Tim Harford (previously) turned me on to Martin Lloyd's Amazing Tales, a storytelling RPG designed to be played between a grownup games-master and one or more kids. (more…)

I wrote about The 49 Boxes in 2015, describing it as a magical participatory experience that combines art, puzzles, story, music — and so much more. Actor and magician Neil Patrick Harris recently experienced it and said, “The 49 Boxes blew my mind. And that’s not easy to do.”Michael Borys, the creator says, "The 49 Boxes is a social, story-driven experience where audiences interact with incredible artifacts to solve mysteries that have been kept secret for more than half a century. This isn't an experience that happens around you… it happens because of you."If you're near Los Angeles on March 24 or 31, I highly recommend that you get tickets. It will be held at the Black Rabbit Rose in downtown Los Angeles.Here's what I wrote after I experienced The 49 Boxes for the first time (when it was at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California):A very, very long table in the front of the room was laden with beautiful, antique boxes. Each box was tagged from the Riverside Historical Museum. At the very center of the collection was a single, large box covered in locks. Quickly, the room began to fill, and soon 75 or so relative strangers were seated. We were told the beginning of a story that took place at the hotel over the course of half a century. The participants could only learn the rest by working together with what they found in the boxes.Every tagged box is an individual work of art and its contents are no less precious. The boxes were distributed about the room and immediately people began to understand what they were holding and what they had to do to unlock their piece of the grand puzzle. Every box interacted with the contents of another, or an element of the hotel and its staff. Everything from card tricks, to science experiments had to be performed. Participants rushed about the hotel in search for clues, objects and tools. From breaking encryption to reading verse, the tasks were varied in difficulty as the story rolled out.People naturally moved from group to group, reading the letters included in each box, trying to gather as much of the story for themselves as they could, as over the course of 90 minutes the puzzle was solved and the central box was unlocked. What was found there once again took us to another fantastic location in the grand old hotel for a final, wonderful pay off.Michael Borys is a passionate collector of interesting artifacts, designer of unique puzzles and has a deep love for magic. He is also a brilliant story teller. The countless hours and masterful attention to detail, the ability to weave together so many complex and delicate elements into the charmingly odd atmosphere of the Mission Inn helped to create a magical experience that brought the crowd together. After 90 minutes this was no longer a group of strangers. We had earned an outcome together that we will never forget and a new community was built.

Built in the early 1970s and currently nestled among a Portuguese wind farm, Casa do Penedo is a residence-turned museum. It would be cool to see how this was constructed! (more…)

It's been 50 years since Mister Rogers' Neighborhood premiered on television. Now you can learn the story of Fred McFeely Rogers (played in this episode by Colin Hanks) from comedian Solomon Georgio as he relays it to host Derek Waters -- completely sauced-- in the latest episode of Drunk History. https://www.facebook.com/drunkhistorytv/videos/1549445235168307/And, if you've never seen the real footage from 1969 of Mr. Rogers pleading to the Senate for more funding for his then one-year-old television, I recommend that you do:https://youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AAGives me goosebumps every time.Also: There's going to be a Mister Rogers documentary in 2018

Jeff Goldblum admits that he can't cook. But that won't keep Jeff Goldblum from cooking. In this video Jeff Goldblum Jeff Goldblums the shit out of a pot of soup. Product plugs abound, but hey: Jeff Goldblum.It's not as good as Cooking with Chrisopher Walken, but I'll take it.

I read a lot. It's part of my job as a writer. Sadly, most of what I read these days is kind of terrible. We do awful things to one another. We've been doing it for a long time. Here's something terrible that I learned today.In 1972, Herman Wallace was in the Louisiana State Penitentiary doing a stretch for armed robbery. While he was inside, one of the prison's guards was murdered. Wallace and two other black men--Robert King and Albert Woodfox--were convicted for the murder.There was just one problem: they weren't guilty.To say that Wallace, King and Woodfox, known members of the militant Black Panther Party, were unpopular with the penitentiary's staff was an understatement. Back then the trio insisted that the crime was being hung on them because of the color of their skin and their political beliefs. Their declaration of innocence wasn't enough to save them from being punished for the guard's murder. The trio was declared guilty. Wallace spent the next 41 years of his life in solitary confinement.In 2013, a United States Federal Court Judge overturned Wallace's sentence, stating in no uncertain terms that Wallace's trial had been "unconstitutional" and ordered his immediate release. The Department of Corrections complied with the order.A few days later, Wallace died of liver cancer. The only moments of freedom he had known in over four decades were also his last. King and Woodfox were a little more lucky--both managed to stay alive for more than a few days after leaving prison.This is what happens when justice is perverted. It's exactly why organizations like The Innocence Project and Amnesty International exist. If you think that one more person suffering for crimes that they had didn't commit is one too many, you'll want to hit up their links to see how you can contribute.Things have been terrible for a long time. They'll continue to be so be unless each of us takes the time, in whatever way we can, to fight for what's right.Image: msppmoore - Angola Prison, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

