Bootie Mashup's Adrian Roberts is traveling in Hong Kong right now and came across these amusing knockoff LEGO products at the Temple Street Night Market.Click on the images below to look at them closer.photos by Adrian Roberts

Saudi Arabia is known for its oil and sun-soaked deserts. In a move to secure the kingdom’s financial future, its name could soon become synonymous with renewable energy.According to the New York Times, Prince Mohammed bin Salman decided that Saudi energy company ACWA Power would spearhead the creation of a $300 million solar farm capable of powering 200,000 homes. And that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to what the Saudi government plans to spend on renewables.

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's Secret Society, the INNER HIVE. You'll be helping the comic strip and getting exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, special secret memos, 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…)

Trump has ordered a grand military parade later this year in Washington. No one in the military is sure how to pay for it. GoFundMe?(more…)

I've used this ">12-outlet power strip (under my desk and against the wall) for years and it has never given me any problems. The outlets are spaced far apart so I never have to worry about adapters covering up neighboring outlets. It's 4 feet long and made of metal and the power cord is 6 feet. The power switch lights up and has a built in circuit breaker to protect your devices. Amazon has it on sale for the next three hours for $30.

Senator for Illinois Tammy Duckworth didn't take kindly to Trump's claim that anyone who doesn't clap for him like a trained chimp is guilty of treason, a crime punishable by death. She tweeted, "We don't live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. I swore an oath — in the military and in the Senate — to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap."

Police in London surrounded the embassy of Ecuador, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange resides in exile, to reportedly address a 'suspected suspicious package.' More details as the story develops.(more…)

Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, which owns Doritos, was interviewed on the Freakonomics podcast recently. She said her company is making a less crunchy version of Doritos because "woman don’t lick their fingers generously and they don’t like to pour the little broken pieces and the flavor into their mouth," at least not in public.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is all set to test their Falcon Heavy rocket today for the first time.Musk says he gives the launch at best a 50-50 chance of working today, and that's if they can even get the go-ahead to countdown. Space is hard.(more…)

Without a doubt one of the coolest looking insects around, the Hercules beetle is now a threatened species as a result of deforestation. Great Big Story's 80-second video has beautiful footage of this majestic animal.

Super Mario Odyssey producer Yoshiaki Koizumi kindly answered questions about Nintendo's famous characters of the Mushroom Kingdom, such as "Why does Mario have nipples but not a belly button?" and “Is Toad’s head a hat or a head?”

The unnamed host of this video takes a 32,000 lumen flashlight and points it at glow-in-the-dark Culture Hustle paint, which is supposedly the brightest paint in the world. I thought it would be bright, but wow, this is amazing. When the host refers to it as "the world's glowiest glow," he ain't kidding.Here's the full video in case you want to hear his scientific explanation on how it all works: https://youtu.be/GnYcDe6HFKM

Unpaywall is a service that indexes open access repositories, university, government and scholarly society archives, and other sources that make articles available with authorization from the rightsholders and journals -- about 47% of the articles that its users seek. (more…)

This purple and black deck of cards is absolutely lovely.I like to tell myself that decks with lovely and unexpected art work distract people from mistakes as I'm performing sleight of hand. Mostly, I just like fancy decks of cards.Limited Edition Karnival Midnight Purple Deck Playing Cards by Bicycle via Amazon

In South Korea, there is a popular TV (and completely wacky) variety show called Infinite Challenge. From what I've been able to gather, contestants go through a series of challenges with celebrity guests.(more…)

Cloudflare has terminated service to Sci-Hub, the site that provides paywall-free access to virtually all scholarly work, citing Aaron Swartz as inspiration -- Cloudflare previously serviced the sci-hub.la, sci-hub.tv, and sci-hub.tw domains, but in response to an injunction obtained by the American Chemical Society, they will no longer provide that service. (more…)

Most of us want rid of heavy old TV sets: they're piled high in warehouses, a dangerous waste mountain resulting from a huge recycling scam. But some of us are desperate to keep their old CRTs going.

