Over at The Official Action Figure Therapy store, they've got all kinds of customized minifigs for sale including this "Calm Bearded Tree Enthusiast Painter Dude." It's like a hilarious exercise in describing Bob Ross and LEGO, without actually using those words. Also see: the "Hairy Canadian Fast Healing Angry Claw Man In Wife Beater," the "Scary Kid Loving Sewer Clown With Balloon," and the "Terminally Ill Contraband Manufacturing Underwear Science Teacher."Thanks, Howard!

While the typical answer is 33 beats per minute, musician Adam Neely's answer morphs into a great primer on the "perceptual present," a concept widely discussed in both the philosophy of music and of consciousness. (more…)

I don't know about you guys but I can't wait to catch Backwanzus, Bing the Bung, and Lil Hack this year at Coachella. I hear they're going to play all their early stuff.What...? Botnik Studios (previously) trained its neural network on thousands of band names to generate a completely fake Coachella 2018 lineup?Oh, yeah, I totally knew that.

Mark E. Smith, the inscrutable and inimitable poet frontman of UK post-punk band The Fall has died. He was 60.(more…)

I was told that chopping vegetables and fruits would be easier with a Santoku knife. For $25 I gave it a shot. (more…)

A reader sent us a link to an awesome VW microbus poster, so I bought it for my mechanic. In response to this nice gesture all the coolant dumped out of my engine. (more…)

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Prince Charles fears he’s becoming a werewolf, the KGB tried to kill Lee Harvey Oswald, and Meryl Streep is going blind, according to this week’s reality-challenged tabloids.It’s the rare week when the Trump-loving tabloids don’t indulge in paeans of praise for the president, but they still gleefully hurl incendiary allegations at the Clintons.The feds’ probe into the Clinton Foundation “explodes,” claims the Globe cover, with the “secret arrest” of Bill Clinton's brother Roger. Is Roger Clinton’s 2016 DUI arrest truly “secret” when it was reported on at the time by The Washington Post, New York Daily News, Los Angeles Times, TMZ . . and the National Enquirer?Roger was sentenced to two days in jail, ordered to take an alcohol education program, and given three years probation. Yet the Globe claims that federal prosecutors are now threatening to revoke Roger Clinton’s probation if he doesn’t “turn stool pigeon and spill whatever he knows about any illegal actions” by the Clintons. Can somebody please explain to the Globe that the feds can’t revoke Roger Clinton's probation for saying he knows nothing about his brother’s charity. And why would he know anything anyway? Sheer wishful thinking.The National Enquirer cover promises “never-before-seen crime scene photos inside California’s house of horrors!” The headline warns readers of a “chilling look inside putrid hellhole.” And what do the photos show? A scattering of brightly colored trash bags strewn across the family’s front yard (outside, not inside the “putrid hellhole”) and a shot taken through a glass door revealing an unremarkable table and some shelves. Shocking. Another Enquirer headline reminds readers: “13 innocent children secretly kept in chains!”It’s worth noting that People magazine, which devotes this week's cover to the “House of Horrors,” refers to only “12 children chained & tortured for years.” Whatever happened to the 13th child? People notes the distinction that the Turpin Family’s two-year-old “appears to have escaped abuse." So she was a happy, well-adjusted baby among the foul-smelling trash while her 12 siblings were chained and tortured around her? Seriously?Jane Fonda is battling “lip cancer horror” claims the Globe, showing the actress wearing a Band-Aid on the left side of her chin. “Emergency surgery to save her looks!” reports the Enquirer, showing Fonda with a Band-Aid on the right side of her chin. Did she undergo two surgeries? No – it’s the same photo, flipped into reverse by one of the rags, because what do they care what side she’s been operated on? If she’s wearing a Band-Aid, it must be cancer, right?It makes as much sense as the Globe claim that Prince Charles is becoming the “Werewolf of London!” Charles is supposedly concerned that he inherited from “mad” King George III the genetic disease porphyria, which some have proposed may have led to werewolf legends in extreme cases of the affliction. As an unnamed source helpfully explains: “Now everyone – including his wife, Camilla - is convinced he’s going insane.” Maybe that explains the Enquirer report that Charles has not been invited to son Prince Harry’s coming bachelor party in Switzerland? Is Harry worried that his dad might howl at the moon over the Alps? Or perhaps he simply doesn’t want the 69-year-old heir to the throne making it rain for Swiss strippers?It’s illuminating to read the Enquirer cover story revealing that the “KGB tried to kill Oswald” to prevent him assassinating President Kennedy, since it was only in November that sister publication the Globe ran a report claiming “Secret KGB Files Reveal Russian Spy Killed JFK!” and the Enquirer claimed that Oswald “worked for CIA!” Are they making this stuff up as they go along? Russian spies probably know the answer to that one.“Meryl Streep going blind!” claims the Enquirer. How do they know that? Because she needs spectacles to read a menu. And everyone knows that wearing glasses is the first step toward blindness.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Alessandra Ambrosio wore it best, that Jordan Fisher (champion of Dancing With The Stars, which has become a star-free zone) would “never be caught dead in wicker loafers,” that Fifty Shades Free actress Arielle Kebbel carries an amethyst to calm her and a carnelian stone “for strength and courage” in her Chanel tote, and that the stars are just like us: they read magazines, eat avocado toast, tote luggage and pump petrol in their cars. Riveting.Us mag devotes its cover to Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel revealing “How We Make It Work!” Says Biel: “We like to have fun.” Reveals a friend: "They love spending time together.” And that’s how they make it work, apparently.In what couldn’t possibly be misinterpreted as a conflict of interest, People mag devotes almost half a page to Kim Kardashian and her sisters taking on a new modeling gig as spokeswomen for Calvin Klein underwear, in the same issue that Calvin Klein runs a two-page ad showing the quintet of women in their skivvies, demonstrating how to make five beautiful women as unsexy as possible in tighty-whities.“Disease, disaster, miracle cures and vampires coming,” predicts the Council of Native American Seers, according to the National Examiner. An Egyptian pyramid will become a time travel portal, a fish with human arms will be found in the Great Lakes, a factory worker will discover “the secret of eternal youth,” and a maximum security prison will be built orbiting Earth, the seers forecast. But an online search for the “revered” Council of Native American Seers produces zero hits. I should have seen that coming. Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa, among six prophets named by the mag, died in 1836, so his prediction that “aliens broadcast from a TV station in Springfield, Ill.” is a true feat of foresight – or journalistic imagination.Onwards and downwards . . .

