Janelle Shane (previously) is a delightful AI researcher who likes to use machine learning systems to produce absurd, inhuman outputs, such as a list of AI-created notional ice-cream flavors generated by merging a list of real ice-cream flavors with a list of metal band names and pressing "go." (more…)

Ed Piskor's offering an annotated page-by-page look at the first part of X-Men: Grand Design, his epic retelling of how Marvel comics' pantheon of heroes came to be. Catch up here. — Eds.Director’s commentary…

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I'm fascinated by painting of an extrasolar planet, credited to "Beau.TheConsortium" and apparently first posted to this SF Wiki. They're called "eyeball planets" -- similar to Earth, but tidally locked with their star, creating a vast polar ice cap on the dark side, a scorching desert facing the sun, and a band around the center where water melts from one side to the other and life happens. The extremes involved have made them a hot topic among those searching for life.

When I first started watching this "outtakes" video by entertainment site BlendTV, I thought it was real. They took the part of Harry and Meghan's wedding where they exchange their vows and made it better, or at least funnier, by redubbing it.(reddit)

If you came of age in the 1990s, you couldn't help but know the lyrics to at least one James song. Laid is great! Not just the single, but the whole damn record. But here's the thing: It's not the greatest tune that the band has churned out. In fact, since Laid hit the charts back in 1993, James has continued to make absolutely fabulous, soulful music. If you're not familiar with their catalog, there's no better time than the present to fill your ears with their sounds. You'll find their songs on Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube.Once you're caught up, you'll be ready to buy their new album, Living in Extraordinary Times, due to pop on August 3rd.

Children's shows often include jokes to give a little "nudge nudge wink wink" to grown-ups. I mean, who could forget the subversive bits in Looney Tunes or, say, Pee-wee's Playhouse?But this compilation by YouTube channel Best of Simpsons Characters is different, because The Simpsons isn't really a show for kids. It's just the Simpsons' jokes that they didn't get when they were little.

Hey, remember a few months back when we told you about the dogs of Chernobyl? If not, long story short: when the nuclear power plant lost its shit back in the 1980s, everyone was evacuated so quickly that they were forced to leave their pets behind. The dogs living in the area were irradiated, but continued to breed. They went feral. Their numbers grew. But, when crews returned to the power plant with plans to clean the joint up, the dogs remembered that people were mostly OK. As such, the pooches decided to hang out. There was talk of a cull, but the workers at the plant refused to participate. A charity stepped in to keep and care foe the dogs. They’re currently living the best life many of them will have ever known.For a handful of the wild pups, things just got even better.According to Meduza, Ukraine State officials are planning on taking up to 200 of the dogs out of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. After holding them in medical quarantine for 45 days, the puppers, provided will be flown to the United States, where they’ll be put up for adoption. Provided they’re deemed to be free of radiation poisoning or any other weirdness, the first 12 dogs will be flown to the United States for adoption this June. There’s no word on where the dogs will be put up for adoption, but maybe that’s just as well: the dogs should be adopted because they’ll be lovable, loyal companions and not because of their irradiated pedigree.It’s estimate that between 200 to 300 stray pooches still roam the Exclusion Zone. Hopefully, it’ll be possible for each and everyone of them to find a forever home.Image courtesy of Ukraine State Agency of Ukraine for the management of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

One of the best reasons to buy a piece of Apple hardware, in my opinion, is the company’s history of protecting the privacy of its customers.Provided you're not a customer living in China.You may recall that, a while back, iOS users in China lost the ability to download most VPN clients to their phones and tablets from the iTunes App Store—the Chinese government doesn’t like their citizens to be able to anonymously access the Internet or view the world through the lens of unapproved news sources. So, Virtual Private Networks were kicked to the curb. According to 9to5mac, Apple is once again showing the Chinese government their soft underbelly, in the name of being able to continue to sell their hardware in the country.According to 9to5mac, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has decided that they’d like Callkit—a developer framework that lets devs bake VoIP capabilities into their apps for iOS—to not be a thing for applications available to its citizens. You likely use Callkit-backed apps on a regular basis, without even knowing it. When your iPhone displays you the name or number of who’s calling you on Skype? That’s Callkit, doing it’s thing. The Chinese government doesn’t dig on Callkit because of the fact that it’s difficult, if not impossible to intercept and monitor calls made using it. Last summer, Skype was removed from the Apple’s Chinese App Store portal, likely for this very reason.Look. Before anyone swoops in to say that I’m anti-Apple I wrote this post on a MacBook. There’s an iPad Pro sitting on my desk and I have an iPhone 7 Plus that goes pretty much everywhere that I do. If that’s not enough for you, when I'm not blogging here, I write for Macworld. I like the gear that the Apple makes. But I hate what’s going on here.In the United States, Apple has, publicly, flat-out refused to decrypt an iPhone for the FBI. The Guardian quoted Tim Cook as saying that “...at stake is the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties.” Apparently, Apple’s protection of civil liberties only extends to people who live in countries where the ability to sell their hardware isn’t at risk. The company has, over the past few years, become one of the biggest financial noises in the worldYou don’t get to be the richest pooch in the dog pile by standing on principle.The question I’m asking myself after hearing about Apple’s latest capitulation to China is whether the threat of being unable to sell their wares in the North American market would be enough to force them to lick the boots of our own governments. Given the leanings towards protectionism, xenophobia and paranoia that are quickly becoming the norm, not just in America, but around the world, we may not have to wait very long to find out.Image courtesy of Cristie Guevara

Activate your willing suspension of disbelief because Squirrel Monkey's back with Wonders of the World Wide Web. In this episode, they envision Amazon, "the department store of the future," as a virtual department store in the eighties. It's not historically accurate by any means, but that's part of what makes it so fun to watch. Previously: If Siri existed in the 1980s

Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch used his stolen Supreme Court seat to carry the day for corporations against workers in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, ruling that employers could force potential employees to sign away their legal right to participate in class action suits as a condition of employment. (more…)

My favorite culture critic, the inimitable Mark Dery, visited the "David Bowie is" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Author of the excellent "All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Rock Matters," Dery sees the exhibit as "a burial chamber for a rock god, replete with everything he’ll need for the afterlife." From the Brooklyn Rail:

VanTassel2 posted a fantastically weird series of ridiculous horror and science fiction B-movies with all appearances of humans edited out. Above, is the MST3K favorite "Attack of the Eye Creatures" (1965), without people. Below, "Curse of Bigfoot" (1976) aka "Teenagers Battle the Thing" and "The Mad Monster" (1942), without people.(via Weird Universe)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npDpJsBFqN8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_6rR3Z67dk

I've owned these safety glasses for a long time. They're like regular safety glasses, but they have magnifiers at the bottom. I've found them to be useful when I use a rotary tool, bandsaw, or drill press. I can look down and see the details, and when I back up to see the big picture, it's not blurry because the upper part is not magnified. You can get them in a variety of strengths.

Next year, high schools in Lockport New York will use the "Aegis" CCTV and facial recognition system to track and record the interactions of students suspected of code of conduct violations, keeping a ledger of who speaks to whom, where, and for how long. (more…)

Fondation Émergence created a great PSA they call the Pride Shield, where 193 pride flags (one for each country) show that together we can end the worldwide epidemic of violence against sex and gender minorities. (more…)

High school students in Pennsylvania's Northern Lebanon School District report that they are not allowed to walk through their schools' hallways unless they smile; if they refuse they are sent for mandatory counselling. (more…)

Here's a photo of a gentleman, possibly inebriated, who appears to be urinating while seated in a Frontier jet. The Denver CBS news affiliate reports the man was taken away in handcuffs when the plane landed in South Carolina.From CBS:

Sweden is sending out 4.8 million booklets to households across the country called, "If Crisis or War Comes" (Om Krisen Eller Kriget Kommer).The booklet is 20 pages long and explains what to do if there is a terrorist attack, if all the shops run out of goods, if tap water stops running, if infrastructure is sabotaged, if you hear a broadcast emergency alarm, and loads of other really scary scenarios. The booklet is meant to help citizens "cope with a major strain."This isn't the first time Sweden has prepared its citizens for wide-spread disaster. Last time it distributed a similar pamphlet was during World War II.According to The Guardian:

The Vatican has published “‘Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones’. Considerations for an ethical discernment regarding some aspects of the present economic-financial system” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, 17.05.2018, a lengthy report on the wickedness of Wall Street, in which the finance industry is condemned in the strongest and most specific terms, accused of creating an "amoral culture" dedicated to the "profit of the strongest" instead of the "authentic good." (more…)

When Theresa May became the British Prime Minister, her pick for Home Office Undersecretary of State was Victoria Atkins, a former prosecutor who specialised in jailing drug users, and who was on record for her uncompromising, evidence-ignoring stance on any form of drugs legalisation. (more…)

Asian Boss asked Japanese people on the streets in Tokyo to try American style sushi."I can see that they try to hide the fish flavor by using mayonnaise and adding a bunch of avocado."Indeed.

Finger Machines will likely give viewers a visceral reaction by design. That reaction will vary greatly, from joy to arousal to disgust, and maybe all of the above. It's totally safe for work, but it may be better to wait till you're able to watch away from passersby who might get the wrong impression from a quick glance. (more…)

You'll want to learn to play Fortnite.Fortnite, the ridiculously fun battle royal game, will hit the esports scene with an incredibly INSANE prize pool. The game's creator, Epic Games, has pledged $100,000,000 in 2018-2019 tournament bounties. In what currency, I am not sure.I pay my daughter's allowance in "v-bucks" so she can buy cool skins and funny dances in the game. She has never been so eager to get her chores done. Fortnite helps keep the litter boxes clean around here.The video above is one of Twitch streamer Dr. Lupo's fantastic guides, Domeshot University, where he explains how a competitive gamer thinks.

A man in Elyria, OH was walking home at 5:26am Saturday morning when he got spooked. Someone - or something – was following him. When he noticed it was a pig, he freaked out and called the police.Of course the cops thought he was either really drunk or hallucinating. But he wasn't. The frightened gentleman just didn't like being followed by a pig.The police ended up returning the animal, whose name is Zoey, back to its owner.Phew. Close call. But the man survived the frightful morning without a scratch and lived to tell about it.Via CBS

Robin and Julia Rogers team up in this video to make a giant blown glass rabbit that barely fits in the kiln. (more…)

Tiffanie Turner has mastered the art of the paper flower to the point that she can make enormous crepe-paper blooms that still somehow look real. (more…)

The revelation that encrypted email is vulnerable to a variety of devastating attacks (collectively known as "Efail") has set off a round of soul-searching by internet security researchers and other technical people -- can we save email? (more…)

Few programming languages boast the versatility and user-friendliness of Python, which is why it's the first language of choice for many aspiring programmers. Regardless of your experience level, you can take the first step to becoming Python-savvy with the Python 3 Bootcamp Bundle, available in the Boing Boing Store for $35 this week.Featuring more than 30 hours of content spread across nine courses, this collection is designed to teach you the fundamentals of working with Python, as well as some of its most important tools, such as Scrapy, Spicy, and Numpy. You'll explore core concepts, like branching, loops, functions, and exception handling, and refine your knowledge as you learn how to write programs using real applications.The Python 3 Bootcamp Bundle was on sale for $41, but it's available in the Boing Boing Store this week for $35.

Vanessa Hill at BrainCraft got obsessed with tallying up how many times Arnold Schwarzenegger has appeared in scientific papers, but she wasn't prepared for the actual number of papers: over 15,000. (more…)

Looking to Facebook for help with addiction? Take care: the social network is full of predators, and they know where to find vulnerable people. They're sleazy marketers, brokering questionable self-help and inpatient treatment options.

A nasty comedy short depicting a foley artist fisting a jar of mayo to make sex noises for the movies was not far off the truth. Sometimes. Rebecca Pahle:

(Photo: WSOC-TV 9)Bessemer City Police report that Roger Self, 62, deliberately rammed his vehicle into a Surf and Turf Lodge packed with diners, killing his 26-year-old daughter and another victim.