The art of tattoing is really, really old, according to a new study of some Egyptian mummified bodies that date back to around 3,000 B.C.E.The mummies -- accidental ones, people whose bodies were buried in sand that nicely prevented rot -- have been in the British Museum for a long time, but only recently have their tattoos come under scholarly examination.It turns out that the hot tattoo for women back then was a curious "S" shape, while for men it was ... a sheep.Sheep? As Atlas Obscura explains:

Easter is a busy time for chocolatier Andy Karandzieff (aka "Andy Candy"). He expects to sell over 10K chocolate bunnies this month at his candy shop, a St. Louis institution since 1913.However, when one of his hand-poured chocolates breaks coming out of its mold, the Crown Candy Kitchen owner doesn't toss it or re-melt the chocolate. He instead takes the broken pieces and starts franken-ing them together, forming "misfit chocolates."He told KSDK, "You can start getting creative and you get these oddball, misfit things that come out of my demented imagination sometimes."I wish his shop was closer to me, so I could buy some of his mutant mashups to gift. Easter is on April Fools Day this year, after all (not that I need an excuse).

Vicki from Fifth Gear throws both these massive, monstrous automobiles around the track.One was a show about a handsome Jewish cop and his blonde Steve McQueen-lookin' sidekick, the other some hillbilly moonshiners in a corrupt southern town. Both starred the cars.As a kid I guess I always assumed these cars were fast and well handling. This video shows what lumbering, terrible beasts they were. "Diabolical!"Flash was the best part of The Dukes of Hazzard.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLln7EFTBqQ

I keep a tin of binder clips in the kitchen, on my desk and in my tool bag. They come in all kinds of handy!I didn't think I'd be writing a love song to binder clips today, but they just come in so amazingly useful. I clip ziplock bags to the side of my sous vide vessel. I clip bags of chips shut. I can use large size clips to hold shoes together as I'm gluing them -- and small ones on more delicate projects.Binder clips have been used to hold trim and moulding in place as I glue or hammer it back up, after my dogs ripped it off the walls. Binder clips have held my scuba mask's strap, and acted to guide hoses and hold them in place all over my BCD.There are 100s if not 1000s of uses, like clipping papers together.Binder clips.Staples Binder Clips, Assorted Sizes, Black, 60-Pack via Amazon

If you click the coupon checkbox on the Amazon page for this Stanley Home Repair Mixed Tool Set it'll cost just $11.Here's what it has:

This man made a functional kitchen -- complete with cabinetry, stove, sink, running water, and refrigerator -- in the back of his little electric car. "I learned that making a car kitchen is hard if you want it to actually look like a real kitchen," he says. The best part is that the entire kitchen is easily removed from the car.

Last week a retired Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by novichok, a nerve agent, in Salisbury, England. Officials are concerned that anyone who visited the restaurant or pub the man and his daughter went to that day are at risk of being poisoned themselves. Traces of novichok, which is similar to the poison used in the double assassination, were found at both places.The Russian scientist who developed novichok says anyone exposed to minuscule traces of it could be affected by it, even years later.From Sky News:

Looks like the worm at the bottom of a mezcal bottle just isn't enough for some folks. Boas and iguanas stuffed into mezcal bottles are now the thing, at least in Oaxaca, Mexico.So far, environmental inspectors have seized 15 bottles of “artisanal, wild agave” mezcal that also contained entire reptiles such as "a blood snake, ridge head snake, yellowbelly snake and a whip snake," according to APNews.Although some adventurous drinkers dare to swallow the worm, these larger critters would require a lot of chewing before swallowing. Good thing that mezcal can reach an alcohol content as high as 55%.Selling wildlife in Mexico is strictly regulated, so this trend might not last long, at least not on store shelves.Image: Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE - Western Whip Snake (Hierophis viridiflavus) male close-up (Found by Jean NICOLAS), CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

Last night while ABC 10News reporter Bree Steffens was giving a live report in San Diego, we see her pulled off the screen. A growling man appears on camera and then disappears while we hear Steffens scream "Oh shit!" We also hear a loud crunch and glass breaking (the camera, most likely). We are then switched to a worried 10News anchor, who says they will be checking on Bree Steffens and getting back to us about the situation soon.Fortunately Steffens and the photographer are both fine. According to ABC 10News:

Trump fired secretary of state Rex Tillerson, replacing him with CIA director Mike Pompeo. He nominated deputy director Gina Haspel to lead the CIA. If the Senate confirms her, she'll be the first woman to direct the CIA. Quartz offers some background on her:

Kudos to Travel Oregon for making a beautiful animated promotional video, called "Only Slightly Exaggerated." It was written and produced by Portland's own Wieden + Kennedy. Animation by Psyop and Sun Creatures Studio, and music by OregonSymphony.From Cartoon Brew:

One of China's most famous female reporters (according to a translation from the video's YouTube page) spices up an otherwise dull parliamentary session when another reporter asks a long and obsequious question. Watch the sassy Liang Xiangyi from Shanghai-based China Business Network roll her eyes, scrunch her face, sigh, look the other reporter up and down, and then turn to whisper something to another person.According to Asia Times:

While looking something else up, I came across Merriam-Webster's new online "Time Traveler" feature today. It allows you to browse to see what words were first used in print for a particular year.For example:"Idiot box" was first used in 1955, "granola" in 1970, and "cyberpunk" in 1983. "Bloodletting" was used before the 12th century and "bootleg" first appeared in 1634.It's a lot of fun to play with but, according to Merriam-Webster, there are the factors to keep in mind when using it:

One of my favorite writers has a new book out and was interviewed by The Cut. He talkes about his transition, gender identity, bylines, and the new context of his past work.

Longtime Trump consigliere Roger Stone likes to give slippery answers when grilled by lawmakers or reporters about the specifics of his contacts with Wikileaks and Julian Assange, who are more or less one and the same. The Washington Post finds that their contact dates back to at least 2016.(more…)

This is very bad and not normal.(more…)

John McEntee, a personal assistant to President Donald Trump, was today fired and escorted out of the White House for unspecified security reasons. His was not the only high-profile White House departure today: Trump also fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. This is not normal.(more…)

This is not normal. Today, President Donald Trump has fired Rex Tillerson, and plans to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him as America's top diplomat.(more…)

The Washington Post reports that Rex is gone. Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker:

TIL: Chronicle Books has published The Clown Egg Register, a book authored by photographer Luke Stephenson and fine artist/clown Helen Champion on -- you guessed it -- the Clown Egg Register:

It's not for the public ("accessible in the Yale library"), but researchers are working on a "universal translator" for old computer files that might otherwise be lost to obsolescence. Jessica Leigh Hester, at Atlas Obscura:

Sony's Digital Mavica FD was a digital camera that saved pictures directly onto floppy disk: a wonderful convenience in an age when flash cards (and their readers) were expensive and rare. Images were saved at up to 1280x960 (1.2 megapixels!) and "not that bad", and it takes up to 6 seconds to save them to disk. Quality wasn't the point: this gadget captured 40 percent of the consumer digital camera market. Looking back, the Mavica FD was probably a key solvent in the unexpectedly fast transition from analog to digital photography.Thrifting notes: third-party batteries won't work in some models, the FD75 and especially the FD87 are the best models, but the FD5 is simplest and easiest to just lug around.

Cecil Robert posted this remarkably effective video. It should be inscribed on titanium disks, encoded in the simplest possible video format to decipher, so that future generations may understand the essence of angloamerican culture at the twilight of mankind.Previously:

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Nerdist got Tommy Wiseau, of "The Room" infamy, to dress up as Arkham Asylum's most famous resident and run through some classic lines. With firm direction, and a lot of takes, Tommy would be a startlingly good Joker.

