Here's the first part of my reading (MP3) of Petard, 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. (more…)

A group selfie is a great way to document a successful adventure, but getting everyone in the shot can be tricky when you're with a large group. And, while you can roll the dice on a good Samaritan to take the shot for you, there's a better way to immortalize a memorable outing. Meet the AirSelfie 2 Drone. Smart, compact, and simple to use, this drone lets you take your selfies airborne and capture truly original photos. It's available in the Boing Boing Store for 20% off.Combining a 12MP camera with turbo fan propellers, this pocket-sized drone is capable of capturing stunning wide-angle shots from up to 65 feet in the air. You can pilot the drone via your phone using the free iOS and Android app, and its battery lasts for up to five minutes of continuous flight. Plus, with a built-in 16GB micro SD card, this drone has more than enough space to document your entire adventure.The AirSelfie 2 Drone is available in the Boing Boing Store for 20% off.

Tesla burned $710m last quarter but hopes to be profitable soon. In the meantime, don't ask Elon any boring questions!

The Colors of Motion creates abstract images by sampling the distinctive colors of frames and then stacking them as individual horizontal lines. This gives an impression of the movie's overall sense of color--and an idea of its narrative progression.Pictured above is Blade Runner 2049. Here's 2001: A Space Odyssey:Here's Disney's Aladdin:Here's Aliens:And Fantastic Mr. Fox:

EFF supporter Benjamin McLean was kind enough to send along his "Mashup Maker" as a new entry to EFF Catalog of Missing Devices, a tour through some of the legitimate, useful and missing gadgets, tools and services that don't exist but should. They're technologies whose chance to exist was snuffed out by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which makes tampering with "Digital Rights Management" into a legal no-go zone, scaring off toolsmiths, entrepreneurs, and tinkerers. (more…)

There's something about Sugarfoot's perfectly-constructed drum work on Smooth Criminal that's both of its time and completely timeless—a key part of Michael Jackson's sound.

Cajiso's "paper watches" wrap a watertight tyvek wristband with a magnetic closure around a cheap-and-cheerful LED watch mechanism, yielding a $28 novelty/fashion item that can be printed with arbitrary bitmaps and are thus available in a wide variety of patterns. (via Red Ferret) (more…)

Blithely contradicting President Donald Trump's claim to have known nothing about the payoff made to Stormy Daniels, Rudy Giuliani said Trump reimbursed the lawyer who made the payment. Stormy and Trump reportedly had an affair shortly after his current marriage began, and she was paid $130,000 by Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, to stay quiet about it during the 2016 presidential race.

Signal is an encrypted messaging app for smartphones and desktops that I and a lot of other folks use on a daily basis to communicate with discretion and security. I like it so much that I've moved away from using other services on my iOS and Android phones to using Signal for all of the texting I do, even with those who don't use the app. Unfortunately, according to The Verge, the Signal team is having a difficult time trying to provide its services to users in the UAE, Egypt and Oman, where the app has been banned by the government. Considering the fact that these states aren't known for treating political dissidents and minorities none too well, that's a big deal. For some people, encrypted comms are essential to avoiding incarceration or worse.The crux of Signal's issues with providing services to users in these countries is that Amazon, whose CloudFront web services Signal's parent company, Open Whisper System, uses, has banned domain-fronting. Domain-fronting, put simply, is a technique for making traffic from one site look like it's from another site. In an email received by Open Whisper System's founder, Moxie Marlinspike (best damn name in the business,) the General Manager of Amazon CloudFront called Open Whisper Systems' domain-fronting out, telling Marlinspike that Amazon would love to have their business, but not his company refuses to comply with their no domain-fronting policies.From the email:

Oakland, California -- a city across the bay from San Francisco whose large African-American population has struggled with gentrification and police violence for decades -- has a long reputation for police corruption and surveillance. (more…)

After Michelle Wolf made fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the courtiers of the White House press corps, there was much anguish and gnashing of teeth. Beyond a heightened awareness of how servile and sad the American political press is, though, not much good's come out of it. The best is surely Laura Hudson's (previously) guide to doing Smokey Eye makeup, an art that Sanders is as accomplished at as she is at lying.

On Fox News tonight, Rudy Giuliani shared some jaw-dropping things.(more…)

Last week, I flew to Toronto to check out a new phone that LG's had a hell of a time trying to keep a secret: the LG G7 ThinQ.It looks looks and feels a lot like most of the high end handsets that companies are pushing out today. It's slick to the touch (you'll definitely want to put it into a case), has a nice heft to it, and yes, a notch at the at the top of its display a là iPhone X, but the company reps were quick to point out to me that you can totally make it disappear with a little software sorcery.Depending on where you are in the world, you'll be able to pick up the G7 ThinQ with 4GB of RAM plus 64GB storage or with 6GB RAM plus 128GB storage. No matter which one you fork over your money for, storage shouldn't be an issue: the handset supports microSD cards up to 2TB in size. The phone's got an ultra bright 1,000-nit display which, while they wouldn't let me take outside to test, LG swears will make it easy to see in direct sunlight. I don't doubt that this is the case.https://youtu.be/ybG8iWK4e2IIts camera does tricks, too. It uses onboard A.I. to guess at what you're taking a photo of and sets itself up to take the best shot of your subject that it can. Under controlled conditions, I was shown how it can take photos in near darkness that'll come out well lit and looking reasonably good. Sadly, its not a feature, to my understanding, that can be turned off. Goodbye moody emo shots.While I was at their hands-on press event, LG let the journalists in attendance listen to how loud the speaker – mono, not stereo, mind you – was. They told us about how they used the spare space inside of the phone as a resonance chamber to boost the volume level that its capable of, without reducing audio quality. Neat. Most importantly, to run it all, the handset comes with a big ol' battery that'll keep it running right through your workday, and depending on how much you use it, likely until bed time. For all intents and purposes, it looked, to me, like a solid choice for anyone looking for a decent Android phone.However, there was one feature that I came away from the event feeling uneasy about. In the time since I returned home, that feeling hasn't changed.There's a button baked into the side of the G7 ThinQ that can only be used to call up Google Assistant. Topically, it's not a terrible idea: having a button to call on Google's digital helper means no more having to yell "OK, Google" for everyone in the room to hear. As far as I'm concerned, that's a win. But here's the thing: this button, which the PR reps assured me was made possible by an exclusive deal with Google, can't be reprogrammed to do anything else. At least that's what LG's people told me. I find this both gross and intrusive. I'm relatively new to using Android on a full-time basis. One of the things that I enjoy about how the OS has evolved since the last time I used it routinely back in 2010, is that if you don't like an app or a service, you can disable it. Out of sight, out of mind. Different camera apps can be downloaded. You don't have to rely on Google Docs to get shit done and if you hate the way the OS looks, you can theme it or plop in a different set of icons.While I'm uncomfortable with the comparatively low level of security an Android handset offers compared to what you get with iOS, I can say that all of this makes a modern Android phone, for me at least, a pleasure to use. Having a button that's exclusively associated with a particular app, especially one that demands access to the minutiae of my daily life, my contacts, and other particulars, feels... uncomfortable.Google Assistant needs to map your location and habits to suggest things that you might enjoy. It trawls your handset's data to better serve you, although Google's pretty stingy on the details of what data Google Assistant collects: "Web and app activity, which includes your searches, Chrome history, and content you browse on the web and in apps. This info helps Google Assistant provide better results and suggestions." It can even look at what's being shown on your display so that it can suggest similar content. It hears all, it sees all and, the last time I checked, it doesn't work well with encryption (do correct me if I'm wrong about this). That, no matter which platform I'm using, is a deal breaker.The solution of course, is to simply buy a handset that lacks a hardwired A.I. assistant button. Cool. But the fact that we've got one that gussies such a button up as a feature makes me concerned that it may become more difficult, as time goes on, to avoid intrusive services like Siri, Alexa Google Assistant or Cortana.Even if you don't own a smart speaker or handset that rocks an always-on audio connection to some far-flung server on the other side of the world, your friends do. Maybe your mom got an Alexa Dot to use in the kitchen. Being watched and listened to, against our will, is an uncomfortable part of modern life. I fear that the day is coming where we won't have the option of choosing anonymity. The ability to decide how much access to our lives we give to our governments and the corporations that fellate consumers with promises of cutting-edge convenience could soon be lost to us.I know it's just a button on a handset that I'm under no obligation to buy. But it gives me the fucking creeps.

