Nicole from EFF writes, "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is excited to host the 2016 Pioneer Awards in San Francisco next Wednesday, September 21 at Delancey Street’s Town Hall Room." (more…)

Lucy Walinchus's How to Raise a Smartass is a great, funny, irreverent memoir/guidebook about Walinchus's own experiences, proudly raising a passel of smartass kids. Speaking as the father of a self-declared "sassy" eight year old, I could certainly relate -- I laughed, I winced, I laughed again.

In a 1958 interview, author, philosopher, and futurist Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, The Doors of Perception) shares his grim predictions that are unfortunately quite relevant today. From Blank on Blank:

Responding to the bombshell Kurt Eichenwald cover story in Newsweek on Donald Trump's tangled web of foreign business matters and the national security risks they'd pose if Trump were elected, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has questions. Twenty of them.(more…)

2002's feel good Lilo & Stitch, a movie about humans getting along with aliens was originally intended to end with a madcap 747 hijacking and chase scene through a hi-rise filled city. This video shows both versions.Via HuffPo:

Manning's hunger strike began on September 10, as Manning faced potential years in solitary following her suicide attempt, which an expert psychologist with years of treating gender dysphoria attributed to the government's refusal to treat Manning, who is transgender. (more…)

Even though both parties' presidential candidates say they oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership -- the secretly negotiated "trade" deal that lets corporations sue governments to repeal their environmental, labor and safety laws if they hurt profits -- Obama's plan to ram through a vote before the election is alive and well. (more…)

Samantha Bee has grown tired of the current trend wherein interviewers just smile and nod as Trump and his surrogates create fantastic lies. Bee reminds them, and us, that “Calling a liar a liar isn’t an opinion if you can prove it."

Stephen Mader, a former police officer in Weirton, W.Va, was fired without severance because he decided not to shoot Ronald D. "R.J." Williams Jr, who had threatened to kill himself and was holding a gun that turned out to be unloaded. (more…)

Again and again, Wisconsin government Scott Walker flouted election laws to raise millions from some of the richest executives and biggest corporations in America, illegally laundering the money through the nominally independent, nonprofit Wisconsin Club for Growth -- and now we have all the details, thanks to an enormous leak of documents that a Wisconsin judge ordered destroyed. (more…)

Starting a siphon sometimes meant a mouthful of some liquid I'd prefer not to sample. This siphon has a hand pump to get things started! Huzzah!I'd try as hard as I could to start a siphon up without having to suck fluid into the tube with my mouth. Every now and then I'd find I had no choice but to give up and start sucking. A face full of bright blue, phosphate-free coolant got me looking for better solutions.This siphon is great. Simply squeeze the hand pump and things get started! You can keep pumping if you are moving fluid against gravity, but I wouldn't want to move gallons that way. There is 6' of fuel-safe hose and fittings, which are fantastic for moving gas from motorcycle fuel tank to fuel tank, when I'm working on the bikes.Also, if memory serves: today's clear gasoline also tastes a lot different than the good old red stuff.G.T Power Equipment Fluid Extractor Pump for Gas, Oil, Water, Anti-freeze via Amazon

Rick Prelinger writes, "Today I've released my 2013 feature film NO MORE ROAD TRIPS? to the world for viewing, public screening and remixing." (more…)

It’s true that summer is almost over—but that doesn’t mean that you’re all out of chances to take the vacation of your dreams. And because we think that everyone deserves to kick back and relax as much as possible, we’re pumped to announce this Virgin America $1000 flight credit giveaway.All you have to do is sign up through this link and very soon it could be you taking that long-awaited trip to Thailand, backpacking to Macchu Picchu, or just sipping Mai-Tais on a beach.Good luck, we’re rooting for you!Oh and by the way, while you’re zipping through the air on your Virgin America flight be sure to check out the A-Audio Legacy Noise Canceling Headphones. These are Boing Boing's best-selling headphones of the summer and you can get them for $79 in the store.

