If it weren't for Chef Paul Prudhomme, we wouldn't have turducken, and Cajun/Creole cuisine would not have become the global sensation it is today. When the charismatic television chef popularized blackened redfish, it became such an obsession the species nearly went extinct.[caption id="attachment_426851" align="alignright" width="284"] Chef Paul[/caption]Prudhomme died today, at 75. His restaurant, K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, confirmed the news to CNN, and said he died after a “brief illness,” the nature of which was not further specified.If you read only one obituary, make it his hometown paper: The New Orleans Times-Picayune. If you're not old enough to remember when he was a fixture on public television, here's a primer on why Chef Paul was so awesome.

Ed Piskor drew this cool pin-up of an X-Men family tree (abridged). Each row represents a decade of the X-Men from 1963-1992. [Download]

Harald Albrigtsen shot this beautiful footage off the coast of Norway. (YouTube)

This smallish portable USB charger from Kmashi is rated at 5000mAh and is on sale now for $8.38 when you use promo code: PIRVWBWG on Amazon. I have a few different Kmashi chargers, and have used them for over a year with good results.

See sample pages of this book at Wink.I have always had a great attraction to obsessive hobbies. When I was a teen, I didn't just want to have model trains, I needed the fully detailed train board, with forests, a mountain and tunnel, a town, and a coal mine. I didn't just want to play tabletop wargames with salt shakers and napkin holders for obstacles – I had to build an entire terrain board, with homemade buildings, impact craters, command bunkers, and the like. And when I'm not dabbling in my own all-in hobbies, I'm frequently found online, looking at forums about other people's hobby obsessions. One of these is super-detailed scale modeling.Anyone who has done any military modeling is familiar with the AMMO brand of Mig Jimenez. Mig and AMMO are known for making the most amazing products for super-detailing models, paints, powders, and effects for painting, weathering, and basing, and high-end how-to books on model painting and finishing. Soon they will also be known for creating this incredible series, Encyclopedia of Aircraft Modelling Techniques.I got Interiors and Assembly Volume 2 in the five-part series because I was looking for inspiration for interior detailing of some tank models that I'm building for a tabletop wargame. I was not disappointed in what I found in this book. These volumes are crammed with hundreds of high-quality, close-in photographs showing many tried and true techniques for using aftermarket parts, making your own parts, and getting the most out of the parts that came in your model kit. There are also all sorts of tips and tricks that you won't find elsewhere. Even seasoned, award-winning modelers who've looked at these books have said they learned new techniques from them. I can't wait to try some of what I've learned on modeling my tank interiors.The other volumes in the encyclopedia include Cockpits, Painting, Weathering, and Final Steps. Each volume is $30-50 depending on which volume it is and where you buy it. If you think you might end up getting more than one (and you're likely to), I'd recommend buying the entire set on Mig Jimenez's website. There, you get all five volumes and a special subscriber-only sixth volume, all for $135.Encyclopedia of Aircraft Modelling Techniques: Interiors and Assembly

Alex Schomburg's cover for Speed Comics #35, published by Harvey Comics, November 1944, has a lot going on: bondage, sadism, racist depictions of Japanese soldier, gunfire, and a scantily clothed woman.[via]

Bikram Choudhury, the millionaire accused serial rapist who popularized hot yoga in America, sued other hot yoga studios in 2003, including "open source yoga" practicioners, asserting that he held a copyright over the sequence of poses conducted in his class. (more…)

Artist Rebecca Cohen posted her interpretation of six sexy halloween costumes on Deviantart: a sexy cockroach, a sexy frying pan, sexy poo, a sexy tampon, a sexy fetus, and sexy late-stage syphilis.

In Brazil, a 70-year-old woman was killed when directions she followed from the driving app Waze led her and her husband into a neighborhood controlled by a violent drug gang. The destination they meant to go to? A beach area popular with tourists, which was in the opposite direction. (more…)

Oct 31 2005: Security researcher Mark Russinovich blows the whistle on Sony-BMG, whose latest "audio CDs" were actually multi-session data-discs, deliberately designed to covertly infect Windows computers when inserted into their optical drives. (more…)

Oh, Taiwanese Animators, you rarely disappoint.(more…)

Mary Yordy made a set of 16 cards called Women In Espionage. You can buy them through Etsy. (more…)

Online retail giant Amazon just launched a marketplace for handcrafted goods: Handmade at Amazon. It's “an arts-and-crafts bazaar online that squarely takes aim at a niche but growing market dominated by the Brooklyn-based Etsy,” as the New York Times puts it.Handmade at Amazon went live early Thursday more than 80,000 items from roughly 5,000 sellers in 60 countries around the world. They're launching with only 6 categories — home, jewelry, artwork, stationery and party supplies, kitchen and dining, and baby.Crafters can sell their crocheted pants or 3D-printed succulent cozies on the new Amazon marketplace, just as they've been able to for years at Etsy, a $2bn-a-year business .Amazon's business is a lot bigger: $75 billion in annual sales. And Amazon's is growing, while Etsy appears to be challenged. One recent change at Etsy that allowed sellers to outsource their production to others is seen by many as a move away from its maker/seller roots.Amazon, on the other hand, promises “Genuinely Handmade.” In the launch announcement, Amazon emphasizes that everything will be “crafted and sold directly from artisans.”“We only approve artisans whose products are handcrafted,” said Amazon in a statement. “We are factory-free.”Them's fighting words. Is this the end of Etsy as we know it? I hope not, I love Etsy.Here's the full Amazon press release. And here's a snip from the Times story:

The biopic, starring Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs, is getting good writeups: "brilliant, when not breaking your heart," is Time Out's summation of both man and movie.An early dissent, from Rex Reed, is equally unsurprising to anyone who has followed the narratives of Jobs: " Cold, obnoxious, neurotic, selfish, indifferent toward everything but his computers … worth $441 million when his wife and daughter were living on welfare". (And, postscript, Fassbender "looks nothing whatsoever like Jobs.")At Wired, Jason Tanz writes about Steve Jobs and "Tech's god complex".

Authorities in Tennessee say an 11-year-old boy has been detained on first-degree murder charges after shooting and killing an 8-year-old neighbor with a shotgun because she would not show him her pet puppies.The gun belonged to the boy's father. The two kids went to the same school.Neighbors interviewed by local news reporters identified the victim as Maykayla Dyer."Wanting to see a puppy, the little girl laughed and told him no... and that was it," said neighbor Chasity Arwood."Watching the Tennessee football game, heard the bang," Arwood said. "And then everybody screaming that he shot her baby girl."(more…)

“A sneezing monkey, a walking fish and a jewel-like snake are just some of a biological treasure trove of over 200 new species discovered in the Eastern Himalayas in recent years,” reports the World Wildlife Foundation today.(more…)

The Wikipedia co-founder is also the UK government's special Internet advisor. In the previous election cycle, Tory PM David Cameron promised to ban strong crypto if re-elected, and when the US surveillance establishment dropped its demands for a ban on crypto, Cameron doubled down on the proposition. (more…)

Deep Fried Art's t-shirt "Scoundrels" ($20 with shipping) depicts Gossamer (the Looney Toons monster) and Bugs as Han and Solo: "I wonder what their ship would look like? The Millenium Carrot??"

Watching Netflix, Hulu or other streaming services can unfortunately be difficult while traveling outside the US. Rather than bypass these restrictions with the help of a complex and slow VPN, choose a faster and simpler solution with Getflix. Instead of rerouting all your Internet traffic through a different server, this handy service only routes the traffic needed so you can still enjoy top Internet speeds. Getflix unblocks more than 100 streaming channels around the world so you can watch movies, TV, sports, and more wherever life may take you.

“This is what happens when people come back from vacation in China and try to get into Beijing. And you thought your puny traffic jams were crazy.” (more…)

Endorphins may have been getting too much credit for “runner's high,” that euphoric lift we get when we exercise intensely. (more…)

Andrew Wardle suffers from a rare medical condition that prevented him from developing a penis. The 40-year-old man claims that he has been intimate with more than 100 women and most of them never knew he was missing a member.“I knew my way around a woman’s body, I knew my way around their mind,” Wardle says. “I was very confident in bed of what I could do to them so they wouldn’t come near me and they were finished and I was fine.”And when that didn't work, he told his partners not to bother because recreational drugs, or kidney disease, made it impossible for him to get an erection at the time.Wardle is currently undergoing procedures to have a penis constructed from muscle tissue. His story is the subject of a new TV documentary.(The Independent)

Doctors Without Borders received an apology from President Barack Obama today for the deadly U.S. bombing of its hospital in northern Afghanistan.The international medical aid organization released a statement today:"We reiterate our ask that the U.S. government consent to an independent investigation led by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to establish what happened in Kunduz, how it happened, and why it happened," said Dr. Joanne Liu, international president of the group, also known as Doctors Without Borders.[caption id="attachment_426606" align="alignnone" width="800"] MSF headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland October 7, 2015. REUTERS[/caption]

Amazon's book editors compiled their list of "100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime."It's a compelling list, even if they skipped two of my favorite SF authors, JG Ballard and Rudy Rucker. Who else did they miss? Share in the comments!"100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime" (Amazon)

Edward Scissorhands has got nothing on Chuck Berry's two-handed Christmas tree trimming at Berry's Christmas Tree Farm in Covington, Georgia. (via Digg)

The flashlights in our household have a tendency to wander off. Where do they go? I gave my last remaining one to my daughter for a camping trip, so I just reordered an 8-pack of metal LED flashlights for $14. Each flashlight has 9 LEDs and uses 3 AAA cells (included, though some reviewers on Amazon have reported that they did not come with batteries). I keep one in the car, one in my travel bag, and the rest in a kitchen drawer, where they no doubt plotting their escape.

Kim Davis isn't doing her job again. Michael from Muckrock writes, "This time, she's falling short on responding to public records requests, particularly one relating to her controversial visit with Pope Francis." (more…)

In 1969, my friend Jacques Vallee published Passport To Magonia, the first study of how modern UFO sightings are just the latest interpretation of weird "visitation" experiences that people throughout history have experienced in different forms: angels, demons, fairies, devils, Our Lady of Fatima, and on and on. (No, Jacques doesn't think UFOs are extraterrestrials who traveled here in spaceships.) This folkloristic study of UFOs has become a Fortean classic. Recently, Jacques and co-author Chris Aubeck followed that thread further, cataloging and analyzing hundreds of reports of mysterious aerial phenomena dating back all the way to ancient Egypt through 1879. Guess what? People have seen strange lights in the sky since way before Roswell, Communion, and the X-Files. The witnesses just described them using the language and metaphors of their time, instead of calling them flying saucers or gray aliens. And this phenomena, whatever it is, influenced religion and culture in profound ways.Jacques and Chris collected their latest research in the book Wonders In The Sky and have now launched an Indiegogo campaign to publish a magnificent Collector's Limited Edition! The slipcased tome features more than 100 color photos and illustrations and includes a print portfolio of rare 17th and 18th century broadsheets documenting strange celestial events, and a facsimile of a 1648 French coin depicting a "legendary shield from the sky." Only 500 of these signed, numbered copies will ever be made.Indeed, this edition of Wonders In The Sky is an objet d'art that exemplifies why the printed page will never die. It is a wonder in itself.Support and purchase Wonders In The Sky: Collector's Limited Edition

Three scientists won the world's top science prize today, for their "mechanistic studies of DNA repair." Their work mapped how cells repair deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to prevent damaging errors from appearing in genetic information.Tomas Lindahl, Paul L. Modrich and Aziz Sancar today received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “having mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA and safeguards its genetic information,” the New York Times reports.(more…)

The severed, animated, flopping zombie appendage is a staple of horror films, and these zombie-mouth cupcakes look like someone has decorated an amuse-bouche with a bouche coupé. (more…)

If you live in Austin, Texas and need a vasectomy, how could you choose a physician other than Dick Chopp!

For more than a year, once every week or so, Benjamin Bennett sets up his video camera, sits in front of it, and smiles at it for four hours straight while recording.(more…)

In the last five years, criminal gangs in Moldova have been stopped four times from selling radioactive materials, including bomb-grade uranium, on the black market. You have to wonder if they have also succeeded one or more times, and we just don't know about it yet.From AP:

In World War II, the Nazis made a bunch of different booby trapped items, including thermos flasks, mess tins, motor oil cans, watches, and even a chocolate bar designed to kill Winston Churchill when he bit into it. Fortunately, England's Prime Minister did not sink his teeth into the candy-coated bomb, and the MI5 hired an artist to illustrate it and the other German booby traps it had discovered. These drawings were lost in a drawer for 70 years, but were recently found and have been published by the BBC. (more…)

The appeal of visual novels usually lie in their wish fulfillment, their ability to transport you into fantasies about dating beautiful boys (and girls), becoming a celebrity or a pop star, or acquiring amazing powers. The the visual novel SC2VN, however, offers you a chance to live out a very different sort of fantasy: becoming a professional Starcraft 2 player in South Korea.Unexpectedly, I loved it. I know virtually nothing about eSports, and have certainly never fantasized about playing them. But if Friday Night Lights proved anything to me, it's that you don't actually have to give a shit about sports in order to give a shit about the people who play them. Tell the right story, and the specific details of the competition matter a lot less than the fact that it matters to characters you care about—even when the competition happens to be a digital one.The game (which originally started of as a joke by its creators at Team Eleven Eleven) opens on a competitive match of Starcraft 2, where your character is about to suffer an ignominious defeat. The loss feels doubly painful because you're a foreigner (read: not a South Korean) who just spent your entire savings to fly across the world and take one last shot at achieving your eSports dream. It hasn't been going well.You have no wins to boast about, no friends to support you, and now you're running out of money. As someone helpfully reminds you after you arrive, "it's been more than five years since a foreign pro-gamer accomplished anything noteworthy in Korea," and the odds are stacked against you as an outsider. And while playing video games for a living might sound like a dream job, it to mention that playing Starcraft 2 isn't even "fun" for you in the traditional sense, and seems to provoke more far more anxiety and self-doubt than it does happiness.But here you are, risking everything for it anyway. Your character (who can be either male or female) regards Starcraft with something between awe and addiction, a game that "requires the dexterity of a pianist alongside the strategic thinking of a chess player," and one that you just can't seem to quit no matter how punishing it sometimes feels.But what makes SC2VN so compelling isn't just the fascinating window it offers into a potentially unfamiliar subculture, but the more universal story it tells about passion generally and sports specifically, the dizzying highs and crushing lows of loving a beautiful game.Your protagonist, who goes by the pseudonym "Mach," has traveled to South Korea not only because it's the country where eSports was born, but because it offers the most opportunities for pro gaming—not to mention the sort of rabid fandom that can fill stadiums and elevate players to mainstream fame. But if you have any hope of rising beyond the amateur matches on your local PC bang, you'll need to find yourself some teammates, get the attention of a sponsor, and start making some waves.If you're unfamiliar with eSports generally, and the professional Starcraft 2 community in South Korea specifically, SC2VN does its best to catch you up. In the "extras" section, there's a particularly helpful introduction by Day[9]—a popular eSports commentator and former pro—that'll give you a crash course in the history of professional gaming.You'll have to pick up the finer details on the fly, though it's not that difficult; even if you don't know exactly what it means to "ladder" and "cheese," or exactly what a "one base all-in" strategy involves, you can pick up most of it from context. At several points, you actually play faux-Starcraft matches in the midst of the visual novel, experiences that feel very tense and intense, especially when your reputation (and your dreams) are riding on the outcome. Most of it unfolds through the narration of your as your character, who explains the backstory and the implications of various choices a bit like a first-person sports announcer. Other times, though, you'll be asked to make strategic choices that could very well determine the outcome of the game. Should you rush in quickly for an early attack, hoping that you'll take your opponent by surprise, or hold back to build up your forces before staging your assault?The closer you grow to your goal, the more you'll have to deal with the double-edged sword of fandom and online visibility, which can help make you a star—or tear you down. Just like many more traditional sports, a lot of eSports fans become invested in the games because of the personalities and rivalries, and your character even suggests that "most of the people who follow Starcraft know less about the game itself than they do about the people playing it."Although eSports is still a very male-dominated field, there are a surprising number of women in the primary cast of SC2VN. If you decide to play as a female character, the majority of players on the pro Starcraft team you eventually assemble will end up being women. Unsurprisingly, these players express many of the same frustrations that you've likely heard from women in games before, including how frustrating it is to be objectified and condescended to by the people in your field, rather than celebrated for your ability.When a teenage boy suggests that women have it easier in eSports because they get more attention, two female players quickly correct his attitude.If you've ever laughed as eSports or dismissed the concept as absurd, you might reassess your own attitude as well by the end of SC2VN. After watching your character sweat and struggle—and seeing exactly how much work and talent it requires to succeed at such a competitive and complex game—chances are the condescension won't come quite as easy.Although the game drags a bit by the end and there are moments when it spends a bit too much time explaining things that are perfectly evident on screen, I found myself surprisingly absorbed by Mach's quest to achieve a goal that holds absolutely no personal interest for me. (It's also free to download on Steam and Itch.io, so it has that going for it too.)If SC2VN taught me anything about competitive Starcraft, it's both how little I know about it and how much there is to know. Even as a semi-professional player, your character has several moments where you realize that the truly elite players are functioning on a level of strategy you can barely comprehend, and for all your efforts, you're just starting to scratch the surface.Will you ever be able to go head to head with the most competitive players in the world? More relevantly, will you be able to do it before you run out of money and have to admit defeat—to your friends, to your family, to yourself? Ultimately, it boils down to the same rdilemma that so many artists and athletes face when they're trying to turn their passions into a career: If you can't quite make a living at the thing you love, how long should you hold out—and when do you need to admit that you're deluding yourself? How much are you willing to give up for a shot at your dream, even if it's one that the people around you don't understand or appreciate?While your character gets some unrealistically lucky breaks, there are no rose-colored glasses here, and no fairy tale ending on offer, especially in a field where few people remain competitive beyond their 20s. It's a story that might feel very familiar to anyone who's had to sacrifice their comfort and security for a shot at their dream—no matter how long the odds might be, or how briefly the spotlight shines on them.