Anti-Muslim hate personality John Guandolo was speaking just a couple of weeks ago about his desire to arrest Democratic and GOP leadership, then execute people. Mr. Guandolo's 'training workshops' on the dangers of jihad have some popularity among some police officers in the U.S., as evidenced by past speaking engagements with various police departments. Mr. Guandolo is now reviving that speaking tour.(more…)

Hobby Lobby's President Steve Green was part of a conspiracy to steal a lot of irreplaceable antiquities. The stolen artifacts have now been returned to the Iraqi Government. Mr. Green is suffering as a devout Christian does, before his God and no one else.Via CBS:

Cambridge Analytica may be out of business thanks to bad publicity, but "Emerdata" is a new company, whose board includes the daughters of Robert Mercer, who bankrolled Cambridge Analytica; disgraced former Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix is on its board of directors, and much of Cambridge Analytica's C-suite has packed up their desks and moved into the Emerdata offices. (more…)

Steve Brusatte is a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh and a specialist on the evolution of dinosaurs. He has a new book out called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. Here's a list of surprising facts about dinosaurs he wrote for Boing Boing. Enjoy -- MarkCat-sized ancestorsThe first dinosaurs were not brutish monsters like T. rex or earth-shakers like Brontosaurus. Dinosaurs evolved from skinny, long-limbed, cat-sized ancestors called dinosauromorphs, which lived about 250 million years ago. They were sprinters who ran around on four legs, and lived in the shadows of giant amphibians, reptiles, and mammal ancestors who dominated the food chain at the time.Overshadowed by crocsAfter they originated, dinosaurs diversified during the Triassic Period (252-201 million years ago). Many new species evolved, but they lived in only the more humid parts of the Earth, and none of them got very big. During this time they were being eclipsed by their close cousins, the crocodile group of reptiles. There were more crocs, they lived in more places, and they were at the top of the food chain.Saved by a mass extinctionAs the Triassic Period drew to a close, the world was plunged into chaos. All of the land had been joined together into a supercontinent called Pangea. But now, Pangea began to break apart and as it did so, huge volcanoes erupted in between the fragmenting bits of crust. These eruptions caused a mass extinction—the sudden, simultaneous death of more than half of all species. The crocodile group was decimated, but dinosaurs survived, for reasons that are still unclear.Biggest sauropods the size of a 737After the mass extinction came the Jurassic Period—the era of dinosaur dominance. Dinosaurs spread around the world and grew to enormous sizes, none bigger than the long-necked, pot-bellied, column-limbed sauropods. The most famous sauropod is probably Brontosaurus, but the biggest ones were species like Patagotitan, Dreadnoughtus, and Argentinosaurus, which were more than 100 feet long and weighed more than 50 tons. That’s bigger than a Boeing 737!T rex could crush through the bones of its preySome meat-eating dinosaurs got big too. The One True King was T. rex, which lived during the next interval of the Age of Dinosaurs, the Cretaceous Period. T. rex was the largest pure predator to ever live on land, that we know of. It was over 40 feet long, weighed between 7 and 8 tons as an adult, and had a five-foot-long skull