive With the Dead: A Fly on the Wall With a Camera, by photographer Susana Millman, seems like such a revelation to a fallen Dead Head like me. Oh sure, Millman gives us plenty of shots of the hoopla surrounding the 1987 release of “In the Dark,” which went double platinum, but her photographs also offer intimate peeks inside a scene I’d always dismissed as being too big for its own good. And in many ways, it certainly was, as Millman’s photos of the tie-dye-clad crowds filling enormous venues like Soldier Field in Chicago might have argued in the hands of a different author and photographer. Soldier Field, of course, is where the Dead performed its last show on July 9, 1995 — lead guitarist Jerry Garcia would die one month later. But instead of using the pages of her book to caution readers against simultaneous addictions to heroin, cigarettes, and Ben & Jerry’s, Millman gives us a glorious double-printed, double-exposed photograph of the band on stage at its last gig, dwarfed by the adoration of its fans, stage lights, and fireworks.Elsewhere, Millman shares a sweet recollection of Garcia on her wedding day, during which he confesses his nervousness at having to walk Millman down the aisle to give her away to Dennis McNally, the band’s publicist and biographer at the time. This and other human anecdotes — some fleshed out with text, some left alone as photos — give Alive With the Dead the feeling of a well-thumbed family album rather than a precious tome about rock stars. It’s good to know that from Millman’s fly-on-the-wall perspective, the members of a band I once loved didn’t let the fame I missed go entirely to their heads.Alive With the Dead: A Fly on the Wall With a Camera

This looks like a good collection of public domain novels, in Kindle format. I've been wanting to read Sister Carrie again, so I got this. It's volume 1 of a 2 volume set. Here's volume 2.Here are the books in the volumes that I've read and recommend.

Archive.org's Wayback Machine has a copy of Trump's deleted tweet, which read: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people. SICK!"

Tiny Trumps is a new subreddit page that features the little fella in his daily life. From Melania making sure he doesn't take a tumble to Obama doing his best not to laugh to Trumpkin entertaining Justin Trudeau, Tiny Trumps is my current go-to when I need a good chuckle. (more…)

The Pentagon has a rule requiring retired officers to report income from foreign states. But the Pentagon says it can find no records that former National Security advisor Michael Flynn filed a report after he'd been paid by Russia for an interview on the Russian state television network RT and for dining with President Vladimir Putin at RT's 10-year anniversary gala in 2015.Via Politico:

In 1948, Robert Moog, age 14, was inspired by classical Theremin performer Clara Rockmore to build his own Theremin. Then in 1964 Moog designed a brand new kind of electronic instrument, a modular voltage-controlled synthesizer. That instrument and Moog's work since transformed the sound of modern music forever. To hear how, dive into this fantastic 10-hour Moog playlist:(The Guardian via Open Culture)

Today my friends in Rogue Wave released the video for their lovely cover of Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door." The track is from their latest release "Cover Me," a quite wonderful covers album that consists entirely of Rogue Wave going back to their 1980s musical roots, influences, and mix tape favorites. Songs include The Cure's "In Between Days," The Cult's "She Sells Sanctuary," The Church's "Under the Milky Way," The Romantics' 'Talking In Your Sleep," and many more 80s MTV classics. "Cover Me" is available for digital download or colored vinyl -- pink or splatter paint, natch.The video for "Let My Love Open the Door" was directed and edited by Jim Granato with color effects by Truckee Lynch."The idea for this video has been circling around my brain since we finished tracking it," Zach Rogue says. "A fantasy about what I could tell my younger self if I had the chance."Check out Rogue Wave tour dates here.

This video featuring Viktoria Odintsova is probably not adhering to local occupational safety regs. If the photo below gets your palms sweating, you may want to skip the video above. (more…)

Behold Library Hand, a font designed specifically for librarians without typewriters who created cards for card catalogs. What's cool is the variation within the guidelines: (more…)

Artist Rachel Sussman discovered the ancient art of kintsugi, repairing cracked vases with gold, and applied it to cracked pavement and flooring for her Sidewalk Kintsukuroi series. (more…)

Mich Farrell and Cliff Haynes created a camera from drinking straws that effectively works as 32,000 pinhole cameras, creating an analog version of pixellation, but with circular pixels. (more…)

When I reviewed Matt Ruff's incredible Lovecraft Country last February on its hardcover release dates, I wrote, "Ruff inverts the Lovecraft horror, which turned so often on "miscegenation" and the duty of advanced humans to trample those around them in their drive to recapture this lost wisdom (and humanity's lost grace). His Lovecraftian horror is the horror of the people whom the Lovecraftian heroes viewed as subhuman, expendable, a stain on the human race. By blending real history (such as the Tulsa riots) and Lovecraftian tropes, Ruff's characters shine as active protagonists in their own story who have lives, have dignity, and have indomitable spirit that they use to fight back against the power structure that Lovecraft lionized." (more…)

