Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the summons from the Mother of All Parliaments to explain the way that Cambridge Analytica was able to plunder his company's databanks: he's told them to go fuck themselves. (more…)

American geologist Clarence King led a strange double life in the late 1800s: He invented a second identity as a black railroad porter so he could marry the woman he loved, and then spent 13 years living separate lives in both white and black America. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll consider the extraordinary lengths that King went to in order to be with the woman he loved.We'll also contemplate the dangers of water and puzzle over a policeman's strange behavior.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Vanity Fair's Maya Kosodd points out the consequences of tapping or clicking through the little popups when you sign up for Facebook: these are contracts that let Facebook do everything that you're now complaining about.

What a sad and enraging video; I hope they track down the monster responsible. As posted on Twitter but embedded below, since they'll presumably remove take it down. [via]

The Aral Sea is one of the worst human-authored environmental disasters in history. It used to be the world's fourth-largest freshwater lake, until the Soviet Union in the 1960s diverted its two main river-sources for cotton production. In three decades the sea shrank to barely 10% of its former size, splitting into two much-smaller bodies, the North and South Aral seas.That's terrible on its own, but the shrinking water produced a huge spike in salinity -- which killed off nearly all the fish. The Aral Sea used to support a thriving fishing industry, but that evaporated with the water, destroying the lives of untold people in the USSR. (And stranding ships, as in the photo above.)In recent years, though, the story became more positive -- as intelligent engineering and planning has helped to mend things somewhat. As National Geographic reports ...

Simple comedy, perfectly executed, by voice actor SungWon Cho. Here's his YouTube channel.

Some new calculations suggest that a small red-dwarf star -- accompanied by a smaller brown dwarf -- flew so close to our solar system 70,000 years ago that it passed through the Oort Cloud.This blows my mind.That is dementedly close to Earth! I mean, viewed one way, the Oort Cloud -- the ring of icy material that surrounds the solar system, and which is the likely source of the comets we see on Earth -- is very far away: 0.8 light-years. But considered in terms of interstellar enormitude, that's basically our backyard. Consider that the original Voyager space probe will probably enter the Oort Cloud in 300 years.Or to put it another way, an object made by humans will, in just a few generations, be chilling in the same region that not too long ago saw another damn star swing by. And yeah, 70,000 years is, in cosmological time, not that long ago at all.In fact, our ancestors may have seen the star as it swung through the neighborhood. As a press release by the scientists notes:

San Francisco's Killing My Lobster troupe teaches sketch comedy to kids in a program through the 826 Valencia writing center. Then, as KML writes, grownups "take their work, rehearse it, add zany props, and perform it in front of a live audience." How fun is that?The show is in its fourth year and is called 826+KML=BFFs. They've got six performances coming up in April at PianoFight.

Jenya Ivkov documented a tropical paradise surf safari, and even the waves are nice and relaxing. It includes some lovely footage around the island. (more…)

The fight for net neutrality has been an arduous one ever since the FCC voted to repeal a set of Obama-era regulations that protected against data throttling and blocking by ISPs back in December of last year. The fight's heating up, especially now that the Internet Association (which represents significant web players including Google, Facebook, and Amazon), filed to intervene in an ongoing lawsuit against the FCC challenging this repeal.While this signals some degree of hope for the future of net neutrality, nothing is certain, which is why as web-faring users, we should take it upon ourselves to ensure our browsing movements stay unhindered and private. To this end, VPNs have surged in popularity as they allow users to encrypt their browsing activity and surf the web hassle-free.For the unaware, a VPN, or virtual private network, is a tool that produces a secure channel for you to browse the Internet safely. Picture it like a private room that you can do everything you'd typically do, like pay bills, answer emails, and shop, but you and everything you touch is invisible while you're doing it. In this way, VPNs allow you to sidestep the prying eyes of your ISP while still staying connected to the Web.VPNs are particularly useful for those who often travel or find themselves commonly connecting to public hotspots. While convenient, these unsecured networks are prime hunting grounds for hackers, and if you find yourself sharing the same digital space as them, your personal information, like banking info and passwords, can become compromised.Of course, with net neutrality being a hot topic and hackers launching more sophisticated attacks, VPN solutions have flooded the market, and they're not all created equal. NordVPN, however, is a solution worth highlighting, and its trove of features may very well make it the last VPN you'll ever need.Top-tier encryptionRated 5/5 by PC Mag, TrustPilot, CNET, and PCWorld, NordVPN has made a name for itself in the industry as one of the most comprehensive VPNs out there. With NordVPN, all of your browsing information is funneled through the software's double encrypted tunnels, boasting double data SSL-based 2048-bit encryption. You can get online access across the globe with more than 3,500 worldwide server locations in 61 different countries, and you can tap into them on up to six devices simultaneously, handy for those with extensive collections of devices.High-speed connectionsOne major complaint of most VPNs is that they hinder browsing speed in exchange for keeping your movements under wraps. NordVPN, however, grants you unbridled access to high-speed connections that are ideal for streaming video content and can even let you do so in locations that impose geo-restrictions on streaming services, like Netflix and Hulu.No trace left behindNord VPN also lets you use secret notes that auto-destroy as well as an encrypted chat function, so you can communicate without worrying about leaving a trail. What's more, in the event you lose connection to NordVPN, the software automatically shuts down your browsing, closing any windows of opportunity hackers might have to steal your information.The fight for net neutrality is far from over, but with NordVPN's comprehensive protection and liberating features, you can still experience the Web unhindered and free from the meddling of your ISP and the government. A two-year subscription to NordVPN would generally run you $286, but you can sign up today at a 75 percent discount, lowering the final price to $69.

Dezeen interview leading architects and designers around the world for Elevation, a new documentary on how drones will change cities. Speculative architect Liam Young points out, "Now that drones are in the hands of every person in the street, they're potentially as disruptive as the internet." (more…)

Demna Gvasalia, luxury brand Balenciaga's creative director, has reimagined Crocs by adding a five-inch thick sole to them.Of course, the main difference between the two pairs of shoes, besides the platform soles and the Balenciaga-specific flair, is the price.A pair of ordinary Crocs costs under $50. A pair ofBalenciaga "foam platform sandals" will set you back $850 (a charmless pair is "only" $495). [Its high price didn't stop the shoes from selling out on its release in February, according to Dazed.]W writes that Gvasalia has "a habit of trolling the fashion industry with upscaled versions of mundane items."

Dr. Jack Brown is a body language expert. On his site Bodylanguagesuccess.com, the Las Vegas physician shares his analyses of the nonverbal communication exhibited by people in topical videos. I've been reading his site for sometime now and I think he does an incredible job explaining what can be seen by really looking at someone's oh-so-telling body language, esp. their micro-expressions.So, it was with delight to see that he gave his insight on Sunday night's Stormy Daniels' interview on 60 Minutes.In short, Brown says Daniels exhibits a high "sincerity quotient" and that she was "telling the truth throughout the duration of this exchange."He writes:

What Went Wrong? is a citizen journalism project started in sub-Saharan Africa to document all the unsustainable aid projects started by Westerners who fail to follow through after their PR blitz. Journalist Peter DeCampo spoke with BRIGHT magazine about the project, where Africans can text reports on local fiascoes and boondoggles: (more…)

It's easy to undervalue how much joy music can bring into a life.Rafael is a guitarist from Guantanamo, Cuba. He doesn't have reliable access to the Internet, so a lot of the music that we take for granted has never made it into his ears. In this video, posted to YouTube by ATKFW, Rafael is encountering Stevie Ray Vaughan for the first time. Even with the video's poor lighting, there's no hiding the joy on his face or in his response to the music.The little kid he's hanging out with seems pretty stoked too.

Being rich might not buy you happiness, but it can get you out of prison pretty damn fast, even if you kill four people. In the holy-shit-what's-gonna-kill-us-today fast-paced world that we live in, it's easy to forget about a Grey Poupon stain like Ethan Couch. Here's his thing, point by point:

Ira Nayman writes, "I'm the Managing Editor of Amazing Stories, which was the first true science fiction magazine (Hugo Gernsback published the first issue in April, 1926; yes, the Hugo Awards were named after him). In its time, it published such luminaries of the genre as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, E. E. 'Doc' Smith and Arthur C. Clark, to name a few. (more…)

"Defendants plainly intended to prevent American voters from hearing Plaintiff [Clifford] speak about Mr. Trump," the suit says.Stormy Daniels has amended her lawsuit against Donald Trump to say Trump attorney Michael Cohen defamed her, and also says the non-disclosure agreement she signed violates campaign finance law.(more…)

Public records requests have shown that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- who have continued and intensified Obama's program of mass deportations and separation of families under Trump -- uses Facebook's logs, merged with logs from cellular carriers and analyzed by software from Palantir (Peter Thiel's police-state arms-dealer) to track immigrants. (more…)

Trump's White House spokesman 'strongly, clearly, and consistently' denied Stormy Daniels' affair claims the day after her interview with 60 Minutes aired.(more…)

Tokyo designer Hiroto Ikeuchi creates amazing wearable cyberpunk assemblages out of scrap electronics and other odds and sods. (more…)

Ohio State sociologist Natasha Quadlin set out to study the effect of high academic achievement on women's employment, so she created 2,106 fictional job applicants, half male, half female, across a spectrum of GPAs and college majors, and submitted them via common recruiting sites. (more…)

New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo joked about how folks of various religious faith dance. Evidently Judaism is dead last.Via the Root:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r_VAxvu4l8St Petersburg's Internet Research Agency -- AKA "The Troll Factory" -- is in the news since Robert Mueller indicted 13 of its employees, but it first came to public attention in 2013, when investigative reporters working for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta revealed that the agency was working to manipulate Russian public opinion in favor of Putin and the Kremlin and against opposition politicians by flooding Russian online discussions with thousands of "patriotic" posts made under a welter of pseudonyms. (more…)

"Using only the paper pizza menus that were pushed under our door during the day, I can shim open our hotel room door defeating both the striker and the top swing arm latch in under 30 seconds," writes MM Developer. "Faster times can be achieved if you aren't trying to video."

States have a patchwork of arcane, antiquated laws that disenfranchise citizens deemed to be "incompetent," "incapacitated," "idiots" or "insane persons." Tens of thousands of people -- especially elderly people believed to have dementia -- lose their votes every year under these rules. (more…)

Rebecca Solnit's 2008 essay "Men who explain things" popularized the concept and the general awareness of this gentlemanly practice, but the word itself was not used therein. Instead, "Mansplain" was apparently first uttered on Livejournal a few weeks later by phosfate, a now-vanished psuedonymous user. This is revealed in Merriam-Webster's new official definition, crediting Know your Meme for the discovery. [via Kottke]

Last month in Texas, Ana Lisa Garza, a Democrat running for a state House seat, received a campaign donation of deer semen valued at $51,000. The semen is stored in straws that are worth $100 to around $5,000 each depending on the genetics of the "donor." From ABC7News:

Pats of Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova was covered with orange snow this weekend. The odd hue was caused by sand blown into the atmosphere from the Sahara Desert that mixed with snow and rain. The same Saharan dust also resulted in a very orange tint to the Greek island of Crete, seen below."African Dust Turns Snow Orange in Eastern Europe" (Weather.com)

"I'm better than any piss-ant who ever lived."Jim Nabors, who died last year, apparently recorded this fantastic clip to promote his new television series, "Gomer Pylse, USMC," to TV execs and possible sponsors.(via r/ObscureMedia)

Screenbid is holding an online auction for furniture, props, and other items seen on Mad Men. The high ticket items are Don's 1964 Chrysler Imperial (asking bid $40,000), Don's box of secrets from Adam Whitman (asking bid $2100), and the SCDP office sign (asking bid $1,900.) Don's office TV is pretty sharp though but apparently doesn't actually work.Mad Men 2018 Auction

Here's part seven of my reading (MP3) (part six, part five, part four, part three, part two, part one) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015's Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It's my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my 2017 novel Walkaway.MP3

McDonald's deploys a number of design tricks that are intended to tempt you to buying from its more expensive, higher-margin new menu: they're largely trivial and obvious (putting up big pictures of the menu items, animating the preferred menu-items to catch your eye), though sometimes the explanation for these rests in highly speculative accounts of the evolutionary pressures on early hominid (the idea that we are attracted to moving things because it helps us "spot predators" -- an evidence-free conjecture based on the imagined lives of our distant ancestors who left no record of their social conditions). (more…)

If you have aspirations of becoming any sort of digital designer, you'll need to get comfortable with Adobe Creative Cloud, a leading suite of design and editing software hailed by creative gurus. Thankfully, you can familiarize yourself with these tools for pennies on the dollar thanks to the Pay What You Want: The Adobe CC Lifetime Mastery Bundle.Here's how the deal works: Simply pay what you want, and you'll unlock two of the collection's nine courses. Beat the average price paid, and you'll get the remaining seven at no extra charge. Plus, if you beat the leader price, you'll be entered into a major giveaway and earn a spot on the leaderboard.From Photoshop to Illustrator, this collection features more than 40 hours of training with the Adobe Creative Cloud's suite of programs. You'll discover how to navigate through each program's interface and leverage their tools to their full capabilities to edit photos, create designs, and even build websites.Just choose your price, and you can start your design education with the Pay What You Want: The Adobe CC Lifetime Mastery Bundle.

The Wall Street Journal profiles rich "train buffs" who buy vintage Gilded Age railcars and refurbish them, then pay to have them hitched to Amtrak trains and pulled between their city houses and their country places. (more…)

kiwami japan (previously at Boing Boing) shows us how to turn a pack of kitchen foil into a ready-to-chop kitchen knife. See also the pasta kitchen knife and the chocolate kitchen knife.

I enjoyed the recently-viral comparison of a $600 craiglist piano with Yamaha concert grands, but was disappointed with the lack of experimental rigor. Thankfully, a more scientific comparison is now available: $1 piano vs $1000 piano, embedded here for your critical listening pleasure.

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In an interview aired last night on CBS, Stormy Daniels described her affair with Donald Trump and the threats she received to stay quiet about it.Watch the video and read the transcript at CBS News. (Embedded above are highlights from CNN; CBS offers an embed but it's broken in every browser I tested.)

Dries Depoorter & David Surprenant's Die With Me is a chat app available for iOS and Android, but only if your device is on its last legs: "The chat app you can only use when you have less than 5% battery. Die together in a chatroom on your way to offline peace."

You likely read about "Mad" Mike Hughes in the news last year – you know, when you weren't busy stockpiling canned goods and potassium Iodide tablets to help deal with the existential dread that's currently gripping the planet. Hughes is the flat-earth loving, paradoxical science-hating DIY rocket designer who stated that he'd blast himself into the sky in a steam-powered, homemade rocket to prove that the earth isn't round.That was a mouthful, but there's a lot going on here.The first time that Hughes attempted to fire himself into the air in a blaze of Darwinism, the Department of Land Management shut him down, as his flight path would have taken him into the airspace over public lands. So, Hughes scrubbed the launch. Yesterday, he took another go.According to the Associated Press, Hughes's steam-powered death chair was able to carry him to a distance of 1,875 into the air before he and his capsule floated back to earth, in relative safety, via parachute. When questioned about how he was feeling after surviving his flight, Hughes seemed happy that it was over and done with, citing that his back hurt, but over all he felt relieved that it was over.No matter what you believe about Hughes' beliefs about the shape of the earth, of the lunacy it takes to strap yourself to the tip of a homemade rocket, you've got to respect that he pulled it off. Maybe he didn't gain as much altitude as he'd wanted. Yes, he failed to prove the earth was flat, round, or any other shape. But dammit, he built a frigging steam-powered rocket, rode it into the sky, and then lived to talk about it. That's one hell of a thing.

There's too much to chase, these days, so deputize yourself. The Origami Unicorn Lapel Pin [Amazon] evokes three cool things for me: Blade Runner, pride, and this very website. It's $10, 1.5" wide, 2mm thick and double-pinned.

After the Argentine economic collapse in 2001, Juan Villarino realized that he was probably going to be poor for the rest of his life; he tried moving to Belfast and working low-waged jobs, but couldn't get ahead there either, so he decided to become a lifelong, professional hitchhiker, and got very, very good at it. (more…)

After years of free-range kids campaigning, a state legislature has taken heed: Utah just passed the Child Neglect Amendments, affirming that common activities like letting your kid walk to school or leaving them in the car while you duck into a shop are not neglect or child abuse. (more…)

The Obama-era Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule was intended to prevent companies with a history of wage-theft and unsafe working conditions from getting federal government contracts; the GOP in the Senate and House passed a bill rescinding this rule and then Trump signed it, eliminating any possibility that companies that endanger and steal from workers will be excluded from receiving your tax dollars. (more…)

Whether you were an avid collector back in the day or simply inherited a collection from your parents' mixtapes, you likely have a stash of cassettes you're hanging on to for nostalgia's sake. And, while your taste in music might last for years to come, those cassettes likely won't have the same longevity. Luckily, this Audio Cassette to MP3 Music Converter can help you preserve those tracks well into the future, and it's on sale in the Boing Boing Store.This converter hooks up to your laptop and allows you to convert tapes to MP3 files for easy digital access. It's compatible with both Mac and PC, and once your cassettes are converted, you can transfer your tunes to your phone or tablet for easy listening and sharing whenever you'd like.The Audio Cassette to MP3 Music Converter normally retails for $69.99, but you can get it in the Boing Boing store for $20.99.

"No computer graphics tricks were used in this video," writes Jiri Zemanek of Czech Technical University in Prague.

Uzi Nissan registed Nissan.com for his computer business 25 years ago, long before the web was of interest to big corporations. Later on, the car manufacturer Nissan knew his ownership was legitimate and that it couldn't make him to hand it over. So it ruined him financially with years of spurious, strategic legal action in the hopes he would yield. Mr. Nissan lost almost everything, but he still has his domain name.

Every time I think I understand how weird platypuses are, I obtain additional information that further weirdifies them.Popular Science has a great little piece that kicks off by talking about a new study on platypus milk, which is apparently loaded with a powerful antibiotic that science has found nowhere else in nature. That's pretty cool to begin with – it might be possible to harness that antibiotic, for example, to deal with antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria!But PopSci uses this study as a hook to deliver a full-on recitation of platypian oddness, which brought untold joy into my heart: