When most of us gaze upon an eight-place setting of fine porcelain china or a curvaceous ceramic vase, we see exactly that, but when Jim Robinson of Rookwood Pottery looks at such objects, he sees rocks, as I learned recently when I interviewed Robinson about his role as the venerable art pottery firm's glaze chemist.

Arduino is awesome. It goes beyond coding to actually connect the physical world of gadgets to computer programming. So many rad devices are built using this language and now it’s easier to learn than ever with this trio of laid back course packs. It doesn’t matter if you’re a total tech rookie or silicon rock star, you can launch or brush up your Arduino skills here with incredible projects definitely worth nerding out on.Complete Arduino Starter KitThe complete Arduino starter kit has over twenty five hours of training to get you on your feet. At 87% off, it’s the absolute best way to start your engines because it also comes with a fully stocked toolkit of your dreams with wires, lights and buzzers. There are straightforward instructions with easy-to-follow diagrams and lessons on mastering the basics.Arduino Enthusiast E-Book BundleFor the total Arduino enthusiast comes this e-book bundle. There are eight titles here, all for 88% off, each with lessons on how to apply this programming language to different kinds of device-building from wearables to robotics. Completing this pack will give you total control over creating anything you want and make you a samurai of silicon.Arduino Step-by-Step: Your Complete GuideFinally, the Arduino step by step complete guide gets you off the ground with over twenty two class hours that you can take at your own pace for 92% off. You’ll explore basic principles here and study sensors and components, shield and accessories. Familiarize yourself with building basic electronic devices and advanced integrations with motors and gears, ratcheting up your skills from beginner to master.This is quite the bullet to add to your resume. Arduino is the future of software and hardware and you’ll be glad to get a firmer grip. Each class lets you learn on your own time, so there’s no rush and you can take it all in anytime, anywhere. Check out the link for many more details on everything these courses have to offer and robot on.

I keep Flexisnakes in all of our bathrooms, and use them frequently to pull out gross blobs of matted hair clogging the sink drains. It's kind of like a long pipe cleaner with a crank. You insert it in the drain and twist the handle. The hair wraps around it. It's on sale for $5.28 on Amazon right now, which is the lowest price I've seen.

That is one pottymouthed bird.(more…)

Thirty years ago, 66 chimpanzees who had been used (and horribly mistreated) by the New York Blood Center for hepatitis research were abandoned on remote islands off Africa’s Ivory Coast. One of the chimps, named Ponso, was 10 when he was abandoned on an island with 19 other chimps. Within nine months, 11 of the chimps died, mainly from starvation. They were moved to another island, but most of the chimps died, leaving only Ponso, his mate and their two babies. A man in a village would occasionally drop by to give them chimps bread and bananas, their only source of food.Oddity Central has more:

Planes that carry passengers should be prohibited from carrying large quantities of lithium batteries in cargo, a United Nations aviation watchdog says.(more…)

They are grooming Neil for 2020.[via]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ8jkZQxyjAJames Kingston makes POV videos as he climbs tall structures around the world. In this video, he climbed the world's tallest residential building, which us in Dubai. It's still under construction. Once he got to the top, Kingston asked a man sitting in the cockpit of a crane if he could climb to the top of the crane, and the man told him to go for it.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Doreen Green is a totally normal teenager. She’s starting college, she’s a fan of the Avengers, she’s trying to get her new roommate to like her... and she has “the proportional speed and strength of a squirrel.” She can talk to squirrels, and she’s here, squirrel-like, to “kick butts and eat nuts.” She’s Squirrel Girl!When the cashier at my local comic book store told me about Squirrel Girl I thought he was pulling my leg — she’s half-girl, half-squirrel? And she’s unbeatable? Squirrel Girl is a hoot. There are dilemmas universal (How does one save the world from a super-villain?) and personal (How does one hide her tail in her jeans?). You can race through Squirrel Girl reading for the goofy plot and funny banter, or you can stop and linger over the fine details and hidden wisecracks.Some comics are written with the long-time dedicated fan in mind, but Squirrel Girl also works for people who are new to the series, or even new to comics. Iron Man plays a role, but it’s clear from context who he is — and if you’ve seen the movies, you’ve got all the backstory you need. And Thanos makes an appearance, as does Galactus, but Deadpool helpfully has provided trading cards to bring you up to speed — and let’s be honest, these aren’t subtle characters here, you can figure it out as you go along. Squirrel Girl is suitable for elementary school kids through adulthood (and beyond! No, wait, that doesn’t work). – Sara LorimerThe Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 1: Squirrel Power

Photographer Robert Benson visited the uncanny valley to capture the making of a RealDoll, the $6500 hyperrealistic sex doll first made famous by Howard Stern. His photo series is surreal, provocative, and beautifully odd."Everyone was super passionate about what they're doing, and they take the work seriously," Benson told CNN. "I guess the fascination wears off after a week and it becomes like any other job."See more here: Sex Dolls (NSFW?)

It reminds me of that disorienting sensation when you hear a very familiar song in a TV commercial but the lyrics were changed to talk about the product. From Wikipedia:

"If your thoughts were in the future, you loved electronics and music, and you had a vivid visual imagination, what profession would you choose?"A laserist for a psychedelic light show at a planetarium, 'natch!In this fantastic 1977 video, meet Glenn Thomas, the laserist behind the Laserium "Cosmic Concert" at L.A.'s Griffith Observatory, who performed 12,500 shows over 25 years.Far fucking out.(Thanks, UPSO!)

Reminder: even if cannabis is now legal in 23 states, including recreationally in some, Facebook does not want you posting about it on its website. The BBC reports on its recent crackdown on accounts and pages set up by legal dispensaries and weedy websites.

ABC News reports that President Obama has sent a plan to close Guantanamo Bay to congress. Good luck, Mr. President!

Toast tastes great. I can't have toast, because I'm on a keto diet. So I hate all of you toast-eating people, right now. But I still love Taste Cheshire's toast identification chart, upon which I can drool this fine Tuesday morning.P.S. I like a nice light E1.

Ben Carson, a Republican candidate in this year's general election, hopes to be America's first black president that wasn't raised as a white person in Indonesia.

Trick or Treat Studios is accepting pre-orders for their $70, official They Live Donald Trump Hallowe'en mask, the first in a series of masks based on the 2016 presidential candidates, which will be released in late Sept/early Oct. (more…)

Lawyer and journalist Sarah Jeong is one of the net's best writers, and her new ebook, The Internet Of Garbage, grapples with misogynist harassment and threats online. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juRDql6wBIQ&feature=youtu.beAdorn your laptop with whatever stickers you want, in whatever places you want, but for pete's sake, make sure you do it to last!

Philadelphia's Wooden Shoe Bookstore is 40 years old: it's a collectively run, volunteer "anti-profit" bookstore; they're hoping to raise $25,000 for much-needed remodelling and refurbishment. (more…)

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled that states could restrict access to abortion provided the restrictions weren't "unduly burdensome," Republican thinktanks have been spreading "TRAP" ("Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers") rules that have a veneer of reasonableness but have the effect of making abortions impossible to procure for the majority of women in those states. (more…)

Scout Sinclair Brody (previously) is executive director of Simply Secure, a nonprofit I volunteer for that works on impriving the usability of privacy tools so that normal people can understand and benefit from them. (more…)

NASA has released recordings of weird sounds Apollo 10 astronauts heard while flying around the far side of the moon, and the crew responding to the strange phenomenon.(more…)

