I'm familiar with the psych music scene that emerged in the 1960s-1970s in some Latin American countries like Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, thanks to fantastic reissues of rare LPs on labels like Luaka Bop, Goma Gringa, Now Again, and Mr Bongo. Now, the esteemed diggers at Mr Bongo have brought us a stunningly spacey psych record from Mexico: Luis Pérez's "Ipan In Xiktli Metztli, México Mágico Cósmico, El Ombligo de la Luna."In the 1970s, Pérez studied the pre-Columbian instruments and musical traditions across Mexico, from the Maya and Nahuatl to Raramuri and Wixarika. He channeled those influences into his own deeply original and gorgeous electronic and experimental psychedelic songs that make up this record first released in 1981. Listen below.As Mr Bongo writes, Pérez "delves deep into the past but also exists entirely outside of time."Far fucking out.

Adam Savage gives a talk every year at Maker Faire. It's one of the highlights at the Bay Area event. This year, Adam talked about why sharing is such an important part of the maker movement.

A private plane carrying at least six US passengers from Austin, TX crashed on the small runway at Toncontin airport in Honduras's capital, Tegucigalpa. The plane split in half, but miraculously nobody was seriously injured.According to the BBC:

Eudora -- first released in 1988 -- was the first industrial-strength email client designed to run on personal computers like IBM PC and the Macintosh; though there are still die-hard users of the program, the last version was published in 2016. (more…)

The Lifeclock One: Snake Edition is a $300 licensed replica of the countdown timer watch worn by Snake Plissken in Escape From New York: it's very cool looking and faithful to the original prop, but regrettably, the designers have added in a bunch of "smart-watch" features (Bluetooth, an app, text-message and app notifications from your phone) that raise the price, create needless attack surface, and add complexity. (more…)

George Clinton, explaining why Medicaid Fraud Dogg was being released under the Parliament banner, rather than Funkadelic: "Because the last album was (2014's) Funkadelic First Ya Gotta Shake The Gate. It's Parliament's turn." (more…)

The workday is long, and inevitably, you're going to find yourself needing to take a break from the daily grind. With Mini Materials Miniature Cinder Blocks, you can take some time for yourself and decompress by turning your desk into a miniature construction site. They're available today in the Boing Boing Store for $22.49.https://www.youtube.com/embed/8KGN2W-EXSkHandmade out of real cement, these 1:12-scale mini cinder blocks make fun toys for DIY-ers and tinkerers alike. You can use them to decorate your desk and build pen holders, platforms, and whatever else your mind can envision. Plus, they come on a wooden pallet that doubles as a coaster for extra utility.24-packs of Mini Materials Miniature Cinder Blocks are available in the Boing Boing Store for $22.49.

Celotex convinced the owners of Grenfell Tower and hundreds of other buildings in the UK to insulate with their RS5000 insulation product -- a product that had never passed safety tests. The company claimed it was safe for use because a different version of RS5000 (one that used much more flame-retardant) had been through the tests. (more…)

Steam is reportedly cracking down on "scantily clad cartoon women" in its online gane platform. Publishers of adult-themed anime visual novels say they've been told to remove offending titles or leave town.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I56Kkxh_osRammellzee (previously) -- artist, graffiti writer, hip hop musician, masked performer, Gothic Futurist -- died in 2010, leaving a mysterious body of work. Hua Hsa explores his spectacular mythology. [via Metafilter]

Adobe's Photoshop, the all-conquering image manipulation software that now anchors the subscription-based Creative Suite, was originally written in Pascal and distributed under the name "Barneyscan XP" for its first licensor. Not long after...

In 1990, two thieves dressed as policemen walked into Boston's Gardner museum and walked out with 13 artworks worth half a billion dollars. After 28 years the lost masterpieces have never been recovered. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the largest art theft in history and the ongoing search for its solution.We'll also discover the benefits of mustard gas and puzzle over a surprisingly effective fighter pilot.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Let's check in with Michael, who has thoughts on the nuptials of the lizard prince.

Project Chimps put chimps in a ball pit and the chimps were happy: "Chimpanzees love ball pits too!"

You likely haven’t heard of magician Franz Harary, an American who’s fame and fortune have come from performing mostly in Asia. Not only is Franz a fine performer, but he’s also one of the most respected creators of illusions.Recently he produced an entire marching band—I kid you not—using one of his own methods. No CGI here folks, just a magician doing something really clever that will leave you bewildered.

Here's a fab funk cover of Guns N' Roses' 1988 hit single "Sweet Child O' Mine" featuring the powerful vocals of Mario Jose.Now, here's the backstory of the band behind the cover: In 2017, Patreon's founder and CEO Jack Conte started a band (no, not that one) with his buddy-since-high-school Ryan Lerman, a funk band called Scary Pockets.Conte shares how the band formed:

No one will doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion in Standard Rainbow's leggings. Their geometric patterns are inspired by the "dazzle camouflage," the experimental paint jobs used on World War I battleships to confuse enemy submarine gunners.P.S. There are also totebags.Previously: "Dazzle camouflage" on BBCongrats, Evan Wagoner-Lynch!USS Nebraska image via Wikipedia (public domain), totes image via Standard Rainbow

FOR THE KIDS IN YOUR LIFE, AND THEIR SUMMER READING: Get Ruben Bolling’s hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures."The EMU Club inhabits exactly the world I always hoped to live in when I was 12, when the answer to questions like 'Where did I put my toy' led inevitably to alien conspiracies and secret underground tunnels. A book for the curious and adventurous!" -Cory Doctorow, author of "For the Win" and "Little Brother""The type of non-stop action and improbably hilarious fun that only a kid could dream up. ... The EMU Club's adventures perfectly capture the intersection of imagination and wonder - the crossroad that's so often found in cardboard boxes, pillow forts and backyards everywhere." -GeekDadGet Book the First, "Alien Invasion in My Backyard," here.Get Book the Second, "Ghostly Thief of Time," here.--More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Walter Stabosz writes, "Delaware was the first state to ratify the US constitution, giving it the moniker 'The First State.' It is also the second smallest state, and has only three counties. Tonight in Delaware's most populous county, New Castle County, there will be a vote that may decide the fate of a library built in one of New Castle's most underserved and at-risk communities. (more…)

At this year's Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, researcher Chen Chen presented a cool project that vastly improves the quality of images captured in low-light conditions.Via his presentation:

I'm heading to Phoenix Comics Fest tomorrow (going straight to the airport from my daughter's elementary school graduation) (!), and I've got a busy schedule so I thought I'd produce a comprehensive list of the places you can find me in Phoenix: (more…)

I've been patiently awaiting this Bad Lip Reading of the Royal Wedding, and, I have to say, it was worth the wait. "Let's all try to be the best squirrel in the hole."Previously: Bad Lip Reading videos on BB

I already have a metal plate on the back of my phone case because I use it with my magnetic car mount, so this magnetic desk mount looks like a good way to hold my phone on my desk. If your phone doesn't come with a plate, this mount includes one. It's regularly $15, but if you use code 87HFODR4 at checkout on Amazon, it's $9.

This classic mashup of The Matrix and Office Space holds up, so ICYMI, enjoy this well-edited clip of Neo hiding from Lundbergh while taking a call from Milton. (more…)

I love low-rent pulp magazines from the 1920s right through to the early 1980s. Trashy, flashy and a constant pleasure to read, I used to own a ton of the things in varying conditions. If I saw it and it was still in a condition where I could read it, I’d fork over folding money for the privilege of inhaling the smell of rotting, low quality paper and the sweet sense of abuse one can enjoy at the mercy of ham-handed prose. Unfortunately, I had to unload my collection a few years back: there was just no room for it in the nomadic lifestyle that my wife and I are currently living—paying for a storage space to keep stuff I just don’t need is an entanglement that I’m not OK with.Thankfully, the good people at Open Culture discovered that a cache of over 11,000 pulp magazines has been digitized and posted online where pulp geeks like me can access them for the low, low price of free.The Pulp Magazine Archive contains treasures printed on low-quality paper that have publication dates ranging from the late 1800s through to the 1950s. Each magazine in the Archive can be viewed online using the website or downloaded in a number of formats to be read offline, including options for use with tablets, Kindle and Kobo e-readers.I don’t know about you, but my downtime for the next few years is spoken for.Image via The Pulp Magazine Archive

Without question the 1976 BMW R90s is the high watermark of motorcycle design and engineering. I absolutely love mine. Listening to Peter Egan, a legendary motorcycle journalist, talk about his and some other bike he compares it to, is a lot of fun.If Egan had a Daytona Orange model no one would have noticed the other bike. Daytona Orange is not only faster, it handles better.