Larry Nassar was sentenced today to 175 years imprisonment, Justice Rosemarie Aquilina telling him "I've just signed your death warrant." 163 of his victims—many of them young women athletes all but ordered to tolerate his abuse by sporting authorities who held the power to end their careers—gave accounts of assault at his sentencing.

The US -- allegedly a bastion of the "free market" -- has one of the world's lowest levels of economic competition, thanks to the triumph of the Chicago School economists, who used shitty math to convince Ronald Reagan and his successors that the only time a monopoly is a problem is when it raises prices. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e-H4sEHB54'Todd Rogers is one of the few people genuinely famous for their mastery of video games, holding numerous high-score records and scoring merchandising deals. But it turns out that at least some of his achievements are technically impossible, now that it's easy to decompile old games and look at the code. So how did he do it? [via]The video above breaks down the case against him; cited is this thread at the Atari Age forums.

Evangelicals love a president who cheats on all of his wives, brags about assaulting women by grabbing their pussies, and pays hush money to a porn star to keep her from talking to the press about his sex affair with her. Tony Perkins of the right-wing Family Research Council, said Trump gets "a do-over" because evangelicals "were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists." But Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chair, has one thing to say to evangelicals about their unwavering support for the unfaithful Trump: “I have very simple admonition: just shut the hell up and don’t preach to me about anything ever again,” he said on MSNBC.

The mid-nineties roughly mark the point where Britain's late-20th century TV-entertainment monoculture ran out of steam: its stars too old, its programming too staid, its secrets too widely-known, new competition in the form of the internet and cheap cable/satellite channels, and a new generation of British artists conquering the world without Jimmy Savile's introduction. Spice World, the official Spice Girls movie, is an interesting artifact of the times: the new paying their respects to the old, who were given a staggering parade of cameos. It is, Sirin Kale writes, a deranged postmodern masterpiece.

Municipal networks are cheaper and faster than the ones that cable and telephone duopolists build after being given exclusive franchises to serve cities, which is why the FCC had to issue an order banning cities to stop building them -- in the absence of such an order, it seems likely that most of America would end up using municipal internet connections (unlike today, when 100,000,000 Americans are served by a single ISP). (more…)

Ironically, the most honest thing the NSA has done since its founding might just be deleting the word "honesty" from its statement of core values, in January 12th's revisions to the earlier version that also once included "openness." (more…)

California regulates payday loans (good thing, since Trump's about to kill the federal rules preventing payday loansharking), but not "installment loans" of $2,500 to $5,000 and that means that out-of-state lenders are able to target desperate Californians; they're getting seven-year loans of $5,000 that cost $42,000 to repay. (more…)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, exclusive extra comics, exclusive commentary, and much more (exclusively).DO A KID A FAVOR AND GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series, 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…)

In January 1888, after a disarming warm spell, a violent storm of blinding snow and bitter cold suddenly struck the American Midwest, trapping farmers in fields, travelers on roads, and hundreds of children in schoolhouses with limited fuel. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the Children's Blizzard, one of the most harrowing winter storms in American history.We'll also play 20 Questions with a computer and puzzle over some vanishing vultures.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Jimmy Kimmel Live went to the Original Farmers Market in Los Angeles to get random children's opinions on how Trump did in his first year in office. Their answers are pretty funny, of course, but not as funny as their on-the-spot dead-on impressions of him.

Flexispy is a creepy, potentially illegal piece of stalkerware marketed to abusive men who want to spy on their partners; but Jim Born, an ex-DEA cop and retired Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent (now a crime novelist) says that he thinks he "used on a case or tried it to understand how it worked. Nothing nefarious." (more…)

In order to ram through its Neutrality-killing bill, the FCC had to break all the rules: ignoring expert testimony, inventing an imaginary alternate internet where Neutrality didn't matter, pretending millions of obviously fake comments were real, obstructing justice when law-enforcement tried to investigate these comments, pretending the evidence supported neutracide, lying about how the Obama FCC created its Neutrality order, and lying about what happened after the order was passed. (more…)

The web is a big place, but competition is still fierce when it comes to getting your site to stand out among the clutter. While measures like boosting your SEO have their place, sometimes a simple tweak to your site's appearance can promote user engagement and translate to better leads. Therein lies the value of Dessign Premium's WordPress Themes and lifetime memberships are on sale for $29.Whether you run your own website or build others for a living, this collection of premium themes boasts more than 180 fully responsive, aesthetically beautiful themes designed to make your site(s) stand out. You'll get lifetime access to a continually updating library and a license that permits use on an unlimited number of sites, so your future WordPress sites will never be short on style.These themes have been featured on Mashable, