Born in 1919, this gentleman thinks he's only 79 years old. Watch as he learns he's going to turn 99 this summer. He asks, "How did I get old so fast?" I hear ya, buddy, I hear ya.(reddit)

Writer Kenny Keil and award-winning artist John Martz have an all-new satirical comic timeline in the upcoming issue of MAD #550, titled "The Future of Job Automation." It takes a jab at robots' success in taking over human jobs in the future - even if they don't always get it right. The upcoming issue will be available on digital this Friday, 2/9 and on newsstands 2/20. Click here to embiggen the image.

For better or worse, Motorcity ain't what it used to be. But, having survived bankruptcy, corruption and bad luck that nearly broke its back, Detroit is making a slow comeback. While most of the city's residents are looking to the future, anyone looking to hold on to a piece of the city's long, colorful history would do well to take up guitar lessons.Wallace Detroit Guitars builds their axes from wood they've reclaimed from Motorcity landmarks. Founded by Mark Wallace in 2014, the brands use reclaimed wood from sites like the Brewster Wheeler Recreation Center where fighter Joe Lewis trained, and the former headquarters of the Detroit Fire Department. The wood is collected by Detroit nonprofit groups, providing training and employment to local residents. Occasionally, the company accepts materials reclaimed from other sources within the city too: contractors doing renos on historic properties drop off high grade, decades-old wood, perfect for making guitars. The resulting product, as you can see, is both badass and classic.Because of the historic value of the wood and the amount of work it takes to lay hands on it, a Wallace Detroit Guitar doesn't come cheap: One of the guitars on the site is listed at $2,400. As each guitar the company produces is made-to-order, prices will vary--but don't expect to get a screeching deal. Each of these guitars is a work of art made with the guts of a former work of art, especially for the purpose of making new art. Owning anything that can lay claim to that's gonna cost you.Image courtesy of Wallace Detroit Guitars

When Patti Smith, the queen of cool, tells you to "just be cool," you'd better stop and check yourself. Watch her do just that in this Live at Rockpalast German TV footage from 1979. At around the 3:45 mark, she pauses her performance of "Dancing Barefoot" to break up a ruckus in the crowd.

It's good to be number one.According to a report from Reuters journalists John Shiffman and Reade Levinson, The United States could well be the biggest exporter of severed heads, arms, legs, and torsos in the world.The report states that the lion's share of these exports can be traced to a Portland-based company called MedCure Inc. In a recent shipment, the company sent roughly six thousand pounds of human remains to overseas buyers, at a value of $67,204. MedCure came by the body parts by dissecting the remains of individuals who left their bodies to medical science:

Facebook and Google's parent company Alphabet are among the tech giants pushing a congressional bid to reverse the Trump administration's plan to repeal Obama-era Net Neutrality rules that protect the open internet.(more…)

Between this and Starman's Tesla in space, it's a weird week.(more…)

Why is this bad, even if you don't care about violence against women? Because blackmail risk.🤷(more…)

Every three years, the US Copyright Office asks for proposals for exemptions to Section 1201 of the DMCA, which bans breaking DRM; in 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation won a broad "jailbreaking" exemption to modify the firmware of phones and tablets; this year, we're asking for that permission to be extended to smart speakers like Alexa/Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePods, and the smaller players in the market. (more…)

The anchor on CBS Philly only has to eat one chip to complete the One Chip Challenge, and yet Paqui's Carolina Reaper Chip is too much for the poor fellow.(more…)

Science fiction author Hugh Spencer (previously) has published an essay on how Rod Serling's activist views on human rights were embodied in The Twilight Zone, drawing on the practice of using fantastic fiction to evade social constraints, in the tradition of Gulliver's Travels (to say nothing of books like Pinocchio and Inferno). (more…)

Stefan Lawrence is a much-loved designer whose work graces such Maximum Fun podcasts as Judge John Hodgman and Bullseye, noticed that the "fast-fashion" brand Topman (a division of the notorious slavers Topshop) had ripped off one of his designs and used it without license or credit in a bunch of its products. (more…)

Chinese transit cops are wearing glasses with heads-up displays and cameras tied into the country's facial recognition to spot criminals, people smugglers, and riders who are using high-speed trains in defiance of rules that prohibit indebted people and people from ethnic and religious minorities from traveling. (more…)

Robyn Dial is suing White County, Tennessee Sheriff Oddie Shoupe for excessive force in the killing of her husband Michael Dial, who was shot in the head after he drove away at low speed from a traffic stop while towing a heavy trailer behind his 40-year-old pickup truck; Sheriff Shoupe was captured on bodycam mics ordering his officers to gun down Dial rather than run him off the road and risk cosmetic damage to their cruisers; after he arrived on the scene and observed Dial's corpse, he was recorded saying "They said 'we’re ramming him.' I said, 'Don’t ram him, shoot him.' Fuck that shit. Ain't gonna tear up my cars. I love this shit. God, I tell you what, I thrive on it. If they don’t think I’ll give the damn order to kill that motherfucker they’re full of shit. Take him out. I’m here on the damn wrong end of the county." (more…)

In 1989, to promote their fifth studio album, Cosmic Thing, the B-52s took MTV viewers on a tour of the city where they formed: Athens, Georgia ((sadly, without guitarist Ricky Wilson who died of AIDS in 1985).They began at the now-defunct Bluebird Cafe, formerly named the Eldorado, a vegetarian eatery where Fred Schneider used to wait tables.From there, they continued their Athens excursion, first from the back of a convertible and then by walking the streets.As the story goes, the band formed in October of 1976 after drinking many Flaming Volcanos at Hunan, one of the few Chinese restaurants in town. After drinks, they had their first of many jam sessions, according to this 1980 Rolling Stone article:

Barlow (that's what most of his friends called him) flaunted his complexity. He advertised himself as a Republican Deadhead, as a cowboy hacker, a spiritual rationalist, a womanizing feminist, a technological hippy. He had a remarkable gift of conforming himself to the contours of whomever he was arguing with, so both sides could violently agree and civilly disagree. His full embrace of his own cognitive dissonance allowed him to craft outrageous statements and manifestos that he truly believed to be true and also knew were wholly fictional.It may be truer to say the most of what he wrote and said was less an attempt to nail reality as it was to reshape reality. He was an unashamed aspirationalist. In that regard, Barlow had much in common with many prophets, gurus, visionaries, magicians, innovators, charlatans, and politicians in that he placed greater emphasis on what could be rather than what is. And he believed, as those just mentioned do and most journalists and scientists don't, that you can create reality with your words.I always thought of Barlow as the Mayor of the Internet. He saw very early that the internet was a political artifact that would require the same kind of idealism, compromise, and civics that prosperous and free societies needed. Nobody elected him, but if we did vote for a Mayor of the Internet, he would have won because everyone – no matter their stripe or color – thought of him as a good friend (and he was a good friend to thousands). I think he would have done a decent job as Mayor, rallying our better natures to make a better internet city on the hill.If there had been no Barlow, I believe the internet would still be hunting for its own identity, it would have far fewer heroes guarding fragile rights and responsibilities in this new realm, it would lack some of the most poetic descriptions of technology written, and we would not have had the rawhide character of Barlow, the free-spirit no one could domesticate, always ready with a satisfying turn of phrase to illuminate the horror and glories of our new world.One thing certain you can say about him: He out Barlow'd everyone to become singular and original. There was no one else like him. In the digital calculus of infinite possibilities, that is the highest form of success.Photo image: Kevin Kelly

The New York Academy of Medicine has organized #ColorOurCollections, in which various member libraries take images from their holdings and put 'em online as high-end coloring-book material.The image above is from the NYAM's coloring book itself, but there are dozens more; some of my faves include the Carnegie Hall Archives book ...... the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library ...... the University of Adelaide ...... the Shangri-La Museum of Islamic Art ...... and the Ricker Library of Art and Architecture:

Anna Rosling Rönnlund, co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation, asked Swedish students where they thought they fell on the global income spectrum. They guessed somewhere in the middle; they were wrong. After having 264 homes photographed in 50 countries and collecting 30,000 photos, she made this tool to help everyone understand the world – and how they fit in – a little better.Want to see how people at your income level live in other countries? Of course you do.It's the perfect antidote to Instagram-induced envy. Actually, I'd like to see someone curate a Selby or Apartmento-style lookbook from these images. Anyone?

In what can only be described as some serious next level patriarchal bullshit, an Indian woman recently discovered that one of her kidneys had gone missing. The most likely culprit? Her husband.The BBC reports that a West Bengal woman's husband arranged to have her appendix removed, several years ago, as she was complaining of frequent abdominal pain. So far so good, right? Well, here's where it gets hinky. From the results of two separate medical examinations late last year, Rita Sarkar discovered that she was short a kidney. The revelation was made months after Sarkar's abdominal surgery took place, when she sought medical help for lower back pain. Scans of her body quickly revealed that her discomfort was being caused by an infection in her left kidney – also, that she was missing her right one.As a kidney isn't the sort of thing that one misplaces, Sarkar contacted police, stating that her husband had been demanding a dowry from her and her family since before they were married. After tying the knot, these demands turned to physical and emotional abuse in the months leading up to her abdominal surgery.

I'm a huge fan of the Earthbox. My best crops of tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, and corn have all been from these wonderful self-watering containers.I really like gardening in self-watering containers. I have made my own, but after a number of seasons, I've found that that the Earthbox-brand, commercially produced with plastics that last in the outdoors, last a lot longer. There is also no guess work with soil vs. reservoir depth.I've ordered 4 new Earthboxes to compliment the two I have been using for nearly 10 years. The best tips and tricks I can offer for container gardening are to simply follow the directions from Earthbox. I've bought a few books, I've scoured the interweb forums for info, and honestly nothing has helped more than doing it exactly the way Earthbox suggests.https://youtu.be/2y2QUifx2ggI may try some of California's newly legal recreational plant in a box as well. Who knows, everything else likes to grow in them...EarthBox Terracotta Container Gardening System via AmazonImage and video courtesy Earthbox.com

Consumer Reports dragged a bunch of its top-rated smart TVs back into its labs to re-evaluate them, this time checking them for hard-to-evaluate information security risks and defects, which are not normally factored into its ratings. (more…)

Apple's been having a rough go of it this year. As if the uproar surrounding their throttling of iPhones in the name of power efficiency and damning reviews of their HomePod smart speaker weren't enough, the tech giant is now having to deal with the fact that a vital piece of their intellectual property has made it into the wild.According to Motherboard, the code that underpins Apple's iOS operating system was posted to GitHub, leaving it exposed to jailbreakers and hackers to take a look at and, in a worse case scenario, exploit. While exploiting the code, known as iBoot, isn't a straight forward affair as a number of files in the code posted are missing, what's there could be enough for a knowledgeable programmer to probe for vulnerabilities. This is a big deal: iOS used to be easy for hackers and jailbreakers to meddle with, but recent versions of the operating system's security, combined with Apple's advances in chip design, have proven almost impossible to crack.What this could mean for iPhone and iPad security is anyone's guess. The code has been removed from GitHub via a DMCA takedown order. But that doesn't mean it's gone: once something's been released into the wilds of the web, it's nearly impossible to wipe it out.Image courtesy of Apple

Jokgu is a Brahma Bantam chicken who can peck her way through an operatic aria on a piano keyboard.Yes, she follows the red light on the keyboard to do so but, hush now, it's still impressive. More importantly, it's entertaining. Impressive and entertaining enough to earn a spot on America's Got Talent.Here's that performance, from 2017:https://youtu.be/L7EfLNFRG7M(Viral Viral Videos)

Everyone is raving about Nintendo Labo, simple contraptions made with cardboard and circuits that turn a Switch into a whole new experience. (more…)

Blipblox is a deceptively simple-looking toy that lets young kids experiment with sound design and music.Presales start this spring, according to the description:

Looking for a really unique vehicle that will garner a lot of attention? One that will have your neighbors asking, "What's in that Bozo's driveway?"Well, quit (start?) clowning around and check out this 1957 Morris Minor named "Clarabelle." She's just $7K. The wind-up key, polka dots, light-up red nose, and flower boxes are all included:

Justin Lincoln creates lots of interesting little tidbits of visual ideas, like this particle capture experiment that is kind of unsettling. (more…)

As far as Valentine's Day is concerned, there are a couple of things we can say with confidence. One, it's nearly impossible to make a dinner reservation the day of, and, two, flower prices are inflated. While only divine intervention will help you lock in that last-minute dinner date, there is a way for you to spare yourself from the financial hardship that comes with shopping for flowers. Teleflora's Valentine's Day Special is offering a $40 site-wide credit on its arrangements for 50 percent off.Teleflora offers beautiful, hand-arranged bouquets and fast, reliable delivery by local florists located in the US and Canada. The site offers a wide selection of options, including floral baskets, centerpieces, and gourmet food baskets. Plus, every Teleflora order is handcrafted by a local florist and delivered in a vase, ready to be enjoyed immediately.Shopping with Teleflora supports local businesses and strengthens communities, and now you can start browsing with a $40 site-wide credit for $20.

With Vaunt, Intel is taking steps toward solving the Glasshole paradox: how to get consumers to wear wearables that don't make wearers seem like bad clichés of wearable users. (more…)

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He loves you, he loves me. He'll teach you tantric for a fee.If you survived the 1990s, you either loved or loathed Barney and Friends: the kid's television show that taught children how to share, be great friends to one another, and that it's OK to pursue a career in show business without an ounce of talent in your body. While the show was left to die in a ditch some time ago by PBS, at least one of the people involved in its production has gone on to get tangled up in a new venture.David Joyner spent 10 years moving inside of Barney (get yer minds outta the gutter) as the actor that played the purple dinosaur. According to Vice, Joyner, now free of his relationship with Barney, has moved on to become a full service tantric sex practitioner. His ladies-only service has been around, in one form or another, since 2004 and currently boasts a roster of 30 patients who pay him $350 an hour to do his thing: teaching them how to do their thing, with his thing.As journalist Rebekah Sager explains:

https://youtu.be/Lxd43iH-CX0Artist, inventor, and bio-hacker Julian Melchiorri created "Exhale, the Bionic Chandelier," a hanging electric light that "purifies the air indoors through photosynthesis performed by living microalgae enclosed into leaf modules." Exhale is now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum's permanent collection. From the project page:

Tabloid stories usually have some vague, distant relationship with the smallest sliver of a fact, but some are such ludicrous fantasies that they deserve special attention.“Inside Versace Killer’s Bag of Death!” is one such a gem. The National Enquirer tells us, in its trademark ungrammatical style, that the backpack belonging to the fashion designer’s killer Andrew Cunanan “holds key to shocking slaughter!” As the bag’s contents are “unveiled for the first time,” we learn of the “explosive evidence” inside “the killer’s sack that contained everything he needed for a quick escape” as the assassin “planned to flee the country.” Fighting back our excitement, barely able to breathe, we learn that Cunanan’s getaway kit comprised “a brochure for a hotel on Catalina Island, Calif., a bottle of Nair hair remover, a lubricated condom and an X-Acto knife without the blade.”No passport (which the Enquirer fails to mention was found near the crime scene inside a red Chevy truck Cunanan had stolen.) No giant wad of cash. And no weapon (though perhaps a bladeless X-Acto knife could be used to poke people pretty hard).An empty envelope, and a receipt for sliced meat, cheese and crackers, completed Cunanan’s supposed “bag of death.” One can see how the Enquirer believes that Cunanan planned to flee the country, because he had a brochure for an island in the Pacific (albeit 26 miles off the coast from Los Angeles). But the clincher is the Bottle of Nair: if Cunanan could use depilatory cream to make unsightly hair disappear, it’s a short step to making himself disappear. And we know he must have been a slippery character, because he was carrying a lubricated condom.The rest of this week’s tabloids are hardly more inspiring.“Obama and Hillary ordered FBI to spy on Trump!” screams the Enquirer cover, heralding a story that boasts a “six-month investigation.” It’s slightly disappointing, then, to find the Enquirer allegations are merely a critical reinterpretation of long-known details like this: “The Russia probe is a frame-up – based on bogus intelligence reports – masterminded by Obama and the crooked Clintons.” Seems fair and balanced to me.Mariah Carey’s “Satanic Sex Shocker!” is touted as an "Enquirer Exclusive," though it seems a little less exciting when we learn that the singer was allegedly just a child when dragged along by her mother to witness occult rituals. This information reportedly comes from Carey’s sister Alison, who the Enquirer helpfully describes as “a mother of four and a former heroin addict who worked as a prostitute.” Sounds like an impeccable source to me.Elton John’s announced retirement from touring gives the Globe full license to proclaim “Elton’s Parkinson’s Nightmare!” In smaller print you’ll find the addendum: “ . . . pals fear.” Because in Hollywood, celebrities' friends are all medically trained to diagnose a star’s illness.Nostradamus should have seen this coming: the National Examiner reports on the 16th-century French seer’s “amazing predictions coming true by Easter.” That’s right: unbeknownst to every scholar who ever studied the works of Nostradamus, he gave clear indications of what would happen in the first quarter of 2018. These include, and I kid you not, a new chain of “vodka saunas” where clients relax in liquor vapors, Beyoncé losing her voice, actor Dwayne Johnson announcing a run for the White House (because everyone knows Nostradamus was a big fan of The Rock), and an elderly Hollywood actress “will be impregnated by an alien.”Us magazine devotes its cover to country singer Carrie Underwood promising “The Truth About My Marriage.” It’s unclear what lies or misconceptions Underwood hopes to clear up, but “the truth” is stultifyingly boring: She and hockey star-husband Mike Fisher “make it a point to focus on communication,” says the magazine, and then quotes a 2016 interview in which the singer urged couples to spend “as many hours together as possible.” Truth.People gives its cover to U.S. Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman, still reeling from molestation by the team’s now-incarcerated doctor, assuring readers that she is “Taking Back My Life.” Raisman explains: “I lost a part of myself, and I’m getting it back by speaking out.” That’s great, but I guarantee that if People had managed to get exclusive photos of Kylie Jenner’s newborn baby, Raisman would have been relegated to the back of the mag.I have dismissed repeated rumors that Jennifer Aniston and husband Justin Theroux are about to divorce, but this week People magazine devotes two pages to an at-home photoshoot with the couple – which makes me think the rumors must be true. It’s the sort of PR push we’ve come to expect just weeks before divorce papers are filed. Adding fuel to the fire: None of the photos inside the couple’s happy home show the duo together in the same frame. Maybe they need to talk with Carrie Underwood.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us to tell us that Heidi Klum wore it best, figure skater Karen Chen’s “favorite way to relax is to take a bath,” that alpine ski racer Mikaela Shiffrin carries Advil, a foam roller and a can of Red Bull in her High Sierra U.S. Ski Team backpack, and that the stars are just like us: they get haircuts, take selfies, eat food and toss trash.But celebrities aren’t like us, because the one thing they lack is privacy, as all these intrusive candid shots show. Us devotes a page and a half to photos of actress Natalie Portman playing tennis on five different occasions, wearing five different outfits – meaning that paparazzi hounded her on five different days while she just wanted to play tennis. It makes me proud to be a journalist.Onwards and downwards . . .

