Few programming languages and web frameworks are also intuitive and user-friendly for beginners as Ruby on Rails. Even 15 years after its rollout, a virtual lifetime (or two) in tech terms, Ruby and its most popular framework Rails are still vital and energetic players in the programming world. And with over a million websites built […]

Biometric technology is doing more than opening your iPhone. In fact, the process of digitally identifying individuals from physical characteristics like fingerprints is opening up whole new areas of innovation. Earlier this month, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced that it would start testing biometric recognition software to process air passengers faster. Meanwhile, the FBI […]

For years, whenever I'd see a seriously creepy and cool old house, I'd post it to Facebook and say something like: "Gothic retirement home and artist colony! Who's with me?" The idea of living in a haunted fixer-upper has always appealed to me, but it's something I would never actually do. A group house? The […]

Hangnails bother me so much that when I get one, I can't think of anything else until I get rid of it. I will even bite it off if I am without clippers (this doesn't work well and usually results in blood being drawn). The Tweezerman hangnail clipper was designed to cleanly cut off a hangnail. The […]

JK Rowling continues to beat her awful transphobic drum. Vanity Fair: According to an early review in The Telegraph, Troubled Blood—the fifth installment in Rowling's Cormoran Strike series written under the pen name Robert Galbraith—deals with the cold case of a woman who disappeared in 1974 and is believed to be the victim of Dennis […]

[UPDATE: Read Lizard of Oz's comment about Colin Turnbull's disputed book, The Mountain People] Doug Belshaw recently read the book The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter, and shared an interesting excerpt. He writes on his website Open Tinkering: In the first chapter of the book, Tainter gives numerous examples of societal collapse, which […]

I can not wait the October 2nd release of Star Wars Squadrons. Since X-Wing Vs TIE Fighter I have been waiting for this game.

For a president who has told over 20,000 "false or misleading claims" while in office, as The Washington Post reported in July, finding a Trump truth is like finding a needle in an ocean made of hay. But super PAC MeidasTouch succeeded to do just that. "It just seems that the economy does better under […]

"There's an old saying about arguments: when you resort to ad hominem attacks, you've already lost." That's what Matt Tillotson wrote in his essay analyzing entrepreneur/gadfly James Altucher's blog post about the end of New York City and Jerry Seinfeld's weak, hypocritical rebuttal in the NY Times. From Tillotson: [Seinfeld wrote:] The last thing we […]

Honoring the longstanding Boing Boing tradition of enjoying vehicles not quite making it under a bridge: we present to you this train.

Because Trump is an enemy of science. "Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in our 175-year history—until now," tweeted the publication today. "The 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death. We urge you to vote for health, science and Joe Biden for President." Excerpt: The evidence and the science show […]

The Trump Make America Great Again Committee released this "Support our Troops" ad last week. Thing is, those jets dramatically flying over the troops are Russian MiG fighter jets. And the "soldiers" are Russian models. The image is a stock photo available at Shutterstock.com. From Politico: …The creator of the image, Arthur Zakirov, confirmed in […]

"It's me, Navalny." Russian opposition leader and investigative journalist Alexei Navalny posted these words with this photo from his hospital bed on Instagram, with his wife and two children. Navalny is in Germany, where he was airlifted after being poisoned with the Russian chemical weapon nerge agent known as Novichok. Navalny's wit and humor appear […]

• NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), aboard the Aqua satellite, captured carbon monoxide plumes coming from California wildfires last week. • The observations from Earth orbit show high-altitude concentrations of the gas that are more than 10 times typical amounts. Shown in this post, some new carbon monoxide emission imaging from the ongoing wildfires in […]

For the first time in nearly four decades, vinyl records have outsold CDs. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), there were $232.1 million in vinyl music sales and $129.9 million in CD sales during the first half of 2020. Of course, that's pennies compared to streaming music's revenue of $4.8 billion for […]

People who are "sarcastic, cynical, resentful, impatient, or irritable" are more likely to die of a heart attack, says the European Society of Cardiology. The study was published in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing. researchers. Lead author Dr. Tracey Vitori of the University of Tennessee said, "There is much cardiac patients can do to take […]

Canadian police are searching for a truck diver who pulled up to an Alberta meat-packing plant, packed his semi with more than $230,000 worth of meat, and drove off. Now it's come out that a few days later, someone drove a truck registered under the same fake name, perhaps even the same truck, stopped by […]

Move over, Charmin, time for Pétalo. The extended duration toilet paper panic buying spree inspired by the coronavirus pandemic has been so intense, "in order to keep their shelves stocked, retailers are buying up foreign toilet paper brands, mostly from Mexico," reports AP. Across the country, chains such as CVS, Piggly Wiggly, Safeway, 7-Eleven, and […]

I can not wait and am hopeful Obi-Wan is even better.

The city of Louisville, Kentucky has agreed to pay several million dollars to the mother of Breonna Taylor, and install police reforms. The reforms and financial compensation are part of a settlement with Taylor's family, The Associated Press reports. The settlement is said to include reforms on how warrants are handled by police, and the […]

In Greater Manchester, England, a fellow boarded a public bus wearing a live snake as a face mask. One observer said she thought it was just a "funky mask" but that it eventually slithered off his face and onto a handrail. Face coverings are currently required to ride public transport in the county. From Yahoo!News: […]

If you're been enjoying HBO's "The Vow," the documentary series about the multi-level marketing self-help cult NXIVM and its secret society of sex trafficking (trailer below), you might appreciate Wikipedia contributor Feoffer's diagram above. It outlines many of the self-help frameworks, bullshit belief systems, and "stating-the-obvious" personal transformation techniques that seemingly influenced NXIVM founder Keith […]

South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg admits that he ran over and killed a man while driving home from a Republican fundraiser on Saturday night. He claimed to have thought he struck a deer, to have reported this immediately, and to have then returned to the remote stretch of U.S. Highway 14 the following day […]

Reindeer herders in the Russian Arctic's Lyakhovsky Islands found a preserved carcass of a cave bear frozen in the ice between 22,000 and 39,500 years ago. From the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk: [North-Eastern Federal University} scientist Lena Grigorieva said of the island discovery of the adult beast: 'Today this is the first and only find […]

Dawn Wooten is a nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, a private prison owned by LaSalle Corrections that contracts with ICE. Wooten has filed a whistleblower complaint through the legal advocacy group Project South, alleging a variety of medical abuses, neglectful mismanagement, and other horrors. According to the complaint, LaSalle Corrections has […]

In 2016, Nikola demonstrated a full-size electric truck flying along a desert highway. The company now admits the demo, embedded below, was faked. The truck was simply rolling downhill. The trick ius not subtle: it appears they towed the vehicle to a subtle slope, hid the gradient with slightly curvilinear lenses and camera angles, and […]

Oscar the Grouch knows what's up. In this Sesame Street PSA, he tells kids to wear a mask when out in public because it's the healthy thing to do. And because he doesn't want to have to see your happy smiling face! Fair enough. screengrab via Sesame Street/YouTube

The Financial Times takes a sober look at the tricks Trump and the GOP could pull to keep him in power if he loses the election. With a vast patchwork of state legislatures, electors, vote-count shenangigans, congressional maneuvers and courtroom fights to wage, it could go on for months, and even see Nanci Pelosi installed […]

One of the best things about being a parent is getting to experience things again for the first time through your kiddo's eyes. It's rare to catch those moments on video but Bloomberg editor Lisa Fleisher did. While in upstate New York, she caught her daughter's reaction to seeing a waterfall for the first time. […]

"Smoking does dreadful things to your lungs and is very bad for your heart." [R2-D2 beeps.] "Well, I know I don't have one, but Humans do, and I think we should set a good example."―C-3PO and R2-D2 via Oh, I had nearly forgotten about this early eighties gem of a PSA where C-3PO busts R2-D2 […]

Matthias Wandel explains how this self-inverting spinning top will flip over when spun quickly enough. If you have a lathe, Matthias shows you how to make your own: If you don't have a lathe, you can buy plastic ones and even fancy metal ones, spelled variously as tippie tops or tippy tops. Image: YouTube / […]

In 1920, a young woman was pulled from a canal in Berlin. When her identity couldn't be established, speculation started that she was a Russian princess who had escaped the execution of the imperial family. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the strange life of Anna Anderson and her disputed […]

These nifty gizmos use a set of gears to uncoil and recoil. Alex Fox shows how to make one with wood. They can also be 3D printed. Below is the inspiration. Oskar's video mentions the Thinkfun Tail Spin, but that model is currently unavailable on many outlets following a lot of poor reviews. Image: YouTube […]

