Chatroulette is still alive and, unsurprisingly, full of schlongs.For the uninitiated, Chatroulette was an Internet darling back in 2010. Created by 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy, the site served up the ability to have video chats with random people from around the world. At its peak, Chatroulette was host to around 35,000 users at any given moment, with a total of 1.5 million users worldwide. It was an enchanting way to meet new people from all walks of life. Musicians, jokers and attention seeking narcissists flocked to the site. Also, guys who love to jerk off in front of other people.As most of us have the attention span of a fruit fly when it comes to shiny things on the Internet, Chatroulette eventually lost its lustre. The site’s users moved on to other services that offered less of a chance of stumbling across a stranger stroking one out. Despite Chatroulette’s diminished numbers, many of the wankers remained, continuing to make baby batter for strangers to this day.The Verge’s Megan Farokhmanesh recently paid a visit to the near derelict website to speak to the skeleton crew of spunk monkeys that are still manning their love pumps, longing for a female audience.I’m quickly running out of ways to talk about masturbation and dicks, so I’ll close by saying that Farokhmanesh’s short feature is long on entertainment and worth taking a few moments to read.Image Courtesy of Pexels

Signato is a handsome, readable script typeface based upon the Lithuanian declaration of independence.

Mii Channel Markov generates melodies similar to, but never likely to be mistaken for, the Mii Channel theme.

Bruce Sterling's scathing editorial in The Atlantic on the future of "Smart Cities" uses London's many smart city initiatives as a kind of measuring stick for the janky and dysfunctional future of civic automation: a city that throws great smart city conferences while its actual infrastructure is a mess of "empty skyscrapers, creepy CCTV videocams, and sewers plugged with animal fat" that require decades of planning an attention to cope with -- significantly beyond the attention spans of any of the tech giants vying to be the smart city providers of the future. (more…)

Five years after activists forced Seattle's mayor to return the city's surveillance drones to their manufacturer, the city has announced that it is terminating its warrantless mass-surveillance program altogether. (more…)

It's hard to find decent Mexican food in Canada. We're lousy with Taco Bells and, out west at least, we've got Taco Time. But these are just chains offering a cartoon version of the real deal. The first time I went for burritos with friends in San Fransisco's Mission District, I damn near cried.The food was so good, I regret having not hired a poet to capture the emotion surrounding my meal. I've spent the past three months in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. Same deal: the Mexican cuisine here is phenomenal. Hell the gas station down the street from me serves up fresh carnitas. It tastes like heaven. Back home in Alberta, gas station food tastes like death. I love Mexican cuisine! The thought of returning to Canada, with its sub-par joke tacos, fills me with ennui.So, when I read how cops in Los Angeles discovered that criminals were moving crystal meth through the city disguised as burritos, I took it kind of hard.According to The LA Times, two LA patrol officers were conducting a routine traffic stop when they discovered the occupants of the vehicle they'd pulled over were packing 14 beefy-looking, tinfoil wrapped burritos. The burritos turned out to be jammed full of around 25 pounds of methamphetamine. Obviously, arrests were made, but the thing that bothers me is this: while they got the drugs and a handgun off the street, no body even mentioned the fact that they'd desecrated those burritos. I just don't get it: in a world so bereft of decent Mexican food, doesn't anyone care about the damn burritos?Los Angeles needs to check its burrito privilege.Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

During World War II, the U.S. Army experimented with a bizarre plan: using live bats to firebomb Japanese cities. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the crazy history of the bat bomb, the extraordinary brainchild of a Pennsylvania dentist.We'll also consider the malleable nature of mental illness and puzzle over an expensive quiz question.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

When it comes to improving the atmosphere of our living spaces, most of us consider merely buying a few plants or light fixtures to liven things up. The ZenCube, however, literally improves the atmosphere of your abode by releasing negative ions into the air that can enhance your mood, energize your mind, and enrich your environment. Today, you can get it on sale for $199.99 in the Boing Boing Store.The world's first smart Himalayan salt lamp, the ZenCube deodorizes and purifies air, balancing oxygen and your health simultaneously, and you can change the color of its glow via a smartphone app to suit your mood and aesthetic likings. Better sleep, improved mood, and reduced radiation are some of its benefits, and it brings these to you while staying cool to the touch and consuming little energy. Plus, in addition to cleaning and deodorizing the air, the ZenCube can also be used with essential oils for aromatherapy, adding to its therapeutic potential.The ZenCube is available in the Boing Boing store for $199.99.

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

[embed]https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6en93n[/embed]When Lissa Lucas stood up at a public meeting of the West Virginia legislature and read into the record the gas-industry campaign contributions that lawmakers had received prior to taking a favorable view on allowing gas-drillers to drill in West Virginians' property, she was dragged out of the chamber. (more…)

Michelle McNew: "My crazy kid jumping on his buddy’s ice covered trampoline"

On Saturday at London Fashion Week, Burberry will reveal its new collection featuring a rainbow plaid that the company says celebrates LGBTQ communities. They've also announced support for three LGBTQ charities."My final collection here at Burberry is dedicated to - and in support of - some of the best and brightest organisations supporting LGBTQ+ youth around the world," says Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey who is leaving the company after 17 years. "There has never been a more important time to say that in our diversity lies our strength, and our creativity."From the BBC News:

If only it were true. Chicago's ABC affiliate WLS-TV featured the graphic seen above during a story about the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. From the Chicago Tribune:

If you're at the Winter Olympics in South Korea and want a diversion from winter sports, why not head over to Penis Park, also known as Haesindang Park, which is only a one-hour hop, skip and a hump away. There you can tool around the much-larger-than-life penii, which work as wind-chimes, benches, statues, and even a penis-shaped cannon (but a sign warns that you may not mount this particular penis).In case you're wondering why South Korea decided to dedicate a park to the male member, Buzzfeed explains:

Amazon has a good sale on this digital tire pressure gauge. It has a backlit LED display and the nozzle is lighted, too. It comes with batteries. It's regularly $9.97 but it's on sale today for $6.57.

A pair of researchers from Toronto's storied Citizen Lab (previously) have written an eye-opening editorial and call to action on the ways that repressive states have used the internet to attack dissidents, human rights advocates and political oppositions -- and how the information security community and tech companies have left these people vulnerable. (more…)

Here is a prototype of a giant pong-inspired game called GRiD, by multimedia entertainment creators Moment Factory. But rather than facing a screen, you are facing humans, in a physically challenging real-world game.According to engadget:

It's been less than a week since the death of EFF co-founder, cowboy poet, Grateful Dead lyricist and Mayor of the Internet John Perry Barlow died, and he's already sorely missed. But Barlow was an open access advocate before that was a thing, and the archive of his work at the Internet Archive is full of what Bruce Sterling calls "a lot of weird, flaky, broke-the-mold stuff."

The LA Times recently reported on unpleasant behavior among Disneyland "social clubs," who roam the park in gangs of 20 and "resemble a cross between the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and a grown-up Mickey Mouse Club." The clubs have names like, The Dark Side Elites, Big Bad Wolves, Main Street Fire Station 55 Social Club, and the White Rabbits Social Club.

All is Art, via Adam Koford:

Anil Dash's third law holds that "Three things never work: Voice chat, printers and projectors." But Joshua Rothman's long, fascinating, even poetic profile of the Xerox engineers who work on paper-path process improvements is such a bit of hard-science whimsy that it almost makes me forgive every hour I've spent swearing over jammed paper. (more…)

Kevin Nicholson is seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin. Oddly enough, Nicholson's parents donated $2,700 each -- the maximum allowed under the law -- to the incumbent, Democrat Tammy Baldwin.From The Week:

Watch the Nicholas Brothers dance the "Jumpin' Jive" in the 1943 musical, Stormy Weather. Fred Astaire said it was "the greatest dancing he had ever seen on film."From The New York Times:

The Wind Symphony at Liberty University decided to prank their band director by playing the Mii Channel theme song instead of a Bach chorale. Fortunately, the band director has a great sense of humor. He immediately went to the flute section to check out the music they were playing, listens to the end, and then tells the band, "You're number one in my book!" followed by much laughter from the group of students. The music arrangement was written by band member Drew Harris, and it's quite good!

Huffington Post published this list of open neo-Nazi and white supremacists running for office.HuffPo includes a number of assholes who are also white-supremacy-adjacent, as well. Some cowards simply use the dog-whistles and encourage the ideas of racism, while not posting photos of themselves in SS-esque outfits complaining about Jewish folk.Via HuffPo:

Monday Starts on Saturday is the Strugatsky brothers' uniquely Soviet take on the future of research and the institutions that perform it. This gem from 1964 is not to be missed.Sasha, a young computer programmer, is recruited by some hitchhikers to join them at their off-the-rails think-tank: the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy. Imagine Harry Potter's Ministry of Magic, set in the Soviet Union and given the noble task of researching true happiness for all people, regardless the cost.Better known as NITWiT, the institute is home to a dizzying array of sideways experiments, baffling discoveries and talking animals. The Strugatsky's viciously parody dysfunctional element of a bureaucratic, government-run research facility, lambasting the politics, laziness and narcissism while also sharing some wonderful characters and mind bending experiments. NITWiT's director doesn't exist in linear time, Baba Yaga's hut is running around in the back ground and Maxwell's "macrodemons" make a fantastic appearance.I have only read this translation, but others are available online, at least in-part free.Monday Starts on Saturday by Boris and Arkday Strugatsky, translated by Andrew Bromfield via Amazon

Did you know you can get worms in your eyes? According to National Geographic, it's a thing.Back in 2016, 26-year-old Abby Beckley ended up with a bunch of the tiny, translucent critters living in and around the delicate flesh of the inside of her eyelids. Beckley described the sensation of the eye worms nesting in her as being similar to having an eyelash poking her. After much prodding and poking, Beckley managed to extract a worm from her eyelid... and then another. In total, she wound up pulling five worms out of herself before deciding that maybe checking in with a doctor might be a good idea. Beckley was in Alaska at the time that she discovered the infestation. After an initial consultation with the doctors there, she decided to head to Portland to hook up with an ophthalmologist who was able to snag yet another worm from her and send it to the CDC for analysis.It turns out that the worms living in Beckley's head are called Thelazia gulosa – a parasite normally found in the eyes of livestock. The parasites are spread to a host when a face fly lands on an eyeball, like Beckley's, and begins drinking the sweet, delicious tears that keep it lubricated. The parasites, which gestate in the digestive tracts of the face fly, get passed on to the owner of said eye, where they mature until, finally, BOOM: eye worms.By the time Beckley was declared free of the parasite, she'd pulled 14 of the little buggers out of her eyelids.The good news is that this sort of infestation in humans is exceptionally rare, largely because of the the fact that we're predisposed to shooing flies away before they have a chance to get into our eyes. Hopefully, knowing this will be comfort enough the next time you feel something's in your eye.Image Courtesy of CDC, via National Geographic

I'm not saying that building a flamethrower is a responsible use of your time – but I'm not saying that you shouldn't take the time to build one, either.In January, Elon Musk's Boring Company built 20,000 $500-flamethrowers and sold them all to the tune of $10 million. $500 is a lot of cheddar to throw at what basically amounts to a fancy tiger torch. Provided you've got the right tools on hand, as you can see in this video, it's possible to build one for considerably less.Disclaimer: Despite the fact that you can totally play with it, a flamethrower is not a toy. Always use fiery weapons that are the stuff of nightmares responsibly.

IBM Security's 2018 survey of 4,000 adults worldwide found that for the first time in the history of their research, the majority of users say that they'd take extra steps in the name of "security" even if it meant that their usage would be less "convenient." (more…)

For six months, the Intelligence Community Inspector General office investigated the cases of 190 whistleblowers who went through US spy agency channels to report corruption, waste, fraud, abuse and criminality, discovering that the overwhelming majority had faced some combination of indefinite delays and retaliation (being fired, facing paycuts and demotions, being passed over for promotions, etc) -- only one of the 190 whistleblowers had their case upheld, and that took 742 days. (more…)

The USA has moved up in the Tax Justice Network's Financial Secrecy Index to number two, behind Switzerland; in reality, though, the UK is the world's worst money-laundry, but because its laundering activities are spread out over its overseas territories -- taken as a whole, the UK leads the world in helping criminals and looters hide their fortunes. (more…)

When she was nearly 30, Jennifer Jones learned that she had been misdiagnosed with allergies and asthma all her life. According to ABC 6 News, Jennifer discovered after the birth of her son, that she instead had Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that wreaks havoc (primarily) on the lungs.

Perhaps you've put food in a ziplok baggie. Perhaps you've tried to leave open just enough of a gap to push out almost enough air to consider it truly sealed. Perhaps, like me, you've even sucked out the last air through that gap, creating a genuine vacuum while filling your mouth with delicious, cold poultry slime. Here's how to do the same thing without risk of becoming a campylobacter campsite! All you need is a plastic tub or pot of water.

Henrik Trygg: "This is how 45mm new black ice sounds like. Don't forget to put on the sound. Recorded on Lissma Kvarnsjö outside Stockholm the 5th of December." (Previously)It's beautiful and a little bit scary. See (below) a cool NPS video about the weird sounds that ice make. The same phenomenon, acoustic dispersion, is often heard in wind-whipped metal cables. It's the foley artist's secret sauce for making laser-gun sound effects that don't register as synthesized.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC7_zpyqCrU

Sound financial understanding doesn't come to all of us naturally. And, even if you're not interested in pursuing a career as a Wall Street investor, knowing the essentials of accounting, investing, and the like can net you a host of advantages in your professional and personal lives. The eduCBA Finance & Investments Lifetime Subscription Bundle is curated to give you these skills, regardless of your professional pursuits, and it's on sale for $49 in the Boing Boing Store.This colossal training gives you 24/7 access to more than 2,000 hours of finance instruction spread across more than 700 courses. With lifetime access, you can take classes in investment banking, financial modeling, project finance, private equity, accounting, and more on your own time and at the pace that's right for you. As you make your way through the training, you'll use mock tests and online quizzes to reinforce your learning and earn certificates of completion for each course you finish.You can take the first step towards netting a full finance education with the eduCBA Finance & Investments Lifetime Subscription Bundle, on sale for $49.

Leave it to Squirrel Monkey (previously) to imagine what Siri might have been like in the eighties. In this spoof called Wonders of the World Wide Web, they give the ancient alter ego of Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant a garbled, synthesized voice which I found particularly funny. Be sure to watch the whole video, as it just gets weirder as it goes along.(Tastefully Offensive)

There are about 4,200,000 surveillance cameras in United Kingdom. According to a feature in Wired UK, police want to take an even closer look.The West Yorkshire Police Service is currently testing a mobile fingerprint scanning system that's connected to databases containing the fingerprints of 12 million immigrants and criminals. 250 mobile fingerprint scanners have been issued to officers in the north eastern English city and will be used, as part of a pilot program, to help identify individuals who refuse to or are unable to tell the police who they are or are. The Yorkshire Police Service says that the system would most likely only ever be used on suspects at the scene of a crime, those who are found to have no identification papers or anyone found dead or unconscious.In 2012, for example, the London Metropolitan Police were blasted by the country's highest court for keeping surveillance footage of citizens who had committed they had charged with no crimes. Six years on, there's little evidence that this practice has come to an end. More than this, being an immigrant is not a crime. That the device, in addition to sifting through criminal fingerprints, also looks at the fingerprints of individuals who have come to the UK and have committed no crimes, dances into some pretty dark territory.Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

David Granick's unseen 1960s Photos of London’s East End offer a glorious Kodachrome history, rediscovered and scanned by Chris Dorley. Most are colorful and filled with life, poverty and halting renewal, but check out this moody still of Stepney Green in 1961. It seems almost science fictional, a view of London that informed literature (consider Ballard) more than cinema (the same environment has a very different quality in the 1962 film Sparrows Can’t Sing). I can imagine setting SF in this precise setting and filmic character. All of this, including the then-new towers, are long-demolished. There's more at The Guardian.

Spitalfields Life highlights a selection of the "Villainous Valentines," Victorian-era prints that illustrate the irritations of hiring different kinds of tradesmen, accompanied by appropriate doggerel. It's like a bougie mirror-world version of London Labour and the London Poor, with illustrations by way of John Tenniel. (more…)

Matthew Dessem's I Am the Very Model of a New York Times Contrarian is a zeitgeisty bit of doggerel that neatly sums up many of my frustrations reading the Grey Lady, stretching all the way back to the paper's shameful sell-job for George W Bush's disastrous Iraq invasion. (more…)

Researchers demonstrated a new process that makes wood stronger than steel. According to the University of Maryland mechanical engineers, their novel process could lead to a greener alternative to metal in automobiles, airplanes, or buildings. “This could be a competitor to steel or even titanium alloys, it is so strong and durable," says researcher Liangbing Hu. "It’s also comparable to carbon fiber, but much less expensive.” From the University of Maryland:

You know that thing where politicians take money from big companies and then try to pass bills that represent the interests of those big companies? Well, some of that shit went down in West Virginia last Friday when a bill was brought into the legislature that would allow oil companies to drill for black gold on a piece of land, provided 75% of the land are cool with it. I'm not huge on math, but it seems to me that this would seriously screw the last 25% of the land's owners who don't want their land messed with.Lissa Lucas, a Democrat who's running for a seat in the state's House of Delegates, thought so too. Also, she has a serious issue with the strangle hold that energy companies have on West Virginia's politics and, in turn, West Virginian politicians. Giving voice to her beef, Lucas stood up and attempted to read, on camera, the names of all of the politicians who were voting on the bill who happened to have also received political donations from oil companies.For her troubles, she was hauled out of the legislature faster than shit pours through a goose. Did I mention that the whole thing was caught on video? Welp, here we are.The Intercept's Zaid Jilani spoke with Lucas about the incident, earlier today. If you've got a few minutes and care about the right of citizens to have their say over what their government does, and why, it's worth a read.

Shane Townley says: "Watch as this kid runs and screams throughout the entire flight while the mother does little to nothing to stop him. Three years old on a 8 hour flight from Germany to Newark NJ. He never quits!"The person who recorded this could sell the recordings of the shrieks to a sound library and make good money licensing them to low budget horror movies.

The Associated Press reports that two Baltimore police officers were convicted today of racketeering and robbery. I'm not sure off the top of my head which case it is, because it's Baltimore and the apple barrel is so rotten as to be a gooey tub of lovecraftian matter that converts public trust into settlements.https://twitter.com/AP/status/963182784381640705UPDATE: 2 Baltimore detectives convicted of racketeering, robbery

The latest from Boston Dynamics is alarming in a wonderfully uncanny new way. I shan't spoil it for you, but I am looking forward to the latex sheathing options.