with over 50 banana-sized teeth. These teeth were powered by huge jaw muscles, and each one could bite down with a force of over 3,000 pounds. By contrast, lions bite with a force of about 940 pounds, and humans 175 pounds. T. rex bit so hard that it shattered the bones of its prey—which is why paleontologists find chunks of bone in the coprolites (fossilized dung) left behind by T. rex....But it couldn’t run fastT. rex was a supervillain, endowed with huge size, killer bite forces, a big brain, and keen senses. But there is one superpower it didn’t have: it couldn’t run. Sometimes in films T. rex is depicted as a sprinter (think of the scene in Jurassic Park where it is chasing down a jeep driving at highway speeds. Don’t believe the movie magic! Computer simulations of T. rex skeletons show that the King could only move at speeds of 10-25 miles per hour. That’s faster than we can run, but nowhere near the speed of a car or a racehorse.Velociraptor had feathers and wingsThere’s something else that the movies often get wrong. Velociraptor has become an iconic dinosaur, but it wasn’t a drab green, scale-covered, reptilian trickster like it is portrayed in Jurassic Park. The real Velociraptor was covered in feathers, and even had quill pen feathers on its arms that formed a small wing. Many other dinosaurs had feathers and wings, too. Thousands of feathered dinosaur fossils have been found in northeastern China—their feathers preserved so immaculately because the dinosaurs were buried by a volcano, Pompeii-style.The smallest dinosaur is…a bee hummingbirdFeathered dinosaurs prove something remarkable: today’s birds evolved from dinosaurs. That makes them dinosaurs. They are merely a group of strange dinosaurs that evolved wings and developed the ability to fly, the same way bats are strange mammals that fly. This means that there are still over 10,000 species of dinosaurs in today’s world. One of the most remarkable is the bee hummingbird of Cuba, which is about two inches long and weighs about two grams (0.0044 pounds). It is the smallest dinosaur of all!An asteroid caused volcanoes to go into overdriveThe Age of Dinosaurs ended 66 million years ago, when a six-mile-wide asteroid crashed into what is today Mexico, striking with the force of over a billion Hiroshima bombs and unleashing a torrent of earthquakes, tsunamis, and wildfires that destroyed much of the Earth. It was a bad time to be alive, and the dinosaurs couldn’t cope. New evidence suggests that the asteroid impact was even more deadly than we used to think. Around the same time the asteroid hit, lava started to spew out of huge volcanic fissures across much of India. It seems like the asteroid may have kicked these volcanoes into overdrive, compounding all of the other problems.Within a few hundred thousand years of the extinction mammals blossomedWith extinction comes the opportunity for rebirth. As the asteroid became a distant memory and the volcanoes stopped erupting, the Earth began to heal. The climate stabilized, new plants and animals evolved, and ecosystems were rebuilt. The dinosaurs (except for birds) were gone, but other animals had taken their place: mammals. Within a few hundred thousand years of the asteroid impact, mammals had already spread around the Earth and diversified into a menagerie of species, from runners and burrowers to saber-toothed carnivores and cow-sized plant-eaters. Among these new mammals were gangly, puppy-dog-sized creatures that swung from the trees. They were the first primates—our ancestors.https://youtu.be/mGuykhLZ5dM

There are lies, damn lies, and tabloid exclusives.“FOUND!” screams the cover of this week’s National Enquirer, claiming a “bombshell” scoop about Prince Harry’s bride-to-be, American actress Meghan Markle.“Man-Eater Meghan’s Secret First Hubby!” the front page raves. “The hush-hush annulment! How she hid past from husband No.2! Poor Harry will be Husband No.3!”There’s nothing unequivocal about these headlines, nothing suggesting the least bit of doubt, especially with the heavily pixilated photo of the newly discovered ex-husband, with the promise: “His story inside!” You have to plough through almost two pages of hyper-ventilating excitement before you reach the tell-tale sentence near the article’s end: “ . . . if the explosive claim of Meghan’s hidden husband is proved to be true . . .” Wait, what?The Enquirer claims to have found Markle’s previously unknown first husband, and then admits the story might not be true? So what does Markle’s supposed ex-husband say? “When approached for comment at his home on the East Coast, he became agitated at the prospect of being exposed.” Just the reaction you’d expect from someone who has never met Markle and wonders why he’s been ambushed by a tabloid reporter.“He later denied the relationship.” Well, he would, wouldn’t he?The Enquirer has never shied away from identifying subjects in tabloid scandals, and would not hesitate to publish a photograph of the alleged ex-husband – if he existed. Everything in this story points to the Enquirer taking a random internet rumor and running with it, and using a barely-plausible subject's denial as evidence of the ex-husband’s existence.A Kensington Palace spokesman allegedly told the Enquirer that the story was a “fabrication,” which seems an understatement. If there’s any truth to this story, the Enquirer hasn’t found it. But that’s standard operating procedure for the tabloids, as seen in this week's Enquirer “exclusive” about Austin Powers actor Verne Troyer: “Mini-Me Was Murdered!" He was allegedly “Force-Fed killer dose of booze.” Where does this revelation come from? A rent-a-quote former cop says: “This should be looked at very carefully,” if only because drug or alcohol abuse has been used in the past to cover up murders. That sounds like incontrovertible evidence to me.The Enquirer does it again with its story: “Bobby Kennedy Was Not A Kennedy!” claiming that RFK was the product of his mother’s extra-marital affair. The evidence? A private investigator examined photographs of Robert Kennedy and his father at the same age, and concluded: “I cannot say with any certainty Bobby Kennedy is, in fact, a Kennedy!” Wow. And that’s what passes as proof that RFK was illegitimate. Why don’t they teach this stuff at journalism school?What about actor Val Kilmer, given three months to live by the Enquirer . . . three years ago. He’s still alive today, so how does the rag explain it? “Val Kilmer cancer miracle!” is the headline. Right.The Globe gets in on the act with its cover story touting its “Special Investigation” above the headline: “The Fight to Save President Trump!” which reports on the “Deep State conspiracy to destroy The Donald.” What does this “special investigation” entail? Apparently little more than cracking open the book Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump, by controversial author Jerome R Corsi. Lifted wholesale from the book, it’s a paranoid imagining of the unelected “shadow government” including Robert Mueller, James Comey, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, that will “stop at nothing to end his presidency.” And if the “Deep State” fails to remove Trump from the Oval Office by legal means, “there is a CIA plan to assassinate Trump,” claims the report. Makes perfect sense. If it’s in the Globe, it must be true.The one tabloid story that rings true this week is the Globe quoting the president’s first ex-wife, Ivana Trump, suggesting that the president not seek a second term. “Donald is going to be 74 for the next election and maybe he should just go and play golf and enjoy his fortune,” says Ivana, who was once a paid-up columnist for the Globe.Us magazine devotes its cover to country music star Miranda Lambert telling “Her Side of the Story” amid accusations that she broke up her boyfriend’s marriage and is a serial home-wrecker. Only one tiny problem with this: Lambert doesn’t talk to Us mag. Not a word. An unnamed “friend” claims: “Miranda didn’t steal [new lover] Evan [Felker] from his wife.” Well that’s convincing.People gives its cover over to The Fixer Upper stars Chad and Joanna Gaines revealing: “We can’t wait for Baby No.5.” Let me be honest: I didn’t care about your first baby, let alone babies two-through-four, so I certainly don’t care that you’re going through this routine for a fifth time. Good luck to the happy couple, but seriously People magazine – is this the best you’ve got this week? Evidently.Fortunately we have the crack investigative squad at Us mag to tell us that Kerry Washington wore it best, that flexible Priyanka Chopra “can twist myself into a pretzel,” that actress Hannah Simone carries earrings, headbands and “a bunch of tiny stuffed mice” for her cat to toy with in her Madewell tote, and that the stars are just like us: they get a haircut, grab a pizza, and go bowling.Following last week’s pictorial montage of celebrities picking up after their defecating dogs, this week Us gives us a two-page spread of stars – including Jane Fonda, Jennifer Lawrence, Pink, Halsey, Rita Ora, Future and Jaden Smith – flipping the bird to paparazzi. It’s the most honest, appropriate response to hounding photographers, and if Us was honest they could fill an eight-page pull-out with identical photos every week, proving that sometimes the stars really are like us.Onwards and downwards . . .