Sometimes you just need to set the mood. And if you’re lucky that mood is super romantic and you can put on some red lights and we’re very jealous. But in all likelihood, many times the mood is sleepy or sad or lazy or kid time or drunken dance party. Luckily the ilumi LED Smartbulb sets any mood with a color for every single occasion and/or feeling and you can get the bulb that does it all for 25% off now.It’s the smartest smartlight around and so brilliant, in fact, that it makes flicking a normal switch look like lighting a torch inside a cave. You install the bulb right into any normal socket on your ceiling or in a lamp, then let your phone do the rest. Everything is controlled via Bluetooth from the free app. First of all you can choose your color from a wide range of hues. Next, you can pulse the light on and off to the beat of any music you’re playing for big time parties. The light can follow you from room to room, turn on when you wake up on a certain schedule, and with all this you’ll even save on your energy bill.Hamburglars? Nope. You can leave one of these energy efficient lights on while you’re gone to make it look like there’s a full house. Whatever your favorite light setting is, this app remembers it and you can deploy it at any time from up to 150 feet away over Bluetooth. Save 25% on one of these brilliant bulbs today and light up your whole new life.Take 25% Off the ilumi LED Smartbulb in the Boing Boing Store.

"Brian Jones co-wrote this jingle with the J. Walter Thompson ad agency. It was only shown in England in 1964. Nice one Brian!"[via]

See sample pages from this book at Wink.When most people think of professional cycling today, the name Lance Armstrong probably still comes to mind. Between 1999 and 2005, Armstrong won a record seven Tours de France, only to have them all tossed out in 2012 after it was revealed the Texan had been using performance-enhancing drugs. Between 1957 and 1964, a Frenchman named Jacques Anquetil won five Tours, also – by his own repeated admission at the time – on drugs. But the trait shared by Armstrong and Anquetil that interests authors Shelly and Brett Horton in Shoulder to Shoulder: Bicycle Racing in the Age of Anquetil is not doping but celebrity. Forget Armstrong (in their book, the Hortons do just that): What John F. Kennedy was to U.S. presidents and The Beatles were to rock ’n’ roll, Anquetil was to cycling.Anquetil’s story, as well as that of other Anquetil-era racers like Tom Simpson of England, Federico Bahamontes of Spain, and Rik van Looy of Belgium, is told through more than 100 magazine and newspaper photos collected and restored by the Hortons. Each photo is captioned, though not sourced, and accompanied by a short note in the back of the slim volume. We learn, for example, that a 1962 photo of the driver of a support car, who’s leaning out the car’s window to drip oil on the rear gears of a cyclist’s bike during the Circuit des Boucles de la Seine, actually depicts a ruse to give the unidentified rider a chance to lean on the car’s fender for a precious few seconds. As for the photo of Rik van Looy smoking a cigarette as he pedaled during the 1961 Giro d’Italia, it makes you wonder if his pair of secondary classification and numerous stage victories in the Tour and Giro could have been parlayed into something more with healthier lungs.These glimpses of cycling in the sixties are welcome, as are the images of the punishing circuits, the mercurial weather, and the crashes that came about as a result of both. But the book’s focus is Anquetil, which means we get to see him as a young man being served soup by his mother, Marie. There are photos of Anquetil meeting the legend who preceded him, Fausto Coppi, and the cyclist who would equal his number of Tour victories, Eddie Merckx. We see Anquetil exulting during the 1962 Tour, which he won, cruising in a motorboat with his wife, Janine, and signing the inside of a leggy blonde’s thigh in a photo clearly staged for a nearby group of photographers. It all looks impossibly romantic and dashing, which, not coincidentally, was exactly the impression the world was given of Jacques Anquetil.– Ben MarksShoulder to Shoulder: Bicycle Racing in the Age of Anquetil

Troy Walker of Farmington, Utah was cooking dinner for a church function when she opened a can of green beans and discovered a snake's head inside!“As I got closer to lift it off the spoon, I saw eyes," she told 60abc.com. "That’s when I dropped it and screamed."The manufacturer, Western Family, promised to investigate.I'd like to remind the reader that Walker was making food for church and that a snake is a symbol of the devil. Just sayin'.