Gabe at H.I.S Survival demonstrates the fascinating process of making chocolate from bean to bar. He also describes some of the many kids of cacao pods and has plenty of tips on how to improve the yields from each batch. (more…)

Finnish photographer Ossi Saarinen has gotten quite adept at taking photos of birds facing directly to camera, making each bird look adorably round, like the cute shot above. (more…)

Since last time I wrote about Toronto's leading role in "reparative therapy" for curing LGBT people, the worst gender clinic was shut down and its head was fired. Now another "expert" had his license suspended after having sex with men he claimed he was "curing" of homosexuality. (more…)

Jaywalking shouldn't be a crime. Everyone does it; it's part of the self-governing behavior of urbandwellers, and is so routine that I've suspected it plays a crucial role in a city's everyday mobility. Countries that don't criminalize jaywalking have lower rates of people killed in traffic.Even the police in many US cities would seem to agree that jaywalking laws are silly, because they ignore a ton of jaywalking.The exception? Black Americans -- they're dramatically more likely to be charged with jaywalking than white folks. What's worse, several jaywalking arrests of black residents in recent years have spiraled into abuse, violence and even death -- as with Trayvon Martin, or the case that recently came to light of Johnnie Jermaine Rush: after Rush jogged away from two officers who stopped him for jaywalking, they strangled, punched and tasered him.This, as Matt Ford argues in this excellent piece in the New Republic, is yet more evidence that jaywalking laws need to go. They're selectively enforced in a racist pattern:

In the original 1992 Castle Wolfenstein 3D, you fought off Nazis and their dogs.Now there's a mod called Woof3D -- also known as "Return to Castle Woofenstein" -- which removes all the nazis and the guns, and all you do is ... pet the dogs.As the creator explains:

I am a huge fan of Jon Peterson's beautiful doorstop of a tome, Playing at the World, an exhaustive history of D&D, RPGs, and wargames. So, I was delighted to discover his YouTube channel. Even though he only has a few videos on it, I found them all very interesting.https://youtu.be/_EVQsIETO_AIn "A History of D&D in 12 Treasures," Jon looks at 12 artifacts (I assume from his personal collection) that help in understanding the early development and history of D&D. It it so cool to see early correspondence between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, early newsletters, rules for pre-D&D games that influenced D&D, and of course, the first printed, 3-booklet edition of Dungeons & Dragons.https://youtu.be/N74fRQkqAJEBefore there was Critical Role, HarmonQuest, D&D With Pornstars, and Wizards of the Coast's own Dice, Camera, Action, there was The D&D Radio Show. Or, there would have been if it had ever been broadcast. Back in the 1980s, TSR created a pilot for a D&D radio show that never saw air. Jon got a hold of the pilot episode. It's fascinating to ponder what RPG entertainment, now in its infancy, might be like today if it had taken hold over 30 years ago.https://youtu.be/sQlA6oAyLXgIn this video, Jon sits down with fellow D&D history nerd, Bill Meinhardt, to go through the early boxed set editions of D&D to discuss how you can tell which printing is which.

UK animator Cyriak Harris celebrated getting 1M YouTube subscribers by livestreaming this trippy Mega Dance Party Mix. It's a 20-minute long retrospective remix of some of his past music and videos.No, you're not hallucinating. It just feels like it.Thanks, Heathervescent!

I can confirm that the little Bluetooth speaker that was on sale for $7 last week sounds great. Despite its diminutive size, the sound is very solid and can be turned up a lot louder than I would have thought. The Amazon promo code Y98TGMLD still seems to work, but even if it doesn't $15 is a good price. I'm going to take this with me on trips so I can listen to music and podcasts in my hotel.

Acclaimed UK photographer Andy Rosen, who took many of the iconic photos of the early punk days, has written a nerve-racking, but entertaining piece about his bizarre experience he had after photographing Simon LeBon of Duran Duran.Excerpt:

After 8th-grader Sasha Matthews posted here about the copyright-swiping terms and conditions imposed in Scholastic's annual Art & Writing Awards, the group says it will no longer demand legal ownership of youngsters' submissions.Scholastic's competition is a marquee annual event celebrating the creative work of schoolchildren, but its rules assign the company copyright ownership of entries forever. This would allow Scholastic to reuse and profit from the work without the creators' permission--and prevent the creator from stopping them or doing likewise.Now the company is planning a revision to its rules so that it can use the work, but the kids still own it. Though Scholastic hasn't said exactly what form the new terms and conditions will take, similar events require only a license to use the work.https://twitter.com/RumbleComics/status/964528736602386432?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwNicole Brown writes:

An undercover police car ran a red light at an intersection in Brooklyn, almost cutting off a driver who made a legal left turn in front of him. The officer pulled him over and took pleasure in repeatedly asking the driver why he was "shaking so hard." The officer's amusement was cut short when the driver informed the officer that he had a dashcam recording that would prove the officer a liar in court. The cop made one last attempt to nail the driver for not having his current address on his license, but the driver pointed out that he didn't need to get a new license to reflect that.From YouTube: "Undercover silver police car with three officers, NY Plate HMJ 7410. Approximately around 12-12:15am on March 9th at the intersection of Morgan and Grand."

French antipodists Régina and Yvonne Baranton wow the audience in this 1969 episode of the Ed Sullivan Show. Fun fact: Regina was married to famous juggler Gil Dova:https://youtu.be/mlk1_tmdCro

A young man named Mohammad Hashem caused a furor on a live Egypt television show after telling the host and his "debate" partner, former Deputy Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mahmoud Ashour, that he was an atheist. Ashour looked as if he'd been startled awake, saying "What? What was that?" When the Hashem said the words "Big Bang" in English, the host (looking dapper in an electric blue suit) angrily interrupted and shouted "Speak Arabic! You are in Egypt and you are addressing simple people, so don't use big words for no reason."It went downhill from there, with the host whipping himself into an artificial frenzy worthy of Wally George. "You are confused and unreliable," he said. "You deny the existence of God and reject our religion and principles. You come here to talk about a certain idea, but have nothing to offer. You offer atheism! You offer heresy!" The former Deputy Sheikh of Al-Azhar told Hashem he needed "psychiatric treatment." The host jumped in and said, "I advise you to leave the studio and go straight to a psychiatric hospital... Please get up and leave and I will continue the show with Dr. Mahmoud."

As a species, we've got a long history of being shitty to one another for no other reason than skin color. White folks, myself included, have arguably earned the right to drop the mic on bigotry. Over the centuries, we honed systemic racism to such a razor edge that the cuts our ugly worldview made are still being suffered today. As our world's recent politics have illustrated, a lot of people still buy into this superiority-of-the-white-man bullshit. But it's getting better. Views are changing, albeit slowly, and we're crawling on our knees towards equality.I think that one of the reasons that it's taking us so long to get there is that no one likes to admit that they're wrong. Doing so puts you in a perceived position of weakness, which is ironic given that owning one's faults can be so powerful. Believing this as I do, I was really surprised to read this morning that National Geographic decided to call itself to account for the racist reporting that its correspondents have written and they've published over the decades:Instead of wasting their time on naval gazing, the magazine's editorial team asked an outsider, historian John Edward Mason, to hunt down all of the ugly, racist writing he could find from National Geographic's archives. As National Geographic's current Editor-in-Chief Susan Goldberg explains, examining the publication's past was both painful and necessary:

A man has been living in a tent hidden in a tube on top of a train station in Antioch, CA. He was spotted lowering a bicycle from roof and was reported to police, who determined he was maintaining an "unsafe camp."From Fox News:

Adult film star Stormy Daniels doesn't want Trump's $130,000 hush money anymore. But unlike an unwanted new pair of shoes that suddenly feels too tight around the toes, can hush money be returned?Daniels, aka Stephanie Clifford in real life, sent a letter to Trump's private lawyer Michael Cohen today offering to return the money for her freedom to freely share her story about Trump. This includes being free to share any text messages, photos and video she might have regarding their alleged affair.According to NBC:

When Nixon formed the EPA in 1970, the agency had the prescience to send photographers across America to photograph the kinds of environmental catastrophes that triggered its formation: chemical factories belching smoke; smog over cities; burning barges in the middle of waterways; clearcuts, litter and filthy lakes and rivers. (more…)

London's housing bubble has appeared unprickable, stabilised by influxes of offshore money from "investors" who saw property in the capital as a safe, easily liquidated bet even after the 2008 crisis when the rest of the UK saw housing prices tumble. (more…)

"Only slighty exaggerated," it's titled. "Based on actual events. More or less. "