NASA's groovy imagining of space settlements were put in the public domain in 2007, and now space antropologist Michael Oman-Reagan has shared these remarkable hi-res scans created by David Brandt-Erichsen. (more…)

Retro Pi Cases makes and sells adorable housings for tiny computers, and their next model is going to be Tandy's classic TRS-80. It's not available yet, but checking out their site revealed to me their Commodore Amiga model, a no-brainer purchase.

There's no point buying Abba albums instead of the Greatest Hits, the conventional wisdom goes, because the albums were just commercial vehicles for the blockbuster singles. Not so, declares The Quietus, which presents fifteen "phenomenal album tracks that prove the superlative Swedes were much, much more than a singles band.Embedded above is "Arrival", from the album by the same name, a glimpse into a world where Abba was Sweden's Mike Oldfield.

Redditor datacanbeuseful charted the wounding of Craigslist and the death of Backpage. After a political panic over sex trafficking, the latter's domain was seized by the government. Craiglist, to avoid the prospect of a similar fate, shut down all its "casual encounters" and similar categories overnight. It turns out to have been a significant but not critical element of the site's traffic: about 25 percent, but only as inferred through Google Trends.

One of the most iconic scents of childhood, Play-Doh's, has been trademarked.Hasbro, the company behind the modeling clay, made the announcement Friday:

These next-level Transformers costumes are not only cute, but they are very well-designed! It's especially cute because the kids are so young they seem a little unclear on how cool their final forms are. (more…)

Mike from the Useless Duck Company simply wanted to make a dancing and talking banana robot. For his troubles, he got banned from Twitch due to racist and sexist content. (more…)

If you're the kind of parent who wants to spy on everything your kids do, you can force them to install an app like Teensafe, which only works if your kid doesn't use two-factor authentication; you have to give it your kid's device ID and password, so if that data leaks, it would allow anyone to break into your kid's cloud and plunder all their private data. (more…)

The 2017 Nebula Awards, presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America, were announced last night, with a sweep in the main literary categories by women: Best Novel, The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin; Best Novella, All Systems Red by Martha Wells; Best Novelette, A Human Stain by Kelly Robson; Best Short Story, Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM, by Rebecca Roanhorse; Best Dramatic Presentation, Get Out; and the Andre Norton YA prize went to The Art of Starving by Sam J Miller.

An NBC investigative journalism team and a security researcher went wardriving around the DC area with a cell-site-simulator detector that would tell them whenever they came in range of a fake cellphone tower that tried to trick their phones into connecting to it in order to covertly track their locations (some cell site simulators can also hack phones to spy on SMS, calls and data). (more…)

The US birth-rate continued to plummet last year, with births falling in nearly all groups, and a one-year dropoff in overall fertility not seen since 2010; the US fertility rate is at its lowest level in recorded history. (more…)

The latest Ebola outbreak in Congo has moved from the rural area in which is was first discovered to Mbandaka: a city home to approximately one million people. That the disease has spread to an area with such a dense population is extremely troubling all on its own. Add to this the fact that Mbandaka is a major transportation hub with an airport, river traffic and direct transport options to Kinshasa, Congo's capital city, and you've got a scenario with the potential to keep World Health Organization personnel awake at night.From the BBC

Almost nothing riles up a cat like the red dot of a laser pointer mysteriously moving around on a surface. But what would happen if one of them actually caught it?The latest episode of Los Angeles-based visual effects artist Aaron Benitez's comedic series, "Aaron's Animals," imagines just that. The cat, Prince Michael, gets his day in the sun after nabbing that pesky little red dot.(Tastefully Offensive)

The New York Times was just for starters: Something Awful got the real deal from manhood's true savior. (more…)

Humans take hot showers, wash their sheets, and use soaps, disinfectants, hand sanitizers and all sort of other cleansers to keep themselves free of dirt and germs. And yet, after all that effort, chimps win in the clean bed department, at least when it comes to personal bacteria. Yes, according to a study in Royal Society Open Science, chimps sleep in beds that contain less saliva, skin and fecal bacteria than humans.From National Geographic:

As a tail-end Baby Boomer, many memories of the early 1960s linger even as I’ve just turned 60 (of which I can only say, Holy She-it!). The talented jingle composers of the ’60s had no peers when it came to luring young viewers with catchy toons into needling their parents endlessly for something we wanted. The catchier the tune, the longer it lingered in our minds, and the more we begged. A $10 toy was a difficult “get,” but marshmallow fluff was inexpensive, and thus required less whining and persuasion.This brings me to one of the great joys of my childhood: the fluffernutter. And you can revisit my ancient memory here.https://youtu.be/m3PW5JT47VYSo, having watched the video, you know that a fluffernutter is made from putting peanut butter (smooth, not crunchy) and marshmallow fluff (a lot, not a little) on squishy white bread (not toasted, and not wheat). If you use crunchy peanut butter, toast the bread, use whole wheat bread, put Nutella on the damn thing, or commit any other accursed act such as putting bacon on the sandwich, I’m done with you.What the heck is a Fluffernutter? Who named it? Where did it come from? How long have people been eating this thing? With the somewhat trustworthy help of TrickyPedia. and Boston.com, I shall answer your questions because you can’t really allow your day to proceed until the facts are known.Would you believe that there are three competing claims for the invention of fluff? Who knew.The stuff we love was first cooked up by Amory and Emma Curtis. (Did I mention that people claim fluff is a New England thing?). They lived in Melrose, Mass, and concocted “Snowflake Marshmallow Crème” in 1913. They also were the first ones to make a sandwich out of it by adding peanut butter in, at the latest, 1918. A lot more people had no teeth or were wearing choppers back then, so something that was smooth and didn’t stick to the teeth was likely welcomed. Of course, eating too much fluff long term may well result in the eventual loss of your teeth, but that’s an issue for another day. The Curtis Marshmallow Company went kaput in 1947.Next up is Limpert Brothers, Inc., which states it created “Marshmallow Fluff” in 1910 as a sweet to be used on top of ice cream. They also trademarked the name at some early point. And here’s where it gets convoluted. Another company was also selling a product called “Marshmallow Fluff,” which is of course a no-no because the name was trademarked. Limpert goes into much detail about all of this on their website.The other company was Durkee-Mower Inc., which had purchased “Marshmallow Crème” in 1920 from its inventor Archibald Query (he’d started selling it in 1917). Durkee-Mower started calling their purchased product “Marshmallow Fluff.” In 1939 Limpert sold a 20 percent share of their trademark to Durkee-Mower and now both companies sell “Marshmallow Fluff.” The sandwich was not titled a “Fluffernutter” until circa 1960, and by an ad agency no less. (Personally, I find this very disappointing.) The TV commercial above is from Durkee-Mower just a few years after the name “Fluffernutter” was born.Now that we have finished with all the historical nonsense, I will explain the differences between the various ingredients on the market (yes, I am obsessed and make no bones about it.) The most common brands of fluff found in supermarkets these days are Durkee-Mower’s “Marshmallow Fluff” and Kraft’s “Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Crème,” which first appeared on the market in 1958. (Ugh, the year I was born.) I’ve never seen the product Limpert Brothers sells; it seems designated for wholesale only and is still sold in gallon cans to stores as a topping for ice cream.Is there a difference between “Marshmallow Fluff” and “Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Crème”? You betcha! I’m neither a chemist nor a chef, thus won’t go into the details of the ingredients. We only really care about what it does on a sandwich, don’t we? “Marshmallow Fluff” is somewhat gooey rather than light and fluffy. When you put “Marshmallow Fluff” on a piece of bread, it almost immediately starts to smooth out and in a few minutes it begins spreading like the Blob. “Jet-Puff Marshmallow Crème” has more body, and is light and fluffy. It pretty much sits where you put it on the bread, at least for longer than “Fluff.” The Kraft and Durkee products also taste slightly different. If I were to sit there and just eat one of the two with a spoon right out of the bottle, it would be “Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Crème.” However, as far as the best ingredient for a Fluffernutter, it’s definitely “Marshmallow Fluff.” And I don’t care what the hell kind of peanut butter you use, as long as it’s smooth and creamy like Jif, Skippy, or Peter Pan.As you can see, I prefer my Fluffernutters to be “loaded.” I also still eat Lucky Charms out of the box. That’s all and goodnight.