Black decks of cards certainly get a lot of attention. This Bicycle reversed deck may is my current favorite. They rule, even outside of a 90s dance club!The stark contrast over the reversed rider back, and the super black faces of the cards is wonderful. The deck comes with a blank, and a double sided ace of spades.Bicycle Black Reversed Back Playing Cards via Amazon

Andreas Antonopoulos is one of the most respected experts in bitcoin and blockchain technology, and he regularly shares his expertise with businesses and organizations around the world. His 2014 book, Mastering Bitcoin, was called the “best technical reference available on bitcoin today,” by Balaji Srinivasan, the CEO of 21.co, and received high praise from Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation.In January 2016, Institute for the Future launched Blockchain Futures Lab, a research initiative and a community for “identifying the opportunities and limits of blockchain technologies and their social, economic, and political impacts on individuals, organizations, and communities over the coming decades.” I'm working with IFTF on Blockchain Futures Lab, and I interviewed Antonopoulos to get his thoughts on the current state of blockchain technology and where it’s headed. You can read the full interview on Medium.

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine seeks religious and spiritual leaders to participate in a research study on psilocybin and mystical experience!

Tubesockor pokes away at three Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators to play the music from the 1987 Commodore 64 classic game Delta. The original game music is by Rob Hubbard, inspired by Philip Glass's "Koyaanisqatsi" and Pink Floyd's "On the Run." Clips from the game below! (Thanks, UPSO!)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlwgAzgK7ws

"YOU CANT UNDERSTAND A DAMN THING RAPPERS BE SAYING THESE DAYS" (Warning: noises vaguely resembling racial slurs)

Salon's Heather Digby Patron summarizes the consensus opinion that the Republican party is responsible for his "creation"—but also suggests that it still doesn't understand him and enjoys little prospect of stopping him.

Rep. Rodney Davis [R-IL]'s campaign was backed by American, Continental, Delta, Jetblue, and Southwest as well as airline PACs; airlines were the largest donor to Rep. Bill Shuster [R-PA]'s campaign, together, the two led a House Transportation Committee vote against a government study on the effects of passenger legroom on aviation safety, laughing at the idea that close-packed seats might make it hard to evacuate a plane. (more…)

In the 19th century, the nascent advertising industry took notice of the fact that postmasters could send each other letters for free, and bribed them to forward packets of mail to one another to pass on to townspeople ("To Superintendent Sunday School OR ANY ONE INTERESTED IN MUSIC"). (more…)

For 13 years, Iraq's post-Saddam elites have run amok, looting the country's riches while creating a pervasive culture of corruption that spreads all the way down -- only the continuous injection of new money from the country's oil-fields kept the whole thing from collapsing. (more…)

Maybe you took Spanish in high school, or French. Or if you were really academic maybe you dug into Latin. How much do you use those today? Spanish, maybe, but Latin? Nope. And how often do you whip out the old accent at a French restaurant? Let’s be honest: the only language you need to know in 2016 is code. This bundle of programming courses is 98% off and will teach you to talk the talk and help you become a certified web developer. Say Bonjour to a new job.There are five courses here for a total of over twenty five hours of content including lessons on advanced Javascript development, CSS, GitHub fundamentals, Ajax and all the details you need to become officially certified as a developer. Even if you’re a newbie to computer science and programming, you can start here with the fundamentals and revisit material often. You’ll learn HTML, PHP and MySQL where you’ll manage and extract large data sets plus get dozens of of existing code examples to study and emulate. With all these tools you’ll create beautiful, functional sites in no time that you can call your own.Got a question? Just raise your hand by emailing the instructor. Everything you need is here and you’ll end the course bundle with a huge portfolio of samples to show your existing employer for a raise or title bump or shop yourself around to new potential employers. The demand for coders has never been greater and you can get officially certified for 98% off with this class pack so check out the link for more details.Take 98% Off the Become a Certified Web Developer Bundle in the Boing Boing Store.

Dan Kaminsky is master of all that is terrible and wonderful about the Internet's Domain Name Service, a vital piece of Internet infrastructure dating back to 1983, whose criticality and age make it a source of ongoing problems in Internet securityland. (more…)

Some of Sanders' Democratic Party adversaries have claimed that the Senator's history of principled stands has been short on racial equality, a charge that has required those opponents to claim that photos of Sanders being arrested at civil rights demonstrations are actually photos of someone else. (more…)

Please clap.

Perfect soundtrack for the last week.

I wanted a Space Opera, and found Nathan Lowell's series Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. I've spent 2 weeks reading through the series, and am worried about what I'll do when I reach the end!Lowell's space trading epic follows the career of Ishmael Horatio Wang, cast adrift by the untimely death of his Mother and meal-ticket, in the apparently trade focused Confederation. Wang finds a berth on a solar clipper, and joins the spacer culture. As he rises through the ranks we meet a cast of colorful characters, and watch as Ish, and his various crews, solve the problems one may encounter in the Deep Dark.I'm nearly done with the final book in the series. I've found each book to be a perfect distraction for the things that have plagued my last few weeks, and I have hardly wanted to put my Kindle down. Highly reminiscent of a less bawdy/abuse focused Bio of a Space Tyrant, by Piers Anthony, Lowell's first book Quarter Share rapidly sets up a world that is easy to understand and fun to predict where things are going next.Lowell's novels follow our hero Wang through each pay-grade in the life of a crewman, officer, and finally owner. I'll be looking for other stories by this author. The entire series was free, with my Kindle Unlimited subscription.Quarter Share (Trader's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper) (Volume 1) via Amazon

A federal judge called America's move to forced arbitration and bans on class-action suits -- bans favored and enabled by Scalia -- "among the most profound shifts in our legalhistory." (more…)

Irregular Choice make pretty gloriously crazy shoes, and they've teamed up with Disney to make crazy, flamboyant heels and flats themed after 1951's Alice in Wonderland, which will premiere at their Carnaby Street location in London. (more…)

It happens. You felt a little parched and ended up downing a few too many glasses of water, (or let’s be real, beers), before you went to bed. And now it’s the middle of the night, pitch black and you’re stumbling from your bed to the bathroom to pee. The last thing you want to do is flick on the overhead light because that will zap your delicate, sleepy eyes, but you seriously can’t see a thing. We’ve all been there. Now, the IllumiBowl Toilet Night Light is 15% off and is about to save your butt when you pee late night.You can finally see the bathroom in all is colorful, glowing glory. Using high tech motion sensors, the light turns off and on automatically as soon as you enter the room. You can set it to the color of your choice - a gentle, calming blue or perhaps a romantic red - or you can let the LED do the work with its color-rotate mode with eight hues to enjoy. You’ll completely wow your guests when they walk in to use the facilities, with a light show bonus to their private time.It fits on any toilet and snaps right on to the rim of the seat. It’s splash proof and therefore naturally keeps clean. Have little ones? This is Godsend in terms of potty training. And for 15% off right now, why not make your bathroom the new hotspot in your house? Check out the link below to see this toilet light in all its glory.Save 15% on the IllumiBowl Toilet Night Light in the Boing Boing Store.[embed]https://youtu.be/zd-fOdKS6ok[/embed]

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump ended a rally in South Carolina Friday by recalling, approvingly, the probably-apocryphal tale of General Pershing's execution of Muslims.

In 2005, a former AT&T engineer named Mark Klein walked into the Electronic Frontier Foundation's offices and revealed that he had helped the phone company build a secret NSA surveillance outpost at the Folsom Street switching station, through which AT&T was helping the US government conduct mass, warrantless, domestic surveillance. (more…)

In his excellent technical explainer about the Iphone decryption order, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Joseph Bonneau discusses the actual process of cryptographically signing a new release of a major piece of Internet infrastructure like IOS. (more…)

Umberto Eco, the Italian philosopher, writer and semiotics professor, is dead at 84, reports the BBC.Eco is most famous as the author of elaborate historical novels such as The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, but my favorite is his book of shorts, Misreadings.From it, here is his summary of the Bible, presented as an internal memo at a publishing house written by an editor rejecting the manuscript.