I don't know how long this deal will last but $5 for a digital guitar/ukulele/violin/bass tuner (on Amazon) is a great deal. I already have one but I just bought a couple more to give away.

Since 2008 Leslie Vosshall, director of the Vosshall Laboratory at Rockefeller University, has been working on making a better mosquito repellent than DEET. In this Atlantic article by Ed Yong, she explains why it's so hard to keep the tiny vampires from sucking our blood.

US Representative Mark Takai, a Democrat from Hawaii, formally requested that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan permit the wearing of Aloha shirts on the House floor on Fridays. The longstanding House dress code is "business attire." Aloha Friday has been a custom in Takai's native state since the 1960s."The Aloha shirt is a tangible symbol of the Aloha Spirit - it embraces diversity, inclusion and friendliness that pervades throughout the State of Hawaii," Takai wrote in his letter to Ryan. "Embracing the Aloha shirt will allow members to embrace the Aloha Spirit - something that Washington could use a little more of."(AP)

In the 1920s Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola toured the United States and Europe to share the culture of his African homeland with fascinated audiences. The reality was actually much more mundane: His name was Joseph Lee and he was from Baltimore. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the curious story of this self-described "savage" and trace the unraveling of his imaginative career.We'll also dump a bucket of sarcasm on Duluth, Minnesota, and puzzle over why an acclaimed actor loses a role.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon.Enter promo code CLOSET at Harry's and get $5 off your first order of high-quality razors.

It sucks when Xbox Live is down.I'd love to play some Star Wars Battlefront with Snoop. I bet he has his force choke down. Add me, Snoop! My gamertag is "The Muir Beast"

https://youtu.be/4XRnZ0wGGm4NYC photographer Soraya Doolbaz has a business selling merchandise with photos of penises dressed in outfits. The videos above and below are probably NSFW as they show penises dressed in outfits. She recently exhibited her photographs at Art Basel, selling prints for $10,000. Doolbaz has also created an app so people can dress up photos of penises by dragging and dropping articles of clothing, eyeglasses, and moustaches onto the photos.From Cosmo:

If you stood next to Sankey Flynn (1918-2001) of Greensboro, North Carolina, you might have thought he had a wristwatch in his head. An audible tick-tock sound could be heard coming from Flynn's ears about twice a second.According to physicians, the noise came from the "spasmodic contraction of muscles in the roof of his mouth. This causes the eustachian tube, leading from the throat to the ears, to open and shut making the peculiar noise."Clipping above from the Waynesville Mountaineer, June 1, 1950; Below, from the Somerset Daily American, Feb 26, 1951.(via Weird Universe)

Why do people blush? Darwin studied the phenomenon of reddened cheeks and necks as a response to embarrassment and wrote, "Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions." And, unlike a smile or laughter, a blush can't be faked. David Robson wrote an article on BBC.com about new research that suggests that "feelings of excruciating embarrassment may be crucial for your wellbeing in the long term."Psychologist Mark Leary at Duke University thinks blushes are “non-verbal apologies” that can clear up awkward moments. “Even if you are innocent, it may not hurt to convey discomfort at being accused – to say ‘I'm sorry that I have inadvertently given you a reason to suspect me’,” Leary said.Matthew Feinberg did research at the University of California, Berkeley, and found that people who were more easily flustered were more likely to be altruistic and to play honestly in a game that involved cash rewards.

Ha-ha-yes, it's true, there's an IoT rectal thermometer, which is about as irrationally exuberant as you can get about a technology bubble, bu(t)t... (more…)

Happy trails, Alan Rickman.

Matt Locke from London's "The Story" conference writes, "We've just announced the final lineup for The Story 2016, including poet Musa Okwonga, CEO of Canongate Jamie Byng, games designer Hannah Nicklin, founder of Iron Circus Comics Spike Trotman, Wolfgang Wild (@retronaut) and Dallas Campbell, who will be talking about the history of the spacesuit." (more…)