There is literally nothing in the world that isn't made cooler by being displayed in a bell-jar, and the addition of a diffused white LED base to the traditional jar in the Suck UK jar is a genius move that is obvious in retrospect. (more…)

The upcoming Rule 41 modifications to US Criminal Justice procedure underway at the Department of Justice will let the FBI hack computers in secret, with impunity, using dangerous tools that are off-limits to independent scrutiny -- all without Congressional approval and all at a moment at which America needs its law-enforcement community to be strengthening the nation's computers, not hoarding and weaponizing defects that put us all at risk. (more…)

If you're a longtime reader, you'll know that I love me some impractical timepieces; the LED Word Clock qualifies, with a set of stencil-text cutouts of words that are selectively lit by LEDs to tell you the time(ish); it measures 8" square and costs $74 and the major complaint from reviewers is that it is too bright, which strikes me as a feature, not a bug. (more…)

In 2008, the Swiss/Danish design team Yarisal & Kublitz created their "Anger Release Machine," a vending machine stocked with "crystal glasses, plates, porcelain, various items" (the catalog helpfully adds "70 x 77 x 182 cm") -- insert coin, shatter breakables, feel better. (more…)

Kritian Williams: "He wasn't bound by the common design tropes of the '70s. He was able to create something genuinely Alien, a distorted biomechanical reflection of man. Everything we feared about ourselves, taken to the point of surrealism." (more…)

This illustrated flowchart makes it easy to pick an evening out with the Bard.

The White House released a video of Barack Obama making history as the first U.S. president to visit Laos. Reflecting on his visit, Obama explains: (more…)

The ladies of WhatsUpMoms always have the best suggestions for parents. And in this new video, Elle Walker talks through the process of creating a family calendar that makes scheduling easy—even for kids too young to read.

Marvel soundtracks don't stand out with memorable risk-taking music for several reasons, but Every Frame A Painting names the key culprit: temp music, also called scratch tracks or needle drop. (more…)

Secret Wood Rings are pretty cool-looking, so Peter Brown decided to experiment with making his own using some resin and hand-splintered wood. Not bad for the first try! (more…)

Any true NASA nerd knows that Michael Collins was the third astronaut who joined Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. But even for those who are already familiar with Collins, this video is still a lovely, poignant tribute to an unsung hero of the space race.

I can't get enough of this gorgeous macro video of various blobs of glorious color. It's like a neverending lava lamp.(more…)

“If he wins, his many overseas deals would create a national security nightmare.” That's the tease on the cover of this week's edition of Newsweek, which contains a bombshell Kurt Eichenwald report detailing presidential candidate Donald Trump's financial conflicts of interest.Eichenwald is also digging into other sensitive information regarding Trump's medical history.(more…)

“A NASA airborne mission designed to transform our understanding of Earth's valuable and ecologically sensitive coral reefs has set up shop in Australia for a two-month investigation of the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest reef ecosystem,” reports NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory today.(more…)

“Shila the Pomeranian dog plays Piano.”This is actually what I look like when I play the piano, too: “i have no idea what I am doing.”(more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Dear Data

In a 1968 episode of Get Smart, Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 are ordered to stop a cartoonish beatnik hippy guru with a plot to brainwash the youth of America and command them to "attack all the squares in the establishment, you dig?"The episode features the infamous song, "Kill Kill Kill," by The Sacred Cows:Kill, kill, killThrill, thrill, thrillMake a sceneBump off the DeanYeah, yeah, yeahKnock off the squaresTake to the streetKill everyone you meetJust kill, kill, killFull episode, if you can stomach it, here.

