If your next hookup app "date" has this strange white contraption on the nightstand, it's not a high-tech reading lamp. It's Pulse, a personal lubricant warmer and touchless dispenser. It's also a good sign that they use a whole lotta lube for who knows what. (more…)

Here are six new lateral thinking puzzles to test your wits and stump your friends -- play along with us as we try to untangle some perplexing situations using yes-or-no questions. (more…)

Australian photographer Tom Blachford found a way to make vintage cars and midcentury modern Palm Springs homes look classic yet strikingly modern: shoot them on long exposures under a full moon. The resulting series, Midnight Modern, is worth checking out. (more…)

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Cigar Box Nation has just updated their archive of free DIY musical instrument plans. More than 20 new projects were added. These include cigar box guitars, ukuleles, lap steel guitars made from 2x4's and more. New this year is their historical archive, featuring plans and diagrams dating back to 1884.

Kirkus Reviews is one of the publishing industry's toughest gauntlets, used by librarians and bookstore buyers to help sort through the avalanche of new titles, and its reviews often have a sting in their tails aimed at this audience, a pitiless rehearsal of the reasons you wouldn't want to stock this book -- vital intelligence for people making hard choices. (more…)

Here's Bill Bailey moonwalking at the Apollo Theatre in 1955, a good decade or three before Michael Jackson perfected the move. Below, a video compiling that and other similar moves from the period.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35nIo8aBw-gFor dessert, here's Bob Fosse in 1974's film of The Little Princehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LE_TYTxRxg

The only entry in the "it gets faster" genre worth watching; the ultimate substitution of actual content with an indicate tone makes it.

The folks at Kurzgesagt are decidedly in the camp that believes in the grand scheme of things, the "legend of overpopulation" is not a cause for concern. Their case is based on a four-stage theory of demographic transition in a country or region: (more…)

Peter Kogler projects or applies patterns to the surfaces of rooms that can be quite disorienting for anyone who enters. Most of his work uses warped black and white lines to distort the size and shape of floors, walls, and ceilings.He also makes a lot of cool creations involving images of mice and ants.• Peter Kogler site (via Colossal)

What's a driver to do to kill time between rideshare gigs? For Noah Forman, the answer was trying to set a record for most consecutive green lights. He hits about 240 green lights in a row in this video.This seems much safer and more fun than the knucklehead who set the fastest lap around Manhattan, an honor that landed him in jail:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_4ghLXaEVM• Noah hits 240 green lights. (Vimeo / Shawn Swetsky)

Russian animator Alexey Zakharov (aka seccovan) created this lovely short animation of dewdrops, plants and insects. (more…)

A Chinese man learned that the device he'd been using to crack walnuts for 25 years is, in fact, an old hand grenade. Alex Linder at Shanghaiist reports that he realized what it was after picking up a safety leaflet about explosives, then handed it in to the police.

English singer-songwriter George Michael died December 25 at his home in Oxfordshire, reports the BBC. His publicist said he died peacefully. Born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, Michael rose to fame as part of the duo Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley, and sold more than 100 million records worldwide, specializing in soulful mainstream pop.

This is why I eat at Denny's.

Many Alan Watts fans try to help others connect with his ideas by layering them with images and music. This worthy entry by David Lindberg examines the nature of the self and our relationship to the universe, set to a number of recent philosophically-minded films. (more…)

Evan Greer writes, "Anne Feeney has been raising hell with an acoustic guitar since you were in diapers. She's toured the world, rambling from protest to picket line with the likes of Pete Seeger and Billy Bragg. She was the first woman to become the president of a musicians union in the U.S. and has raised tens of thousands of dollars for striking workers. Anne has been battling cancer, and winning! for the past several years, prompting Anne's daughter, Amy Sue Berlin, to gather a notable lineup of musicians to contribute to a tribute album for Anne, with acts like punk icons Anti-Flag, Peter Yarrow (of Peter Paul and Mary), and Dan Bern covering her rabble rousing songs. With the fights we have ahead of us in the next four years and beyond, we're we're gonna need songs like these stuck in our heads."

It only takes 100 seconds for a crack SNL crew in stage blacks to clear a multi-panel set from downstage between the Trump cold open and host Casey Affleck's monologue. The teamwork is incredible in this behind-the-scenes video. (more…)

Plop! was a humor magazine published by DC from 1973 to 1976. I bought most of the copies when they were on the newsstand, and I still have them. It was an unabashed rip-off of Harvey Kurtzman's 1950s MAD, and not as good. The best thing about this self-described "New Magazine of Weird Humor!" were the covers by Basil Wolverton (who drew for MAD) and the marginalia by Sergio Aragones (another MAD artist).The Bristol Board posted a high-res scan of this unpublished original Plop! cover by Wolverton/Aragones. What does it mean? I don't think it means anything, which is classic Wolverton.See also: Creeping Death from Neptune, a treasury of early Wolverton comics

The trolling heats up at the 3 minute mark.From YouTube description:

The Chocolate Watch Band perform "Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In)" in this excerpt from the 1967 LSD exploitation film, The Love-Ins.Here's the full movie:https://youtu.be/f2WrQqoIa78YouTube description:

ZZ Top hit a Billboard's "Hot 100" charts at #8 with a song about a Sleeping Bag. Completing their transformation from 70s boogie-woogie blues band to 80s boogie-woogie synth stars.No one rocked the mundane quite like ZZ Top, "she's got legs" after all.

