The realm of web development is constantly evolving. New platforms, languages, and processes materialize all the time, so staying on top of all that innovation is a tall order.Whether you’re brushing up on new tricks, starting from scratch, or just looking to make your own website a little jazzier, Rob Percival's new Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 (now just $19 in the Boing Boing Store) offers the cross-disciplinary chops to bring your website ideas to life.This course features nearly 300 lectures and over 30 hours of content on all things code, from fundamental disciplines like HTML5, CSS3 and Python to more advanced practices like jQuery, PHP 7, and Twitter Bootstrap.You’ll follow practical lessons creating real functioning websites, whether it’s developing e-commerce sites with Wordpress or learning techniques to create your own Twitter clone. You’ll even get a free year of unlimited web hosting to try your creations out.The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 puts all your web creation tools under one umbrella -- and at nearly 85% off its regular price, it’s perfect for adding to your development arsenal.

Singaporeans are the most prolific speculators on UK commercial property, and the United Overseas Bank is the most prolific lender to Singaporeans who want to speculate in that market -- and now they're turning off the faucet. (more…)

Radiolab's Jad Abumrad riffs on "The Function of Music" in this spectacular cut-up video by Mac Premo.

When I was in junior high school, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club. One of the books I got from the club was an anthology that included several stories by Fredric Brown (who was primarily a mystery writer but occasionally delved into science fiction). Some of Brown's stories in the anthology were a mere page or two, and I loved their humor and surprise endings. As soon as I could, I went to the Boulder Public Library to load up on as much Brown as I could find. It turned out the library had just two of his science fiction novels: Martians, Go Home (1955), and What Mad Universe (1949). They were both terrific.In Martians, Go Home a race of cartoonish little green men invade Earth for the sole purpose of being hideously bothersome pests, behaving very much like Internet trolls and Second Life griefers. (Artist Kelly Freas perfectly captured the personality of the martians in his cover painting for Astounding Science Fiction.) In What Mad Universe a man gets thrown into a parallel universe and has to figure out how to get back home. Both books are semi-parodies of science fiction novels (the protagonists in each novel are science fiction writers), with plenty of Brown's signature wry humor. If you've not read these novels, I highly recommend them both.It wasn't until I was in high school that I scored a copy of The Mind Thing (1961), which is probably my favorite Brown novel, even though it is not as well-known as the other two novels, and could be arguably be classified a horror novel. The Mind Thing is an alien being (which looks like a turtle shell) that has been banished to Earth for committing crimes on its home planet. It is unable to move on its own, but can hijack the nervous system of any sleeping animal within range and take control of its mind and body. To leave the body, it forces the host to commit suicide. The alien goes on a spree, hopping into people's bodies and killing them, as it moves forward with a plan to make the Earth ripe for takeover (in the hope that its fellow creatures will forgive its past crimes and hail it a hero). Eventually, a smart fellow (an MIT professor on vacation) figures out what's going on and takes it upon himself to save the planet from the evil space alien.Long of of print, The Mind Thing, Martians, Go Home, and What Mad Universe are available in Kindle editions. (I don't recommend Rogue in Space or The Lights in the Sky are Stars because they both stink, unfortunately.)

Andre Maat, a director and animator from Amsterdam, made a short stop-motion video called Woodo that uses many pieces of laser cut wood to make it look like he is cutting, molding, and stretching plywood.

My San Antonio reports of a fight that took place in a North Dallas restaurant:

PBS has a quiz that presents a number of different investigatory police stop scenarios. You are tasked with determining which of the scenarios represent illegal stops.

One of the things I enjoy most about living in Muir Beach, California, is the amazing CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) provided to my community by our neighbors at the Green Gulch Zen Center. Their incredible program lands a wide variety of wonderful fruits and veggies in my home, weekly, for half the year.The CSA doesn't just provide great, healthy food for my daughter and I. It provides a weekly puzzle; how to use the wide variety of things they send? Check out this week's list:

The Pew Research Center conducted an international survey between April 4 and May 29 regarding attitudes towards the U.S. and when it came to Donald Trump, the wanna-be president fared miserably. In fact, positive ratings were in the single digits in nearly half the countries surveyed. According to the AP:

June's Decentralized Web Summit at San Francisco's Internet Archive was a ground-breaking, three-day combination of workshops, lectures, demos and a hackathon, all aimed at figuring out how to restore the decentralized character of the early internet -- and keep it that way. (more…)

Everyone should know how to play three card monte. I learned decades ago and it has been immeasurably helpful.https://youtu.be/o2kO_5cNF5kThis video by The Card Trick Teacher will teach you the con, and the sleight of hand. It is very simple to learn 'the throw.' The thing these internet videos leave out is, don't use bordered cards! You'll get caught really, really quickly.These Bee Club Special playing cards do the trick. The pattern on their backs runs right up to the edge of the card, and it is very hard to see that the throw is happening. They are also made by US Playing Cards, and are the same lovely quality as my beloved Bicycle decks.Remember, you need a few friends to make this hustle work.Bee Premium Playing Cards (Colors may vary) via Amazon

Some of Neil Gaiman's finest work has sprung from classical mythology, from American Gods to Odd and the Frost Giants: now, in a new nonfiction book for WW Norton, Gaiman will retell the Norse myths in novelistic style. (more…)

In 2012, a scandal erupted in the UK when it was revealed that undercover police officers infiltrated environmental groups, seduced and impregnated their members, and then abandoned them. (more…)

After allowing women to serve in combat roles, the United States Marines Corps plans to update various specialty titles to be ungendered. Insecure men are angry about this.Antitank Missilemen, for example, will now be Antitank Gunners instead. Operations Men will henceforth be Operations Chiefs. Most of the changes just replace the word "man" with the world "marine." Where a literary barbarism is unavoidable, gendered titles will be kept. For example, it's still going to be Riflemen, not Rifleperson/Riflemarine. And yet, the rage.

The Supreme Court recently sided with UT Austin's use of affirmative action. That plaintiff Abigail Fishers simply lacked the grades for admission was part of the case's many numbing ironies. But it's not a joke, according to Jia Tolentino, who tutored Fisher in the art of gaming the system. It's a way of life for second-rate kids in first-class families. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btPJPFnesV4When Mike Huckabee played Eye of the Tiger at a rally for a Kentucky county clerk who refused to marry same-sex couples, it cost him big. Sued by the song's owners, he forked over $25k to settle the lawsuit.The failed Republican presidential candidate got the usual settlement gag clause, but decided to list the payment in election disclosures. Huckabee claimed the anti-gay rally was "noncommercial" and that his use of the song met the standards for "fair use," but...

Bob Dylan, interviewed in 1962 when he was 20-years-old, playing Manhattan coffee houses, and trying to make enough money to eat. The day he earned $1 and a cheeseburger for a gig was a good day.(more…)

Brett from Mozilla writes, "Codemoji, a game and learning tool that lets you encode secret messages in emoji and then send them to friends for deciphering." (more…)

University of Stuttgart researchers used 3D printing to fabricate a tiny three-lens camera that fits on the end of an optical fiber no wider than two human hairs. Eventually, the technology could lead to a new kind of very thin endoscope for looking inside the human body. According to the researchers, the camera delivered "high optical performances and tremendous compactness." From Phys.org:

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Vader: Star Wars Darth Vader Vol. 1

A lock of David Bowie's hair sold for $18,750 at auction this week. The seller was Wendy Farrier, a wigmaker who snipped the lock for color reference for a wax statue at Madame Tussauds. No info on the buyer."Once hair samples were matched with any figures at Madam Tussauds they were discarded as a matter of course, so there was amusement when I asked to keep one from the selection taken from Bowie,” Farrier wrote in a signed letter of provenance given to Heritage Auctions.

Remember Cody Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed who caused chaos last year with his design for a 3D printed gun, The Liberator? Now, Wilson and engineer John Sullivan have developed a $1500 desktop CNC mill, called the Ghost Gunner, that cranks out the key component in assault rifles. Now you can make your own AR-15! There's a waiting list to buy one and the money is going to Wilson's lawsuit against the State Department. From Rob Walker's excellent feature in Bloomberg Businessweek:

https://youtu.be/yAckE3s4rtcHappening was a Los Angeles-based rock and roll variety TV show produced by Dick Clark, and co-hosted by Mark Lindsay and Paul Revere of the Raiders. It ran from 1968 to 1969. It's interesting to see the TV commercials, which make me miss Mad Men, and to see how unsophisticated live TV was at the time. The budget was probably miniscule.

Here is Tony Hawk attempting a 900 at age 48. It's amazing to watch as he stumbles, and stumbles, but his determination pays off. His first 900 was exactly 17 years ago, and he says this is his last.

I'm generally happy with Oxo Good Grips kitchen utensils, and this Ground Meat Chopper ($12 on Amazon) is no exception. We made tacos with ground beef last night and the three blades did a good job of efficiently breaking up the meat (it was partially frozen) - much better than a spatula, and fun to use, too!

The Portside Flask is perfect for keeping your reputation for asocial behavior intact while maintaining a stylish image.(more…)

NPR has a quiz that invites you to guess which of six poems were written by a computer program, and which were written by humans. A group of 10 judges weren't fooled, but I had trouble correctly guessing all of them. I appreciated the computer-generated poems as much as the human-written ones.

Coatings that allow ketchup and other gel-like liquids to easily slide down plastic bottle interiors have been around for many years. Finding something that prevents liquid soap from clinging to the inside of a bottle has proven more elusive, because the qualities that make soap "soapy" also make it clingy to plastic. But researchers at The Ohio State University have created a microscopic texture that repels soap products, as reported in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on June 27.From Ohio State University newsroom:

The Stool Analyzer is the perfect website to squeeze into over breakfast: tell it everything about your turds and it will give you health tips that are at least as accurate as a carnival fortune-telling machine.

The Blitzortung live lightning map shows the world's storms and strikes in real time, with a little click played every time heaven and earth become one. You can zoom right down to the state level; it's an indoors day in Ukraine and Greece.

In a new paper, researchers from Ben-Gurion University demonstrate a fiendishly clever procedure for getting data off of airgapped computers that have had their speakers removed to prevent acoustic data-transmission: instead of playing sound through the target computer's speakers, they attack its fans, varying their speeds to produce subtle sounds that humans can barely notice, but which nearby devices can pick up through their microphones. (more…)

Since the Tony Blair years, the Labour Party has really been two parties: the dominant one was neoliberal, surveillance-happy, banker-worshipping, and it held the other party -- working people, unions, progressives, students -- ransom, with a pitch that went, "Well, you're hardly going to vote for the Tories, are you?" (more…)

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is suing Breitling Energy Corporation of Dallas, Texas, and its CEO, "Frack Master" Chris Faulkner, for fraudulently spending $80 million dollars of investors' money on fancy dining, luxury cars, strippers, sex workers, and all the other fixins of a jet-setting sociopath's lifestyle.(more…)

Volkswagen AG's settlement with half a million U.S. regulators and diesel vehicle owners over polluting vehicles is valued at more than $15 billion cash, a source briefed on the matter told Reuters Monday.A separate report from AP puts the figure around $14.7 billion.If that's accurate, the settlement will be the largest ever automotive buyback offer in American history, and the most expensive auto industry scandal ever.The historic lawsuit followed the German automaker's admission in September 2015 it lied to regulators and installed secret software that let U.S. cars emit up to 40 times legally permitted pollution levels. (more…)

Scientists are recruiting thousands of women for a large clinical trial to find out if weight loss should be prescribed as a treatment for breast cancer in some patients.The trial will put obese and overweight women who are 18 and older and recently diagnosed with breast cancer on diets and track exercise to see if losing a little weight could help prevent a cancer recurrence.(more…)

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Modern civilization has all but disappeared. It falls to a fearless, dedicated and slap-stick bunch known as Post-Apocalyptic Nomadic Warriors to help humanity recover. With help like this, you might be better off on your own!Benjamin Wallace's first installment in the Duck and Cover series is a quick and witty read. We find America highly mutated and extremely dangerous. Small enclaves of folks are trying to rebuild society, and boy do they need help! Enter the post-apocalyptic nomadic warriors: experts in a little bit of everything, and a whole lot of nothing. Two such warriors arrive at the town of New Hope, each offering to lend his aid. New Hope sends one away and accepts the aid of the other. Did they choose wisely? Did they even need to choose? How did humanity survive at all?This read was a good time! The characters are a lot of fun, and standout for this style of novel. The contrasting styles of the two titular characters, and the passing of focus back and forth, really makes this tale roll along. The story is predictable, but Wallace's wildly mutated landscape, and slowly emerging backstory, made it hard to put this book down.Post-Apocalyptic Nomadic Warriors: A Duck & Cover Adventure

I usually do one Google Hangout a day, sometimes more (I also use the same kind of Beam robot that Snowden uses.) I work out of the guest bedroom in my house, and I've never been happy that other people can see the bed behind me. I recently bought a WebAround ($45 on Amazon, which is a big round screen that attaches to my chair, and creates a neutral wall behind me. I wish I'd bought it a long time ago.It's easy to fold up:https://youtu.be/2LwdolLTuPII wish it were a bit larger, because the edges show unless I'm pretty close to the computer. But it is so much better than not having it.

"Run through a motherfucker's face, then you don't have to worry about them anymore," Marshawn Lynch, recently-retired Seattle Seahawks player, told 60 Minutes Sports. (more…)

The winner of Saturday's College World Series game between the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers and the Texas Christian University Frogs was decidedly this kid.

In March, Christy Sheats, 42, wrote on Facebook: “It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away, but that’s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semiautomatic weapons.” On Friday she got into an argument with her two daughters and shot them both dead. Sheats herself was shot and killed by a police officer.(more…)

The Court ruled in Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt that the Texas law placed undue burdens on clinics that performed abortions by requiring them to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers, use doctors with admitting privileges at local hospitals -- measures that led to the closure of three quarters of the state's abortion-providing facilities since 2013. (more…)

The Snowbot -- a $14,000 Beampro telepresence robot that Edward Snowden pilots from Moscow -- is becoming a fixture at conferences, meetings, and in the halls of power in the USA, where Snowden is a frequent invited guest. (more…)

China's Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (in English, "Publicity Department") spends $10B/year -- only part of its budget -- getting the official Chinese party line into foreign news outlets, with the rest of its activity directed internally, at government communications discipline and media censorship. (more…)

Edward Snowden has taken to Twitter to condemn Russia's proposed "Yarovaya law," which provides prison sentences of 7 years for writing favorably about "extremism" on the Internet, criminalizes failure to report "reliable" information about planned attacks, and requires online providers to retain at least six months' worth of users' communications, 3 years' worth of "metadata" and to provide backdoors to decrypt this material. (more…)

The Leave campaign's old homepage, which once linked to screen after screen of promises about the UK's bright future out of the EU, is now just a static banner, with no way to navigate to those pages. (more…)

The Smile Makers 88 was sent to McDonald's franchise managers in 1987, filled with garments they could buy for themselves, their families, and their workers. It. Is. Terrible. (more…)

Wise Ones, an Australian "gifted" education programme offers students who test into it vaccination exemption forms, and advises them to avoid wifi, because they say that "gifted children" have "extra neurological connections" that make them vulnerable to "extra sensitivities to food or chemicals." (more…)