https://youtu.be/B65mtQv6NxsOnly the biggest fans of the 1971 classic film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory were able to figure out that the actor who played the cowboys-and-TV-obsessed Mike Teevee was a contestant on Jeopardy. I say "only the biggest fans" because never did host Alex Trebek or contestant Paris Themmen, now 58-years-old, ever mention his younger years as a child actor.Introduced on Monday only as "an entrepreneur from North Hollywood, California," it took die-hard Wonka fans on Twitter to enlighten the rest of us.

This guy set up a telescope in public areas around Los Angeles and invited people to look at the Moon. They react with astonishment and joy.(more…)

On the crowdfunding site Massdrop, board-game fan Cassidy Williams is taking preorders for a $160 Scrabble-themed mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches (if you've got a mechanical keyboard kicking around that you'd like to convert, you can get the $47 keycap set instead). (more…)

In just two days the entire U.S. – and much of the rest of the world – will be green (green clothes, green hair, green balloons, green beer...).(more…)

Tax lawyer Jed Bodger has publised an analysis in the journal Tax Notes detailing the expected gains for superheroes under the Trump tax plan. (more…)

In 1955, MIT- and Caltech-educated Qian Xuesen was fired from his job teaching at JPL and deported from the USA under suspicion of being a communist sympathizer; on his return to China, he led the country's nuclear weapons program and became a folk hero who is still worshipped today.(more…)

Jun Ying was serving as CIO of Equifax when he avoided more than $117,000 in losses by exercising and liquidating all of his stock options before the public was notified of the company's catastrophic breach -- but after he had figured out what was going on. (more…)

Hey, LA! Molly "Strong Female Protagonist" Ostertag, Tillie Walden and I are going to be talking with Jen Wang about her amazing, genderqueer middle-grades fairy-tale/graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker, tonight at 7PM at Chevalier's Books. Be there or be square!

The good folks from Night Vale have launched Pounded in the Butt By My Own Podcast, a new audio treat in which guest-readers read the extremely NSFW and utterly delightful erotic fiction of Chuck Tingle (previously).

Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan has only been on the job since October, but he's earned a 35%, $4.6m raise, despite flat earnings and a series of scandals since Sloan took over from the cartoonishly villainous John Stumpf. (more…)

The so-called dark web is now so big that mapping efforts are afoot. It feels a bit like the web in the 1990s! The creators explain:

It's a silent video, but for a few chuckles from the camera operator. I recommend Maurice Ravel's Bolero as a soundtrack:https://youtu.be/dZDiaRZy0Ak?t=5m51s

Androkavo tests some of the cheap eBay solder against the brand-name stuff; it gets there in the end, but it's surely not the advertized 60/40 alloy and needs to be close to 400° before it behaves itself.

A woman named Stevie was so stoked to have an entire subway train car to herself, that she started singing a song about it while recording it with her phone. Then she noticed someone else was in the car too and got a little embarrassed.Thankfully for us, her friend Adam Broud got hold of the footage and posted it on the internet, where it went viral:https://twitter.com/AdamBroud/status/973025457388929024(digg)

Online privacy is pretty much a dumpster-fire, but it's a funny dumpster fire in the world of Kiwi editorial cartoonist Chris Slane, whose one-panel strips are hilarious in a kind of oh-shit-we're-doomed kind of way. (more…)

When a Kansas family taking a United flight yesterday from Oregon to Kansas City, Missouri boarded their dog on the plane, they probably hadn't yet heard that United had just killed a passenger's puppy. When they landed, they went to the cargo area to pick up their 10-year-old German Shepherd, but were greeted by a great Dane instead. Fortunately, the Dane was alive.Meanwhile, their German Shepherd, Irgo, was still in the air, on a different plane headed for Japan.The owners of Irgo are, of course, distraught. Apparently, United is trying to tell the family the the great Dane is indeed their German Shepherd, because, well, the paperwork tells them so.According to CBS:

The British Royal Family is nothing more than a lurid soap opera to the tabloids, which this week come up with a few wild and fact-free plot twists of their own.The tabloids have long indulged their salacious imaginations at the expense of the Royals, who are loathe to sue for libel, exposing them in recent months to stories of Prince Harry’s “real father” being at least two different men, Prince Charles plotting Princess Diana’s death, and Charles’ wife Camilla being locked up in a mental institution.This week German TV repairman-turned-private eye Guenther Focke, aged 71, claims that he is Prince Charles’ long-lost brother, the result of his mother's World War II fling with Prince Phillip, according to the Globe, which includes the headline: “DNA Test Bombshell!” The bombshell? Focke is demanding a DNA test. The “exclusive interview” with Focke might be more gripping if he hadn’t been making this claim since 1995, and penned a book on the subject in 2008: Not In Her Majesty’s Service. In those past 22 years not one iota of evidence has confirmed Focke’s claims, but that’s good enough for the Globe to revive the ancient allegation.“William & Kate Crowned King and Queen!” screams the cover of the National Enquirer, in a story that spectacularly ignores every known fact and law in the Royal line of succession.A “top secret meeting of government leaders” from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand meets next month to force Queen Elizabeth to abdicate and “cast their votes in secret” for Prince William to take the throne, “and there’s nothing the Queen – desperate for Charles, her eldest son, to succeed her – can do.”Let’s be clear on this: The Queen has vowed never to abdicate; Charles is next in line for the throne; and there is nothing foreign government leaders can do to change the British line of succession, unless the British Parliament ever votes to abolish the monarchy. And since this imaginary meeting has not yet even occurred, the Enquirer cover claiming that William has been crowned King is premature at best.Meanwhile, Prince Harry’s future bride Meghan Markle’s “secret junk food diet has royal courtiers cringing over her caloric cuisine!” reports the Enquirer. It claims that the American actress loves to wolf down mac 'n' cheese and French fries, saying: “I love carbs.” Proving that what you post on social media years ago really can come back to haunt you, even if it bears no relation to reality.“Princess in Training!” declares the cover of People magazine, which knows its readers love a good Royal story. Unfortunately, this isn’t it. The future Royal is reportedly being taught how to curtsy, wave, and how to politely decline to sign autographs. Also how to sit, roll over, and beg, one assumes.Back in the real world, the Enquirer claims a “World Exclusive,” which you can also read in this week’s Globe, which calls its story a “bombshell exclusive.” Both report that American soldiers in Afghanistan in 2003 placed explosives inside the corpse of an enemy combatant and exploded his head. Former U.S. Army Sgt Ronald Logan appears to have photographs of a dead Afghan soldier, but they are hardly conclusive evidence of anything. Suffering PTSD, Sgt Logan reportedly attempted suicide in 2013, was charged with sexual misconduct, accused of attempted rape in 2015, and demoted to private in a court-martial, before being discharged for misconduct, the Enquirer reports. Logan claims to have written to President Obama in 2013, but received no response. Intriguingly, while the Enquirer portrays this as the “Shame of Abuse By U.S. Troops,” the Globe headline places blame elsewhere: “Obama War Crime Cover-Up! . . . Ex-President ignored evil atrocities on his watch!”But more importantly, will Ben Affleck get back together with estranged wife Jennifer Garner? Us magazine’s cover story is breathlessly devoted to reports that the couple are “spending nights together! . . . Ben declares he’s still in love with Jen . . . Jen’s only dates have been with a Ben look-alike . . . Will they reunite – or finally move on?” It’s all a huge tease, as Us goes on to report that Affleck stays at Garner’s home on occasions “to log some time with their children,” and that Garner is already moving on, looking not for a boyfriend but for “a partner.”Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Julianne Moore wore it best, that Dennis Quaid admits “the biggest misconception about me is that I’m a nice guy,” that Grey’s Anatomy star Camilla Luddington carries pimple concealer, a satin eye mask and her daughter’s teething ring in her Stella McCartney purse, and that the stars are just like us: they have pedicures, pump gas and go through airport security. Shocking, as ever.The award for the week’s most disturbing headline goes to the Enquirer, with its story on Burt Reynolds’ alleged problems with incontinence on a recent movie: “Burt’s Bowels Explode!” The 82-year-old acting legend on occasions would “have to run to his trailer” to take care of business, claims the report – as if other actors never have to use the bathroom. The only surprise is that the Enquirer does not have exclusive photos of skid marks in Burt's underpants.Onwards and downwards . . .

Immerse yourself in the awkwardness that is Shark Tank with all the talking removed. Makes ya sweat a little, don't it?Previously: Dr. Phil with all the talking removed

The distorted text was bad enough, but these grainy photos with slivers of this and that are getting ridiculous. I'm with the people who suspect it's some kind of free labor mechanical turk AI bot training. And what of esoteric definitional matters like this: (more…)

Someone watched reruns of WKRP in Cincinnati, tracked all the songs played on the show, and then put them in this spreadsheet. Dr. Johnny Fever played the first song played on the show, Ted Nugent's "Queen of the Forest," which marked the end to the previous radio station's format (Muzak/Swing) and the beginning of the new WKRP format (Rock, Punk and Top 40).https://youtu.be/ZTpvqUvMkzQ?t=17m11sAll right, Cincinnati, it is time for this town to get down! You've got Johnny... Doctor Johnny Fever, and I am burnin' up in here! Whoa! Whoo! We all in critical condition, babies, but you can tell me where it hurts, because I got the healing prescription here from the big 'KRP musical medicine cabinet. Now I am talking about your 50,000 watt intensive care unit, babies! So just sit right down, relax, open your ears real wide and say, "Give it to me straight, Doctor. I can take it!"Now someone just needs to make this into a Spotify playlist. Who wants to volunteer?Previously: WKRP in Cincinnati redacted to save on license feesThanks, Christopher Bickel!

Dremel rotary tools are useful but pricey. I bought this $21 clone in 2017 because the Dremel tool I owned was cordless, and not really strong enough to rough out the wooden spoons I was whittling. It accepts Dremel bits (If you don't have any Dremel bits, no problem -- it comes with a good starter assortment). It has plenty of power. I have never turned it up more than halfway. I really like the flexible shaft, because it gives me more control than I have holding the relatively heavy tool itself.Sample spoon:

Today at 10AM local time, students across America walked out of their classes for 17 minutes, in memoriam of the 17 students murdered in the Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, exactly one month ago. (more…)

The last message Stephen Hawking posted to a public internet forum was an answer to a question in a Reddit AMA, querying how humanity will weather an age of technological unemployment. (more…)

Highly trained with firearms, Police reservist Dennis Alexander was teaching his high school class about gun safety when the handgun accidentally went off. Splintered fragments of the bullet ricocheted off of the ceiling and hit three students.Guns do not belong on campus.Via SF Gate:

Slovenian immigrant and reluctant First Lady of the United States Melania Trump is gearing up her long awaited battle against cyberbullying. She's going to hold a meeting where no one expects her to actively do anything. This meeting will be with the leadership of several social media giants, good people to not do much about online bullying with.Yesterday her husband fired the Secretary of State via a tweet. Looks like she has her work cut out for her.Via NBC News:

Leslie Gibson, who is running unopposed for Maine House 57th District seat, says he is sorry, so sorry, for calling 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez a “skinhead lesbian.” Gonzalez, who survived the February 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, co-founded the gun-control advocacy group Never Again MSD, and has a Twitter account with more followers than the NRA does.From HuffPost:

Dan Lipinski literally inherited his Illinois seat from his father, and has held it since 2004, despite voting against a $15 minimum wage and against a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. (more…)

United Airlines has repeatedly attained viral fame for its mistreatment of its passengers and their belongings, and has even dabbled in pet murder, but now the airline has crossed another item off its worst-airline bucket-list, murdering a passenger's puppy by insisting that a dog-carrier be stored in an overhead locker during a 3.5 hour flight, despite having received a $125 cabin pet fee and despite the carrier fitting comfortably under the seat. (more…)

A teacher who has received gun training as a reserve police officer accidentally shot his gun on Tuesday at a California high school. A boy was “struck in the neck by ‘debris or fragmentation’ from something overhead,” said Seaside Police Chief Abdul Pridgen.From The Washington Post:

Theranos, touting fast and easy blood tests, was a billion-dollar Silicon Valley beast. But it all came crashing down after its tech turned out to be unreliable and it emerged the company used traditional tests to hide that fact. Investors were bilked and its partners sued it, but founder Elizabeth Holmes seemed to escape serious sanction--until now. In a settlement with the SEC, she gets away with a $500,000 penalty, must leave Theranos, and is barred from serving as an executive on a public company for 10 years. (The SEC does not impose criminal penalties such as imprisonment.)