A letter was sent to Donald Trump Jr., but his wife Vanessa got to it first. When she opened the envelope, she discovered unidentified white powder. She and two others in the apartment were sent to New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center as a precaution, but they seem to be okay."There is no indication anyone suffered any injuries; the NYPD said the substance was deemed to be non-hazardous and was taken to a lab for further analysis," according to NBC.Image: Max Pixel

I'm excited to be going on Jonathan Coulton's JoCo Cruise this year. We've been asked to bring some games with us, so I'm bringing the Tenzi dice game plus the variation deck.The basic rules are simple - everyone starts out with 10 dice and the goal is to roll your dice as fast as you can until all of them show the same number. Every time you roll, you are allowed to set aside any dice that match your desired number. When all ten of the dice show the same number, you shout "Tenzi!," throw your hands in the air, and gloat while the other players gnash their teeth. The game rules included a couple of variations on the basic rule set, which we also played and liked.There's also a deck of cards called 77 Ways to Play Tenzi, which takes Tenzi to a new level. The deck adds variety, surprise, and humor to Tenzi. It makes Tenzi so much more fun that I think the company shouldn't sell the dice without the cards.Each Tenzi card has a variation of the basic rules. The rules for the variants are simple enough that they can be described in one or two sentences. Here are a few examples:To win the above game, you start with nine dice and roll until you get nine threes. Then you have to arrange the dice as shown on the card, and then roll the tenth dice until you get a six.

A man has an important message about elephant poaching but this baby elephant won't let him deliver it because it's playtime.Image: Youtube screenshot

Pour one out for Thomas the gander. Let us not talk of his death, at 40 years of age. Instead, let us revel in how he lived.Thomas knew early in his life that he was not like other geese. His horizons were broader. When of age, he left his flock, finding love and acceptance in the company of black swans. He and his long-time partner, a cob named Henry, were inseparable for over two decades. But life is a journey, and those who travel its roads with us sometimes look to other routes than those we have planned. After 18 years together with Thomas, Henry's gaze fell upon a pen named Henrietta. Thomas' love for Henry knew no bounds. Accepting his partner meant loving Henrietta, too. Two became three.When the time came that Henry and his lady longed for children, eggs were laid. Thomas was there to help raise the cygnets. Over the next 12 years, the trio raised 68 cygnets to swans. In 2009, Henry passed. Henrietta, unable to find solace in Thomas alone, sought out a new swan to stifle the pain left by her absent partner. Thomas looked to new horizons as well, settling down with a goose. The relationship was not a lasting one. A short time after their goslings were born, her affections turned to a different gander. A short time later, Thomas, a goose that had seen so much love in life, lost his sight. Blind and alone, he was brought to the Wellington Bird Rehabilitation Trust to live out his final years in peace, surrounded by friends and caring attendants.Goodbye, Thomas. Thank you for all of the love you gave.Courtesy of bzwei/Pixabay

Police officers working in Baltimore have always been able to rely on the financial backing of the city when the courts demanded payouts for wrongful death or police brutality suits, but that could soon change.According to the Forward Observer, Baltimore's police union has cautioned its members that individual officers may soon be responsible for paying damages to litigants that have won suits for police brutality, wrongful deaths or other wrongdoings they undertook in the line of duty.It's not unusual for police departments or police officers to be named in a civil suit. In most instances, such cases end with the officers in question being freed of any liability, due to the fact that they were doing their jobs within the confines of the law, or that they were found not guilty by a jury or a residing judge. However, if an officer is found guilty, the punitive damages awarded to the victim are usually paid out from the coffers of the city or agency that the officer works for. That Baltimore will be leaving its police officers on the hook for damages awarded in civil suits where they're named is unusual, and could have some serious ramifications for how the city is policed.Baltimore's new policy could make malicious, heavy-handed cops think twice before using force, deadly or otherwise, in the line of duty. Where ethics and humanity have failed to curb their violence, a serious hit to their wallets could do the trick. But there's a downside to this, as well: not all police officers have it in for the communities that they've sworn to protect. Many care as deeply for their fellow citizens as they do about coming home to their families at night. It could be difficult to attract or keep good cops to a city where they might have to think twice before using necessary force in the line of their duties, for fear of financial repercussions.Image: GoBlue85 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40704845