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Updated 2025-01-15 20:48
Man arrested with 51 turtles in his pants
Kai Xu was arrested attempting to cross into Canada from Detroit, Michigan with 51 live turtles down his pants, mostly strapped to his legs. He was apparently smuggling the turtles he had bought to resell outside the US at much higher prices. From the Associated Press:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by famed "dot" artist Yayoi Kusama
See sample pages from this book at Wink.You must have some trepidation when you set out to illustrate a story as iconic as Alice in Wonderland. What effect can you offer that isn’t already achieved by the classic words themselves? From the myriad images contained within the story, how do you choose what to illustrate and what to leave out? And when everyone’s idea of Alice is already so wrapped up in the Disney version, can you really expect anyone to embrace your vision instead?Thankfully, Yayoi Kusama doesn’t shy from the task and in the process has accomplished something beautiful and thoroughly undisneyfied. The illustrations aren’t designed to help you visualise Alice’s world as if it were real, but rather to exhibit it in all its un-realness. Kusama’s dreamy polka dots pattern each page while bold colors and abstract mosaics challenge everything you thought you knew about Lewis Carroll’s story. Frequently the illustrations require a double take: are you looking at something that’s close and microscopic, or far away but gargantuan? Even the text of the story is welded into Kusama’s artistic vision, growing and shrinking, hiding amid the illustrations, getting eaten by fish and winding around mushrooms. The book just gets curiouser and curiouser."Begin at the beginning," the King tells Alice in the story, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Easier said than done, King – because with such lush illustrations on display, reaching the end isn’t a guarantee of anything. It’s only going to make you want to go right back to the start.– Damien McLaughlinAlice's Adventures in Wonderland
Animated interview with Nina Simone about fashion, shock, and her daughter
The high priestess of soul in an interview with Lilian Terry from July 1968.(more…)
Filmmaking teacher makes a mini documentary about a cigar connoisseur
The Cigar Connoisseur from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.Philip Bloom is a filmmaker who teaches 3-day documentary making workshops. He went to a cigar shop in New York and shot this short profile of one of the customers, who turned out to be interesting and charming. Bloom says, "As students took what they had learned on day one and made a mini documentary for themselves in NYC I also did the same thing. This is the end result, which we found and shot within two hours."[via]
State driving laws on US map
It is legal to drive while texting in Montana and Arizona. It is legal to drive while drinking alcohol in Mississippi. It is illegal to drive with a dog in your lap in New Jersey and Hawaii. It is legal to drive for Uber in all fifty states, but illegal to drive for an escort service in all fifty states. See a visual representation of these laws and other driving laws at JustPark.
Anatomical Theater (In the Grip of Strange Thoughts)
Andrei Sen-Senkov's Anatomical Theater is a fascinating, bizarre look into the day to day observations of a gynecologist and well known Russian contemporary poet. It also has amazing cover art by Sveta Dorosheva.I enjoy poetry of the mundane and the first two sections of this book certainly explore this theme. With a very even, methodical pace, Sen-Senkov calls out the absurd in observations of daily Russian life.His titular chapter, Anatomical Theater, is something very much else! I best describe it as a medical text intended to be read dramatically. This is a tour of human anatomy by a masterful story teller, and if you enjoy the cover art, this section is for you!Anatomical Theater (In the Grip of Strange Thoughts) by Andrei Sens-Senkov via Amazon
Woman faces 10 years in prison for giving water to pigs on a scorching summer day
Anita Krajnc, of Toronto, was charged with criminal mischief when she gave drinking water to pigs being transported to a slaughterhouse on a hot day.From The Guardian:
The first robot in cinema
Harry Houdini thought he was a superstar, but there was one medium he was unable to conquer: movies. He made a number of silent films, yet only The Grim Game is even tolerable. But there is one memorable thing about Houdini’s The Master Mystery, a 1919 filmed serial of 15 installments – it contains the first appearance of a robot in cinema. At the time the word “robot” did not yet exist, and Q is referred to as “The Automaton.” (The term “robot” was created in 1920 by Josef Čapek, whose brother Karel first used it for the title of his play R.U.R. [Rossum's Universal Robots].)But Q is certainly recognizable as a robot, and his image lingered in the minds of designers of robots to come in later films, and also as toys, for over 40 years. He cut an imposing figure, managing to even squeeze some emotion out of Houdini.If you’re wondering what the first robot in cinema looks like in action, here’s a snippet of Q as he appears in The Master Mystery.https://youtu.be/0DpRSDkI3NYWhat became of the original costume used for Q we do not know, however at the Los Angeles Conference on Magic History held at the beginning of November, Q mysteriously reappeared.The Conference is put on bi-annually by Jim Steinmeyer, Frankie Glass, Mike Caveney, and John Gaughan (names you likely don’t know but should), and is an invitation-only 3-day event that is the hottest ticket in the magic community. In addition to lectures on the history of magic, the specialty of the Conference is recreating illusions and such that have not been seen for a century or more. In the case of Q, he was recreated in sculpted foam and cardboard by Paige Moore, then painted and aged by Jim Piper, and displayed in the Conference’s Exhibit Room.On Saturday evening, after a lecture by illusion builder and conference co-organizer John Gaughan, Q reappeared in a humorous interlude and stomped his way through the audience.https://youtu.be/3q0NUWQXzWUTo understand why audiences in 1919 might have been somewhat alarmed and apprehensive about Q, we only have to transpose that to our own feelings about the robot Ava in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, in which we eventually learn that Eva is not so different from Q after all. Almost a century may have passed, but robots are still of questionable character.