In a new paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, sociologists and criminologists from University at Buffalo (SUNY), the University of Alabama, Kennesaw State University, the State of Georgia, and Georgia State University review 40 years' worth of FBI data on violent crimes and property crimes, correlating this data series with Census data on the influx of immigrants to US cities. (more…)

Immediately upon assuming office, the Trump administration directed the US Department of Agriculture to take down the extensive records of its publicly funded investigations of animal cruelty in America; now, Americans can only access their own data by paying for expensive, unweildy, and slow Freedom of Information Act requests to the USDA. (more…)

Install the Emotional Labor extension and it will automatically add social niceties to your outbound mail -- phrases like "Hey, Lovely! I've been thinking of you." (via 4 Short Links)

The city of Paris has installed "anti-refugee boulders" beneath a highway overpass in Porte de La Chapelle in a bid to stop Syrian refugees from sleeping in the flyover's shelter while they wait for space to open up at a nearby humanitarian relief center operated by Emmaus solidarité. (more…)

It's called Cayla, it's about a foot tall, and it can be used to listen to and talk to the child playing with it. But who is doing the listening? Anyone in Bluetooth range, reports Germany's Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur).

Python is immensely popular in the data science world for the same reason it is in most other areas of computing—it has highly readable syntax and is suitable for anything from short scripts to massive web services. One of its most exciting, newest applications, however, is in machine learning. You can dive into this booming technological frontier with help from this course and e-book bundle.Before diving into advanced artificial intelligence topics, you will be introduced to the fundamentals of programming and software design patterns with Python. Once you’ve built a solid foundation of skills, courses in deep learning and data mining will guide you in efficiently processing and analyzing massive datasets automatically. With the included e-books, you'll familiarize yourself with real-world applications of machine learning techniques using Python, gaining a better idea of just how relevant and in-demand these machine learning and data science skills are.Get started toward a brand new, lucrative career path. For a limited time, you can get the Machine Learning with Python Course and E-Book Bundle for 92% off—just $49.Explore other Best-Sellers in our store:

New Jersey governor Chris Christie told a reporter that President Donald Trump made him order meatloaf when they ate a meal together at the White House this week.It's hard to believe it, people, but yes. This is where we are.(more…)

A state judge today ordered the office of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to release thousands of documents, including emails, related to Pruitt’s conversations with energy industry executives. Tomorrow, the United States Senate votes on Pruitt’s nomination to run the Environmental Protection Agency, for the administration of Donald Trump.(more…)

Ret. Vice Adm. Bob Harward, a former U.S. Navy Seal, rejected President Donald Trump's offer to become new national security adviser.Trump is reportedly trying to win him back.The “well-liked navy veteran who is close to James Mattis, US defence secretary” was to replace Mike Flynn after Flynn resigned in a cloud of suspicion, over alleged contact with Russian agents.A friend of Harward's has been quoted in the press as saying Harward was reluctant to take the job because the White House seems unstable. Harward called the offer a "shit sandwich," his friend said.(more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwJ-yuKyImoBilly the Mime is working through some things. What they are, exactly, I don't want to guess.(more…)

“Peace through strength,” Donald Trump said to reporters today in a rambling, aggressive, monologue news conference that lasted nearly about an hour and a half. Trump rattled on in circular patterns about plans to “build and rebuild” the “great” military and law enforcement. He dodged questions on Flynn, Obamacare, leaked reports of turmoil within the administration, and expressed outrage at being questioned repeatedly about “this whole Russia scam that you guys are building so that you don’t talk about the real subject which is illegal leaks.”(more…)

Prepare to take a technological trip down memory lane with this enormous comprehensive chart of every Nokia dumbphone model starting 35 years ago. Extendable antennas, clamshells, you name it. (more…)

Readers recently saved the hemovanadin article from Wikipedia's ongoing extinction event through extraordinary measures, but that's just one of over 2 million stub articles deleted or at risk of deletion by Wikipedia's entrenched bureaucrats. Today's example is Chickenhead, a notable hip-hop song killed by deletionists in 2015. (more…)

Oakland-based designer and illustrator Peabe just dropped this hilarious take of Trump and Pence as Beavis and Butt-Head.Peabe has some other good ones, like this reimagining of Radio Rahim from Do the Right Thing as Megatron holding SoundwaveIf you'd like to encourage more of this sort of thing, stop by Peabe's site and social media and give a little love.• Pea-Be.com (via Imgur)