Now that the International Union of Applied Chemistry has recognised four new elements, the race is on to decide what to call them. (more…)

https://youtu.be/5uurT7yVWkQOn New Year's Eve, a patient bouncer wore a GoPro at a nightclub to show how hard he works dealing with drunk people who plead, lie, and threaten to let them in.

Jacklyn Collier was dubious that the man claiming to be Martin Shkreli really was Martin Shkreli. He convinced her by showing photos of his identification. Curious about the notorious HIV drug price-gouger, she went on a date with him and wrote about it for the Washington Post.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Robo-Sauce starts out as a mere picture book, then – with a few paper folds and a little imagination – transforms into a ROBOT picture book. The story starts out normally enough – when a boy can’t get enough of pretending to be a robot, he wishes for a potion that will actually turn him into one. And what do you know? The off-camera narrator happens to have the recipe for just such a potion. After dousing himself in the day-glo orange “robo-sauce,” the boy becomes a rather jerky and destructive robot – punching down a fruit stand with his robo-fist and blasting open a water tower with his laser eyes. When the startled narrator tries to offer the antidote to robo-sauce, the robo-boy promptly disintegrates it, then proceeds to slosh the noxious liquid all over his family, dog, friends, and pretty much anything else in sight. EVERYTHING transforms into a robot, and when the robo-sauce inevitably seeps over the words in the story, even the book turns into a robot. A page folds out, and instructs readers how to re-fold it to activate the robo-book. The larger fold-out page essentially turns into an alternate book jacket, and the last few pages in the story are full of beeps, boops, and, of course, robots. But one final page turn reveals that all the shenanigans were the result of one family’s afternoon of imaginative play.Robo-Sauce is a brilliant twist on both storytelling and book design. Rubin fools readers into thinking the story is headed in a predictable direction (the boy realizes he misses being human and takes the antidote), but then turns the story on its head by having the robo-boy destroy the antidote recipe. The unseen narrator provides considerable comic relief with his mounting alarm as the story careens off-course. Daniel Salmieri’s illustrations are delightful – loose and scribbly – and astute readers will pick up on details that add humor and substance to the story. Take a look at the cover – at a glance, it appears to be a giant robot looming over a boy. But closer inspection reveals that the robot is actually the boy’s shadow, which is a nice bit of foreshadowing (no pun intended).The fold-out page that transforms the book into a robot is a simple yet ingenious bit of book design. Kids will love this detail, and – whether intentional or not – this book is an homage to the power of physical books to delight and amaze. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve been quite as delighted by any other picture book in the past year. I think other readers who pick up Robo-Sauce will agree.– Amy HollandRobo-Sauce

Children's book illustrator Mike Lowery has an Instagram feed worth following. Each image is an illustrated, Ripley's Believe It or Not style cartoon with an interesting fact. Check out a few samples below.

The #UnpopularMusicOpinionhour hashtag is proving unexpectedly cilivized today—for once, not everyone is complaining about the Beatles like that's some kind of deliciously transgressive thing.https://twitter.com/LouBrutus/status/685084332948586496https://twitter.com/Dynamic_Suave/status/685132517280759808https://twitter.com/JTtheDM/status/685133731057762304https://twitter.com/yo/status/685134138995818496https://twitter.com/Ryan_Friess/status/685133619107500034https://twitter.com/ktdworks/status/685133228911517696https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cntYIkuthYgPeople who think Animal Crackers is better than I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas are scum.

Jack Goldman stars in Ben Phillippo's music video for Gem Club's Speech of Foxes. The band's album, In Roses, is out now.

Comcast's CEO Brian Roberts has been doing a lot of spinning lately to explain his company's plan to increase its prices (already some of the highest in the developed world) by turning on usage caps and charging up the wazoo for people who exceed them. (more…)

This app is more than just a virtual assistant: EasilyDo is a life-hack that saves you hours and hours of time over the span of your lifetime subscription. Instead of wading through emails and logging onto your favorite e-comm site to get your tracking info, EasilyDo presents it for you. Any changes to your travel itinerary? EasilyDo will send you a notification without you having to check in. It’ll even let you know what time to depart in order to arrive on time for an event (that you totally forgot about). It’s the amazing assistant you never had, and best of all, it will never, ever leave your side.