Question Mark and the Mysterians "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" (1967)
"My heart cries out, more baby."
Simple silicone garlic peeler
I am amazed at how well this simple, silly tube of silicone works. Simply crack the outer layers of skin on a clove of garlic, pop it into the cylinder of silicone and roll. The skin comes right off. My hands don't smell of garlic.Rinse this off in the sink, set it aside to dry and it is ready for next time. One of the most useful, overlooked $6 kitchen tools I've got!Zak Designs E-Z-Rol Garlic Peeler (Red)
Watch all the exoplanets orbit their stars simultaneously
The Kepler telescope has found 685 systems with 1705 exoplanets, and you can watch them whirr around together in this mesmerizing animation by astrocubs.
TOM THE DANCING BUG - War on Christian Terrorism
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.Last chance to get both EMU Club Adventures books, signed, sketched and delivered in time for the holidays here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)
The Elf on the Shelf is a surveillance-normalizing little creep
https://youtu.be/s9Pn16dCWIgImportant reminder, happy mutants! The Elf on the Shelf, the cherubic, round-eyed toy with a faux-traditional backstory, is yet another manifestation of the surveillance state. It watches you 24/7, then reports your behavior to an old white man with unaccountable authority who judges you and manipulates you with largesse or neglect.Laura Pinto, a technology professor:
World Class Wreckin' Cru was Dr. Dre's first LP
Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics! (more…)
Why wouldn't Reader's Digest remove malware from its website?
For nigh on a week, the internet hollered at Reader's Digest to remove malware from its website, to no apparent response.
Secret National Security Letters demanded your browsing history
Thousands of National Security Letters are sent annually, don't need a judge's signoff, and it's illegal to tell anyone you got one. What do they demand? Web browsing history, the IP addresses of everyone corresponded with, all online purchases, and more.Ars Technica's David Kravets reports that the details of the secret letters have emerged thanks to court moves from an ISP reluctant to secretly surveil its users for the FBI.
The Soviet Union came perilously close to launching a nuclear strike on the U.S. in 1983
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Empowered female heroines work hard
A classic Mallory Ortberg humor column sets out a day in the life of an "empowered female heroine," a fictional staple on whom society (and literature) project a huge amount of aspirational demands. (more…)
Mesopotamian boundary stones: the DRM of pre-history
Sarah Jeong had me standing up and cheering with her comparison of kudurrus -- the ancient Mesopotamian boundary stones used to mark out territorial land-grants -- and the way that laws like the US DMCA protect digital rights management systems. (more…)
Pandering to the lizard brain: American media versus objective reality
Matt Taibbi, in typical blazing form in the Rolling Stone, asks how it can be that millions of Americans believe Donald Trump's fairy-tale about Muslims cheering after 9/11 when it just didn't happen. (more…)
Canadian civil servants grooming new minister to repeat Harper's Internet mistakes
Mélanie Joly is the newly appointed Canadian Heritage Minister, and she's been given a briefing book by her ministerial staffers laying out the ministry's view of what's going on in the Heritage brief. The book's copyright section is a disaster. (more…)
What was it like working a Nintendo hotline in the 80s?
This week, our partnership with Critical Distance brings us reading on parenting via Tomb Raider, the utility of the word 'gameplay', and experiences from Nintendo 'play counselors' from the 1980s and 90s. (more…)
Find an antidote for your poisoned sister in an alien sea
Playing a Porpentine game often feels like stepping into a poem, or sitting downstream in a river as strange images float by like beautiful, twisted debris. She's primarily known for her Twine games and interactive fiction, where her distinctive alien worlds are fleshed out in long strings of lyrical text.In her first 3D game, Bellular Hexatosis, Porpentine exports her prose into a surreal, visual world of sunset seas, where you can explore a city populated by sentient eyes or meet a column of water spiraling into the sky that may or may not be your sister. Whatever she is, your sister has been infected with the titular Bellular Hexatosis, and only you can find the cure.
Trump says clips of Muslims cheering 9/11 exist because other people have seen them
https://youtu.be/bOWPlH63MlIOn Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd asked Trump to back up his claim that there was news footage of Muslims cheering the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump says it really happened because his supporters saw the same clips he did when they aired 14 years ago.Image: MortonDevonshire/Wikipedia
Wink 2015 Holiday gift guide: Gareth Branwyn’s picks
Over at Wink (the books and fun stuff reviews site my wife Carla edits) our friend Gareth Branwyn has selected a number of cool things he recommends as holiday gifts. There are games, mind expanders, and tools. I want the Pro Studio Hobby Brushes (above).
Here's what the Cards Against Humanity staff bought with the $70k they made selling "nothing"
On Black Friday, Cards Against Humanity sold the "experience of buying nothing" for $5 a pop.This stunt earned them over $71,000 in sales. As a way of thanking their customers, the staff posted the stuff they bought with the money. I wish they had taken the cash, poured gas on it and burned it, though. That would have been true art and a great video.
A tall smokestack collapsed on an excavator, and a drone filmed it
This 115-year-old smokestack in Pell City, Alabama didn't go down without a fight. The 158-foot chimney survived two attempts to demolish it with explosives. That's when Tim Phifer was brought in to knock it over with an excavator. But in a final throe of resistentialism, the smokestack decided to collapse on the backhoe burying it in 2.6 million pounds of rubble. Fortunately, Mr. Phifer survived the attempt on his life.
Buy Ringo Starr's copy of the very first pressing of the White Album
Ringo Starr's personal copy of The White Album, the first pressing of the album, numbered 0000001, is up for auction with proceeds going to charity. The current high bid is $55,000. From Julien's Auctions:
Parrot admires self in the mirror
A Caique Phoenix enjoying the thrill of seeing oneself in a mirror.[via]
Is this thumbs-up thumbs-down mechanism real?
The mechanism shown here is a computer animation, but does something like it exist in the real world? The sliding arc-shaped gear looks like it could come off the glass track pretty easily, but it is a cool way to keep the thumb stationary in the up or down position for a moment. [via]
Man buried retirement cash, only to have it eaten by worms
Five years ago, a fisherman in Deyang, China, buried his entire life savings. The amount he buried totaled about US$5,500. When Wu Chen, 67, and his family recently dug it up, they discovered that the plastic bag the bills were in had deteriorated. Worms and insects had eaten through much of his cash.(more…)
Man follows girlfriend through Southeast Asia with videocamera
https://youtu.be/RBjUxKoNTJkJohanKaos and his girlfriend took a trip through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia and created an entertaining video. Where is that place where they walked into the mouth of a giant stone head?
Easily open a Masterlock padlock by tapping it with a hammer
"Rappin' on MasterLock" (Lock Lab)
Watch this killer pirate television station from 1986
For several months in 1986-87, Network 21 was a pirate television station in the UK that broadcasted coverage of avant-garde art and fringe culture for 30 minutes every Friday evening. The fantastic content included the likes of: Warhol films, a post-punk fashion show by the BodyMap label (above), interviews with Sonic Youth (video below), Derek Jarman, and Genesis P-Orridge, a William S. Burroughs reading, and concert footage by the likes of Diamanda Galas and Einstürzende Neubauten. Sigue Sigue Sputnik's album "Flaunt It" included an advertisement for the station.Raided more than once, Network 21's goal was to see the UK government use a "similar approach to TV as has been afforded to radio, for the BBC and ITV to release their monopoly on frequencies and make some available to the community."Watch clips from Network 21 on YouTube. (Thanks, UPSO!)More background here: Network 21 (Wikipedia)https://youtu.be/KlTw53Hpguk
Animated map shows the Civil War's front lines in 5 minutes
Watch the U.S. Civil War unfold a day at a time in this animated map. The creator, EmperorTigerstar, attempted to represent every single day's movements in the front lines, resulting in a fascinating view of the conflict. He's made many more just like it. See your favorite war from a completely dehumanized perspective!It's strange how some of the most superficially spectacular gains and losses on land were mostly side-events to more important battles. To look at this map, you'd guess the critical events of October 1862 happened somewhere in Kentucky. On the other hand, Sherman's March to the Sea is like OMGGGGGGGG it's all over now. [via]
Eerie skyscraper moans in the wind
Every time the wind picks up in Manchester, England, Beetham Tower automatically generates another Architectural Moancore Drone epic. I hereby confer upon the building our inaugural award for excellence in this genre.The tone is reportedly B below middle Chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAOzegnHg1ghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gcbwrq0iCghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD7n8RAPGvM
Sponsor shout-out: ShanaLogic's Sugar Skull Cameo Necklace
A special holiday thank you to our long time sponsor Shanalogic! Shanalogic is a curated shop of handmade and independently produced gifts, many of which we own and love! Check out this fantastic Day of the Dead Sugar Skull Cameo Necklace!
