[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]It’s another fact-challenged adventure into the wonderful world of fiction in this week’s tabloids.“Ted Cruz named in Madam’s black book!” screams the National Enquirer, following its recent unsubstantiated allegation that Cruz has five mistresses, with the new but entirely predictable claim that he was among the clients of the late Washington, D.C. madam Deborah Palfrey.The madam’s former attorney claims the little black book, long-sealed under court order, contains “information relevant to the upcoming election.”That’s enough for the Enquirer to say that it “could sink Cruz’s waning White House hopes.” But despite its front page headline, the Enquirer admits that it has no idea if Cruz is in the book. It’s just wishful thinking.Tom Cruise is “out to dethrone the Queen,” claims the Enquirer, alleging that the actor will donate $21 million for renovations of the Church of Scientology’s “castle fit for a Scientology king” in West Sussex, England. The property is large, but hardly palatial, yet that doesn’t stop the Enquirer claiming: “Tom’s goal now is to have his cult replace the monarchy out of spite for being ignored by the British upper crust.”That’s what passes as logic in the world of tabloids. I’m only surprised that the Enquirer didn’t suggest that the Royal Family has hated Scientologists ever since John Travolta swept Princess Diana across a ballroom floor.“Cruise Cult Invades Britain!” screams the Globe, telling a similar story about Scientology’s UK center at St Hill Manor. One small detail: church founder L Ron Hubbard bought the property in 1959. The “invasion” happened 57 years ago - but that’s evidently “news” to the Globe.Only weeks after the tabloids were warning us that actor Michael Douglas was “wasting away” and days from death, the Globe runs a photo of him looking fit and youthful on a beach, with a small belly hanging over his swimsuit, prompting a caption saying he “is letting it all hang out.” So, is Douglas wasting away, or overweight? Maybe the tabloids’ indecision is what’s killing him?There are new “drug fears for mangy Macaulay” Culkin, as the former Home Alone star was spotted walking down a New York Street “unshaven, with hair hanging below his shoulders and wearing shabby clothes,” claims the Globe.Unshaven? Shocking! What are young people coming to these days? No wonder the Globe decides that “his haggard and strange appearance is piling on the fears that he’s in the grips of a drug nightmare.”I for one am grateful that the Globe’s crack team of reporters are trained in the field of sartorial psychoanalysis.It’s not that Ted Cruz couldn’t possibly be in Palfrey’s little black book, or that Tom Cruise isn’t actually plotting to overthrow the British monarchy, or that Michael Douglas may one day shed his mortal coil, or that Macaulay Culkin couldn't occasionally be experimenting with drugs - it’s just that little detail called “facts” that’s missing. Call me old-fashioned.It’s hard to beat the National Examiner’s cover story headline: “Angie Dickinson Tells All Before She Dies!”It’s not beyond the Examiner’s powers to have TV’s former Policewoman star “tell all” after she dies, through the intercession of its team of psychic reporters, but evidently they can’t wait that long. So - what does Angie tell? Absolutely nothing. Inside its hallowed pages, the Examiner reveals that the actress “is being urged to complete her explosive memoirs before she dies!” Not quite the same thing as a “tell-all” when all Angie Dickinson can tell so far is probably: “I wish reporters would stop asking me when I’m going to write my memoirs.”Yet again I’m forced to wonder how sick and decrepit celebrity-lovers must be, judging by the ads in this week’s People magazine for anti-aging cream, bipolar depression drugs, cholesterol drugs, menopause medication, rheumatoid arthritis pills, anti-depressants, Listerine mouthwash and skin exfoliators,Both People and Us magazines devote their covers to Drew Barrymore’s marriage break-up. “Fairy Tale Destroyed,” sobs Us. “Inside Drew’s Sad Split,” laments People. Both mags agree: She’s a free-spirited Californian; hubby Will Kopelman is a straight-laced New Yorker. Therefore it could never work. Perhaps the fact that it was Drew’s third marriage might have been a red flag. Abusing drugs from the age of nine probably didn’t help, at a wild guess.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us mag to tell us that Rosamund Pike wore it best, actress Kristen Bell hates goat cheese “almost as much as I love rugs,” and the stars are just like us: they pick up after their kids, they run on the beach, and they talk on their cell phones. Earth-shattering revelations.This week Us mag dives into the bamboo-handled Gucci tote of Arianna Huffington, which begs the question - what was she thinking? Left-wing intellectuals - they’re just like us? Sure, if we all carry Yamamotoyama Genmai green tea bags, pink silk eyeshades and two cell phones (one to speak on, the other to surf the web) in our handbags.I’m intrigued by the Examiner’s headline “Evil Monster Cut Baby Out of Stranger’s Womb!” Would it be less shocking if the attacker had cut the baby out of the womb of a close friend?Onwards and downwards . . .

Sometimes, the right thing happens. (more…)

https://youtu.be/Bft7Wd8QElwThe three laws of thermodynamics:First: You can't win the game.Second: You can't break even.Third: You can't quit the game.

https://youtu.be/SLSCvBpA5NEIn this heartwarming example of interspecies friendship, a monkey named Fedor makes haste to visit his pet chickens and goat.[via]

Follow @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.Please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and more.And/or buy Ruben Bolling’s new book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Searching for "unprofessional hairstyles" and "professional hairstyles" on Google Images exposes a stark racial divide in what's assumed to be appropriate for business settings. Spotted by @bonkamona, the results differ somewhat by platform or query wording, but the ethnic issue remains: professionals are pale-skinned, unprofessionals dark-skinned. (more…)

Everybody loves flash drives and external hard drives. But most come packing USB or micro USB connectors - and that means they’re all but useless with your iPhone, iPad or other iOS device. Now, pick up the first MFI-certified, high-speed drive that plugs right into your iOS tech. Available in both 32GB and 64GB varieties, the iSafe Drive Lite is the perfect storage solution and travel companion - and you can get it for up to 25% off right now in the Boing Boing Store.At a speedy 8MB per second, it’s the fastest means around for transferring files between your portable device and a Mac or PC. You’ll always have your most needed documents and media files at the ready, protected by military-grade AES 256 bit encryption. Or just turn it into your own on-the-go jukebox, streaming a seemingly endless selection of music straight to your device for literally hours on end.With the iSafe, you can double, triple or even quadruple the storage capacity of your current iOS device at a fraction of the price it would cost to upgrade to a roomier model. Best of all, the iSafe tucks right into your pocket, travel bag or glove box, ever at hand and ready to solve your data storage issues.The iSafe Drive Lite comes in a 32GB version for $69 (25% off its retail price) or the 64GB version for just $99 (17% off).

Flagging computer company HP hasn't had a great decade, but for the new Spectre laptop it reintroduced a daring minimalist logo that's been spotted once or twice before, but is only now hitting products. Everyone loves it! So do I.I'm quite certain this was used in the past, though, on mainstream products. Perhaps on printers or CRT monitors with linear ventilation grills that "match" the logo? Maybe I dreamed it.HP says the new logo is only for its "premium" products, which tells you just how strange and paralyzed the company has become.

Sarah Sumeray's mum made these incredible hand-stitched scenes from Dune novels; Andy Baio adds that they're covers by legendary SF artist Bruce Penningtonhttps://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/716691452772769794The originals:

A Scottish craft brewery has developed "spreadable beer," a marmalade flavored with oak-aged pale ale. To go with it, Innes&Gunn is also selling a marmalade-flavored pale ale.

This anonymously posted guide shows how to make adorable little wooden coasters in the style of transport pallets. P.S. don't make things out of actual pallets unless they have the right stamp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZApf9c8TesBabymetal, Japan's greatest synthetic all-woman heavy metal band, just released their second album, Metal Resistance, an occasion they celebrated with an outstanding live appearance on Colbert, performing Gimme Chocolate, their biggest hit. (via Metafilter).