Internet and cable TV provider Time Warner Cable Inc. today revealed that up to 320,000 customers may have had their email passwords stolen.(more…)

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” just pushed James Cameron's “Avatar” aside as the top-grossing film in North America. In just 20 days of release, the seventh installment in the space opera saga has earned more than “Avatar’s” $760.5 million lifetime gross.From Variety:

Is Los Angeles prepared for the El Niño storms we're getting? An #ElPolloLoco in Lincoln Heights wasn't. Jacqueline Garcia shot this video of the roof about to collapse from the rain at about 1pm today, LA time.“They evacuated people but when rain stopped they reopened,” she says.[ABC 7]

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I love coffee. I love chocolate. I shop a lot on Amazon for coffee accessories and for good quality cacao (I dig making chocolate). When I saw Crio Bru show up in my recommendations, I lost my impulse control, and ordered a large $24 bag of these roasted and ground cocoa beans. It's marketed as an alternative to coffee beans.Verdict: Hell yeah. I love it and will be ordering more. Additionally, I will be evangelizing this newly discovered warm chocolatey beverage to my friends, whether they want to hear about it or not, and I will be unable to shut up about it for at least a few weeks. Yes, this shit is just that real.(more…)

Because aviation isn't already a perfect model for class war, privilege and the market's ability to erode comfort, pleasure and humane treatment. (more…)

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Just look at it(Thanks, Alice!)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is hiring four new staffers: a criminal defense staff attorney, a technology generalist and two new activists (here's what life is like for EFF activists). (more…)

[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]Bill Cosby “will die in jail,” J. Edgar Hoover’s “Kennedy blackmail files” have been revealed, and Jennifer Lopez reveals her “secrets for staying young,” which inexplicably doesn't include being born with her parents’ DNA and acquiring several million dollars to maintain one's looks.But if we’re looking for logic and facts, this week’s tabloids aren't the best place to find them.Angelina Jolie has adopted a seventh child “behind Brad’s back,” claims the Enquirer.You think he might notice, sooner or later?Elvis Presley was murdered to prevent him from running off with an alleged lover he bedded 24 years earlier, the Enquirer also claims.And to complete its trifecta, the Enquirer claims that Kurt Cobain was murdered because the fatal shotgun shell was found to the left of his body though the weapon’s chamber ejects shells to the right.Let’s get real. Shell casings bounce. Presley wasn’t about to leave his young fiancé for an old hookup. And Angelina’s “adopted” son is still part of a family in Cambodia that she has reportedly helped by buying $200 worth of new clothes – a fortune in that country, but still, only $200 – which falls slightly short of the legal definition of adoption.Will Cosby die in jail, as the Enquirer promises? Prosecutors have to convict him first.J. Edgar Hoover’s “blackmail files” aren’t “revealed” at all by the Globe, which claims to have interviewed a “top government official” who doesn’t have the alleged files either, and then rehashes all the well-worn allegations about patriarch Joe Kennedy being a Nazi spy, JFK’s illicit sex romps, and First Lady Jackie Kennedy’s affair with Frank Sinatra.Fortunately we have the celebrity magazines to bring us the week’s real news: Sofia Vergara wore it best (or at least, filled it bursting-at-the-seams best), Mark Cuban confesses that he would “rather eat fast food than a formal meal,” and the stars are just like us: they snack on the go, they shop for shoes, and they catch some rays.But Us magazine’s crack investigative team this week fails to bring us an exclusive look inside the purse of a “celebrity" you’ve probably never heard of. There’s no revelation about what brand of chewing gum they favor, or what flavor lip gloss a starlet totes. No candid shots of car keys, sunglasses and the hip, thought-provoking novel they think they’d like to be seen reading, if only they read something other than well-thumbed scripts that other stars have passed on.Thankfully we have People magazine to bring us its cover story on the “Secrets of the Full House stars,” reunited after 20 years.And what are those “secrets”?“Everything happens for a reason,” says John Stamos. Bob Saget reveals that his three daughters “are the light of my life.” And Jodie Sweetin, recovered from a meth addiction, says: “My life is amazing.”Sadly, those aren’t secrets any more.Onwards and downwards . . .

Game developer Jacob Janerka made this sprite of George Costanza for a Seinfeld adventure game (about nothing?) that he hopes to someday complete. Janerka posted the GIF to Reddit and answered some questions in the comments: "In my spare time I'm making a fan made Seinfeld adventure game, I started off by making George."

Pressed into service recently to teach handcuff escape workshops to high school students, I built this. The huge, functional, see-through demonstration handcuff.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Ks-6_x-uQLearning how the ratchet and pawl mechanism works helped the students visualize the internals of the standard-issue cuffs; they were soon shimming their way out of behind-the-back cuffings using only a hair clip.More info on the huge demo handcuff here.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Anyone who's read Hunter S. Thompson's iconic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas knows that the technicolored, bug-eyed, meth-fueled craziness of that narrative is hard to capture in another medium. The Tim Burton movie did an admirable job of conveying the “savage journey” of the book, if sometimes overdosing on the goofballs in the process.When it comes down to it, the madness of Fear and Loathing is probably best expressed in comic book form (as Ralph Steadman showed in the original illustrations, Gary Trudeau hinted at with Uncle Duke, and Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan paid impressive homage). If Hunter S. Thompson didn't exist, it would be necessary for comics to invent him. And I can't think of anyone better suited to fully render Thompson's warped vision of the American dream (aka 70s Vegas) than Eisner Award-nominated Troy Little. His 176-page comic adaptation manages to effectively distill the roman à clef gonzo masterpiece into a form that feels completely natural, managing to retain and celebrate inspired moments of Thompson's brilliant prose-poetry.Little's art has the right kind of energy and violence to effectively convey Thompson's unusual subject matter. He knows how to render the drug-amped fear, anger, outrage, and surprise on Raoul Duke's face, his beady eyes forever burning behind gigantic amber-tinted aviator glasses. The book itself is beautifully produced, with a spot varnish hard cover and brilliant, vividly printed interiors that reproduce the colors of crazy in a way that would do Ralph Steadman proud.It's hard to imagine the impact that the original book has had on popular culture and on the bleeding edge journalism that followed it. It's exciting to see this material presented in a new way that honors the old and presents it to a new generation of swine.Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Glad to see that our nation's capital hasn't been completely gentrified, and retains some of the utlraviolent grit I remember from the streets in the 1980s.(more…)

Each year the Flying Morgan's play host to an amazing New Year's Eve party! They are always thrilled, and lucky, to have incredible photographer Star Foreman on hand to document it.Equally as wonderful as the amazing assemblage of talented friends who gather annually at the Morgan's Castle, I was entranced by the home itself. This incredible family of performers and artists has truly created a paradise where delight waits around every corner.If you know what you are looking for, there is a portrait of me in Star's collection.Check out the whole slideshow!

A hot, filling breakfast is important to get my kid's school day off to a good start! I'm a disorganized mess of a dad who frequently wakes up late. Luckily, we've come up with Adventure Breakfast, a method that leaves us with piping hot oatmeal ready to be eaten anywhere we want.I learned this method years ago. Bob's Red Mill shares it in a few places but this post is best.What I am doing is simply this: take a 25oz Stanely Vacuum Bottle and fill it up with a cup or two of boiling hot water. I then wait 5 minutes for the thermos to heat up. I use the hot water from the thermos to clean something in the kitchen sink, and then I put 1 CUP of Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oatmeal in the bottle. I add 2 cups of boiling water and a pinch of salt, close the Stanley, and shake it a bit.When we wake up in the morning we've got steaming hot oatmeal waiting for us!We usually take some bowls, brown sugar and raisins (or whatever fixings my kid decides on that day) with us in the car. We stop someplace with a fantastic view along the route to school, and enjoy what has become known as Adventure Breakfast.This recipe makes enough oatmeal for us to have a friend along too, but we can generally finish it between the two of us. You can use smaller and larger thermos, and adjust the volume of oatmeal/water to match.Clean up is as easy as rinsing out the bottle.An Assortment of Stanely Thermos sizes via AmazonBob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats (4 Pack) via Amazon(Via reader Ryan Powers, Alton Brown offers a more complicated path to oatmeal.)

Musicologist Mylène Pardoen and a team of 3D artists created this "sonic tableaux" of 18th century Paris based on a 1781 map and numerous historical documents and research on what Paris's Grand Châtelet district, between the Pont au Change and Pont Notre Dame bridges, may have sounded like at the time. From the French National Center for Scientific Research:

Big streaming content news out of CES this morning: Netflix is now live in 130 additional countries, which makes its service available to billions of new users. The most notable exception: China.CEO Reed Hastings made the announcement at the annual Consumer Electronics Forum in Las Vegas today."You are witnessing the birth of a global TV network," he said.Netflix "won't be available in Crimea, North Korea and Syria due to U.S. government restrictions on American companies," the company said.Countries where Netflix will now be available include Azerbaijan, India, Vietnam, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Saudia Arabia, South Korea, Singapore, Turkey and Indonesia can now use Netflix--but presumably with certain restrictions, in certain nations."Netflix Is Now Available Around the World" [netflix press release][CNN via @brianstelter]

Ammon Bundy is the leader of the domestic terror group that has occupied the Malheur National Widlife Refuge Building near Burns, Oregon because they believe the US federal government is an illegitimate, oppressive entity that must be stopped. (more…)

This is footage from the 45th annual Junior Boxing Program Championships, held in 1964. From History's Playlist:

Even when producing infomercials extolling its own product's virtues, the people behind Facial Flex can't prevent their fundamental creepiness from shining through. Dean posted this in '11, but you should probably watch it at least twice a decade to keep the memory fresh.(via JWZ)

The New Zealand High Court has ruled that the NZ police broke the law in 2014 when they raided the home of Nicky Hager, an investigative journalist whose work was sharply critical of the NZ government, and who was working on Snowden-related disclosures. (more…)

On December 30th, someone using an IP address from the 32nd Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg sent a probe out to every IPv4 address with an open connection on Port 80, consisting of a poem exhorting the reader to "DELETE your logs. Delete your installations. Wipe everything clean, Walk out into the path of cherry blossom trees and let your motherboard feel the stones." (more…)

I have vague memories of my older scientist brother Mark wearing a slide rule in a leather case on his belt. It was really one of the first wearable computers, albeit a mechanical, analog one. Then in 1974, he was able to purchase a Texas Instruments SR-50, the first mass-market commercial electronic calculator. The slide rule was buried in Mark's desk drawer, where the SR-50, and later his Sharp Wizard, Palm Pilot, and their descendants would ultimately end up as well. (Mark died wearing a calculator wristwatch!)In this episode of Numberphile, Alex Bellos explains the seduction of the slide rule and also the Halden Calculex, a device he calls the "iPhone of Slide Rules."

Bernie Sanders, who smashed Obama's record for small-money donors in December and blew through his own fundraising goals, writes about the difference between raising lots of small sums from individual Americans and chasing huge donations from America's oligarchs. (more…)

I was hugely impressed with Cathy "Mathbabe" O'Neil's talk at Personal Democracy Forum 2015, "Weapons of Math Destruction," in which she laid out the way that the "opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable" conclusions of Big Data threaten fairness and democracy.(more…)

Subprime mortgages began as a project to extend credit to poor people to give them a bridge to home-ownership, but it did so by allowing unscrupulous lenders to offer credit on unfair terms, with government guarantees to back the loans, even the bad ones. (more…)

The BBC's Social Affairs Correspondent, Michael Buchanan, wanted to know how often the UK government's new "red tape-busting cabinet panel, the Reducing Regulation Committee" was meeting, because he thought that it was probably "all froth and no action." (more…)

The Financial Times' Henry Mance reports that the world’s largest publisher has withdrawn from the self-publishing business, likely having lost much of its $116m investment in the field.

This adorable dog, Trouble, got exactly what he wanted for Christmas: his favorite human underneath the tree.My heart melts each time I watch it.

Angry mad uncle kingdom North Korea claims to have detonated a hydrogen bomb, but observers are skeptical because the new blast was no beefier than North Korea's earlier tests.

“I designed and animated this piece as an homage to my favorite show of all time, HBO’s The Wire,” says animator Elliot Lim.What an absolutely stunning piece this is. One of my new year's resolutions is to watch the entire series, start to finish, in one big binge.[Laughing Squid, animation stills via elliot-lim.com]

https://vimeo.com/150483774Pixar's "Inside Out" alternates between short scenes of the life of a girl called Riley, with increasingly longer, action-packed scenes from inside her psyche (as one Internet wag has it, Pixar movies follow the "_____ have feelings" template, starting with toys, cars and bugs, and they've arrived at the logical conclusion: "feelings have feelings"). (more…)

The visibly excited Donald Trump supporter in this photo is Ms. Robin Roy. We should all be so lucky to experience such exhilaration in this lifetime.[caption id="attachment_442226" align="aligncenter" width="1500"] REUTERS/Brian Snyder[/caption]Ms. Roy was among the many fans of U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump who showed up at a campaign rally in Lowell, Massachusetts on January 4, 2016.If you feel you need to analyze what's going on in this picture, this Washington Post item is for you.

I'm not a hardcore skiier, but growing up in Canada I did learn, and my family and I go skiing about once a year. (more…)

You’d think hitting the defrost button in your car on a chilly morning would be the quickest way to defrost your windshield. But not necessarily so, according to ex-Nasa engineer Mark Rober, who has come up with a way to defrost car windows in half the normal time. In his video, he explains how to speed-defrost our car windows, along with a peppy science lesson that backs his method. In a nutshell, here are the four steps:1. Blast the heater

President Obama wept today as he spoke today about the ever-increasing waves of gun violence throughout America. He announced new executive actions to reduce the frequency of mass shootings, suicides and other gun killings, which have become a common part of life in our country.(more…)