I've been a PlayStation guy for a long time now. (more…)

If you're not up to speed on Hobby Lobby's sketchy investments in illegal artifacts from Iraq, here's the lowdown.(more…)

As a youngster, my favorite Bond film was Moonraker. In fact, it still is. A wristwatch dart gun! A space battle! JAWS! What's not to love!In this video, Tested's Norman Chan visits with Alan Stephenson who has a huge collection of Bond movie memorabilia, models, and props, much of which comes from Moonraker.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida's Sun Sentinel daily newspaper published an ad for a gun show on the front page just below stories about a benefit for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and another article about the guilty plea of the man who killed 5 people last year at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport. After Stoneman Douglas families and others responded with WTF, the paper apologized and then later announced a moratorium on gun ads. From the Miami New Times:

In another career, I used my set of Rock'em Sock'em Robots to settle meaningless employee disputes. They worked successfully at several startups, until I met some online media sales people. They didn't know to stop when their block was knocked off.Mattel's Rock'em Sock'em Robots via Amazon

Just three months after the high school mass shooting in Florida in which 17 people were killed, including 14 teenagers, Georgia's Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp thinks it's comical to point a gun at a teenager as part of a campaign video.“I’m Brian Kemp, this is Jake, a young man interested in one of my daughters,” he says in the video, in which he and a teenage-looking Jake are seating side by side, surrounded by guns.Kemp has Jake tell us what Kemp's three goals as governor are – to "cap government spending...take a chainsaw to regulations...make Georgia number one for small business."Kemp then adds that there are two things you have to know if you're going to date one of his daughters, which he has Jake tell us: "respect," and "a healthy appreciation for the second amendment." At this point Kemp closes his gun and points it toward Jake. "We're gonna get along just fine," he says with a smile.The ad has had mixed reactions in Georgia. According to The Washington Post:

Cambridge Analytica, the firm that consulted on Trump's 2016 campaign and mined the data of 87 million Facebook users without their permission, has shut its doors. Same goes for the company's UK counterpart SCL. From Wired:

Bus drivers in Japan have gone on strike in an unusual way. Instead of forming a picket line, they've draped blankets over the fare machines and are giving free rides to everyone. This is an interesting tactic. If they had refused to drive the buses, the company's management could tell the public that the drivers only cared about themselves and not the passengers who depend on the buses. Instead, the drivers are doing everything they usually do, except collect money.From Japan Today:

A proud young gentleman was triggered by an anti-fascism sign in the streets of Seattle. He decided the best course of action was to tear the big bad sign into tiny pieces so it couldn't scare him any more. But try as he might, he lacked the strength to accomplish his goal. A crowd of jeering onlookers heckled him, which caused him further distress. In the end, he folded the sign and skulked away.

Biohacker Aaron Traywick, who self-experimented with unregulated medical products in front of live audiences, was found dead in a flotation tank at a spa in Washington, DC on Sunday.The 28-year-old CEO of Ascendance Biomedical was known for promoting self-medicating and used himself as a guinea pig at public events. For instance, Traywick, who had herpes, appeared before an audience earlier this year and took off his pants so that he could be the first to inject himself with an unregulated medication his company created to combat herpes and AIDS (watch video below).According to BBC:

PBS asked some experts a question intended to inflame the masses: Which is smarter a dog or a cat? A neuroscientist gave the best answer with some 'measured neuron density shows dogs in the lead' answer. Breed specific cognitive and behavioral specialists hemmed and hawed about how every species is special.No one doubts the raccoons will kill us all.Via PBS:

Chris Notap shows how to make a pocket slingshot (inspired by the Pocket Shot) from a balloon and plastic plumbing parts. It's surprisingly powerful and accurate, even when you use mini marshmallows as ammo.

https://youtu.be/hfR9pwuR5yEChina and Japan have a complicated relationship that goes back for centuries. Asian Boss interviewed people on the streets of Shanghai and asked them about their impression of Japan.

After much anticipation, we finally get a first look at Strange Angel, the ten episode CBS All Access drama series based on the life of rocket scientist, JPL co-founder, and occultist, Jack Parsons. The series is loosely based on the book, Strange Angel, by Boing Boing pal, George Pendle. It remains to be seen how loose. And how far from reality they take the occult and sex magic aspects of Jack's life. Parsons was a member of British occultist Aleister Crowley's O.T.O., and for a time, ran the group's Agape Lodge, a hotbed of sex, drugs, and edgy classical, in Pasadena, CA. The series premiers on June 14th.https://youtu.be/Yvqv3-C_ZBAIf you are unfamiliar with Parsons, here is an article I wrote for Make: magazine years ago, focusing on Jack's amateur rocketry roots.