Rep Steve King (R-IA, @SteveKingIA, 202.225.4426) is a notorious Islamaphobe, surveillance advocate, conspiracy theorist, xenophobe, and all-round asshole; he's held his seat since 2003 but now he is being primaried by his own party and challenged by a celebrity ballplayer turned Sanders Democrat, J.D. Scholten -- a native Iowan who decided to move home and run against King during the first Woman's March, in January 2017. (more…)

Nintendo's last game console, the Wii U, didn't do so well. The Switch, though, is doing very well indeed. One key reason: lots of games. Gizmodo:

Lauri Love is a British man on the autism spectrum who also has depression and severe eczema, who was facing extradition to America on charges of hacking US military and private agencies. (more…)

Using the "world's smallest HD drone," Robert McIntosh filmed Muscle-Up, a short that flies (seemingly) effortlessly over and around Southern California's famous Muscle Beach first thing in the morning. Impressively, it was all shot in one take.At the Los Angeles Drone Film Festival in December, his short won in two categories: Made in LA and Best in Show.According to a friend of his, McIntosh received a a $23,000 drone for the prize.To stabilize the raw footage, which as you'll see below wasn't all that smooth, he used ReelSteady for Adobe After Effects. https://vimeo.com/218837928

First it was Montana, then New York, then California -- and now New Jersey has become the latest state to enact state-level Net Neutrality rules in defiance of Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who not only killed Net Neutrality despite the obvious fraud and deceit in the regulatory process, but also insists (as his Democratic predecessor, Tom Wheeler, did) that states do not have the right to override federal communications policy. (more…)

It's freezing cold in Minneapolis but that didn't stop digital ad agency space150 from making a snowball vending machine. Yup, you can buy real balls of hard-packed Minnesota snow from a vending machine. $1 buys you one snowball.https://www.instagram.com/p/BetVH8zBLx6/?taken-by=realmnsnowballshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BeyTPDBhLlW/?taken-by=realmnsnowballshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BeogHq2nm3D/?taken-by=realmnsnowballshttps://www.instagram.com/p/BeLwyqWHDul/?taken-by=realmnsnowballs(Super Punch)

If you're interested in pursuing graduate school, you'll likely need to submit a GMAT or GRE test score along with your application. And, if taking the SAT back in high school wasn't a miserable enough experience, these exams are even more stringent, and prepping for them the old fashioned way can take up to 350 hours. Thankfully, AllenPrep TestBank offers a new approach to acing these exams, and you can score lifetime access to one of these resources for $19.99 in the Boing Boing Store.With TestBank, you get access to 1,268 GMAT and 1,459 GRE questions from any device. It provides you with an expert-curated rationale for every single test answer and helps you identify your strengths, weaknesses, and progress. What's more, TestBank lets you simulate the actual test with unlimited, timed exams in all subjects, or target selected topics so that you can take the real thing without any surprises.Lifetime subscriptions to AllenPrep TestBanks are on sale for $19.99 today in the Boing Boing Store,.

Since 2006, Matt "Molotov" Bouvier and his wife Miss Dixie DeLish have been traveling coast to coast playing fairs, festivals, carnivals, and Wild West shows with their "Americana Mayhem Roadshow." Sword swallowing, dog tricks, cowboy trick roping, precision bullwhip cracking, and knife throwing are part of their act, which they performed on this gorgeous fold-up theater.On Monday morning, Matt announced on Facebook that they are selling the fold-up theater for $17,000.This theater is the real deal. Matt and Dixie bought the stage in 2006 from some folks in Gibsonton, Florida who had been using it as a "Wild West Follies" show since 1997. (In case you didn't know, Gibsonton is a community for carnival workers.)Matt explains that it takes two people two hours to set the 17'x17' stage up, with no heavy lifting. The stage drops on an electric winch and the marquee raises on hydraulics.Watch:https://youtu.be/e_mDg37eldwFor $17,000, you get the stage with all lights, sound, and its "rough" living quarters (sleeping loft with a shower, sink, microwave, and hot water heater). If you want the 2007 3/4 ton truck they used to pull it, it will cost you $35,000 total.But, as Matt writes, "You can make it back in one season, we did in 2006."

