For $13, you too can have a writhing brass cephalopod instead of an escape key, one of various bizarre artisan keycaps on offer at BGkeycaps' Etsy store.

Patrick Weaver's Record Player is a "Rube Goldberg machine" for music: log into Spotify, upload an image, and it will use the Google Images Vision API to try and figure out what it's a picture of, then play the song. It works on record covers, obviously, but I uploaded a picture of my dog and it played Sabotage, which seems impossibly knowing. (Photo: R. Halfpaap / CC BY 2.0)

Margot Kidder, best known for playing Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent/Superman in a series of movies starting with "Superman" in 1978 has died at age 69. From CNN:

The Social Security Administration has released its "Top 10 Baby Names of 2017" male and female baby names in the United States. (No info on gender neutral names though.)

When I watched the Brady Bunch as a youngster, there was one particular deep guffaw that always caught my attention. I knew the laughs were pre-recorded but always assumed that there was just a laugh track tape and they'd press play at the appropriate times. I liked (and still like) the faux communal experience that laugh tracks provide when watching the Bradys, Bewitched, the Beverly Hillbillies, and other great vintage sitcoms from the 1960s an early 1970s.Turns out, that the rise of the laugh track was due to Charles Douglass (1910-2003), a Navy-trained electronics engineer/maker who went on to build a custom "Laff Box" of several dozen tape loops triggered by keys and dials. After its initial use on the Jack Benny Program, the machine, officially called the "Audience Reaction Duplicator," took the TV industry by storm. Douglass "played" the Laff Box like a proto-sampler and for years had the monopoly on TV laugh tracks. It was a process that the TV show producers and Douglass himself liked to keep secret.It wasn't until 1992 that Douglass and his pioneering work at the intersection of media, psychology, and technology was recognized with a lifetime Emmy award for technical achievement.For the whole story on Douglass and the Laff Box, don't miss this episode of the Decoder Ring podcast.And here is an Antiques Roadshow segment appraising a Laff Box.https://youtu.be/tpY0Muy_1qI

Dr. Dre, purveyor of sick beats, has lost a trademark battle against Dr. Drai, OB/GYN.Praise the FSM for TMZ:

Tom Usher went to a flat earth conference in Birmingham, England; he met an array of people who believe that the Earth is flat, because they believe that powerful people have conspired to control the information they receive in order to secure benefits for the elite, and this belief (which has a wealth of evidence to support it!) has been weaponized by crackpots and cynical manipulators to convince them the world is flat (despite the wealth of evidence against this!). (more…)

That's right, wizard, detective, and occasional actor Benedict Cumberbatch isn't cool with bullshit pay gaps that Hollywood production companies have been laying on his female colleagues since pretty much forever.During an interview with the Radio Times, the actor, best known for his come-hither and do-my-bidding eyes, proclaimed that he refuses to have anything to do with a project where his female co-star isn't being paid the same amount of cash as he is. In an interview with Radio Times Magazine, Cumberbatch espouses the fact that “Equal pay and a place at the table are the central tenets of feminism." He goes on, compelling other men to look at what they're paid and, if they see that a women they work with is being paid less, refuse to do it until amends are made.More than this, with his production, SunnyMarch, Cumberbatch is putting his personal fortunes where is mouth is.From Radio Times Magazine

For some reason I remembered Vehicle Force Voltron this morning and just wondered why?There was something cool about 5 robot lions that an army of little cars didn't have. It was like someone hopped up the Thunderbirds and now 1 thru 5 could merge. I didn't like Vehicle Force Voltron very much.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18i_qfNjeM0Lion Force Voltron was pretty corny but worked for me.