ScratchJr is a simple, free, tablet based programming language kids can use to make simple games and animations. The Official ScratchJr Book has been a great guide for my daughter and I.I first heard about Scratch, when one of our attendees gave a brief show-and-tell on it at Boing Boing's Weekend of Wonder. It sounded pretty accessible. It came to mind again when recently, in an attempt to get my daughter to use the iPad for more than watching Bratayley, I decided to try and interest her in creating something. She loves art, but Minecraft was far too confusing for her and I was looking for another kid-friendly programming option. ScratchJr is a tablet based, even simpler version of Scratch, installing was as easy as any other app.The Official ScratchJr Book does a great job, with friendly illustrations, of walking us through the basics. My daughter prefers the painting and drawing of characters, and backgrounds, to the organization of blocks, but the book did a great job of walking us through it all. Having gone through the book together, once, she can now refer to it one her own, if she runs into a problem. Generally, her problem is me grabbing the tablet and adding things.I am not going to tell you we've made high art, but I think I could throw together a decent 1980's King's Quest parody.The Official ScratchJr Book: Help Your Kids Learn to Code via Amazon

UK Home Secretary Theresa May stood before Parliament on Wednesday, and, with a straight face, said: "The UK does not undertake mass surveillance. We have not, and we do not, undertake mass surveillance, and that is not what the Investigatory Powers Bill is about." (more…)

Now I know where Carlton learned to dance.

Jason Gurley's ELEANOR is a proud sponsor of Boing Boing!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcXshQjRqLUA new novel for readers of Neil Gaiman, Lev Grossman, Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life, and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.Eleanor is the story of identical twins, Eleanor and Esme, who have a secret language all their own. They’re inseparable, until a terrible accident changes everything and reality begins to unravel in strange ways for Eleanor. The first time it happens, she walks through a school doorway, and finds herself in a cornfield, beneath wide blue skies. When she stumbles back into her own world, time has flown by without her. Again and again, against her will, she falls out of her world and into other, stranger ones, until finally she is ripped from the fabric of time itself. Far from home, she will encounter creatures both familiar and dangerous, and a stranger who may hold her only chance to rescue her family.An excerpt of Eleanor by Jason Gurley:

It's an open secret that the world's luxury property boom is being driven by crooked rich people in the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa who have looted their homelands and want to stash the money out of reach of any new dictators who might come along and change which oligarchs are favored and which are not. (more…)

Shenova's science-themed dresses are beautifully cut and come in prints that celebrate the Fibonacci sequence, the DNA double-helix, printed circuit boards, retinal cells, the periodic table, aerospace engineering, and space-time warps (my favorite!). (more…)

In 2009, Indian women sent pink underwear to Shri Ram Sene, a right-wing, conservative Hindu organization that had promoted street-violence against women who were perceived as "immodest." (more…)

To mark the January 12 Blu-ray and DVD release of The Martian, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment has created the 'Life in Space' video series, a lighthearted look at the burning questions troubling all space fans.

Chris from Sense About Science sez, "Thundersnow, willy-willys and the hottest/coldest seasons on record, there's certainly no shortage of headlines about the weather. But many meteorological terms we hear are misused, say early career researchers." (more…)

Famous for his intriguing villains and staccato voice, English actor Alan Rickman is dead at 69.

There's nothing better than getting away--and there's no time like the present. Experience something brand new, and do it without breaking the bank thanks to these must-know travel hacks. From generating income remotely to quickly learning basic Chinese--this bundle will give you the inside guide to discovering the world.Simply beat the average price to unlock all 8 courses listed below:1Become a Digital Nomad: The Ultimate Travel Hack$279 Value2Travel Hacking Mastery: Fly Around the World for Cheap$297 Value3Chinese Made Easy: Understand 65% of Chinese in 10 Hours$199 Value4Chinese Made Easy L2: Understand 79% of Chinese in 10 Hours$199 Value5Start a Business and Travel the World in 30 Days$197 Value6Learn to Speak: Conversational Spanish (Complete Edition)$99 Value7Spanish 1-4: Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced$99 Value8Chinese Made Easy: An Exciting Start to ChineseFREE!

Through a forest, no less.

The same entity that claims to be behind a recent hack of CIA Director John Brennan's personal email now claims to be behind a breach of the accounts of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed to Motherboard that Clapper had been targeted, and that the case has been forwarded to law enforcement.(more…)

“How could this happen to meeeee?”(more…)

Fathers in Arizona who aren't delivering court-ordered child support payments may discover their mugs plastered all over social media soon. Arizona governor Doug Ducey this week unveiled a bizarre new name-and-shame campaign to publicly mock so-called “deadbeat dads,” a crackdown on "the worst of the worst" parents who fail to make child support payments.(more…)

Cool Tools reader Joe Stirt recommended this large cat litter scoop. I bought one, because the little plastic scoop I’d been using for a couple of years had gotten flimsy from use and would often buckle at the handle. This one is made from cast aluminum and will never bend. It easily shaves hardened clumps of litter from that litter box that would cause a plastic scoop to fold in half. It’s actually a beautiful looking tool, too. If Raymond Loewy designed a scoop, it would look like this (maybe the handle wouldn’t be covered with textured plastic). Cleaning cat litter is an unpleasant daily chore for me, but the DuraScoop makes it much less unpleasant. I’m surprised it is only $13. It’s easily worth three times the price.

Jenna McLaughlin at The Intercept writes that Apple CEO Tim Cook “lashed out at the high-level delegation of Obama administration officials who came calling on tech leaders in San Jose last week.”(more…)

“Are you okay?”(more…)

NetSpot lets you visualize, optimize, and troubleshoot your wireless networks with any MacBook so you can get the best connection possible at all times. Use the mapping feature to view dead zones and optimize hotspot placement, and use the troubleshooting tool to identify connectivity issues. With NetSpot Pro, you’ll never miss a beat, post, or important email even when your Internet is acting up.

Kyle Miller (previously) writes, "I've recently launched my newest Kickstarter, featuring the third model in my crowdfunded series of Steampunk style Soviet-era nixie tube clocks. Each is handmade in black walnut or purpleheart, brass, and steel and has a ton of features. Super easy to use and no soldering or assembly required." (more…)

If you purchase Banksy's "Spy Booth" mural for $300,000, you get a three-bedroom Victorian home in Cheltenham, England for free! The house, in dire need of renovation, features the Banksy artwork on an outside wall. It's now fenced in as the mural was defaced in 2014 and then restored.From the New York Post:

[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]When the National Enquirer goes on the warpath to expose your deepest, darkest secrets, you know you’re in trouble - unless you’re Donald Trump.The Enquirer uncovers Trump’s “secret life,” revealing “the Donald Trump nobody knows.”A team of crack investigative reporters blow the lid off the presidential candidate’s greatest scandals: Trump “has quietly donated a huge chunk of his fortune to charity - and is a doting dad to his young son.”I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.Enquirer stablemate the Globe offers equally fair and balanced reporting, under its headline “Impeach Obama!”The president is accused of “bungling and treachery,” which certainly sounds like constitutional grounds for impeachment to me.It’s another fabulously fact-challenged week in the tabloids. The Globe claims that Queen Elizabeth is "flat broke” after squandering her $2 billion fortune on “covering up scandals and feeding (her) horse racing addiction.” Not to worry – she can always make a few quid selling her story to the tabloids.The Globe also informs us that aviatrix Amelia Earhart not only survived her 1937 plane crash in the South Pacific but lived out her days hiding under an assumed name – Craigmile Bolam – in Bedford, New Jersey, until her death in 1982. Which makes perfect sense, because what international celebrity and adventurer with a passion for global travel doesn’t dream of living in obscurity in New Jersey?Brad Pitt and Angelina, whose marriage has been on the brink of divorce for months if you believe the tabloids, united in Cambodia for what the Enquirer calls a “lavish $1 million holiday.” A happy reunion? A loving get-together? According to the Enquirer it was a “honeymoon from hell,” despite the fact that it was not a honeymoon, and they had to endure the “hell” of a luxury yacht, spa resorts and legions of servants. But presumably that's a version of hell if you’re accustomed to the lavish lifestyle of an Enquirer reporter.The Enquirer also has “world exclusive” photos of a Bill Cosby “sex attack” on a drugged woman, “caught on camera.” Yet when you read this story, you learn that the photos are all recreations using actors, and that “the depraved attack may have been captured on videotape.” May have been. Where were Cosby’s home security cameras? Evidently positioned all around the outside of his house, to watch for intruders, naturally. Not focused inside his bedroom or living room. The alleged attack occurred 11 years ago, so I’m sure that like most of us Cosby keeps a private storage warehouse stacked with DVDs of decades-old security footage, just for sentimental reasons. Who hasn’t ever longed to sit down and watch exterior views of your home from years gone by?Thankfully, we have the investigative teams of the celebrity magazines to bring us this week’s real news: actor Dean Cain confesses: “I cook every day,” R&B star Tinashe (Who she, Ed?) carries car keys, lipstick and Advil in her purse (this groundbreaking feature never gets old), and the stars are just like us: they walk their dogs, they enjoy burgers, and they tie up their hair. Bald vegan stars who don’t own dogs are clearly not like us at all, which I find very reassuring.People magazine splashes with “The Untold Story Behind Making A Murderer,” with “shocking new details” implying Steven Avery’s guilt – which might be interesting if prosecutors hadn’t raised those same “new details” years ago during Avery’s trial, and reiterated them numerous times over the past few weeks.Us magazine splashes with meatier material: Miley Cyrus’s rekindled romance with former fiancé Liam Hemsworth. The duo reportedly “held hands” at a Golden Globes party on Sunday, and “left in the same SUV.” I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you.David Bowie’s death merits a small corner of the covers of People and Us mags, which seems woefully inadequate for such a musical legend, especially when both mags give bigger space to Golden Globes coverage of “best dresses” and “backstage gossip.” Because what Jennifer Lawrence wore to the Globes will long outlive Ziggy Stardust, I assume.Did Selena Gomez really wear it best? She garnered 76 per cent of the votes when Us mag asked 100 people at NYC’s Rockefeller Center who looked best in mocha Wolford leggings, crushing Alessandra Ambrosio (Who she, Ed?) who got only 24 per cent of the votes. But what if Gomez’s 76 voters only felt that she had the edge over Ambrosio by a 51-49 ratio? And what if Ambrosio’s 24 per cent of supporters felt that she dominated Gomez by 99-1? I think Us magazine needs to institute some form of proportional representation into these votes, to give us more nuanced results. This is important, people – we’re talking about who wore it best!My favorite tabloid story of the week is found in the Examiner, which explains “why birds never go gray.” Apparently, birds’ feathers are made of a “sponge-like nanoscopic” structure which reflects light in different hues, rather than having pigment in the feathers which could fade with age. “The control of this evolving nanostructure – by adjusting the size and density of the holes in the spongy-like structure – determines what color is reflected,” says scientist Dr Andrew Parnell at Sheffield University in the U.K.Like most Americans, I get all my science news from the supermarket tabloids. How else would I know when aliens have landed? Or, as Hillary Clinton told New Hampshire’s Conway Daily Sun newspaper recently, “we may have been” visited by aliens already. Trust the Globe to report this week: “She thinks aliens have visited Earth."Onwards and downwards . . .

The DS-600, a modular sofa from Swiss manufacturer De Sede, was designed by U. Berger, E. Peduzzi Riva, H. Ulrich, K. Vogt in 1972, and remains otherworldly and wonderful. (more…)

In this beginner friendly book, called Learn to Program with Minecraft, you will learn how to do cool things in Minecraft using the Python programming language. No prior programming experience is needed. Author Craig Richardson shows you how to install Python (it's free) on your Mac, PC, or Raspberry Pi. The book has step-by-step instructions to show you how to teleport your character, create palaces and other structures with a few lines of code, stack blocks, duplicate villages and geography, and a lot more.

They say that flying is safer than driving. In fact, according to travel statistics, the odds of dying in a car crash is 1 in 98 in a lifetime, while the odds of dying in a plane wreck is 1 in 7,178 in a lifetime. Still, when plane accidents do occur, they’re usually catastrophic, and it doesn’t hurt to know your airline’s track record before climbing on board.So let’s start with the good news. Australia’s Qantas has never had a fatality and is considered the safest airline to fly according to AirlineRatings.com. Other airlines on their top twenty list of safest airlines include (alphabetically):Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, United Airlines, and Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.Now for the bad news. There are 38 airlines that got a rating of 3 or lower (with 7 being the highest, 1 being the lowest). That means 38 airlines that are wobbly when it comes to safety standards. The 10 airlines with a rating of only 1 include (alphabetically):Batik Air, Citilink, KalStar Aviataion, Lion Air, Nepal Airlines, Sriwijaya Air and Nam Air, Tara Air, TransNusa, Wings Air and Xpress Air.Click here for the rest of the airlines that landed at the bottom of the list.

My daughter wanted a yo-yo, and I knew that only one would do! The Duncan Butterfly!I spent hundreds of hours playing with one just like this! We randomly got the same green I had as a kid. Just holding the yo-yo in my hand, and feeling the wings in my palm, brought back amazing memories. I immediately pulled off "Walk the Dog," but then hit myself in the back of the head with "Around the World."Maybe she needs one of her own. I'm not sure I can share!The Duncan Butterfly via Amazon

The Femmes broke up in acrimony, and while there have been some noteworthy projects since (frontman Gordon Gano's gospel band, The Mercy Seat, produced an album that was as good as anything the Femmes made together; there was also a reunion show in 2013), there hasn't been any new Femmes-qua-Femmes in a decade and a half. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATSTjjEMmukOn May 20, 1979, David Bowie was invited to take over BBC Radio One for a two-hour DJ set titled "Star Special" that's a fantastic tour of underground, unfamiliar, or avant-rock sounds of that time mixed with tunes by popular artists he loved: Iggy Pop, Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, Talking Heads, Philip Glass, Danny Kaye, Little Richard, Bruce Springsteen, and many more.

Scott Breitenstein, the much-hated proprietor of such delightful Internet outposts as Complaints Bureau, STD Registry, and Report My X, is the "King of Revenge Porn." Or rather, he was. Fusion interviewed Breitenstein and shared with him messages from women who had been victims of revenge porn on his site. Two weeks after the Fusion interview, Breitenstein apparently banned revenge porn on Complaints Bureau and removed old posts."At Home with a Revenge Porn Mogul" (Fusion)

Britain has one—God Save The Queen—as do Scotland and Wales, but England itself has no national anthem. After many years of talking about it, it might finally happen. Jerusalem, a much-loved and rather ambiguous song derived from a William Blake poem, is the popular and perfect choice. Above, Emerson, Lake and Palmer's classic rendition from Brain Salad Surgery.Other songs with a shot are Land of Hope and Glory and, if they decide to hold a public referendum on it right away, Magic Dance.https://twitter.com/hbeschizza/status/687338969227522048

Seems the "patriots" in Oregon, who have occupied a wild life sanctuary, are fixing to start trying local officials for undisclosed, but "substantial" crimes. They have brought in a phony judge and are raring to go!TPM shares the story:

Matt Denton says, "This is test footage and images of the animatronic head built for Edgar Wright's The World's End. This is a fairly simple head with only eye and jaw movement but has just enough functionality to sell the gag! Used during the fight sequence in the toilets"

Why anyone would want to keep a wild animal like a tiger, monkey or bear as a pet is beyond me. But in the U.S. it’s not a federal crime to own exotic animals – it’s up to the states to decide which animals are legal – with or without permits – to keep as pets.The six U.S. states that have no restrictions on keeping large cats, primates and bears include Nevada, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina. Other states allow primates but not bears and tigers, such as Virginia and Tennessee. Even more states allow all three of these exotic animals to be kept as pets once a permit is obtained. The Humane Society lays it all out for you here: Thanks Tech Insider!

Look at Spider go! In this short movie from 1970, we see an energetic short order cook experiencing full-blown Csikszentmihalyi flow state as he prepares dishes for a late-night pre-hangover crowd at a small diner in New Hampshire. Spider's movements are unpredictably explosive and accompanied by bursts of discordant whistling. He reminds me of Tex Avery's cartoons and Raymond Scott's music.Kenneth S. "Spider" Osgood died in 2012. Here's his obituary.

Back in 2012, I wrote about 'Magnetic Reconnection', a beautiful, haunting experimental film about the aurora borealis, scored by Jim O'Rourke (Sonic Youth, Wilco) and narrated by Will Oldham (Matewan, Old Joy). (more…)

Thomas J. Kuntz makes the most incredible automata I've ever seen. Happy birthday, Thomas!(Thanks, Bob Self!)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.I’ve already reviewed a few adult coloring books for Wink and thought I had moved on, but then Patterns of the Universe came my way and I couldn’t resist. When I was editor of Craft Magazine we used to cover projects that involved mathematical crafting, such as crocheting a hyperbolic reef. Although mathematical coloring is a lot simpler, it’s just as fun to see what kind of beauty will emerge when you play with patterns, numbers, and chance.This coloring book is split into two sections: Coloring and Creating. The first offers your basic color-in-the-lines patterns, but they’re all math based and come with a short description to help you appreciate what you’re beautifying. The second Creating section includes simple instructions on how to create patterns, mostly through randomness, such as Coin Hex, which asks you to choose for your hexagon pattern only two colors (but I chose three). Then you must toss a coin (or number generator in my case) to determine the color for each hexagon. The point of an activity like this? Even though your colored pattern is random, “stare at it and you will see patterns. It’s a reminder that we find randomness very difficult to comprehend.” Very difficult indeed. I'm only one-quarter of the way through Coin Hex and already I see all kinds of patterns popping out of the page.Patterns of the Universe: A Coloring Adventure in Math and Beauty