Bernie Worrell -- a "lynchpin" of Parliament Funkadelic whose collaborations with Talking Heads made the sound of Stop Making Sense -- is ill and can't afford his medical bills. (more…)

Each scene in Vincent Urban's video of the wide variety of wonderful things in Japan lasts just a couple of seconds. I can't wait to return.

Larry Decker, 77, arranged rocks into a 60 x 90 foot extraterrestrial face in his Rosmoland, California backyard "in hopes of inviting aliens" to pay him a visit. He's also installed cameras to film them when they do land."Aliens watch everything we do," Decker told ABC News today. "My idea was to build this thing big enough to be seen from up there, and hopefully, they'll decide to come down and check it out.""Wouldn't it be nice to go to the porch swing and have a nice chat?" he added. "So hopefully this face will trick them to come, so we can shake hands and talk."

Shanghai's Longhua Funeral Parlor now offers 3D printing of faces and other body parts to improve the appearance of the deceased during viewing."It is difficult for relatives to see incomplete faces or bodies of their loved ones when they attend memorial services, and makeup cannot always sufficiently repair them," Liu Fengming, an official with the Shanghai Funeral and Interment Service Center, said. From the Shanghai Daily:

ToxicEternity plays a metal medley of iPhone ringtones.

Without his trademark orange tan, Trump looks surprisingly horrific: click through for Buzzfeed's "Trump without the tan" slider widget.

Improvising on guitar has long been a challenge of mine. Chord Tone Soloing by Brett Tagliarino has helped a lot!I have played guitar for several decades, but I never really understood how a guitar worked. Chord Tone Soloing helps explain the music theory behind improvising solos. Adding riffs and melody lines to chords, becomes quite easy, as you work through quizzes and exercises.The CD book of examples is easy to work with, and play along to. You'll need a good foundation in guitar skills, and chord building, but once you are past the basics, Tagliarino will give you the tools to start working on your own!I still need a metronome to keep a beat.Chord Tone Soloing: A Guitarist's Guide to Melodic Improvising in Any Style via Amazon

See inside our Maker Box with Quarterly!Earlier this year we teamed up with Quarterly Co. to curate their very first Maker Box! This was a brand new subscription and we were stoked to be apart of it. Each Maker Box includes at least three kits with a variety of themes and projects to be worked on. For this box, the theme was “grow”. We wanted to cover all aspects of DIY with a focus on growing - as a person, through the gadgets you’ll build and your plants!The first kit was hand-picked by us for you - Farm Curious Vegetable Fermenting Kit.Fermentation is a fascinating chemical process that transforms food, making it more delicious and nutritious. Every time we ferment something we’re amazed. Milk into yogurt! Cabbage into sauerkraut! Cucumbers into pickles! Our mouth is watering as we write these words. We hope the Farm Curious kit turns you into a fermented food fanatic, too.Also included was an original Makey Makey kit. Ever wanted to turn bananas into a piano? Or make your own game controller for a computer game? Well with the Makey Makey Classic you can! Makey Makey is an invention kit that allows you to turn any object into a touchpad and connect it to the internet.For those with green thumbs, and those who tend to forget, we also included this DIY Thirsty Plant Kit from Technology Will Save Us. With this, you will always know when your plants needed water. Using this kit you can build a solar powered moisture sensor to make sure your plants never go thirsty again!Last, but not least, we also included a three month Skillshare trial, because who better to introduce you to the world of Maker than Mark Frauenfelder himself? Skillshare offers hundreds of classes taught by various professionals, etc. And Mark Frauenfelder just happens to be one of them and teaching an intro class to none other than becoming a Maker. In this class, Mark Frauenfelder—legendary maker, creator, and founder of Boing Boing and MAKE magazine—introduces the fundamental world of Making and guides you in transforming your curiosity into a DIY project that makes, modifies, or repairs an everyday object in your life.While this one-hour class is structured for a true beginner, you'll find a wealth of ideas no matter your background or knowledge. It's a class for everyone who believes in possibility, in practice, and in fun.As a fun side project, subscribers had to solve a puzzle custom created by Shinteki in order to access the letter that is usually included in Quarterly boxes. Did any of you guys solve the puzzle? If you are still stuck, just tweet @Quarterly!Well that’s a wrap, we hope you enjoyed this Maker Box! Have you guys made anything else? Share your projects in the comments below or tweet @boingboing with #MKR01.Think big - the world can be your DIY kit! If you missed out, be sure to subscribe here to receive the next Quarterly Maker Box!

The LUCY is a drawing tool I wish I had in art school. The device has been around for 500 years and though it uses no electricity, it's able to project images from your environment onto your drawing pad. The LUCY will make you feel like you have special abilities by letting you look at two things at once – and have them converge in the same spot for you to draw on top of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEpqmPL3bgTSA guards at airports had a new weapon in their arsenal in 2014: tablets that they held up to randomly direct travelers into different lines. According to the TSA's documentation, they spent $47k developing the app that did this. In this YouTube video, Chris Pacia develops a clone of the app in a few minutes.The implication is that the TSA is astoundingly wasteful: Kevin Burke's FOIA request reveals a total spend of up to $336k to develop and distribute the related software, and about $1m more for the actual devices and training. Use of the app was discontinued by the TSA in any case.You know, I've been thinking about it a while, and while they obviously have travelers' safety and best interests at heart, after seeing TSA guards ostentatiously standing with their arrow apps and "swiping" travelers this way and that, I'm beginning to suspect – forgive me! – that this whole deal might have had more to do with the appearance of security than the real thing. Crazy, right? And that in the absence of any real objectives, expertise or oversight, these guys are easily taken to the cleaners by opportunistic contractors. Someone should figure out a snappy phrase to describe this "theater of security" and do something about it. [via r/PoliticalVideos]

Biancoshock, an artist in Milan, created these "Borderlife" installations that appear to be underground rooms beneath the city's sewer-entrances, as a way of calling attention to homelessness, especially in Bucharest, where 600 people are living in the sewer tunnels. (more…)

On Sunday, 100 news outlets published the first tranche of articles based on the largest leak in history, 2.6TB worth of records from Mossack Fonseca, the third-largest lawfirm specializing in confidential offshore shell-companies. (more…)

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When "affordable" homes in San Francisco are advertised as "From the low $1,000,000s", it's not just the working poor who are pushed out of the city: it's everyone, except VCs, people living on VC money, and people who've cashed out on VC-backed companies. (more…)

The US Chamber of Commerce is a business lobbying group that fights against paid family leave, increases in the minimum wage, rules protecting sick time and guaranteeing predictable work-times and hours. (more…)

The "Finkbeiner Test," created in 2013 by science writers Ann Finkbeiner and Christie Aschwanden, challenges science writers who are profiling scientists who happen to be women to write about them without mentioning their gender, childcare arrangements, husband's occupation, etc. (more…)

You may not love Microsoft Word, but you’ve definitely used it. Other than being one of the most ubiquitous programs on the planet, it’s been the go-to word processing system for more than a quarter-century because it’s as basic as it gets. But occasionally, you’ve got assignments that beg for a lot more options than simple line justifications and spell checking. Maybe you’re writing a screenplay or instruction manual that requires deeper specialization. Or you’ve got a document with a host of elements that demand extra organizational assistance.Where Word ends, Scrivener 2 picks up the baton - and right now, it’s only $22.50 (50% off its regular price) in the Boing Boing Store. Fire it up and immediately you’ll see how Scrivener’s project-management-based environment and aid functions can automatically adapt to the work style you prefer best.If you want to organize your thoughts before writing, no problem - Scrivener allows you to jot notes in a storyboard format, document your revisions and even look up research that could add another layer of depth to your project. If you want to write first and let all that editing and revision stuff take a backseat, you can do that too. Scrivener 2 adjusts to your workflow, offering up its bevy of specialized helping tools whenever you’re ready.Choose between a Windows version ($20) or an OS X edition ($22.50) and with both at 50% off, you’ll never find a better time to ditch Word and get with Scrivener 2.

Erik Bauersfeld who voiced Admiral Ackbar's famous line "It's a trap!" from Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, died on Sunday. He was 93. Bakersfield also portrayed Jabba the Hutt's majordomo Bib Fortuna.From the site for Bauersfeld's nonprofit Bay Area Radio Drama (BARD)organization:

Posted without context or comment.

Trolls, when cornered, often excuse themselves as Shakespearean fools of the modern age, as jesters. Given that the term "troll" spans a vast expanse from cute to abusive, this grasp at virtue seems legit. But there's a plain difference between jesters and trolls: sincerity. Jesters are unserious – a good thing! – but that doesn't mean their performance is insincere. Trolls, though, are both of these things.How, then, do you see a troll for what they are? Unseriousness is visible, but insincerity is often not.Mercifully, the excuse itself is a clue. Trolls don't really get the difference between themselves and the noble, world-improving court fools of their imagination.So, when scrutinized in ways that require sincerity, they stop being unserious as well. Instead of proving themselves to be Jesters, they become Squares, serious and sincere, explaining themselves at sententious length until they can retreat back to the Troll corner and resume normal operations.The people to really watch out for, though, the truly Machiavellian types, are people who are serious yet insincere. These Worms (lots in Silicon Valley!) slide across the opposite diagonal: whenever cornered for their shenanigans, they're disturbingly good at excusing themselves as Jesters – unserious in tone, yet ostentatiously moral.The corollaries are also true, I find. When otherwise happy, decent, respectable Squares get defensive, they transform into amazingly unpleasant Trolls. And true Jesters, in their weak hours, tend to moonlight as Worms, manipulating others with affected seriousness.This is just a dumb chart on the internet, of course, even dumber than the Mills Boon personality test or whatever it's called. Reality is more finely-grained. But once you start spotting people moving on those diagonals, you'll never miss it. And because the internet is now everyone's permanent record, they can't hide it.

Starting with this awesome shot of Bettie Page pretend-ladyfighting with a sexy foe, here are some wonderful photographs of female wrestlers from the 19th century through the 20th, all the way up through the '80s and '90s.(more…)

Well, that's one way to get around a federal gag order.(more…)

Not this Netflix, but the next one, the one that'll make Netflix look like Blockbuster -- because if the World Wide Web Consortium goes along with its plan to make it illegal to innovate in ways that the movie studios and record labels disapprove of, there will be no more companies like Netflix. (more…)

Just minutes after U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists flipped on live streaming video of a California condor nest in Ventura County, the long-awaited condor chick hatched.(more…)

California governor Jerry Brown today approved a mandatory minimum wage of $15 an hour by 2022. The bill's enactment came within hours of a similar bill signing in New York by governor Andrew Cuomo. (more…)

A man who almost drove off a mountain precipice escaped from the teetering wreck only to be struck by a passing bus.

This is the Champagne Gun, a $459 contraption with which you can spray down your guests with bubbly in a violent fantasy ritual of excess.(more…)

L'Anse Aux Meadows was the first, and until now the only site widely accepted as evidence of Viking settlement in the Americas. But then there were two—maybe.

I love playing clever puzzle games with friends and for years my go to company has been ThinkFun. They’ve just released a title with the claim of “teaching the basics of computer programming without a computer”. The designer of Code Master is an ex NASA virtual reality simulations programmer named Mark Engelberg and I think he’s hit his mark.Like most of ThinkFun’s games, it comes with an ingenious, well-ramped set of levels that teaches new mechanics as you go. Even though the later levels are driving me batty, the “Huzzah!” moments encourage me to keep playing long after I should have gone to bed.You play the role of an adventurer who needs to collect gems on each level before escaping through a Portal. To aid you in your quest you’ll need to “write a program” that moves your hero across the map.To write the program you’ll need to order a random set of movement tokens that allows your avatar to travel on appropriately colored paths.For the level shown above, you’re movement tokens are 1 red, 1 blue and 2 greens and must be placed in the following order to make it from start to finish.This particular level may seem simple but believe me – the game ramps to insane levels of difficulty!Early on you’ll be introduced to special paths that only allow your Avatar to move in the direction the arrows are pointing and Loop paths that bring your Avatar back to his current position.In the intermediate levels, you’ll meet up with conditions that teach how if-then statements work in coding. This is where the game gets hairy.I had a great time playing it with my 9 year old Nephew this past Christmas. As long as I was there to keep him on track he had a great time with it and felt like a mini-genius the entire time.The lone con - The only thing with the game I’d like changed is the material of the Avatar and Portal’s bases. These pieces are gigantic and the fact that they have to occupy the same space at times makes it impossible to keep track of what lies beneath them.If ThinkFun does another run of this game and the bases are redesigned to be transparent, the game will be perfect.The many pros - Code Master is a clever and beautifully designed game that will make anyone feel smarter for having played it.Like many puzzle games, you have the safety net of an answer booklet to bail you out when the going gets too tough.There is no doubt in my mind that Code Master will inspire a new breed of game programmers and I hope that my Nephew will be one of them.

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"TSA Randomizer" is an Ipad app that tells TSA official swhich search-lane to send fliers down, randomly directing some of them to secondary screening. (more…)

The fact that Ian Cameron -- father of UK Prime Minister David Cameron -- ran a firm called "Blairmore Holdings" that rich Britons used to move their assets offshore and out of reach of UK taxation is no secret. (more…)

You see independent entrepreneurs hawking products of every size, shape and variety on every corner of the World Wide Web. Admit it...at least once, you’ve thought, “Man, I could totally make serious cash doing that.”Well, yes, you can. This Start a Side Business course bundle will not only take you through every step of sourcing brands and products, but show you how to interact with some of the most respected online retail outlets around to market effectively to consumers -- and you can get all this knowledge at any price you want to pay.Here’s how it works...pay one cent over the average price paid by other shoppers like you and you’ll receive 10 courses of material to help you get an online retailing business off the ground, including:

On Saturday, the Associated Press announced that in the 2016 edition of their widely-used AP Stylebook guide to English grammar and usage, the words "internet" and "web" will no longer be capitalized. "The changes reflect a growing trend toward lowercasing both words, which have become generic terms," AP Standards Editor Thomas Kent told Poynter.Please note that Boing Boing will continue to capitalize Information Superhighway.

In 2011, the Norwegian design studio Skrekkøgl scuplted a massive 50-Euro-cent coin and shot it from above with a tilt-shift lens alongside numerous full-sized objects to make them seem to be cunning miniatures. (more…)

An anonymous source has handed 2.6TB worth of records from Mossack Fonseca, one of the world's largest offshore law firms, to a consortium of news outlets, including The Guardian. (more…)

Lose your iPhone? Wanna step up to the latest iPad or Apple TV? Or maybe you’ve been eyeballing one of those Apple watches?The possibilities are endless...but extremely doable if you’re the lucky winner of Boing Boing’s awesome $1,000 Apple Store Giveaway.What do ya get? Just what we toldja...1,000 bucks worth of Apple credit to throw around in any direction you see fit. Do a complete tech makeover and let your friends at Boing Boing foot the bill. Either put it all toward a new Macbook Air or buy a thousand friends a $1 Apple Store gift card...it’s all up to you. Although we’d advise against the gift card idea, because...well...that’s just crazy. But it’s your call...How do you win? Again...simple. Just sign up via Facebook or email and then be that ridiculously lucky visionary who gets their name randomly selected.You can even earn yourself an extra shot at the big prize if a friend of yours (whose 21 or older, of course) also enters the Sweepstakes by following the Additional Entry instructions on the screen.Enter now...registration ends April 13. Good luck.