Or maybe Gary Busey. That's supposed to be Brandi Chastain, recently inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. Here's a side-by-side to see who this resembles more: (more…)

The pretty far reaching study we blogged last week, about Octopi coming from outer space, is really most likely, probably, near certainly not true.Via Space.com

Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hof is known for chilly feats like the world's longest ice bath and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in just a pair of shorts. (Hof is the subject of the recent New York Times bestseller "What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength" by Scott Carney.) Now, researchers from Wayne State University’s School of Medicine recently used an MRI scanner to explore the science behind Hof's dangerous stunts. From Smithsonian:

Farming is undergoing a quiet but radical transformation as machine learning and automation innovations reduce waste. One especially promising new technology targets individual weeds. (more…)

One of the best songs, and videos, of all time.Currently on tour again, after a years long hiatus, Eric B. and Rakim have been in my playlist since Paid in Full's debut in 1987.

Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was so determined to ram through a Net Neutrality repeal that he ignored the fact that the FCC's public comment inbox was flooded with fake comments from anti-Net Neutrality bots -- at least a million of them -- who indiscriminately stole identities from the dead and alive alike (Pai said he'd treat these fake comments with the same weight that he gave to comments from humans, refusing to help law enforcement track down the botmasters, so that the Congressional Budget Office had to step in). (more…)

If you or someone you care about is addicted to OxyContin, former New York City Mayor and current Worst Frigging Lawyer on the Whole Damn Planet, Rudolph Giuliani, is partially to blame.300,000 Oxycontin-related deaths? He can have some props for those, too.According to The Guardian, the United States government managed to slap a criminal charge on Purdue Pharma back in the mid-2000s for the way that Purdue was marketing Oxycontin, a powerful and, oft-times addictive, painkiller. In their advertising for the drug, Purdue buffed up how safe Oxycontin is to use: They claimed that the drug would be slowly released into the patient’s body, providing pain relief while ensuring that the possibility of addiction was kept to a minimum.Which is why so many people inject and snort Oxycontin for a near-instant high.Unfortunately, when it was first released back in the 1990s, doctors had no idea that the drug would prove to be as addictive as we now know it to be. It didn’t take long, however, for physicians who were prescribing the Oxycontin to their patients to discover that many became hooked on the painkiller – hard. The American government took exception to Purdue’s bullshit. A US Attorney began the work to take the drug company down. The matter went to trial.Giuliani, fresh off his stint as Mayor of NYC, was hired by Purdue to help them escape prosecution. This was the same Giuliani, who announced a program to curb illegal drug use back in the late 1990s. That said, this was also the same Giuliani who admitted to buying crack cocaine in the 1980s, allegedly as part of his drug education under the tutelage of the DEA, so I dunno.From The Guardian:

A couple of weeks ago, comedian Jim Gaffigan took a stab at writing cartoon captions for The New Yorker. Turns out he's really good at it, almost as good as 9-year-old Alice Kassnove.Previously: Jim Gaffigan takes over a woman's Tinder, hilarity ensues

YouTuber Nigels Life created a cool proof of concept for a quiz show using YouTube clips as multiple choice answers. He recorded a clip for every possible outcome. (more…)

On June 20, the U.S. Postal Service will roll out Frozen Treats, the first ever scratch-and-sniff stamps. Artist Margaret Berg of Santa Monica, California created the watercolored illustrations of ice pops featured on these special First-Class Mail Forever postage stamps.

For the crime of talking to a western media outlet about his native tongue, Tashi Wangchuk has been sentenced to prison.Back in 2015, Mr. Tashi spoke to the New York Times about his concerns that Tibetans were in danger of losing their native language. It was a problem that had been brewing for a while. Tibet declared independence from the much larger nation in 1913. They had their culture, their Dalai Lama and their territory. Things were good… for around 36 years. In 1949, Mao Zedong got China all hot and horny for Communism. Looking to regain the lands that they felt belonged to them, for political and defensive reasons, The People’s Republic of China invaded Tibet in 1950, invaded Tibet, scourging the nation’s culture, language and beliefs in an effort to bring it into line with China’s political doctrine.China’s never relented its stranglehold on Tibet’s politics but, over time, it did come to allow a certain amount of levity for ethnic minorities, not just in Tibet, but in other Chinese territories (both traditionally recognized or taken by force). Diversity in custom and language were begrudgingly tolerated. In 1984, China went so far as to protect the right to the preservation of language and culture, so long as it didn’t get in the way of their political agenda, under the law. So, when Mr. Tashi chatted with The Grey Lady, he assumed that he and the Chinese government would be cool.He couldn’t have been more wrong.The most recent iteration of the Central People’s Government holds a more assimilationist approach to governance: One people, one language, yadda yadda. The law that should have protected Mr. Tashi was ignored by the Chinese government in favor of arresting him for "inciting separatism." That he was found guilty was a given: the Chinese Communist Party court that Mr. Tashi stood before generally gets its way. In this case, its way is that Tashi be sentenced to five years in prison. Including the time that he’d already served while waiting for his trial, he won’t be able to call himself a free man until 2021.From The New York Times:

TomTechTod has plans for making a very tiny radio transmitter which could be used to eavesdrop on a conversation at a distance. At the end of the video, he demonstrates how it works at a distance of 120 meters. Not to get all Gene Hackman, but it's a good reminder to be careful about what you say.Image: Instructables/TomTechTod

Brian David Gilbert is the anxiety-laden voice of a generation in Shingle Jingle, the most upbeat song ever written about suffering from shingles outbreaks. (more…)

Amazon bills its Rekognition image classification system as a "deep learning-based image and video analysis" system; it markets the system to US police forces for use in analyzing security camera footage, including feeds from police officers' bodycams. (more…)

A servo motor has a rotating shaft that can be controlled to rotate to a specified angle. They'e used in a lot of industrial applications, and also in hobby electronics to control robots and remote control models. This video does a good job of explaining how servos work. It also goes into using Arduino to drive multiple servos.

This curious woodpecker is captivated by a Tesla Model 3, which is parked at a campsite in Yosemite. The bird checks out the entire car, pecking at the metal and glass as it moves from the passenger side to the front of the car and then on to the driver's side.You can hear an amused yet nervous man's voice in the background: "What are you doing to my car? You better not crack my glass. Nope..Hey! What are you doing?!" In the end, the woodpecker decides a tree is more interesting.

The landing is the hard part. Thoughts and prayers for this now-injured skydiver. Thankfully rescue staff rush to her aid, while office staff hope she clearly signed the release of liability.

In January 2013, The Onion ran a satire piece "written" by "Donald Trump," titled, "When You're Feeling Low, Just Remember I'll Be Dead In About 15 Or 20 Years." (Excerpt: "In the not-very-distant future I will die and then be gone from the world for all eternity. You may even get to watch me in a casket on national television being lowered into the ground, never to be seen again. I bet you’re smiling just thinking about that... Indeed, you can always take solace in the fact that the monstrous, unimaginable piece of shit that is me will stop existing fairly soon, and that I will continue to not exist for the remainder of your lifetime.")A couple of weeks later, Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, sent The Onion an unintentionally funny email, asking The Onion to contact him "immediately to discuss," saying "the article is an absolutely disgusting piece that lacks any place in journalism; even in your Onion." He adds, "This commentary goes way beyond defamation and, if not immediately removed, I will take all actions necessary to ensure your actions do not go without consequence. Guide yourself accordingly."The editors of The Onion say they would love to speak with Cohen now.

If you've never heard a lynx wail, now is your chance. Their screams sound more like humans just being weird than actual animal sounds, but according to Global News, these lynx shouts are real.The video was shot in Ontario, Canada.

Cara Koscinksi ordered a graduation cake from the John's Island Publix, requesting the phrase "Congrats Jacob! Summa Cum Laude Class of 2018". Publix ruined the order by removing "cum", because "cum" is "profane."

German maker Laura Kampf came to Maker Faire Bay Area 2018, which took place last weekend. I interviewed her on stage there on Saturday and really enjoyed meeting her. I highly recommend her YouTube channel. In this video, she presents the highlights of her visit to the Bay Area.

Two pages of Ludwig Van Beethoven's original musical manuscript for his Emperor Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 5) are up for auction. The 1809 document is expected to go for US$250,000-$350,000. The Emperor Concerto was the last piano concerto Beethoven completed. From Bonham's:

On Fox News Sunday, the National Rifle Association's incoming president Oliver North partially blamed the increase in school shootings on the ADHD medication Ritalin:

Today marks the release of the paperback of Walkaway, along with reissues of my five other adult novels, all in matching covers designed by the incredible Will Stahle (and if ebooks are your thing, check out my fair-trade ebook store, where you can get all my audiobooks and ebooks sold on the same terms as physical editions, with no DRM and no license agreements!).