Former Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke was convicted in July of sexually assaulting two women, and was yesterday sentenced to two years in jail for the crimes. His first victim, who was attacked by Elphicke at his London home in 2007, said in a statement his actions had had a "lasting impact" on her life, leaving […]

The LG Wing has two layers:the top slides to form a "T" shape with the bottom, revealing a smaller touchscreen display on the rear layer. It's absolutely ridiculous and I'm delighted it exists. "It's a very tricky design to evaluate without using it – it is reminiscent of some of the designs we saw from […]

That's according to Dinosaur Database, a terrific site with an interactive ancient earth feature that lets viewers input a location and a time period to see what things looked like at the time. LA would probably also have been under a glacier at the time: Cryogenian Period. Glaciers may have covered the entire planet during […]

I recently finished listening to the Audible adaptation of Sandman, the acclaimed comic book series that put Neil Gaiman on the map (thanks in no small part to contributions from artists such as Sam Keith, Mike Dringenberg, and Dave McKean). This new full cast audiobook collected the first 20 issues of the 75-issue story (not […]

Now that Qi compatibility is quickly becoming the technology norm, wireless charging pads are becoming not only more powerful, but they're getting slimmer and less obtrusive than ever. Nowhere is that less is more aesthetic more on display than with an item like the Chargeworx Slim and Foldable Dual Wireless Charging Pad. With this inch-high powerhouse, […]

A Portland State University professor Alexander Reid Ross created a map to track the spread of far-right vigilantism in the United States. According to Bloomberg, "has gathered more than 560 examples of far-right actors and vigilantes showing up to demonstrations and other events, drawing from photo-backed accounts on social media and news reports. An interactive map he […]

I bought a Black n' Red Twin Wire Poly Cover Notebook last year and it's been an excellent notebook for jotting down phone call notes and ideas (the useful ones get transferred to Workflowy). What I like about it: The textured poly cover is much more durable than a cardboard cover. The twin-wire binding keeps […]

After a tough workout, it's easy to let your mind drift to how simple your recovery would be if you had a full-time coach and trainer like a professional athlete. You could just lay there while a schooled pro massaged your aching muscles, broke up tightness and generally helped put your body back together. While […]

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go WTF is going on? And of all times, WTF? is presently a totally legit response. What do I know, actually? In his brilliant and uncannily prophetic Netflix show End Times Fun, actor and comedian Marc Maron, wrestling with the confusion and turbulence of our times, […]

The New Yorker's cover editor Françoise Mouly interviewed cartoonist Chris Ware about his cover for the Sep 21 issue. You've titled this "Last Days," and at some point you considered a slight variation, "Last Days. . . ." What did you want to evoke with the title? I mean, first of all, it's September, and the weirdest summer […]

"We have to look at the timeline," and "fog of war." Sound familiar? I don't understand why the news networks bother to interview Trump's obfuscating apparatchiks, other than for the black humor value. From Salon: "Why not level with the American people, Steve?" Fox News host Chris Wallace asked. "This was the fog of war, […]

Spoken Word with Electronics is an audio series delivering to you a two side recording of unusual stories paired with vintage modular electronic sounds Greetings everyone, welcome back to the show. This week we look back at telephone polling hardware from the 1980s and ask the question: "What if they'd evolved into how we vote […]

This video did not get the views it deserved when it went up a few years ago, so Jack Conte recently reuploaded it to his personal channel. He says: No one talks about the epic failures that we all have. I fail most of the time. As a creator, and as CEO of Patreon, things […]

In 1968, political activists and Yippies Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner were charged with conspiracy to incite riots and other alleged crimes during protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Their months-long trial was one of the most bizarre, hilarious, upsetting, and theatrical […]

A recent study has shown that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was a Bad Idea™. The Hill: Based on the increase in case count, the researchers group, estimated that cases connected to the gathering resulted in $12 billion in public health costs, not including the costs associated with any deaths that might be tied to cases […]

This short film was an ad for Ghostbusters, filmed by Bill Murray and John Ackroyd (in character as Drs. Venkman and Stantz) to convince independent theater operators to run the forthcoming movie itself. Todd Spence uploaded it to to Twitter, and found a more complete version of the unused original theme tune—but not the complete […]

David Byrne's Broadway hit American Utopia (previously) has released a trailer in advance of its October 7 debut on HBO. The filmed version is directed by Spike Lee. Despite all that's happened, and despite what's still happening, there's still possibility. James Baldwin said, 'I still believe that we can do with this country something that […]