Deep in the Jostedalen glacier in Norway, musician Terje Isungset puts on an annual concert played on instruments made of ice. It just completed its 2018 run, though they had to move further north this year to an icy lake due to warming temperatures. (more…)

To celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year. the New York Philharmonic played Ricochet, Andy Akiho's concerto for ping pong. (more…)

This week's most widely-lifted viral image is this delight from a car owner whose vanity plate, "Cruz Fan," has evidently led to embarassing misapprehensions in our new golden age of loony conservatives in government. I have no idea who the owner or the photographer were, sadly. I would love to credit both the particle and the observer for generating this tiny quantum of joy.

Cynthia Blee, inspired by a tongue-in-cheek request by Christopher Mims, created a Chrome browser extension that replaces the word "blockchain" with the phrase "mulitple copies of a giant Excel spreadsheet."

In this paper, law professor Lynn Lopucki ponders the question: What happens if you turn over control of a corporate entity to an AI?Pretty terrible stuff. Odds are high you'd see them emerge first in criminal enterprises, as ways of setting up entities that engage in nefarious activities but cannot be meaningfully punished (in human terms, anyway), even if they're caught, he argues. Given their corporate personhood in the US, they'd enjoy the rights to own property, to enter into contracts, to legal counsel, to free speech, and to buy politicians -- so they could wreak a lot of havoc.The prospect of AI running firms and exploiting legal loopholes has been explored in cyberpunk sci-fi, so it's mesmerizing to watch the world of real-world law start to grapple with this. It's coming on the tails of various thinkers pointing out that Silicon Valley's fears of killer AI are predicated on the idea that AIs would act in precisely the way today's corporations do: i.e. that they'd be remorselessly devoted to their self-interest, immortal and immoral, and regard humans as mere gut-flora -- to use Cory's useful metaphor -- towards pursuance of their continued existence. Or to put it another way, corporations already evince much of the terrifying behavior LoPucki predicts we'll see from algorithmic entities; it's not clear that any world government is willing to bring to justice any of the humans putatively in control of today's crimedoing firms, so even the moral immunity you'd see in AIs is basically already in place.Lopuci assumes that AI capable of running a corporate entity will likely emerge -- rather quickly if you believe AI doubters (though naively-slowly if you believe others) -- by the 2070s. As he points out ...

Friends of mine at Because We Can (a local Bay Area "design build architecture" firm) shared some good news:

See ya later, er, crocodile.For an extremely-limited edition line of polo shirts, Lacoste is temporarily replacing its iconic green crocodile logo with the likenesses of 10 different endangered animals. The French clothing brand partnered with BETC Paris and International Union for Conservation of Nature to choose the campaign's threatened species, ranging from the Anegada Rock Iguana (450 left) to the Vaquita (just 30 left).They note:

It's been six years since Disney's original Wreck-It Ralph movie. You'll remember that it was focused on video games. Its sequel, due to release at Thanksgiving, is set inside the internet.

Friday the 13th's bad guy Jason Voorhees can't die but he can be chained under a lake near Crosby, Minnesota. Dread Central reports:

Because you are a Boing Boing reader, you probably know who Jonathan Coulton is. He was a computer programmer who happened to be a wonderful singer/songwriter. In 2005 he quit his coding job and became a full-time musician, writing and recording catchy songs that won the hearts of nerds around the world.Eight years ago, Coulton invited his fans to join him on a cruise ship. His idea was to have a week-long floating "summer camp" for geeks, with lots of tabletop gaming, cosplaying, music, comedy, comic books, science fiction readings, panels, presentations, and workshops. About 375 "Sea Monkeys" took him up on his offer. It turned out to be something people loved, and so the “JoCo Cruise” became an annual event. I was invited this year as a performer (doing talks, panels, and workshops), joining 1,600 other Sea Monkeys to take over an entire cruise ship (Holland America's ms Oosterdam) for a trip from San Diego to Baja California, Mexico. It was the eighth JoCo Cruise, and Carla and my daughter Jane came with me.[caption id="attachment_576836" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: Jonathan Coulton, by John Scalzi, used with permission.[/caption]This was the second cruise in my life. I’d taken one with Carla about 25 years ago. It was on a Carnival Cruise ship, a cruise line that David Foster Wallace describes in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again as the “Wal-Mart of the cruise industry, which the other lines refer to sometimes as ‘Carnivore.’” I didn’t have a great time on that earlier cruise, so I wasn’t looking especially forward to the living-on-a-boat-and-eating-crappy-food part of the trip, but as soon as we boarded the ms Oosterdam in the Port of San Diego I realized this was going to be a lot better than the Carnival Cruise. For starters, the boat was gorgeous and clean and the food was excellent. There was a poolside taco bar that I visited frequently, several restaurants, lots of cozy nooks to hang out, and a buffet that was open until late at night. There was also 24-hour-room service at no extra charge. I ate my way from one side of the ship to the other, gaining five pounds over the week. Also, this cruise was a full-ship charter - Sea Monkeys only. As JoCo says, having the entire ship means not "having to juggle and fit our programming around the rest of the passengers and their schedule. Because we are the rest of the passengers!" That made all the difference in the world.The thing that really made the cruise unique, though, was the passengers. I could relate to everyone! (JoCo describes the passengers as "technophiles, tabletop gamers, and creative-minded people of all stripes." Sounds right to me.) A lot of the people told me they've been reading Boing Boing since it was a print zine. A couple of people even said they have the first issue, which came out in 1988! Everyone was interesting. Some dressed in fancy costumes. Many carried ukuleles. There were 10-year-olds and 70-year-olds. I felt comfortable around these people and temporarily transformed from being a full-on introvert into a semi-introvert!The Sea Monkeys were in a state of bliss being together and doing things they loved. I soon learned that the thing we all loved the most was playing games. Coulton told me that the Sea Monkeys had brought with them almost 2,000 pounds of tabletop games, which were collected on shelves in a library in the main restaurant so people could check them out and play them. Everywhere you looked on the ship people were playing games. We played Letter Tycoon almost every day. Jane and I loved playing social deduction/deception games like Two Rooms and a Boom and One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Playing these games late into the night was one of my favorite parts of the cruise.In addition to games there were many other activities. Each day was packed with stuff to do, such as making puppets, taking a photography class, going to a comic book writing workshop, watching a movie like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in the screening room, or listening to a talk about black holes and explosions in the Universe. The staff did a great job of making things run smoothly. It really did feel like summer camp, only with better food and funner things to do. The nightly concerts featured comedy, music, interviews, and talks. I went on stage and told my story of losing my Bitcoin wallet password. I also gave a talk about the history of making things, and organized a card magic meetup.Here’s a list of all the performers, who were also geeky, friendly, and approachable:I spent a lot of time on the 10th level of the boat in the Explorer’s Lounge – ordering espressos, playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch Carla gave me for Valentine’s Day, reading an advance copy of Gary Lachman's scary and fascinating book, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, and staring out the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows at the endless ocean.We stopped in three places in Baja California: Cabo San Lucas, Loreto, and La Paz. My favorite by far was the little town of Loreto. It was quiet and pretty, and they had good ice cream, as author Patrick Rothfuss can attest:[caption id="attachment_576818" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Patrick Rothfuss vs. Ice Cream. Photo copyright by John Scalzi, used with permission.[/caption]Some people never even got off the boat, because they were having too much fun playing games and doing the scheduled activities.It's hard to convey how wonderful this cruise really was. Carla, Jane, and I didn't want it to end. We want to do it again next year!JoCo Cruise 2019 will be in the Caribbean. It sails March 9-16 from Ft. Lauderdale Florida, and the ports of call are Half Moon Cay, San Juan, and Tortola. The special guests are They Might Be Giants! If you register for JoCo 2019, tell them I sent you![caption id="attachment_576820" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: Steve Petrucelli[/caption][caption id="attachment_576819" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: Mark Barrington[/caption][caption id="attachment_576823" align="alignnone" width="1020"] Photo: Beth Gordon[/caption][caption id="attachment_576834" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: Mark Frauenfelder[/caption][caption id="attachment_576827" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: Freddie Melton[/caption][caption id="attachment_576835" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: Mexican no-prescription pharmacy by Mark Frauenfelder[/caption][caption id="attachment_576838" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: MJ Hart[/caption][caption id="attachment_576839" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: Richard Johnson[/caption][caption id="attachment_576844" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Randy had a Boing Boing Coop shirt![/caption]>[caption id="attachment_576846" align="alignnone" width="1200"] We were the last people off the ship! We spent all morning in the Explorer's Lounge.[/caption]Top image: Open Mike Eagle and his audience in Loreto Mexico, by John Scalzi/Flickr (used with permission)

Vodaphone Germany and Nokia are designing a 4G network for the moon. The network is meant to support PTScientists's "Mission to the Moon" that involves the Berlin-based company launching a lunar lander and two moon rovers aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2019, the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. (PTSScientists was one of the teams competing in the Google Lunar XPRIZE that's ending this month without a winner.) From Space.com:

The makers of the Light Phone 2 want you to leave your smartphone at home, and use this simple phone with calling, messaging, and an e-ink display instead. You can pre-order one on Indiegogo for $199. If it also had a Kindle app, I might buy one, but I guess that goes against the whole point.

Viacom issued a statement this afternoon that the “Heathers” TV series, which was scheduled to premiere on March 7, will be delayed "out of respect for the [Florida shooting] victims, their families and loved ones." They should also probably stop saying the series is "based on the killer cult classic."

https://youtu.be/D9nQmKNtOY4If the GOP and NRA have their way, frequent mass murders of students in classrooms will continue to be the new normal. A South Carolina company called Big 6 has developed an expandable vault that can be installed in classrooms as a place for children (or, as some conservatives call them, "crisis actors") to hide when an active shooter tries to kill them.

I'm just about to go to the airport to fly to Sydney for tonight's event, What should we do about Democracy? (more…)

https://youtu.be/c3PLJnKPn6gSimone Giertz is the beloved creator of a series of Shitty Robots, and now she's working at longer lengths, having created hilariously profane, shitty-robot-themed show about vegetarianism and robots, which culminates in the construction, stalking, killing and eating of a tofu-impregnated robot that she and Adam Savage built. It's pretty much perfect. (via Beyond the Beyond)

James Bridle (previously) is the latest contributor to The Atlantic's excellent series on the future of cities (Bruce Sterling, Molly Sauter, Adam Greenfield); in a new piece, Greenfield discusses the phenomenon of "virtual citizenship," and how it affects cities that are either turned into dumping-grounds for inconvenient poor people, or rootless, tax-dodging one-percenters. (more…)

Darrell aka The Broken Nerd created this cool Killmonger spear from glimpses he caught in Black Panther. It turned out really great. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvnyFPKX8-AIn 2016, the Yes Men (previously), everyone's favorite political pranksters, hoaxed the NRA: today, they've released their short documentary, which lays bare the NRA's internal culture of racist-driven fear and gun-humping murderous fantasies. (more…)

Peter Brown decided to dye some cotton balls, soak them in resin, then turn the resulting form on a lathe to make a delightful colored handle for a refurbished garden tool. (more…)

In the 1940s, Ronald Clark's father was a custodian at the New York Public Library's Washington Heights Branch. That meant he and his family lived in an apartment in the library. Here's an animated StoryCorps video about Clark's childhood in "The Temple of Knowledge" and "creeping down to the stacks in the middle of the night when curiosity gripped him."

Barry Lewis from My Virgin Kitchen decided to make clear potato crisps, and they look amazing, like little starchy dried jellyfish. (more…)

Life has become immeasurably better ever since I swore off inkjet printers and started using a laser printer exclusively. Unless you must have color print outs, laser printers are faster and less likely to have problems. I have an older model similar to this one. Brother sells toner cartridges for $54, but you can buy a 2-pack of toner cartridges for $8 when you apply coupon code AZ18LV2P at final checkout on Amazon.

Elfquest, one of the first breakout indie comics of the 1970s, is ending its 40-year-run with today's issue. There's a farewell signing with creators Wendy and Richard Pini tonight at Things From Another World in Portland -- if you can make it, tell them hi from me!There'll be more Elfquest in future, the Pinis say, but this wraps up the tale for their towheaded Wolfrider chief Cutter and his family.

This video report looks at the current state of consumer arcade VR with VR World’s Head of Content Tommy Goodkin. (more…)

Lower Days Ahead is an Amazon print on demand paperback book filled with nonsense sentences, the kind found in spam email to make its way past Bayesian filters. The author is "Patrick Reames" but when Reames received a 1099 form from Amazon he made $24,000 selling the book he was surprised, because he didn't write it or get any money from the sale of the book. It's likely that criminals are using Amazon's print on demand program to launder money.From Krebs on Security:

Chock up another one for the women and men who work in Antarctica. Not only do they spent months on end slugging away for the betterment of humankind, they also mark the turning of the seasons by watching a film about a crew in their shoes being hunted by an alien threat.iO9 reports that every year after scientists and logistical staff leave Antarctica for the winter, the skeleton crew that maintains one of the research stations over the winter months gathers to watch the 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing From Another World. The movie, which is as corny as you might imagine, still managed to be menacing enough to inspire John Carpenter to create The Thing, back in 1982. The best bit: The Antarctic winter crew watch the movie after the last flight leaves the island, knowing that they'll be isolated for months from the rest of the world as the howling winter storms envelope the continent.I can't imagine that the isolation that the winter crew faces while they're in Antarctica does anything good for their skulls. That they make light of things going terribly wrong for folks in a similar situation to the one that they face? That's bad ass.Image via pxhere

A loud experimental band from Monaco named Hardcore Anal Hydrogen enlisted the aid of artificial intelligence to generate the trippy, psychedelic visuals used in their music video for the track, "Jean-Pierre."On their site, the band details the ins and outs of how they manipulated Google Deep Dream, Neutral Style Transfer, and DeepFlow to get these results:

Tasty’s Devon and Jared test out Marilyn Monroe’s prized stuffing recipe and try to figure out what secrets it holds about her love life.

The ROICHEN EASY TRAY "helps you to stock and pull out your clothes without making a mess" and is an instant classic in the annals of weird advertising.

In this video, AJ+’s Sana Saeed breaks down the long history of the NRA, from its beginnings as a post-Civil War sports club to its present day pro-gun activism. It turns out the group wasn’t always the aggressive Second Amendment defender it is today; the NRA actually used to support gun control. NPR has a similar video featuring senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving discussing the history of the NRA too:https://youtu.be/7460CZcGJRYAs NPR’s accompanying article explains:

Mike Boyd of Learn Quick shows how to tune your voice to the resonant frequency of a glass and break said glass using only the unamplified human voice. (more…)

Beauty YouTuber Jovita George has a really cool series in which she contrasts two cultures’ makeup styles on the two sides of her face. (She’s previously done French vs. American makeup, British vs. Italian makeup, and Japanese vs. Russian makeup.) In her latest video, George contrasts the Hindu bridal makeup that’s popular in South Indian states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh with Muslim bridal makeup that’s popular in the Punjab region as well as Pakistan. As George points out, no one makeup look can represent an entire culture and there are plenty of regional (not to mention personal) differences that determine what someone wants to wear on their wedding day. But this double tutorial is still a fascinating glimpse into two very different bridal styles.https://youtu.be/Y44RSbiT8Ko

Palm Springs just wrapped up Modernism Week, an annual event that celebrates the midcentury modern aesthetic, and no doubt that these swanky tissue box covers were a big hit, even at $75/pop.(If it's hip, it's here)

Stevin Tuchiwsky survived cancer as a child, which he says motivated him to become a renowned nature photographer. (more…)

Jordan Watson, the New Zealand-based father-of-three behind "How to Dad," demonstrates how to rock a baby to sleep in his latest video. It's cute.In my personal experience, the "Invisible Trampoline" is the most effective for knocking newborns out but then again I've never tried waltzing.(This one goes out to my brother and his family who just welcomed my nephew Benjamin to the world!)(Likecool)

Vox breaks down the ways in which our smart phones are designed to keep us addicted and offers some simple suggestions for how to feel less pulled towards using them all the time.

Being a despot sucks. International sanctions keep you from being able to import Game of Thrones DVDs or yellow cake uranium. No one ever tells you that there's food on your face and the anguished cries from your nation's gulags keep you and the rest of your family from getting a good night's rest. When you're not busy threatening the world with nuclear annihilation and when even having your enemies torn apart by dogs doesn't make you smile, it's time to melt away and take a vacation – get outta yer secretive nation!Oh, if you happen to be from North Korea, you'll likely want to do it with a Brazilian passport.According to Reuters, the despotic family of North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il attempted to leave their humanitarian crisis of a nation to visit western countries using illegally obtained Brazilian passports. It was long rumored that the Kims had been using forged travel documents for years to venture into the west in search of rest, relaxation and all of the shit that we don't want them to have because they're a terrible family doing horrendous things to millions of people. But up until now, no one, at least outside of the intelligence community, had ever seen any proof of it. That all changed this week when security sources provided Reuters with a photocopy of passports with Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Il's photos in them. Unsurprisingly, the Brazilian government doesn't have much to say on the matter.I'd love to show you photographs of the passports, but I can't – we don't have the right to use the images. But Reuters does. You can check them out by clicking this link.Image via pixabay

Oh, this is fun: No one in the government seems to be doing much of anything to help curb gun violence, but they're totally willing to use your tax dollars on bulletproof vests to keep their corpulent asses from getting zipped.According to The Hill, The Committee on House Administration, by voice vote, passed a measure to make bulletproof vests a reimbursable expense. The motion also makes it cool for members to hire security to cover their six during public appearances, when they're at their office or taking a whizz at an Olive Garden during a working lunch. The Hill's Avery Anapol points out that the motion to keep House members safe from bullets that regular folks have to deal with on their own comes on the heels of Steve Scalise (R-La.) returning to Washington after getting shot last summer during a ball game. So, yeah, I can see why they're a little jumpy, but c'mon.Given that members were already granted an additional $25,000 to implement greater security measures last year in the wake of Scalise's shooting, their being able to put risk management add-ons on the tab of taxpayers has a rotten smell to it – especially in light of the discussion surrounding school shootings and gun ownership these past few weeks/month/years.Image: National Photo Company/Wikimedia Commons

Palantir Technologies is a data-mining firm that loves it some predictive policing: computer-aided sorcery that uses data models to try and predict where crimes may occur and who's got a reasonable chance of committing them.For predictive policing to work well, the predictive model being built needs to be well fed with data on criminals, their first, second and third-person acquaintances, their social media accounts, and crime statistics for the area where the model is meant to be seeing crimes before they may possibly happen. It sounds like shit right out of Minority Report, because it kinda is – just without spooky kids in a swimming pool and a hell of a lot less accuracy.Accurate or not, the notion of predictive policing raises a number of civil rights and privacy concerns. The ACLU isn't down with it, as the methodology of stopping someone without reasonable suspicion is against the Fourth Amendment. In their eyes, computer-aided guesses don't cut it when it comes to justifying a stop-and-frisk. China's been using it to snoop on their citizens and has been sending suspected radicals and political dissidents for re-education, just in case they decided to protest their nation's ruling party's status quo. It's creepy shit.Anyway, back to Palantir.Did I mention that it was started up by Peter Thiel with money seeded by the CIA? No? How about the fact that they've been running an off-the-books program with the New Orleans Police so secretive that the city's own government didn't have a clue that it was going on? Welp, according to a troubling feature over at The Verge, they totally are.The Verge's Garret Beard and Alex Castro have pieced together a tremendously troubling story of the partnership, which has been in place since 2012 and slated to dissolve on February 21st, 2018. That a city has been using predictive policing for so long, especially when there's doubts as to its reliability, is troubling. What makes it even worse is that according to Beard and Castro, not one of the city's elected officials had the chance to debate the merits of entering into the Palantir partnership. The why of it is simple: none of them knew it was going on – or at least, if any one did, no one breathed a word of it:

In a tweet that's gone viral, Amsterdam-based designer James Cullen referenced a 2015 Fonts In Use article that uncovers the many typefaces on the iconic Huy Fong sriracha hot sauce bottle label. Nick Sherman, the author of the article, writes:

Nadia Ka of My Little Bakery decorates cookies to look like gorgeous old-fashioned embroidered designs. In addition to posting photos of her final designs, Nadia also shares really fascinating behind-the-scenes videos of her process on her Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/p/BfhvC6Oj79_/https://www.instagram.com/p/BfeH3LHD3YY/https://www.instagram.com/p/BfEmECnjWMZ/https://www.instagram.com/p/Be6VVxgjfMU/You can also see Nadia’s work in action on her YouTube channel or purchase some of the supplies she uses on her Etsy shop.https://youtu.be/K_I9xsAesdM

I've been to Yoyogi Park in Tokyo many times, but I've never seen a homeless encampment there. Redditor biwook took this photo of one of the shelters there. Whoever built it did an excellent job. There's a little sign in front. I can understand three of the four kanji characters: "stand up" "enter" "???" and "stop." What does the sign say?

Crying in Public is described as an "emotional map of New York City, made out of the important things that happen to us outside." To use it, you drag a one of 15 different emojis (crying, dancing, sex, drugs, vomit, etc) onto a map of New York City and briefly describe the incident. The creator of the site, kraykray, is going to add more cities.

Shane Speal made a cool 2-string guitar from a 100-year-old cigar box. It sounds great, and he is selling it on his website.

Helen Foster was chief administrative officer for the Department of Housing and Urban Development until she was demoted; she says she was punished for refusing to violate rules limiting how much money Secretary Carson could spend redecorating his office and fixing up his home. (more…)

The more you know about a quantum particle's position, the less you know about its momentum, and vice versa. This is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and I thought it applied to quantum particles only, so I didn't mind not understanding why this was so because quantum physics is weird. But 3Blue1Brown says the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to non-quantum things to, and in this 20-minute video, he explains why. You can actually get a reasonably good understanding of the uncertainty principle by watching the first two minutes of the video.

Who wants to see a lot of plastic beverage bottles get filled with pressurized air until they explode with a loud bang? I do, and so did Chris Notap, who decided to see what it would take to make a pop bottle pop. The pressure in a bottle of pop is about 50 psi, and the many different kinds of bottles Chris pumped full of air exploded at between 150 and 250 psi. The explosions were quite violent. Chris says the caps are designed to come off before the bottles can explode, which is a relief.