My favorite Star Wars characters are the droids, and the best of them all is cantankerous C1-10P, or Chopper from Star Wars Rebels. Seems someone agrees with me, as Chopper was the one Rebels character to make the jump to live-action in Rogue One.MovieWeb shares more backstory:

DJDarren says: "A Darth Vader wood burner I made got stolen yesterday. If you live in Somerset in the UK and you see one, it's probably mine."

Jerry Lewis is in no mood to suffer a fool today.https://youtu.be/xDllXqN684o

Morgan Stanley's pre-crisis fraudulent mortgage activity cost the firm $2.6B in federal fines, $550m in New York state fines, and $22.5M in Illiois state fines -- and part of the evidence against it is emails from high-ranking bankers telling their subordinates not to talk about the criminal stuff in email, because it could get them all in trouble. (more…)

Tony from Starshipsofa writes, "StarShipSofa is very proud to have Hugo winning author Nnedi Okorafor on this week's show (MP3) with her story 'Spider the Artist,' first published in the anthology Seeds of Change. Nnedi Okorafor is the Hugo winning novelist of Nigeria-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism for both children and adults. The narration is by Aminat Badara."

Worlds in Worlds is a beautiful proof of concept by Goro Fujita, who wanted to test just how deep the VR illustration tool Quill by Story Studio could go into an animation. Marvel at how well it works as advertised. (more…)

Simple brilliance from Matt Amys.

Planet Earth is not journalism, and the BBC is open about the various tricks and techniques it uses to create compelling stories from wildlife footage. So Pohjankonna Oy's video retiming these jumping birds isn't really a gotcha. But it sure is cool to see how the sausage is made.

Legendary nutcase John Bolton, said to have been denied a cabinet position in the Trump administration due to the president-elect's dislike of moustaches, has vowed not to shave his off."I appreciate the grooming advice from the totally unbiased mainstream media, but I will not be shaving my #mustache," he wrote on Twitter, hashtagging the reference to his Nietzschean schnozz brush.The Hill elaborates on Trump's preference for men who look a certain way.

Lights On! is a beautifully shot timelapse of cities as they transition from dusk to lighting up the night. Filmmaker Aaron Keigher includes Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York and all over California. (more…)

Finding a quality vape can be a minefield of false promises and burnt lips. From clunky, conspicuous designs that look like tactical gear, to low-quality toys made of cheap materials, it’s not difficult to make an expensive mistake. The Pax 3 is a stylish, discreet unit that quickly and easily heats both loose-leaf herbs and extracts.Fitted with a removable concentrate insert, the Pax 3 produces equally dense vapor with dry or waxy materials. While holding 0.3 grams of material, its internal oven heats up in just 15 seconds, with nearly instantaneous subsequent reheats to provide 15 clean hits from a single fill. The two included mouthpieces never get hot enough to hurt, and it immediately cools when you set it down.Finished with high-polished anodized aluminum and medical-grade materials, its sleek appearance isn’t the only thing that goes well with your smartphone. Customize the flavor and intensity of your vapor with the Pax Vapor app for iOS and Android. Get the Pax 3 Vaporizer in the Boing Boing Store for just $274.99.

On Tuesday November 8, 2016, tens of millions of Americans enthusiastically cast their presidential ballots for a tax-cheating, racist demagogue who literally said anything to get the votes of common working stiffs, even though it should have been abundantly obvious to them that the promises were empty, the rhetoric insincere. A few months ago, I might have called such voters bird brains, but lately I’ve been reading Jennifer Ackerman’s wonderful new book, The Genius of Birds, so I now understand that such an epithet would be an insult to birds. Birds may not be smart enough enough to run a cynical and disingenuous presidential campaign, but birds would never be so stupid as to act so recklessly against their own self-interest.In The Genius of Birds, Ackerman does not argue that birds are the intellectual equals of humans — that if only a robin could type, it, too, could produce a body of writing on par with the complete works of William Shakespeare. But Ackerman does give us enough examples of what can only be described as intelligence to cause us to reconsider many of our assumptions about whether human beings have a monopoly — or, in the case of the current election, even a grasp — on smarts.We learn, for example, that “the world’s smartest bird” is a crow found on the island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, and that this crow can solve puzzles requiring as many as eight steps to execute and two separate tools — O.K., they’re sticks. The first stick is too short to reach the bird’s goal, some food, but it is long enough to reach a second, longer stick, which the crow then uses to accomplish the task. This “metatool” use, as it’s called, is what separates humans and apes from other animals, except for these crows, who, despite the small size of their brains, have powerful enough memories to solve a problem of such complexity.Ackerman also gives us darker examples of bird intelligence, as in a description of a Steller’s jay chasing an American crow from a feeding area by arming itself with a stick (“blunt end in its beak with the sharp end pointing outward”). After the jay drops the stick after lunging at the crow, the crow promptly picks it up and, sharp end pointed out again, goes after the jay.And then there are birds that can actually learn from other birds, giving lie to the maxim of Immanuel Kant that “man is the only being who needs education.” Here, Ackerman introduces us to pied babblers in southern Africa, who teach their young to be sentinels and create “harsh, repetitive peeping alarm calls” when predators are near other foraging babblers. Birds that mimic the songs of others or, in the case or parrots, the words of human beings, also learn their songs and words—obviously, parrots are not born knowing the phrase “Polly wants a cracker.” The knock against parrots, of course, is that they don’t know what they’re talking about, but then again, neither do deceptive politicians and the ginned-up masses that follow them.The Genius of Birds

Artist Randy Regier created the submarine model for this fake cold war era commercial.

It might not have dawned on you, because the media and social networks have a certain way of making everything seem unreal or contingent or liminal.But we're all going to die.

The Butties.

Directed by Michele Lupo, "Un Uomo Da Rispettare" (A Man to Respect) is a 1972 Italian/German crime flick starring Kirk Douglas and Florinda Bolkan. Released as The Master Touch in some countries, this story of a safe cracker and a circus gymnast is considered to be a mediocre movie at best. However, the soundtrack by legendary composer Ennio Morricone is absolutely fantastic. This isn't a typical Morricone spaghetti western score but rather veers into the avant-garde, noir-jazz soundtrack vein. But even during the music's most abstract moments, it still maintains the cinematic groove of which Morricone is the master. I'm delighted that our friends at the Superior Viaduct record label are reissuing Un Uomo Da Rispettare on vinyl for just $20! The first 500 copies are on translucent green wax and only available directly from the label.Check out a track below and, if you're so inclined, watch the actual film.Da Rispettare OST LP (Superior Viaduct)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-6CtPWVi6E

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My friend, author A.J. Jacobs has a new podcast on Gimlet Media called Twice Removed. I listened to the premiere episode and I love it. Here's how A.J. describes it: "We take a notable person (e.g. Dan Savage) and then figure out how they're related to one of their heroes. And then we introduce them, live in the studio. Along the way, we talk about their most interesting shared ancestors (the first episode features a piece on Warren G Harding's illegitimate daughter, and another on Chicago gangsters). Of course, the big point is that we're all related and hopefully can get out of this crazy tribal mindset that has descended on us again!"Previously:Author A.J. Jacob's favorite toolsGweek podcast 137: The Horrors of Ancient MedicineGweek podcast 128: 3D Printed, Science-Based, Mickey Mouse Color Sundayshttp://boingboing.net/2013/06/24/gweek-100-a-j-jacobs-extrem.htmlCrowdsourced advice with author A.J. JacobsGweek 047: Drop Dead Healthy

Deuterium is a hydrogen atom with a neutron in it. Heavy water is made from molecules of two deuterium atoms and one oxygen atom. Because of the extra neutrons, it weighs about 10% more than regular water. In this video, Cody of Cody's Lab taste tests heavy water. Interestingly, it's sweet.

Steve Jobs explains why successful "companies forget what it means to make great products." In short, it's because sales and marketing push the "product people" out.[via]

We hope you can join us for this urgent conversation hosted by Institute for the Future, where Mark Frauenfelder and I are researchers:

This book on America's favorite supreme court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a hell of a lot of fun!Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg serves as a rollicking tribute to the octogenarian justice who is the darling of internet memes. In these troubling times Ginsburg's voice, wit and style may help preserve the United States. Photos, annotated dissent opinions, stories from friends and family all work together to tell the tale of an amazing life, and career in law.Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg via Amazon

Based on Berkeley Breathed's 1991 children's book A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story, this TV special aired on December 18 of that year. In a 2003 Washington Post interview, Breathed responded thusly to a question about where one could find a VHS or DVD copy of the cartoon:

Drew Toothpaste tweeted: "Thank you to Google for helping me compile the most popular search queries for each state in the US this year!"Finally, some real news for a change.

Enter your home address at Run for Office and you'll see a list of all the government positions you can run for. The site also offers a free online course on how to run for office.