Frank A. Gleason may not be a name that you're familiar with. But, given his contributions to the allied war effort during World War II, you should be. During the war, Gleason, now 97-years old, worked for the Overseas Strategic Service (OSS), an intelligence organization that was superseded by the Central Intelligence Agency. It was never his intention to become a spy but, smart as a whip and tough as nails, he was a perfect fit for the gig.From Task & Purpose:

Gina Haspel is the evidence-destroying torturer whose Senate confirmation hearings for CIA chief were so frightening to her that she tried to bow out of them (she went, and bullshitted her way through). (more…)

Last year, the UK occult arts publisher, Fulgur Limited , celebrated its 25th anniversary. Initially focused on the work of the early 20th century British occult artist, Austin Spare, over the years, the imprint has published some of the most beautiful and significant books at the confluence of art and magic and has been the leader in the modern so-called talismanic publishing scene. What the Devil is talismanic publishing? It's an approach to publishing that incorporates magical practice into the act of publishing itself.The concept originated with occultist Aleister Crowley in the late 19th century. He sought to treat his small press published books on magic and poetry as talismanic objects. Where any book nerd might argue that a finely designed, high-quality printed and bound book is already a magical object, talismanic publishing takes this to another level, with the selection of papers, inks, colors, fonts, and dates and times of publishing often being chosen with magical intent and a special level of consideration being given to the "out of box" experience and initial opening of the book. I have had talismanic books arrive with hand-calligraphied addresses, special perfumed paper wrappings, wax-seals, hand-drawn sigils, and more. Some may roll their eyes at all of this as woo-woo marketing gimmickry, but when this treatment is done well, it lends itself to a unique and elevated experience for anyone who loves bewitching books.A great case in point is Fulgur's gorgeous new tome, Touch Me Not, their full-color facsimile of the infamous late 18th century grimoire, A Most Rare Compendium of the Whole Magical Art. Which, truth be told, is really a collection of the blackest of the black arts from 1795, but still...Taking the book from the mailer, you are confronted with a jet-black book of sumptuous silk cloth. Binding the book closed is a brown paper band with a black foil skull & crossbones blind embossed into it. A demonic tome that is literally bound and that warns the unwary with an ancient symbol of danger and death? Nice. Breaking that band and removing it, beneath it is your final warning, the title, Touch Me Not, blind embossed in red foil. The title, Touch Me Not, is actually part of the full, original title A most rare compendium of the whole magical art, systematized by the most famous masters of this art in the year 1057. Touch me not.Touch Me Not is a unique and astonishing artifact. And an extremely bizarre one. It is unlike any other grimoire in my collection. It exists as a strange and singular contribution to the central European "magical treasure hunting" craze of that era. The Fulgur edition of A Most Rare Compendium... is derived from the copy found in the collection of the Wellcome Library in London, with side-by-side translations of its German and Latin texts.There has always been a strange obsession with magical treasure hunting in the European grimoire tradition which I have never clearly understood. Even in more heavenly-minded tomes, like The Book of Abramelin, which includes a torturous process for contacting your "Holy Guardian Angel" and living and serving the lord, they still manage to concern themselves with magical treasure hunting. In Dr. Hereward Tilton's excellent introduction of Touch Me Not he explains what motivated this obsession. A lot of it had to do with the 30 Years War (1618 - 1648), the deadly religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants, which ultimately claimed the lives of some 6 million people.In the wake of this war, many Catholic churches were looted and in ruins. Bandits on the run, loaded down with gold and religious artifacts, had to bury their loot in hopes of returning some day to retrieve it. They rarely did, which led to treasure caches, some real, many more imagined, throughout Europe. Given few maps or other surviving clues, treasure hunters turned to magical means to divine this lost treasure. This was also during the time of European witchcraft hysteria. In the wake of the war, there was devastating disease, crop failure, and famine. Who got blamed? Witches.So that is why so many grimoires of the time are obsessed with treasure hunting! Mystery solved.Touch Me Not is quite unique within the corpus of European grimoires. Unlike the Solomonic tradition of the Clavicula Salomonis (Key of Solomon), or even Abramelin, this book can't be traced directly through a lineage of older texts. The author clearly knew of, and drew from, some of these earlier works, but this book did not evolve from them. It is a one-off.Touch Me Not basically outlines a technique for drugging and scaring yourself near-mad and then raising the demons of Hell in the midst of that madness. You're supposed to take a psychedelic root concoction (which is basically a Medieval European equivalent of South American ayahuasca) along with cocktails of other strange drugs designed to "poison the imagination," and then cover your body in "sigillary body painting" (the sigils in the book are gorgeous). High as fuck, naked, and covered with magical temporary tattoos, you're then supposed to look through the paintings in the book until they scare you out of your ordinary mind. The paintings are extraordinary; beautiful, surrealist art of a surprisingly high order. And designed to be extremely disturbing. The text is also obviously designed to be lurid and shocking to the reader.Suitably lizard-brained on the crazy root juice, terrified of what you've just seen and read, you then perform the book's infernal spells to raise the Devil and his legions of Hell. With the powers of darkness conjured to visual appearance, you command them to go find the treasure you're after. That seems to be the central point of Touch Me Not.The book also talks about treasure guardians. These are spirits and familiars associated with treasure. Besides dragons (and there was widespread belief at the time that dragons lorded over hoards of treasure, in ruined Catholic churches, in magical caves, and in vast underground realms), black dogs, snakes, and "spectral maidens" were believed to be types of spiritual creatures who might guard or guide you to treasure.Bands of treasure hunters, a ruined landscape with dragons and treasure hoards, magicians, necromancers, fighters, and magical and holy relics. Does all this sound strangely familiar? It's straight-up Dungeons and Dragons! Or, even closer still, it's exactly like the currently popular fantasy skirmish game, Frostgrave, where dueling wizards wield dark magic as their warbands fight over treasure and magical items in a ruined city.Besides the treasure hunting concerns of Touch Me Not, there are recipes and spells for other dark, necromantic purposes, such as creating a magical mirror for "viewing everything." The process for making such a mirror is convoluted, torturous, and frankly, insane. The "recipe" involves an alloy made from specified "loths" of various metals (loth being an old German measurement for 1/2 of the "local ounce") and a consecrated hand bell from a church (again with the looted church relics). The process takes three years and there are many steps and ingredients involved, all related to violence, death, and corpses: The brick dust from a gallows, the shirt from a hanged man, coffin nails and coffin wood, etc. When completed, the mirror is fumigated with burning goat and horse hair (fragrant!) and stored in a box made from coffin wood and nails. To use the mirror, it is placed on a grave. The grave is apparently used as the power source for turning the mirror "on."I have long thought that these exotic ingredient lists and drawn-out, torturous procedures found in grimoires are a way of ensuring that basically no one is ever actually going to be able to properly perform the ritual; that the whole sordid business is basically designed to be unattainablely aspirational, more to titillate, to scare, and to entertain.In the opening essay, Hereward Tilton makes it clear that Touch Me Not was most likely a work of occult folk horror, an intentionally transgressive artifact that's a piece of supernatural fiction more than a working manual of the black arts. He points out that a book like this would be so rare, so expensive, that the only sort of person who could afford it would not likely be the sort who'd be traipsing into the deep forest in search of mythical treasure.Seen in this light, Touch Me Not is a very fascinating and immersive form of supernatural horror, and an artifact unlike any in my collection. One of the other amazing things about this Fulgur edition is that it's extremely affordable, at $46.50. Of course, if you're not in the UK, there's the high cost of shipping. If you want one, I would suggest grabbing it quick. I hear it's selling out fast. If you do acquire this infernal tome, remember, as the last lines of the text warn, "meddling in this art never goes unpunished."

One of the greatest gifts I ever gave myself was to never, ever get behind the wheel of a car with a parent sitting next to me while I was in my teens. Others... well, their time learning how to drive a stick shift may have been a little bit different than mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGbvbRUJ--8Since 2016, machinist/sculptor Chris Bathgate (previously) has been building an exciting, marvelous series of fidget toys, which he is now bringing to a close (he thinks). (more…)

Leonard Steinberg, a longstanding New York City luxury property broker, claims that the existence of Uber and Lyft has blunted the premium that buyers were willing to pay to live in neighborhoods with good transit links, because they can afford rideshare cars and use the commute time to work, meaning that commutes are less of a factor in calculating the quality of life (because your day starts when you get into the car, not when you get to your desk). (more…)

Before China came under the sway of Communist rule, many of the impoverished people of the country's southwestern Guizhou province opted to live in caves rather than face the frequent assaults by the region's criminal element. The cave complexes in Guizhou are massive, and until recently, were unknown to those who hailed from outside of the province. Its connection to the outside world is a small one. In order to enter Guizhou, visitors to the region need to navigate a narrow mountain footpath. The difficulties that getting to Guizhou poses has gifted its people with a rare commodity in our increasingly connected world: seclusion.But of late, the region's cave dwellers have become less cloistered. Tourists eager to see cave dwellers' way of life have been making the trek to Guizhou. This is good news for Guizhou's cave dwellers: The tourists have proven happy to pay for the privilege of renting space in the caves. It's also bad news: the Chinese government has noted that some of its citizens are hiding out in caves. Because of the optics this presents, they've been encouraging the cave dwellers to move onto farm properties, complete with modest houses and a relocation payment – let's call it a bribe – of $9,500. Five of the cave dwelling families were totally into the deal. The other 18? Not so much.From The Globe & Mail:

Author and historian Studs Terkel's long-running radio show The Studs Terkel Program will now be available in a public archive online.(more…)

Magic is barely understood science in Tom Miller's The Philosopher's Flight. A United States engaged in the early days of World War II both eagerly adopts Philosophy as everyday technology, while rejecting the few able to use this magic in as the United States always does. (more…)

Canada's two leading digital rights groups, CIPPIC (previously) and Citizen Lab (previously) have issued a joint report called Shining a Light on the Encryption Debate: A Canadian Field Guide , and every Canadian should read it. (more…)

Here's the second part of my reading (MP3) of Petard (part one), a story from MIT Tech Review's Twelve Tomorrows, edited by Bruce Sterling; a story inspired by, and dedicated to, Aaron Swartz -- about elves, Net Neutrality, dorms and the collective action problem.MP3

The London Metropolitan Police use a facial recognition system whose alerts have a 98% false positive rate; people falsely identified by the system are stopped, questioned and treated with suspicion. (more…)

Sebastiaan Kulwanowski displays archer-level concentration as he makes his violin sound like a cow, elephant, cricket, sparrow, and my favorite, the only one with an adjective, "annoying fly."Previous Kulanwoski performances include the likes of Super Mario Bros (below), Minecraft, and the forest. Watch them all.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC3hTQrrOkY(via Laughing Squid)

Jag Talon''s Embed Bud is a single-serving site (made with Glitch) that generates less invasive YouTube embed snippets to use on the web. It's a simple trick that adds the encrypted-media attribute to the http iframe so you don't have to. Suggestion: it could also add modestbranding and showinfo (to remove logos and telltale overlays), rel=0 (to remove next-up recommendations based on user history), and start=15s (because the only thing that ever happens in the first 15 seconds of a YouTube video is logos, music and "hey guys")

In this lovely video by Joel Fox/Smile Mountain, young instructor Sally explains how to make a duct tape coin pouch with a ziploc bag closure. The video has serene, calming quality to it due to the colors, background imagery, and, of course, the stunning synth sounds by my pal Mikael Jorgensen, keyboardist for Wilco and Quindar.

The UK public has spent years being fed a diet of ridiculous, empty promises about the government's capacity to find and block every adult site on the internet, then securely identify who is an adult, and only allow adults to look at adult content. (more…)

Jackie Chaves of BonAppetEats makes delightful jewelry that looks good enough to eat, but among her best-sellers are these cute miniature ponds inside Altoids Smalls mint tins. (more…)

A group of researchers have published a paper and associated website describing a clever attack on encrypted email that potentially allows an attacker to read encrypted emails sent in the past as well as current and future emails; EFF has recommended switching off PGP-based email encryption for now, to prevent attackers from tricking your email client into decrypting old emails and sending them to adversaries. (more…)

The animation team from Big Hero 6 did some cool experiments for the "Into the Portal" sequence, and this week they shared one: an exploding 3D pastel fractal. (more…)

If there's anyone out there who's never felt like an imposter, or suffered from FOMO (fear of missing out), or struggled with self doubt, I sure would like to meet them.Yet, just because these are common human experiences, it doesn't make it any easier to deal with when they happen to you. (Can I get an a-men?!)In 2017, for the 100 Day Project, Portland-based cartoonist Lucy Bellwood penned her own demon in a series of 100 comics. Those illustrations have now become a book titled 100 Demon Dialogues.In the forward she writes, "Back in 2012, entering my first year as a full-time freelance cartoonist, I hit an art rut. Trying to shake things up, I doodled a picture of a tiny, taunting inner imp who apparently believed I’d never make anything of myself.""He cropped up time and time again over the next five years — when things were going well and I was worried I’d lose everything, or when things were going poorly and I thought it’d never get any better. Each comic I drew about him brought a little more humor or clarity to our relationship, but I still felt like I was at his mercy," she continues."Then, in April of 2017 I set out to complete my second 100 Day Project, athemed challenge in which participants do something creative every day for 100 days. Spanning just over three months, it seemed like the perfect chance to really dig into what was going on with this little jerk and get a handleon how to banish him for good."Her project resonated with people of all walks of life. Here's a taste:100 Demon Dialogues goes on sale June 19 but is available to pre-order now for $14.99 (paperback) or $7.99 (Kindle). Portlanders can meet Bellwood at the book's release party on June 4 at Ford Food & Drink.In addition to the book, she's got some cool demon-themed schwag and prints including this plushie for $25. I suggest making poking it with pins like a voodoo doll when self doubt starts creeping in. Previously: Sailor tattoos decoded and Comic about three weeks on an oceanographic research vessel

Sinclair's ZX Spectrum is one of the UK's classic computers, a cheap and cheerful gadget that went toe-to-toe with more powerful, expensive stablemates for a decade. What it wasn't lauded for, though, was its terrible soft rubber keyboard...This was upgraded a couple of years in (perhaps after competitor Amstrad bought out Sinclair and applied adult supervision) with a hard plastic board that was at least theoretically possible to type on:Though not the greatest, it was fine by the form-before-function standards of 1980s 8-bit trash computers. And now you can have something very similar indeed on your cherry-stem mechanical keyboard!

Withdrawn from sale to promote the 16-bit SNES Classic, Nintendo's NES Classic is finally coming back. Pulling it from shelves at the height of its popularity was a canny move by the Japanese game giant, but one that enraged fans and left industry-watchers scratching their heads. All that anguish and pontification is now wiped from the high score chart of history with one fell, swooping press release.Don't pay $200 for old stock on Amazon's official-looking NES Classic page; the real thing will be $60 when it is out again on June 29th.Pictured here is "Shaved Mario" by November17 on Twitter.

Once again offered in black and banana yellow, the new Nokia 8110 has a few upgrades on the original (such as 4G, a better camera, and more than 16 ringtones). But the classic's vaguely erotic curve is left exactly as it was.It's hitting stores in Asia this month and will surely pop up online shortly thereafter; there doesn't seem to be any word on an official U.S. release. It's being made under license by HMD, which is developing its own operating system and appstore for dumbphones.[Photo: LutherBlisset]

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It appears that Jedi Master Yoda is holding up the books using the Force, but it's really just a strategically-placed metal bar which holds up the first book that gives that illusion.You can buy this Yoda bookend for $19.95 from Hallmark, of all places.(The Awesomer, reddit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh9D_PUe7QIOn April 29, a black family set up their charcoal barbecue in the designated barbecuing area in Oakland, Californias' Lake Merritt, only to have a hostile white woman come and demand that they move on or face arrest, because they were using charcoal in one of the areas designated for gas grilling. (more…)

The UK Conservative Party has "made Britain great again" by restoring systems that use tax money to subsidise the wealthy; for example, they have revived the "grammar school" system of publicly funded schools that get to turn away students based on their test scores. Since you can improve your test scores by paying expensive tutors, grammar schools are primarily a way of letting wealthy people enjoy a parallel, publicly funded educational system. (more…)

Artist MyeongBeom Kim likes to pair two things that seem to contradict, creating wonderful and often thought-provoking results. (more…)

The fine folks at Freedom of Thought share tips on How to Focus Intensely, and it shares a lot of good ancillary insight in the process. (more…)

They've been building it up for weeks...https://www.instagram.com/p/BidEeYcnbH7/?taken-by=archiemcpheeTeasing us with build photos of the world's largest rubber chicken...https://www.instagram.com/p/Bh69bBNFmSC/?taken-by=archiemcpheehttps://www.instagram.com/p/BiCoLcOlfbB/?taken-by=archiemcpheehttps://www.instagram.com/p/BikGogIFZnI/?taken-by=archiemcpheeNow, finally, the folks at Archie McPhee have opened the world's first Rubber Chicken Museum at their retail store in Seattle's Wallingford district! The grand opening ceremony for this fowl museum began on Friday at 3 PM, with much fanfare, clucking, and squawking. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bipxb8rgjHt/?taken-by=mcpheeceoThe museum's curator, the High Priestess of the Rubber Chicken Shana Iverson, used giant novelty scissors for the ribbon cutting, which was broadcast on Facebook Live.Congratulations to Shana and everyone involved with creating this glorious madness. I look forward to my personal curator's tour of the museum on my next visit.Need a rubber chicken or three? They've got you covered.https://twitter.com/mcpheeceo/status/995119240435789824lead photo by Mark Pahlow

Trains might not be the most high-tech means of conveyance, but few things match the awe-inspiring size and power of these behemoths roaring across the railways. Trainz: A New Era lets you tap into that sense of wonder by bringing historic trains and routes to life with mind-blowing realism, and with the Platinum Edition Bundle, you can do so with a trove of downloadable content (DLC) to enhance your experience. The Trainz: A New Era Platinum Edition Bundle is available in the Boing Boing Store for $19.99.https://www.youtube.com/embed/xobOFLZ-1E4With the Platinum Edition Bundle, you can build your own railways and tap into hundreds of hours of single and multiplayer gameplay with 16 additional routes, three bonus trainsets, and a myriad of other new content. You can create your own routes with powerful in-game editing tools, share your creations with the Trainz community, and even team up with other players to build and operate a working rail line.You can get the Trainz: A New Era Platinum Edition Bundle in the Boing Boing Store for $19.99, saving more than 90 percent off its usual price.

The stuff nightmares are made of: TEETH NAILS.I'm fighting tooth and nail to express my "thanks" to Nail_Sunny, the Russian nail art chain who created these monsters.https://www.instagram.com/p/BihcTumFZgk/?taken-by=nail_sunny

Last week, I mentioned that listening to The Pogues turned me on to checking out The Levellers. This would be they.The band takes its name from a political movement that rose up in the 1600s during the English Civil War. To be a Leveller, back then, was to believe in popular sovereignty, radical democracy, suffrage, religious tolerance and equality before the law. Civil rights, for all, was the name of their game. Levellers fought for many of the things that the left are still reaching for today. Resistance to power, egalitarianism, paganism and a call to action are the threads that have made the cloth of their music since the band first got together back in 1988.

Handbook of Tyranny tells the story of human cruelty in a series of beautifully designed inforgraphics, like this chart showing methods of crowd control. (more…)

NASA successfully launched the InSight mission to Mars this week. This is a great overview of what scientists will be learning about Martian geology. (more…)

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According to the official sheet music, the familiar Mr Softee jingle was written in 1960 and is titled "Mr Softee Jingles and Chimes." (more…)

Julia Evans's Twitter feed is a treasure trove of her Bite-Size Linux comics that explain core concepts in Unix system use and administration in friendly, accessible graphic form. (more…)

Robert Karnes is your basic knee-jerk reactionary West Virginia state senator who devoted his tenure in office to hating on unions, especially teachers, especially teachers who participated in the West Virginia teachers' strike, the longest, most widespread strike in state history. (more…)

Last year, Interpol set out on a reunion tour celebrating the 15th anniversary of their fantastic debut "Turn on the Bright Lights." Here is a mini-documentary about their post-punk revival revival. Sleep tight, dream right.

Note: some understandably NSFW language. Watching morons get out of their cars in front of apex predators has become a YouTube genre, but rarely are they stupid enough to walk out in pen fields with their children while in clear view of said predators. (more…)