https://youtu.be/hgMfFBLpaD8Watch this (please, the whole thing). Its title is "The Present," and it's a gift to you from Jacob Frey.

Season six of HBO's Game of Thrones continues as we bid a tearful farewell to the kindest and purest soul given unto this series. Each week following the show, Boars, Gore, and Swords recaps everything that goes down in the world of Westeros. For this week's "The Door," Ivan and Red are joined by the hilarious Lydia Popovich to discuss the Iron Islands' applause-based political process, theatrical dingdongs, the consequences of grabbing root, and the loss of our dearest, biggest friend.To catch up on previous seasons, the A Song of Ice And Fire books, and other TV and movies, check out the BGaS archive. You can find them on Twitter @boarsgoreswords, like their Facebook fanpage, and email them. If you want access to extra episodes and content, you can donate to the Patreon.

The Anker PowerCore is advertised as the "smallest and lightest 10,000mAh portable charger." That may be true. It's smaller than a deck of cards, which is smaller than any 10,000mAh charger I've seen. Amazon has them on sale for $19 right now.

Stanislaw Lem predicted ebook readers in his 1961 novel, Return from the Stars.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Enormous Smallness: The Story of E.E. Cummings

Scientists at the University of Maryland, College Park, have developed see-through wood by removing the material that gives wood its yellowish color and then injecting the wood with epoxy to strengthen it.From CNN:

https://youtu.be/p4RLi2EWmkUPyroGirl took one of those rubber squeeze toys with the popping eyeballs, put 2000 match heads in it, and ignited them.

A man who goes by the single name of Obaidullah was never convicted of of a crime, yet remained in Guantánamo for 14 years, even after charges against him were dropped in 2011. From The Guardian:

On last night's episode of The Simpsons, the couch gag was animator Michael Socha's excellent spoof of Ikea's instruction manuals.(more…)

Impressive drone footage of more than 70 tiger sharks chowing on a whale near Shark Bay in Gascoyne, Western Australia. Eco Abrolhos Cruises posted the video to the company's Facebook page:

On this day, May 23, in 1934, police killed infamous outlaw couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow outside of Sailes, Louisiana. Several weeks before they were killed, Parker penned a poem titled "The Trail's End" that became the basis for "Bonnie and Clyde," a beautiful French-language song that Serge Gainsbourg wrote and performed with Brigitte Bardot in 1968. Here's Bonnie's original poem:

Last week, 30 students used a House Judiciary Committee hearing room to hold a debate on mass surveillance in America. (more…)

In Using (bio)metrics to predict code quality online, presented at the ACM's 38th International Conference on Software Engineering, two Swiss researchers presented their work on monitoring programmers' biometrics to predict the quality of the code they were writing.(more…)

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet demonstrate the Barbie Doll Illusion experiment.

If you or your company’s IT system are besieged by black hat cyber attacks, an ethical hacker might be all that stands between crippling damage and a company’s long-term prosperity. It’s no wonder that the market for IT security specialists is exploding.Certification is the key - so learn the tenets of ethical hacking and get ready to get certified in the practice with this Ethical Hacker Professional Certification Package, now just $69 (over 95% off) - in the Boing Boing Store.In over 60 hours of instruction, you’ll get advanced training in all things security, including deep-dives into handling passwords, spyware and keyloggers...and that’s just for starters.Through this coursework, you’ll also learn how to handle digital evidence, review data without disturbing any signs of outside intrusion, and how to implement an information risk assessment process that’ll not only protect your vital data, but block other possible exploitable areas of your system in the future.Once you’re done training, you’ll be ready to get certified in five disciplines: Certified Ethical Hacker, Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator, Certified Information Security Manager, Certified Information Systems Auditor or Certified Information Systems Security Professional.This type of rigorous security training would normally cost almost $1,500, so picking it up for less than $70 is a giant win, so grab this deal now at its wildly reduced rate.

https://youtu.be/g224A2cMORITruculence and bellicosity in the vegetable kingdom, slowed down for your viewing pleasure.

During wargames in Louisiana in September 1941, the U.S. Army found itself drawn into a tense firefight with an unseen enemy across the Cane River. The attacker turned out to be three boys with a toy cannon. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll revisit the Battle of Bermuda Bridge and the Prudhomme brothers' account of their historic engagement. (more…)

Your laptop and mobile devices are top of the line...so why are you trotting out that raggedy decades-old suitcase when you go somewhere? Time to up your travel game with a complete 5-piece Herschel Travel Luggage bundle...and we’ll even give it to you for free!Of course, you’ve got to win the Ultimate Herschel Travel Bundle Giveaway first, which will land you this cool travel ensemble that’ll not only help keep you squared away through the airport, but offer several on-site toting options once you reach your destination.In addition to your standard Trade-style upright suitcase, our lucky winner will also soon be sporting a Little America Backpack with a built-in laptop pocket, a Novel Travel Duffle bag, a Chapter Travel Kit for toiletries and other road essentials and a cool Anchor Sleeve that fits a MacBookPro 15" so your technology stays extra protected.From major vacation packing options to small day-trip excursions, you’re covered for any travel eventuality.

Tristan Harris, formerly Google's Design Ethicist and Product Philosopher, delves into the way that technology design can "hijack your attention," by introducing casino-like intermittent reward; by framing a subset of possible actions as a comprehensive-seeming menu; by deliberately introducing a sense that you might miss out; by forcing you to move though a clickbaity newsfeed to access your friends' updates; by paraphrasing one request ("where can we go for a quiet chat") as another ("which nearby bars make good cocktails?"). (more…)

The flights operated between NYC and Chicago and LA and San Francisco, came with complimentary cigars and specially prepared meals, and were off-limits to women and children; some services were co-branded with the Wall Street Journal. (more…)

William J. Hager of Port St. Lucie, Florida is a 86 year old man who confessed to shooting his 76 year old wife, Carolyn Hager, in her sleep, because the couple could no longer afford her medications, leaving her in pain and wanting to die. (more…)

Tom Vanderbilt, author of the classic book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, has just published You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice, about the science and business of personal preference. In a terrific excerpt on Wired, Tom visits a lab inside McCormick & Company, the global firm that creates "custom labor solutions" for their own seasonings along with myriad food brands and restaurants. From You May Also Like:

Your old fashioned spud gun has got nothing on NightHawkinLight's cheese ball automatic assault blower.

Candace Payne, your joy is infectious.(more…)

A Paris based Associated Press correspondent was flabbergasted to receive a freedom of information request from the Public Health Agency of Canada that had been censored with scotch tape and paper. “I’ve never seen someone use an arts and crafts method in order to hide information from me,” he told the Star.

See sample pages at Wink.Mick Rock: The Rise of David Bowie, 1972-1973

As recently as 5 months ago, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was promising his customers that they could play the software they bought from the Oculus store on "whatever they want," guaranteeing that the company wouldn't shut down apps that let customers move their purchased software to non-Oculus hardware. (more…)

Nintendo continues its long-running campaign of legal harassment against its biggest fans: this time, they're targeting fan-videos showing gameplay from the official, licensed Mario/Minecraft mashup pack for the Wii U. (more…)

Adrienne Lafrance reports on largely futile efforts to make the Internet "safe for women". It's not just that law enforcement doesn't take it seriously, even after "real world" consequences such as swatting, violence and bomb threats. They're so ignorant of the Internet they don't even know what they're looking at when you show it to them. Even when you're a member of congress... (more…)

Commanding two thirds or so of the browser market, Google's decision to turn off Adobe Flash by default in Chrome before 2017 seems like the end of an era that's always said to be ending.

The Chinese government's comment army generates nearly half a billion comments a year on apps and social networks, doing all it can to sway opinion in favor of the party. The vast message-managing operation spans the globe, reports Paul Mozur.

On Sunday evening, I attended Helder Guimarães spellbinding card magic performance, Borrowed Time in Los Angeles. I was excited because Helder was the 2006 winner of the close up card magic awards at the World Magic Championships and is regarded as one of the finest close up magicians in the world. I expected the magic to be good, but what I didn't expect was for the entire experience to be as wonderful and mysterious as it turned out to be.When I reserved my ticket, I received an email telling me that I wouldn't be given the address of the venue until the day of the performance. When I got there, I wasn't sure I in was in the right place. And it just got weirder from there.If you live in the LA area, I highly recommend that you go. The show ends May 29, and most performances are already sold out. I interviewed Helder about Borrowed Time and, trying not to give away too much, asked him about the origins of the show. I think you should see the show before you read what follows, but if you definitely can't make it, go ahead. (more…)

"Project Earth is leaving beta," JW Alden's arch, funny short-short science fiction story in Nature, is a delightful little piece of design fiction in the form of a letter to the backers of planet Earth's crowdfunding, announcing the coming server wipe and 1.0 release ("Yes, we know you've poured time and effort into your 'lives' on Earth, and it's disappointing to lose your progress"), and a host of long overdue features: (more…)

"Famous Cellphone Ringtones Played On The Piano (Tony Ann Arrangement)."

https://youtu.be/QtMAHm4ZfIsMathew Tizard says, "Something I made in 2005 - A zoom into the microstructure of a mosquito's eye, created using scanning electron microscope imagery. The white dots you see at the deepest zoom level are called 'ommatidia,' clusters of photoreceptor cells. "

Math teacher at Dana Hills High School in southern California, late 1970s. Pitted. So pitted.Posted by the engaged educator's son on r/OldSchoolCool and making the rounds again.

Taxi companies and Uber are both awful, so it's fun to watch them fight each other. On Tuesday, El Paso's City Council voted to reduce regulations imposed on taxi companies, instead of increasing regulations imposed on Uber, as the taxi companies had hoped for.From KVIA:

Christian Faur makes art by stacking crayons. Each crayon is a photo. Here are more examples of his work.

Florida man has prior art!From The Guardian:

Pavlok is a wristband that one can use to deliver mild electric shocks to oneself, an experiment in Pavlovian self-conditioning. Intelligent Environments is a UK firm that has invented a "platform" to link it to your bank account, so it can shock you when you spend money.

Kirby Ferguson's amazing Everything is a Remix series (previously), turns its keen eyes on JJ Abrams's record-breaking reboot of Star Wars, itself a mashup of classic films, and shows what happens when a mashup artist remixed a remix of a mashup. (via Kottke)

Sex in the City's IMDB ranking is 7.0, slightly below average -- but among women, it scores a hefty 8.1. Why is its overall score so low? Because men have given it an average rating of 5.8. (more…)

Olivia Jack's Pixel Synth turns images into music, scanning across the pixels horizontally and interpreting brightness values as notes. The results are peculiar, obviously, but also strangely melodic. You can edit your image, too, or simply start with a blank canvas. Click "invert" for a synthesized moment of Hammer Horror. Advanced trippers can also edit the synth parameters and the drawing tool.

Bernie Sanders's fans in the venerable virtual world Second Life have established a HQ, "a Roman-themed hangout space in a peaceful meadow, where Bernie supporters often gather to share news of their favorite candidate," but their peace was shattered when Second Life's Donald Trump supporters laid siege to the building, firing virtual guns whose rounds exploded into swastika flags at Sanders central. (more…)

Chris Wood is a councillor from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a xenophobic party known for its leader and lawmakers' racist and sexist gaffes; this week, he added to the annals of UKIP inanity when he took to Twitter to complain that the BBC had cast a person of color as Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI. (more…)