Nuzo Eziechi said, "I am incredibly excited to be honored as Nigeria's Integrity Idol." The show featured government workers competing to be crowned most ethical. (more…)

Chris Fay captured this cool shot of a helicopter ascent where the rotors are in perfect synch with his camera shutter, creating a delightful and unintentional effect. (more…)

By the end of the Bosnian War in 1995, an estimated 100,000 people had died in the former Yugoslavia as a result of intense combat and horrific ethnic cleansing. More than two decades on, much of the damage done to the buildings in Bosnia and Herzegovina remains as a stark reminder of its recent, bloody past. Bullet holes in brickwork aren't the only remnants of the years of carnage that shook the country at the end of the last millennium: active landmines and other munitions, along with scores of spent shells and other military detritus litter the countryside. While ordinance disposal teams are still working to recover and disarm the former, at least one artist is working hard to make something beautiful of the latter.Kenan Hidić is a Sarajevo-based artist, whose materials of choice can be found freely throughout his country: spent artillery shells, bullet casings – war trash. BalkanDiskurs recently profiled Hidić and his work (you may need Google Translate to read it, though.) In the profile, Hidić talks about his work, and the philosophy behind it. The story is accompanied by some outstanding black and white photos, shot by Armin Durgu, of Hidić at work.Image: Fanny Schertzer - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Huffington Post and YouGov did a survey around the so-called 'Nunes memo' political stunt from last week, and found some that some 75% of Americans who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections now believe the FBI is biased against him.(more…)

I enjoyed reading David Joiner's (aka Talin) retrospective about game development in the early days of the Commodore Amiga: like many creators of the era, he not only had to cultivate his artwork, but also needed to devise incredible technical hacks just to get his ideas working on the frustratingly limited (yet wildly malleable) hardware.

In 1986, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat, lost its shit. Flaws in the reactor's design caused a steam explosion, resulting in a fire that spewed plumes of radioactive material into the atmosphere. The Soviet government mobilized its armed forces to evacuate the area surrounding the accident site where the risk to human life was the greatest. Families were forced on to buses and military transports with little more than the clothes on their backs. Without exception, the evacuees were forced to leave the pets behind. There was simply no time, or space, to include them in the rescue. Later the same year, Soviet troops were sent into the 30-mile wide Chernobyl exclusion zone to cull what animals they could find left still alive. Live stock, wildlife and deserted family pets were eliminated.But they didn't get them all.Largely free of people for over three decades, the exclusion zone has become something of a haven to a thriving (albeit, irradiated, in some cases) miscellany of wild animals. Most heartening of all, the dogs who survived the '86 cull, bred, increased their numbers exponentially and survived. As work began on a new, permanent include to house the still radioactive ruins of Chernobyl's number four reactor, many of the descendants of the abandoned, domesticated pooches began showing up at the construction site, looking for scraps and refuge from the wolves and other predators that pray on them in the wild. The workers at the Chernobyl site began making a habit to save scraps from their meals for the dogs. The dogs in turn, began to trust the men and women working in the exclusion zone. While the doggos were now in a safer environment than the woods could afford them, the dogs were still endangered. Overrun by the dogs, the construction company responsible for work in the area directed its employees to round up and kill the dogs. The employees, to their credit, refused.Fortunately, the Clean Futures Fund has a better idea for managing the dogs that doesn't involve murder.The CFF is accepting donations to help manage the dogs of Chernobyl. The money collected goes to dog food, rabies vaccinations, and to pay veterinarians to come to the area so that the pooches can be spayed and neutered. For more information on the CFF's work to provide better lives for these animals, just follow this link.

President Donald Trump's lawyers want him to refuse to be interviewed by Robert Mueller in the ongoing investigation involving Russia and other possible areas of criminal activity. He may refuse, but the investigation isn't going away.(more…)

'President' Donald Trump used the word 'treason' when commenting today on the behavior of Democratic lawmakers people at his shitty State of the Union address last week. They failed to clap, smile, or praise him.(more…)

James Conley III (29) went shopping at an Old Navy in West Des Moines, Iowa. When he went to the checkout counter to pay for some items, the clerk asked him if he also wanted to buy the jacket he was wearing.From Conley's Facebook page:

Demand is high for IT professionals, but, as any expert will tell you, certifying your skills is almost mandatory for climbing the career ladder. While a host of certification options exist, they're not all created equal. For those looking to break into the field, it's essential to select a certification that's recognized by the industry and ideally vendor-neutral, much like CompTIA.The Complete 2018 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle will prepare you to add several of these certifications to your resume, and it's on sale for $59 in the Boing Boing Store.Boasting 140 hours of content spread across 14 courses, this collection will help you prepare for CompTIA certification exams in cloud computing, network security, and many other IT sectors. The bundle even includes instruction on passing the CompTIA A+ certification exam, which validates your understanding of the most common hardware and software technologies—a helpful start for anyone looking to break into the field.The Complete 2018 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle is on sale now in the Boing Boing Store for $59.

Watch as this unsuspecting tourist crossing a glass bridge freaks out when the glass begins to crack. Special effects that make the glass walkway look and sound like it's shattering were added to the bridge, which is 3,871 feet high and 873 feet long. The gag is meant as a "provocative" experience, but it's been so believable that the masterminds behind it gave an apology – but will continue to terrify people who dare to cross.According to CNET:

https://youtu.be/pnSw8g3DPHwWatch the video to make sure my summary here is right: You are in a dark room with a pile of coins. The coins have a silver side and a gold side. You know two things about the coins. There are hundreds coins. 20 of the coins are silver side up and the rest are gold side up. It's your job to make two piles of coins that have the same number of silver side up coins. The room is in total darkness and each coin feels the same on both coins.This video says there in "a surprisingly easy solution." I haven't solved it yet but I have a pile of nickels and I'm going to give it a try.[via Twisted Sifter]

Peter Lik is one of the world's most successful photographers. He reportedly works in-camera and without significant compositional retouching. But he appears to have been caught with his shoop down. The tl;dr, as Steve Cullen has it: a recent moon shot has a perfectly spherical disc when at that resolution mountains would be visible on its horizon; it's impossible to get that particular angle on the moon from the place where the photograph was taken; and, haha, the same moon shot is already in an earlier composition.

Jack Parsons (1914-1952) was a pioneering rocket scientist and part of the team that founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He was also a deep devotee of Aleister Crowley and worked some heavy duty occult rituals with none other than L. Run Hubbard. Parsons died in a freaky home lab explosion that's fueled conspiracy theorists every since. In the below video, the short, drunken story of Parsons's weird life. For more on Parsons, I suggest George Pendel's fine book Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons.(Drunk History via Daily Grail)

In 1910, the National Pharmaceutical Society gave a thumbs up to the Osculatory Screen, a piece of silk in an elegant handle meant to prevent the spread of germs. The device was described as a "disinfected silk gauze through which the kiss is accomplished, the gauze being held in an ivory frame and placed between the two pairs of lips before they meet."Besides just not working, I think the Osculatory Screen would take quite a bit of the romance of accomplishing a kiss.Kissing Screen (Weird Universe)

After comparing the sizes of movie monsters, MetaBall Studios is now measuring up movie robots. They start at the spindly spider robot from Minority Report at .18 meters and go up to the towering 160 meter CyberKing from Doctor Who.

I have a good feeling about this.

https://vimeo.com/253738508Josh Begley of The Intercept put together a video that shows all 280 reported concussions of the 2017 NFL season in one clip, with the goal of "defamiliarizing the familiar." It's too sad to watch.

Installation artist Jihan Zencirli, also known artistically as Geronimo, created an ambitious massive balloon installation at Lincoln Center for the New York City Ballet. (more…)

Learning how to crawl is a lot more complicated that most of us realize. But this baby walks, er, crawls you through it step by step. Kinesiology at its cutest.

The Las Vegas boneyard of discarded neon signs got a brilliant makeover this month thanks to projection-mapped images that made the still-broken signs look like they were working again. The project was a benefit for The Neon Museum. (more…)

If you were a voting member of the World Science Fiction Convention in 2017, or are registered as a voting member for the upcoming conventions in 2018 or 2019, you are eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards; the Locus List is a great way to jog your memory about your favorite works from last year -- and may I humbly remind you that my novel Walkaway is eligible for your nomination?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s32C3KAi0NcArthur Jones is standing uncontested to be the GOP's candidate in Illinois's 3rd Congressional District, representing suburban Chicago; he has run for office several times on a white-supremacist, Holocaust denial platform, calling the Holocaust "the biggest blackest lie in history." (more…)

Guldies (previously) posted this weirdly satisfing stop-motion animation of life in the woods. The visuals are amazing -- 2500 still pictures taken with a Canon DSLR and sequenced at 18 frames per second in Dragonframe -- but it's the way it works with sound that I really felt.