See more photos at Wink Fun.Katamino is a wooden puzzle and board game that can be played solo (puzzle) or with two players (puzzle game). As a two-person game, players must arrange the twelve different shaped blocks – pentaminos [same as pentomino, but this is how Katamino spells it] – so that they fit and completely cover the grid on the board, which can be adjusted in length before the game starts. Players take turns fitting the pentaminos over the squares until one player can no longer fit a piece. The game is simple, quick and challenging. The wooden pieces are high quality and beautiful enough to keep out on display. I am not much of a window shopper myself, but was amazed by this puzzle game from the moment I saw it. I spent quite a while working the puzzle in the store before I went ahead and purchased it. With over thousands of possible combinations and a handful of variations to play the game, I'd say Katamino satisfies the requisite for a must-have puzzle game for anyone who's up for a challenge.– Joseph NicholasKatamino Deluxe

I am frequently asked about this beautiful telescope! People think it is a bong! The Edmund Scientific Astroscan sits in the center of my living room coffee table.I have heard astronomy buffs screech like wounded monkeys at the idea of my actually using this telescope to view the skies. I'm no celestial connoisseur, and this beautiful post-modern masterpiece offers me all I need in an at-home or camping telescope. Screw telling you about the optics, how much magnification it offers (variable based on your eyepiece,) or any other technical data! Here is the important thing:I love how it looks!Several years ago, I asked Mark what telescope he'd recommend. He sent me a picture of this one and I bought it immediately. Only later did I find out he just liked how it looked, neither of us did a bit of research on its utility as a functional sky viewing telescope.Honestly, it is fine. Here is a great video that'll tell you more than you need to know:https://youtu.be/33goP6I4oPoIf you'd like to find an AstroScan, try eBay! Mine is a lovely, functional conversation piece. Do not attempt to use it as a water pipe.

Everything in my home is looking at me! You'd be surprised, when you have a bag of 500 googly eyes, what they get glued to!This is a bargain price for an art supply my daughter loves having around. I doubt I'll ever need a second bag, but if I do $2.99 is really not a problem.These eyes do not have an adhesive backing! You will need to glue them to things. Glue Stick works well for the 8 year old, and makes it easier to remove them from odd places.It is a lot of fun sticking eyes in weird places.Watch them wiggle eyes, Black(500 PIECES) - BULK via Amazon

https://youtu.be/MPql1VHbYl4Writer Michael Pollan provides play-by-play commentary on these time-lapse videos of plants striving to reach a pole. It really does seem like the plants have a conscious intention to meet a goal. I missed this video when the New Yorker first ran it in 2014.

Maciej Ceglowski (previously) spoke to a O'Reilly's Strata Big Data conference this month about the toxicity of data -- the fact that data collected is likely to leak, and that data-leaks resemble nuclear leaks in that even the "dilute" data (metadata or lightly contaminated boiler suits and tools) are still deadly when enough of them leak out (I've been using this metaphor since 2008). (more…)

Umbracity aims to solve the problem of unexpected urban showers with a shared-umbrella service. They've rolled it out in soggy Vancouver, and the deal is that you get to use an umbrella from any of their kiosks for free for 48h, but if you keep it longer, it's $2/day to a maximum of $20. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ctE_Rf6NFgHow To Cake It's "Deep Red Velvet Brain Cake with Fondant Brain Tissue and Raspberry Jam Blood" is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, only it has to be seen to be believed. (more…)

https://youtu.be/gE6zS6Z9FGQI loved Mariel Cartwright's art for radical fighting game Skullgirls, and now she's working on a big new roleplaying adventure called Indivisible, inspired by classic exploration and combat games like Valkyrie Profile and Super Metroid.Unusually for the genre, the cast of characters is visually diverse, with a young woman of color as the protagonist. Hiroki Kikuta, best known for the Secret of Mana soundtrack, will do the soundtrack for this one, which is pretty impressive too.If it sounds star-studded and ambitious, it is—which is why the game is attempting to raise $1.5 million through crowdfunding. If it achieves that goal, publisher 505 Games will provide the remainder of Indivisible's $3.5 million budget. That might sound steep for crowdfunding, but throwback-style games in well-loved niches often raise large budgets.It'll be interesting to see how Indivisible does—this sort of funding approach, whereby the audience provides the "seed round" that gives a larger company the confidence to produce and back the project, is one possible avenue for unusual or nostalgic games to get made. Vote with your wallet at IndieGoGo if you're interested in this one.

Ted Chiang (previously) may be the best short story writer in science fiction today; though he produces very infrequently, he wins accolades and awards for every story. (more…)

https://youtu.be/HYM-fp1AiXMPsychic Cat is a fascinating, neon-luminescent landscape you traverse as a cat, galloping and leaping through the suggestion of a place that shimmers brightly all around you. At first it feels like a dream, but gradually it starts to make a strange kind of sense: What if this is what the world looks like to a cat?What if, to a cat, the human world looks like a huge failed civilization bisected by unnatural celestial shapes? What if we are vaguely threatening, uniform creatures, our physics jerking unnaturally in the animal eye?What are the glowing cubes the Psychic Cat can toss on its ongoing journey? What do they represent? Does it matter?Get Psychic Cat by George Royer here for free or a suggested $5 donation.

Some day, you may be the defendant in a criminal trial that turns on whether the software in a forensic device reached a reliable conclusion about a DNA test or other piece of evidence. Wouldn't you like to have your own experts check the source code on that device? (more…)

That baby in the snugli is no baby: it's a hollow baby doll fitted with a booze-filled rehydration bladder with an access-straw in the forehead, beneath its wooly cap. (more…)

COME MEET Ruben Bolling at New York Comic Con, this Sunday (10/11), 1-2pm. Signing, sketching, selling, PLUS a limited number of copies of the upcoming second adventure of The EMU Club, Ghostly Thief of Time, which won't be released until November 3, will be available! Info here.FOLLOW @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.And FURTHER, please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE for advance access to comics and more stuff.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)