When Edward Snowden came in from the cold, it catapulted his employer, Booz Allen Hamilton -- a giant military/intelligence contractor -- into the public eye, but Booz is small potatoes, one of the Big Five in the intelligence contractor industry, but it's dwarfed by Leidos Holdings, which recently merged with Lockheed's  Information Systems & Global Solutions to become the largest business in the $50B industry. (more…)

Steven Levy, author of Hackers and one of the best tech writers in the field (previously), has profiled Carl Malamud (previously), the prolific, tireless freedom fighter who has risked everything to publish the world's laws on the internet, even those claimed to be owned by "nonprofit" standards organizations whose million-dollar execs say that you should have to pay to read the law. (more…)

Tony Verity, a broadcaster at Radio Jamaica in the 1960s, introduces the music and dance moves of Ska in this star-packed show. The Maytals are my favorite of the line-up:

Oxfam has released the latest version of its ongoing series of analyses of the relative net worth of the very richest when compared to the very poorest: in this case, they found that the top 1% of Britons own more wealth than the bottom 20% of Britons combined. (more…)

Waffle, a baby Shai-Hulud (terrestrial name: Kenyan sand boa), enjoys his new sandbox. His human companion, Jenny Gaines, says:

Charlie Todd from Improv Everywhere (previously) writes, "We set up a fake press conference set on the steps of the New York Public Library. When random tourists approached it to pose for photos, a mob of reporters ran up and surprised them with an impromptu press conference." (more…)

A new study shows that our planet has 10% less wilderness than in the 1990s.Via the CS Monitor:

Harnaam Kaur, 24, hails from Slough, England. She has a full beard and has been recognized as the youngest woman to have one by Guinness World Records. Ms. Kaur has a hormonal condition known as polycystic ovary syndrome. One of the symptoms is hirsuteness.

A woman has filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of a sex toy that sends data back to the company.From Vocativ:

Scientists at Ukraine's Karadag Nature Reserve have determined that dolphin speak to one another in sentences up to 5 words long!The researchers have no clue what the dolphins are saying, but I gather they're discussing when it'll be time to leave.Via the Telegraph:

Tweeted last night by Rosanne Cash, daughter of country legend Johnny Cash:

In celebration of the centenary of Roald Dahl's birth this month, the Oxford English Dictionary has added words and updated entries related to Dahl's iconic children's books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG. From OED.com:

This wide-eyed kitty is enthralled by Hitchcock's Psycho.Here's what the kitty's watching (spoiler!):https://youtu.be/xWHYmNrAFlIProbably staged, but still.

Carrie Tolstedt is the Wells Fargo executive who presided over a titanic, multi-year fraud through which at least 5,300 of the employees who reported to her opened up fake accounts in Wells' customers' names, racking up fees and fines, trashing the customers' credit ratings, and, incidentally, pulling in record revenues for Tolstedt's department, which Wells' management recognized by giving her a $125M parting gift when she left the company at the end of July, just weeks before the scandal broke. (more…)

Adblock is to begin reselling the ads it blocks, replacing websites' original ads with ones under its control—and which it takes a fat cut of the revenue from.

Graham Dickinson jumped off a mountain in a wingsuit, but the footage of such things is usually chaotic, off-kilter, somehow subtly unlike reality. The joy reported is hard to appreciate: even if we get how amazing it must be, we're replaying a machine's limitations as much as the flight. (more…)

Current condition (via Mefi) is a website lurking in the airwaves and wires somewhere between teletext, those high-number cable channels that just play music and weather, and where the planes were in 19A0 or so. (more…)

This is what happens who you trust tabloids and rich politicians who say you can have your cake and eat it. What they mean is they can have their cake, and you eat it. Today's shit sandwich is for Brits who thought that leaving the European Union, and preventing people coming into the UK, wouldn't mean reciprocal movement controls. As Nigerian Chibundu Onuzo puts it: Welcome to the world of restricted travel, British people!

They put out a compilation of scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road as they were shot, with no CGI or no artsy color grading. It makes me love the film even more: I want a minimalist cut of the whole thing like this, with the only CGI work being what's absolutely necessary to make things work (painting out other cameras and wires, adding key explosions, the waterfall...) and CGI-heavy scenes like the sandstorm interior completely removed.One thought, though: this would probably make Fury Road's sustained, stylized violence (which is rather different from the startling, crude violence of the first two Mad Max movies) less palatable. You'd be surprised how many people already have a problem with it, even if they love the series. It would be an interesting editing challenge. [via io9]