I was honored that old-school Boing Boing pal Douglas Rushkoff, author of numerous essential books for happy mutants, invited me onto his Team Human podcast to talk about the Voyager Golden Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials that my friends Tim Daly, Lawrence Azerrad, and I released on vinyl for the first time. As always, Doug masterfully connected the dots between media, art, culture, and science and kept me on my toes with wonderful provocations and observations. I hope you enjoy it! Listen below.From Team Human: "Music for Aliens":

Photographer Benny Lam spent several years documenting grim living conditions in Hong Kong where people live inside tiny "coffin cubicles" within illegally divided apartments. The images are grim glimpses of life in the city with the most expensive housing market in the world. The photo series is titled "Trapped." From National Geographic:

On March 23, the United States Postal Service will issue a Mister Rogers stamp celebrating the host of the iconic children's TV show. The dedication will take place in the Fred Rogers Studio at Pittsburgh's WQED, the place where "Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” began.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH5Vl99k2JQThe wonderful Copy Me project (previously) has revealed the first installment in its new three-part series on The Creativity Delusion, which takes aim at the "myth of genius," which picks a small subsection of creators, scientists and entrepreneurs and declares them to be "original" by ignoring all the work they plundered to create their own and erasing all the creators whose shoulders they stand upon. (more…)

I had no idea Bufferin was still for sale. I will try this instead of marijuana for the chronic pain my deteriorating lumbar discs deliver.Thanks, Jeff!Bufferin Regular Strength Buffered Aspirin Tablets-Odorless, White to Off-White-130 ct via AmazonImage via Amazon.com

The University of Texas's Ransom Center (previously) has posted a gorgeous selection of digitized movie posters from its Movie Poster Collection, from the 1920s to the 1970s. (more…)

https://youtu.be/ekD9-GMz5EYWhen we debate copyright policy on the internet, the story is pitched as "creators vs technology," but that leaves out the millions of people who create, but who are not part of the traditional entertainment industry -- people whose self-expression, artistic fulfillment, and audiences matter every bit as much as the audiences for creators who sign on to the big labels, studios, publishers and news bureaux. (more…)

Detectives Marcus Taylor and Daniel Hersl of Baltimore's elite, seven-member Gun Trace Task Force are on trial for years of robbery, home invasions, drug dealing, gun dealing, and worse -- their defense is that they were not the primary participants in these activities, not that the crimes did not take place. (more…)

Speaking to the Heritage Foundation last night in honor of Ronald Reagan's birthday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reckoned himself to be an expert on drug addiction and had some sage advice for opioid users: “Sometimes, you just need to take two Bufferin or something and go to bed.”Other words of wisdom: “We think a lot of this is starting with marijuana or other drugs too.”However, according to Think Progress:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h07iXD-aSCAComputers that are isolated from the internet and local networks are said to be "airgapped," and it's considered a best practice for securing extremely sensitive systems. (more…)

In 1992, Oklahoma passed a ballot initiative saying that the state could only raise taxes with a three quarters majority in the state assembly, creating a one-way ratchet where every tax cut becomes effectively permanent, including the sweetheart deals cut for frackers and the deep cuts to taxes on the wealthiest residents of the state. (more…)

The marbled crayfish (Procambarus virginalis) is a mutant slough crayfish (Procambarus fallax) an American species; the mutation that allowed slough crayfish to reproduce asexually by cloning itself occurred a mere 25 years ago, and it came to Germany as an aquarium pet in 1995, sold as "Texas crayfish." (more…)

Meet Cheddar Man. He's from just north of Glastonbury, circa 8,000 B.C.

Oxford's Computational Propaganda Project surveyed 13,500 "politically active" US Twitter users and 48,000 publicly visible Facebook pages, coding them for political affiliation, then measuring how much "junk news" (a news article that fails to live up to three or more of the following: professionalism, style, credibility, bias, counterfeit) was consumed and share by users based on their political affiliation. (more…)

A Logitech keyboard is sacrificed to Saturn in this remarkable video posted by Amazing Timelapse. Plunged into acetone, the device melts slowly until only a cloudy congealment of undissolved plastics remains.

Kelsey Hightower's Nocode [github] fixes all the problems associated with modern web app development: "Write nothing; deploy nowhere."