Judge: no proof Yelp manipulates reviews
Now you can Yelp freely, secure in the knowledge that there are no shenanigans going on at the restaurant review site—or, at least, none that can be proven. So sayeth the judge.
This random word generator is absolutely honery
Burgundy.io generates new words, but no banal syllable-musher is this. It uses a recurrent neural network to find uncannily English-sounding terms. The results are quite periper, with a burledish sense of humor, and the best of them take on a laventine quality. The minimalist web design is a bit anterine, though.
Tremontaine: Lessons from sharing my famous, award-winning fantasy world
When it was published in 1987, Swordspoint was a scandal, a cause célèbre – not so much because of The Gay, but because it was a Fantasy Novel! Without Magic! I subtitled it "A Melodrama of Manners;" then some wag dubbed it Mannerpunk, and a marketing genre was born.I went on to publish two more novels set in the Riverside city (The Privilege of the Sword and The Fall of the Kings), plus a series of interconnecting short stories, delving into the lives of the daring, the desperate, the witty, the deadly friends and family of my Mad Bad Boys.In 2015, the population of my unnamed city changed again, not just with new characters, but with new writers. And with the serial collaborative series Tremontaine, my entire world has changed (no pun intended).(more…)
Folding coffin sofa
This $10,000 coffin sofa was created by Etsy goth outfitter Von Erikson: it's available with purple, red or black upholstery. (via Marxist Barbie)
Hey, kids! Let's play White Terrorism Bingo
When an American tries to kill another American in the name of Islam, it's terrorism. When white Christians -- the most common religious killers in America by a long chalk -- open fire on a black church or a Planned Parenthood office, they're "gunmen." The White Terrorism Bingo Card (origin unknown, please weigh in in the comments if you know where it came from) should be on the wall of every newsroom in America. (more…)
You're only an "economic migrant" if you're poor and brown
Ned Richardson-Little is a Canadian academic who went to the US "in search of a better life," did research in Germany and settled in the UK, something he was able to do thanks to his economic migrant grandfather who happened to have been born in Scotland. (more…)
Pre-mutated products: where did all those "hoverboards" come from?
Those bowtie-shaped "motorized self-balancing two-wheeled scooters" you see in the windows of strip-mall cellphone repair shops and in mall-kiosks roared out of nowhere and are now everywhere, despite being so new that we don't even know what they're called. (more…)
UN places order for 1,000 next-generation flat-pack refugee shelters
The Better Shelter is a flat-pack refugee shelter that costs three times more than the traditional tent, but lasts up to 40 times longer. It was developed with a grant from the Ikea foundation. (more…)
Sunrise, Muir Beach
Sunrise, November 29, 2015.
This stealth micro-drone is 67% off for a limited time only
The Code Black is our top-selling drone of all time—and for good reason. This powerful, palm-size drone is not only insanely fun to fly, but can capture some serious video footage from up above. With a flight time of about 10 minutes and an ultra-smooth ride, it’s a great introductory drone for anyone looking to dominate the sky. This exclusive offer can’t be found anywhere else on the web, so be sure to snag this great price before it flies away!
Man loses lawsuit claiming BMW motorcycle gave him an extended erection
Not known for making the most exciting motorcycles, BMW has triumphed over a lawsuit claiming one of their bikes left a man with a 2 day long erection. This via the Marin Independent Journal:
Today only: get this 10-ft MFi certified lightning cable for just $15
Don’t get handcuffed by Apple’s standard 3-foot Lightning cord (that you’ve most likely already lost), treat yourself to 10 feet of luxurious charging convenience. The Colossal is certified by Apple for its high-end quality, and designed to support full use of your phone while you power up. You can also get it in a 2-pack for $26.99 and a 3-pack for $35.99.
“Unknown number of victims” from shooting at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs
At least five police officers have been shot, and an untold number of other people have been injured, in what is reported at the time of this blog post as an “a very active shooter situation” either at or near a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colorado.(more…)
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