In much of the world, addresses are difficult to convey because they refer to locations on unnamed streets, in unnumbered buildings, in unincorporated townships, sometimes in disputed national boundaries (I have often corresponded with people in rural Costa Rica whose addresses were "So-and-so, Road Without Name, 300m west of the bus stop, village, nearest town, region"). (more…)

https://youtu.be/AA6MKeHNLEwA passenger's bag slides into a United Airlines test compartment with ease, but the employee pulls it out, then sets it down on the test compartment at an angle to prevent it from going in. He shrugs and says "Rules are rules." Why is this staffer purposely stressing out a passenger? Years ago United staff had a reputation for treating their customers with snide contempt. In more recent times they seemed to be on a path of rehabilitation, but institutional sociopathy has crept back.

https://youtu.be/BDByiRhMjVAIsraeli security research firm CTS-Labs has published a white paper detailing nine flaws in AMD processors that they claim leave users open to devastating attacks with no mitigation strategies; these attacks include a range of manufacturer-installed backdoors. (more…)

Happy pi day! Today we think of pi as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter (3.14...). But in the olden days (and even today) some people thought pi should be the ratio of a circle's radius to its diameter (6.28...), Today, that symbol is called tau, and in some cases, it makes for cleaner looking equations. 3Blue1Brown made a fun video about the "seminal moments when pi became the standard."Another reason to celebrate pi day - the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the release of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, a significant update to the amazing little $35 Linux computer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQZxdiz2UAs

This patch by LA artist Alex Pardee made me smile, but only partially. It's called "Half a Nice Day" and you can get one at his site for $10. The same design is available on a tee-shirt for $30.

The DoNotPay bot (previously) is a versatile consumer advocacy chatbot created by UK-born Stanford computer science undergrad Joshua Browder, with its origins in a bot to beat malformed and improper traffic tickets, helping its users step through the process of finding ways to invalidate the tickets and saving its users millions in the process. (more…)

In a bulletin released today, Google announced that it will soon banish cryptocurrencies from its advertising platform. Also nailed are various other scamtastic financial offerings and presentations.

This luxurious upholstered cat sofa by FelinEva is certainly a favorite of the French maid in the video. Watch her fondle it gently, quietly, as if she herself was a cat, a cat in fishnet stockings.Will actual cats be as enamored? There's no real way to know until it's in your living room, right? I'd guess my cat would quickly inspect it and then promptly ignore it, because cat. No mention of the sofa's cost on the website but we have to imagine it's going to set you back a pretty penny."Would you rather be a cat sofa?"Now, if you're in the market for a cat sofa but are looking for something a bit more economical (and less over-the-top), check out the Paws & Purrs sofa bed for cats (and other small to medium pets). It's about $102.(hauspanther)

One of the main reasons why many of us invest in cloud storage is to back up the sensitive files and data that we'd rather not have saved on our computers. Of course, this strategy doesn't hold much water if you're using a cloud storage solution that doesn't protect your information while it's saved to the Cloud. SpiderOak locks your information down at all times with end-to-end encryption, and now you can sign up for a one-year plan for $10 off its $39.99 sale price.With SpiderOak, your data is protected before it even leaves your computer, and it's encrypted again while in transit to, and at rest on SpiderOak servers. You can seamlessly sync data between all of your devices, regardless of operating system and even restore your data before ransomware hits thanks to SpiderOak's recovery feature. Plus, SpiderOak keeps your privacy paramount by maintaining no knowledge of your password, any data stored on their servers, or the metadata associated with your files.1TB one-year subscriptions to SpiderOak were on sale for $39.99 in the Boing Boing Store, but you can sign up today for $29.99.

A new Gallup-Knight Foundation survey suggests that shifting student views are exposing deep rifts in attitudes toward diversity versus free speech among demographic groups. The survey presents this false dichotomy of inclusion vs. the First Amendment, but that's how it's often presented in these debates, ignoring academic responsibility. (more…)

"Wrong again, Albert"Previously: Stephen Hawking has died. The famed physicist was 76.

In 1905 Winchester Cathedral was in danger of collapsing as its eastern end sank into marshy ground. The surprising solution was to hire a diver, who worked underwater for five years to build a firmer foundation for the medieval structure. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of William Walker and his curious contribution to saving a British landmark.We'll also contemplate a misplaced fire captain and puzzle over a shackled woman.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

The NME died and I didn't even notice. Once the place to read about emerging bands and scenes in the UK, its obsession with guitar-slinging white boys ossified into an unnerving lack of sexual and racial diversity, its growing focus on teenage audiences chased off everyone else, and it was ultimately mummified in sleazy advertorials and tone-deaf subject matter after becoming a free pop culture glossy. This latter incarnation lives on online (Today's top story: "Nicolas Cage will finally get to play Superman"); the paper died a while ago.

Turtles were at the center of a hundred-year evolutionary controversy since the 1887 discovery of a Proganochelys fossil in Germany. AS PBS Eons explains, the question of how turtles got their shells led scientists "to rethink the entire history of reptile evolution." (more…)

Democratic party candidate Conor Lamb is probably the winner of yesterday's special election in west Pennsylvania's 18th district, turning a house seat blue and red faces pale. But there's only a few hundred votes in it, with no concession from GOP opponent Rick Saccone, and recount talk in the air. NBC News called it for Lamb, but most networks stayed on the fence early Wednesday morning.

“It just seemed that cosmology was more exciting, because it really did seem to involve the big question: Where did the universe come from?” — Stephen Hawking, 8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018British physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76. He was known for his groundbreaking work with black holes and relativity. (more…)

Buying products that are locally grown or made in your community is a great way to bolster your local economy and support small businesses in your community. Unfortunately being able to tell which products actually come from near the area where you live can be next to impossible, thanks to lax regulation and bullshit on the part of international conglomerates.According to USA Today (disclaimer: I occasionally write for their tech site, Reviewed.com), many of the state branding programs put in place to inform consumers of where the the food that they're buying comes from don't mean a damn thing. This is because many of the food branding programs currently in place allow for up to half of the ingredients in a product to come from out of state.Over the past four months, USA Today had reporters in their network hunt down the laws and regulations surrounding how locally-sourced products are presented for sale. Of the 45 states that rock these branding programs, 18 of them set no minimum requirement for how much locally-grown content needs to be in a product to earn a state brand. Worse still, 36 of the 45 states have no annual inspection process to be able to vet whether companies are actually using locally sourced ingredients in their products. And even if they were to get caught for lying about what's in the junk they make, 40 of the states with local source branding programs have no penalties for mislabeled products. So, a company could falsely claim to be making cookies in your basement and they wouldn't face any consequences for doing so.The best part of all of this? A lot of these locally or state-grown advertising programs are funded by our tax dollars.Classy.The best way to avoid dealing with this kind of nonsense is to shop from farmers markets where you can buy fruits, vegetables and meat right from the source. Beyond this, question what you buy: read the ingredients labels of the items you're thinking of putting in your shopping cart. If it smells like bullshit, there's a good chance that it is.Image via Flickr, courtesy of Eugene Peretz

Loneliness. Fear of catching HIV. Kink. No matter the reason for why someone might want to hump a sex doll, the Zambian government is against it. In fact, Zambia's politicians are so horny to put a stop to the import and use of such sex toys that it's become a top shelf political issue.Zambia's government has always taken a hard line against anything that rubs up against their conservative christian sensibilities. Homosexuality, for example, is punishable with up to 14 years in prison. Law enforcement in the African nation is quick to clamp down on anyone who might dare to step over the line of its ethical norms. As such, you won't find any shops selling sex toys, at least not out in the open. Most of the hardware designed to turn reproductive bits into an amusement park have to be bought online before being discreetly imported into the country.The logic for keeping adult toys and plastic pleasure partners out of the nation comes from the Bible, according to Godfridah Sumaili. She's Zambia's head of its recently created, totally-not-something-out-of-an-Orwell-novel Ministry of National Guidance and Religious Affairs:

I wouldn't feed Charles Manson's corpse to my dog, let alone fight over it. Not everyone's of the same mind: after a whole lotta legal jibba-jabba, the courts have finally decided on who gets possession of his remains. According to Jezebel, Manson's grandson, Jason Freeman, has won the dead cult-leader lottery, having been awarded the right to take possession of his murderous progenitor's remains: