Starting in 2000, Walmart began an aggressive cost-cutting campaign that removed greeters, reduced floor staff, and replaced cashiers with automated checkouts; the more this went on, the higher the crime-rate at Walmart soared, everything from shoplifting to deadly violence. In true Walmart style, the world's largest retailer has offloaded the costs associated with this crime to tax-funded law-enforcement. (more…)

Christoph Morlinghaus got a gig photographing motherboards for Cisco and discovered that the chips he was shooting were spectacular at extreme magnifications, prompting him to create Motherboard, a collection of arty, high-rez images of boards. (more…)

1. Cute. (more…)

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A phone, pen light, or LED is all you need to make this nifty long-exposure skeleton light drawing. Darren Pearson shows you how. (more…)

Here's a new trailer for the film Hidden Figures, on the untold true story of African-American women working at NASA who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit.(more…)

A striking new image of massive wildfires raging through Southern California, captured by JPL’s MISR instrument on the NASA Terra satellite. The image was taken at about noon Pacific time today, and shows the destructive rage of the Blue Cut wildfire, east of Los Angeles.(more…)

On CNN, host Brianna Keilar asked Trump spokesman Michael Cohen about his candidate's sinking poll numbers. "Says who?" he demands. (more…)

The broken ansible in the basement ("We've been instructed in no uncertain terms never to use it, and the last editor to do so disappeared in a flash of late 1970s-era BBC special effects, presumably an extremely painful demise.") coughed this up today. I suspect it might be real.Tzump_(Wikipedia article from the future)

To keep my scuba face mask from fogging up I was taught to spit in it. You then wipe your saliva around and put on the mask. The very first time I was standing on the deck of a boat, waiting to jump 15 feet to the water and needed to spit in my mask, I found that nerves had dried me up! The best solution for defogging a mask I've found is 500 psi Mask Defogger.When a mask is new, make sure to clean the inside surface of the glass with some toothpaste. It'll rub the chemicals the manufacturer put on the glass to make the machine processes less prone to breakage. If you don't those chemicals will cause the mask to fog a lot, regardless what you do, until use rinses them out.Having done that, I rub a healthy amount of 500 psi inside my mask before my first dive, lightly rinse it out, and don the mask. One treatment tends to be good for several tanks of diving. Generally it will last all day and I may only need some more come night-dive time.In the world of "just use some dish soap or shampoo," I'd say 500 psi reminds me most of Head and Shoulders. Those things work with varying degrees of success, as does spit, but why take a chance?Nothing is worse than spending a few days getting to dive site and battling a fogging mask your first dive. Remember, you can flood your mask and clear it for temporary relief too!500 psi Mask Defogger Great for Scuba Divers via Amazon

UC Irvine economist Peter Navarro, a hand-picked Trump economic advisor: "Navarro has never met Trump in person. And as for speaking with him by phone, he acknowledges, 'I have never had the pleasure.'" (more…)

Recently, I went to Outside Lands 2016, where bands such as Radiohead, Lionel Richie, LCD Soundsystem, Duran Duran and many more were playing. But my favorite was Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (The Muppets Band). The day after, I looked up the video for "Once in a Lifetime," by Talking Heads, and happened to find this obscure gem!

Jaelyn the Alien, aka Baby J, says:

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore posted an essay on his blog titled, "Is Trump Purposely Sabotaging His Campaign?" He says he knows for a fact that Trump only ran for President as a way to get a higher paycheck for his NBC "Apprentice" shows. When he actually got the nomination, he started to have second thoughts.

Make It Stranger can turn any two words into a Stranger Things style title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOcv2zITjVcCharlie from Improv Everywhere writes, "We set up 100 dancers in a park and put a platform in front of them. Watch what happens." (more…)

Boston's police do not want to be accountable for their actions: not a single officer volunteered to participate in a pilot program for the force's bodycams, which will now be randomly distributed.

The movie Dune was spectacular but incomprehensible: a boiling-down of a huge science fiction epic into a couple of hours of action. Star Kyle McLachlan, however, can fit the whole thing into a tweet, using only emoji. The Tweeter must awaken!https://twitter.com/Kyle_MacLachlan/status/765390472604971009

Paris's Musée national du Moyen Âge teamed up with The University of Geneva to make this video demonstrating the fighting techniques available to people in 15th century armor, which are much more fluid and athletic that I had presumed -- turns out you can really move in those tin cans. (via We Make Money Not Art)

In a last-ditch effort to shake up his faltering presidential campaign, Republican millionaire Donald Trump has hired Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, to run it.

The economic orthodoxy of austerity means that governments facing recession can't just spend their way out of it by creating New Deal-like stimulus that gets the economy moving again: instead, they handed trillions to banks and then watched in dismay as the banks failed to lend any of that out to small businesses and entrepreneurs. (more…)

Make your own "Stranger Things"-style logo at makeitstranger.com. Does exactly what it says in the title.

On Historic Hunter, Shawn Woods repurposes materials he finds in a local dump into arrowheads using antlers and simple metal objects. The ancient technique, called flintknapping, will be handy to know after the zombie apocalypse. (more…)

Michael Fletcher collaborated with Alan Mathieson to capture drone footage of northern Norway's mist-shrouded mountains during this summer's midnight sun. It's like watching a moving Bierstadt painting. (more…)

Robert Carlson's Hot Wheels Road Trip takes viewers on a wild POV ride on hundreds of feet of Hot Wheels track. (more…)

Krystle Missildine paints delicate animal portraits on feathers, like this robin on a macaw feather.(more…)

Former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, kicked out last month over sexual harassment charges, has been advising GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump, as the self-described billionaire candidate prepares for the fall presidential debates.(more…)

John McLaughlin has died, at 89. The host of a long-running political TV chat show was once a Jesuit priest, and also wrote speeches for President Richard M. Nixon. He was a conservative provocateur with a “pugnacious style” on his political chat show, and sometimes interrupted his guests or yelled “Wronnng!” in response to their commentary. (more…)

By the late 1980s an automotive feature that I love, colloquially known as Vent Windows, or Wing Windows, or Bat Wings had largely been phased out. (more…)

Omarosa, an advisor to the Republican presidential candidate, says his critics will "have to bow down to President Trump." Noted. (more…)

Univision won the auction for Gawker Media with a $135m bid, reports Peter Kafka.

Entertainment Weekly has the scoop. Nice tutu.

This Saturday (8/20), our friends at Noise Pop and their co-conspirators are throwing their big annual music and food festival in San Francisco's Mission District! The 20th Street Block Party will feature an eclectic mix of musical performances across three stages include Miami Horror, Chicano Batman, Boulevards, Nico Yaryan, Hazel English, Spooky Mansion, Mandeline Kenney, La Gente, Dos Four, and DJ Krazy. Also making the scene will be Rocket Dog Adoption Zoo, the San Francisco Lowrider Council, and Community Music Center's Instrument Petting Zoo. Alabama Street becomes Art Row and ArtSpan and Workshop SF are offering workshops, crafts, and community art projects for all ages. Plus, of course, plenty of food and drinks (artisanal and otherwise).My whole family looks forward to the 20th Street Block Party every year! The whole shebang is free with a suggested donation of $5-$10 to benefit the Mission Language & Vocational School. Or you can drop $95 for a VIP "Headliner Experience" ticket including green room.20th Street Block Party

When you drive a Volkswagen Vanagon you get used to woefully inadequate charging systems. I've been carrying this Zeusray battery pack with jumpstarter for an added sense of security.I have several portable jumpstarting power solutions for my various vehicles. The Wagan Powerdome I was carrying in the VW broke the positive clamp trying to squeeze into an odd space on an old motorcycle, and I was looking for something versatile, yet small to stash in the van. I was also tired of the Wagan sliding around the cargo compartment on windy roads.Price and performance wise, I'm thrilled with the Zeusray! My Vanagon's battery was drained and I was easily able to start it on the first try. I charged it back up via the AC adaptor in the van as I drove around and fit it easily in the clothes closet. I've also charged the iPhone off it and the USB port works just fine.Only thing I'll miss from the Wagan is the tire inflator, which saved my butt in Baja a few years ago, but I'm already looking at some tiny replacements. I'm far happier with a smaller package, and lighter battery.The Antigravity XP-1 I reviewed is currently in my second car. It is still going strong. It is about the same size, physically, and 2x the price. I could have moved it over, but wanted one in each car.Zeusray 12000mah Multi function Portable power bank, USB 5V/2A , 12V 400A jump starter for automobile ,DV 12V,16V,19V output via Amazon

In this beautiful exchange Ted Koppel lets Bill O'Reilly have it with both barrels. Feels great to watch!

Medieval manuscripts were the imageboards of their day, full of murderous rabbits and lewd butts, a new (to me) subgenre is "people who don't seem to mind that they've just been stabbed" -- perhaps the origin of the Black Knight? (more…)

This is Trimp. Make again make.(Thanks UPSO!)

In 1983, I wanted a light pen for my Apple IIe so badly that I built one from plans in this issue of Byte magazine. Mr. Wizard's light pen works better than mine ever did though. (Thanks UPSO!)

This Indonesian guy went to college in London for 3 years and lost 45 lbs. His family didn't know and he played a funny trick on them by sitting next to them in a restaurant and waiting for them to recognize him.

Jon Ronson, a Boing Boing pal and author of many great books, including So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Frank, The Psychopath Test, Lost At Sea, Men Who Stare At Goats, and Them, was greeted by this "lovely, then ominous" note from hotel housekeeping. I'm sure Jon is already a good tipper, and this note only served to remind him of that fact.

The National Park Service is studying rapidly growing colonies of microorganisms that are blackening the dome of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and other landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial and tombstones at the Congressional Cemetery. A multidisciplinary team of molecular biologists, conservators, and architects is analyzing the growth of the biofilm to hopefully identify a method to stop it that won't further damage the stone that the microbes have claimed as their home. One option is to battle the tiny beasts with lasers. From the National Park Service:

Japanese Pole vaulter Hiroki Ogita touched the bar with both his legs and his penis, placing him 21st in the qualifying rounds for pole vaulting with a penis. (more…)

https://youtu.be/sOC9oe_n70ARachel Grant makes good use of ziplock bags to stuff over 100 travel items into a carry-on bag.[via]

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Castro's Cuba: An American Journalist's Inside Look at Cuba 1959-1969

Directed by Robert Carlos, filmmaker and author, who "spends his spare time playing with toys and riding roller coasters."

We all know the traditional, navigator-friendly Mercator projection distorts the true sizes of Earth's landmasses. But it's fascinating to see how countries look next to one another when that distortion is, as far as possible, removed. The tininess of Britain against Japan, for example, or the vastness of Alaska against France, become specific in this video from RealLifeLore. As for Greenland...

When Maria Rivera got a bill from Orange County for her young son's year in juvenile detention, she sold her house to pay for it, but ended up short, and the county got a court order for another $10K to pay the remainder and various fees and penalties. (more…)

"How can you tell?"

Travelers mishearing applause apparently triggered a full-scale "stampede" at JFK, complete with screaming crowds, people shouting about guns, and police running around aimlessly with weapons drawn. It was shut down for hours.