The Boy Scouts of America are set to drop the "Boy" from "Boy Scouts" come February 2019 and open scouting to all. Now girls can slave their teens away to become Eagle Scouts too!I was a Scout. Every day I use things I learned from Scouting; from knots to time management I am better off for my time, and adventures, in the Scouts. Troop 2 Santa Monica was led by a folks dedicated to the scouts, didn't matter what we looked like, who we worshiped or wanted to date. That was not always the case in Scouting. There were still no girls.The last few years appear to be bringing change pretty quickly to the National organization.I never made Eagle.Via NPR:

If you haven't seen any of the videos produced by the Templin Institute, then you are in for a real treat. Templin is a shadowy online organization of deep sci-fi, fantasy, and game geeks who post a prolific number of extremely well-done documentary video essays covering the histories, politics, factions, cultures, and characters behind dozens of sci-fi and fantasy universes.I have binge-watched dozens of episodes covering aspects of Star Wars, Star Trek, Fallout, Mad Max, Dune, Harry Potter, Warhammer 40,000, Aliens, and many more. They do a really impressive job of putting together these essays using film clips, screen caps, concept and fan art. The writing and narration are also well-done and extremely informative. I learned a lot, even about fictional universes that I already know way too much about.Recently, the Templin Institute has announced a crowd-contributed sci-fi universe that they are creating themselves. They are going to allow their viewers to submit planets, races, factions, and the like, and the best/most popular ones will be incorporated into the world and future videos. I love this idea. I just hope it doesn't take too much away from their weekly coverage of existing fictional worlds.https://youtu.be/At_NxSmdR4Ihttps://youtu.be/l-SrJuuWCIQhttps://youtu.be/TFDvtXDFJeshttps://youtu.be/58aaAiIhL0Ihttps://youtu.be/GDbPvaicYoYhttps://youtu.be/bEQame19KVYhttps://youtu.be/TiorUtiAJoUYou can follow them on their YouTube channel, Twitch, and Facebook. And you can support them on Patreon, if you like what they are doing.

If you're anything like the average web user, you probably have dozens of online accounts, each with their own unique passwords. And, while maintaining unique logins helps protect your accounts, keeping track of all those passwords can get hairy. Dashlane Password Manager makes it easy to keep tabs on your logins while arming you with powerful, encrypted protection. Premium one-year subscriptions are on sale starting at $19.86 in the Boing Boing Store.With a patented security architecture, the most accurate autofill, and an instant password generator and changer, Dashlane nets you both security and convenience by allowing you to automatically login to websites while using powerful, generated passwords. Dashlane lets you securely store autofill payment information, so you can checkout faster online, and it automatically syncs across all your devices, so your data is always with you.You try Dashlane out for yourself by picking up a one-year subscription in the Boing Boing Store, now on sale starting at $19.86.

Repressive autocracies like Egypt, Oman, and the UAE ban Signal and other encrypted messaging apps, using national firewalls to try to block their traffic; Signal evades these blocks by using "domain fronting," in which the service's cloud provider shows up as the origin of its traffic, forcing countries to block Google or Amazon to get at a single service hiding behind them. (more…)

Actor, comedian and rapist Bill Cosby lost the honorary degree Yale University bestowed upon him after a vote Tuesday by its Board of Trustees.From its statement:

"Oh."Here's the American one, offering an entirely different experience:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yKrsq8LKqk

One cute side-effect of Brexit is that it got the UK out of pending EU rules limiting financial secrecy as part of a crackdown on money laundering by looting dictators, one percenters, and criminals; the Tories had put a process in train to come up with a made-in-Britain version, which was always going to be weaksauce thanks to the outsize influence of the City of London and its finance bosses on UK politics, but even that was killed by Theresa May's disastrous snap elections last year. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY1QHpp6iEE&feature=youtu.beAsh Thorp and Zaoeyo animated this stunning tribute to Katsuhuro Otomo's animated Akira. It's so perfect it could be the trailer for a sequel or remake—and had plently of folks briefly fooled.

The Scottish Limited Partnership is a notorious financial secrecy vehicle that's been used to launder at least $80 billion, mostly from oligarchs and organised crime figures from the former USSR, in only four years. (more…)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and much more.GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”Filled with wild twists and funny dialogue” -Publishers Weekly) Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Director’s commentary…Every comics page is just an accumulation of many, many drawing choices and once a cartoonist puts pencil to paper, the world of that strip begins to solidify more and more. I think the idea of someone being able to read another’s thoughts is just about as creepy as can be and keeping Charles Xavier bald as a boy adds to sell his idea. He looks like a little humanoid alien from Outer Limits something. I suppose I also liked the idea that the Peanuts character, Charlie Brown, was a bald-headed boy so that created a precedent for my youthful Charlie X.Panel 3: I knew what I was getting into when I endeavored to begin making an X-Men comic. For one thing, I knew I was going to have to draw lots and lots of victorian mansion interiors thanks to the Xavier School of Gifted Youngsters. I made sure to get plenty of practice in before drawing the actual comic. The color scheme of this panel is noteworthy as an example of a Kubert School assignment that we first year art students had to do when studying color-theory: create an illustration using predominant cool colors or warm ones and accentuate the image with one color from the opposite side of the color wheel. I thought it was a lame, gimmick assignment as a student but rejoiced to find it applied well to this image.Panel 4: The diss from the red-headed step brother is a classic schoolyard snap. The true version contains a copyright I didn’t feel like sending to the Marvel legal dept. “ Your head's so big and your neck’s so skinny you look like a Dum Dum™ lollipop.” Use it on someone next time you wanna deflate take the wind out of their sails. It works.Panel 5: My impulse was to go Tim Vigil with Cain Marko’s murder fantasies but, alas, Marvel is Disney and I didn’t feel like redrawing things if I gave the editor a heart attack.The first X-Men Grand Design collection is now available for purchase on Amazon! Stay tuned for another strip this time next week.You can pre-order X-Men: Grand Design, Second Genesis on Amazon today.

The active ingredient in Ecstasy, MDMA, is safe and can help to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, a new clinical psychotherapy trial shows.(more…)

Thanks to pollution, bug excrement, and particulates thrown into the air by construction in the vicinity, the Taj Mahal has turned color. Constructed primarily using white marble in the 17th century, the UNESCO world heritage site building has changed in color from white, to a troublesome yellow and, more recently, has become sullied with shades of brown and green. Given the Taj Mahal's importance as a tourist destination (it draws close to 70,000 people per day!) and its cultural significance, India's Supreme Court has said enough's enough: they've ordered the country's government to seek foreign help to bring the building back to its former glory.According to the BBC, the Indian Supreme Court recently scolded the country's government for allowing the site to fall into such disrepair, with one court justice saying, "Even if you have the expertise, you are not utilizing it. Or perhaps you don't care."Ouch.For its part, the Indian government has moved to protect the Taj Mahal in the past: it forced the closure of thousands of factories near the site in an effort to protect the building and grounds from pollution. Unfortunately, fighting pollution in the area is an uphill battle. The mausoleum, located in the city of Agra, sits adjacent to the Yamuna River. The river is rife with raw sewage, which attracts hordes of insects. Those bugs apparently love to poop on the world heritage site. On several occasions over the past couple of decades, the Indian government has attempted to clean the exterior of the building, in the hopes of bringing it back to its original coloring. But their efforts have had little or no effect.Apparently, the Supreme Court's reaming of the Indian government's ass wasn't a one-time thing: there's another meeting on the matter scheduled for May 9th.Image: © Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

"He dictated that whole letter. I didn't write that letter," Bornstein told CNN on Tuesday. "I just made it up as I went along."(more…)

As the original Reddit headline states, "Took me longer than I care to admit."(/r/illusionporn)

"I dreamt we spoke, I dreamt we spoke again."My friends in Death Cab for Cutie just posted this enchanting video teaser to announce a new album coming in August and a US tour this fall! This record will be the band's first release since 2015's marvelous LP Kintsugi and their anti-Trump number from 2016, "Million Dollar Loan."Fall tour pre-sale starts May 2.

It is hard to imagine a more foolish proposition than putting Mark Zuckerberg in charge of my romantic life.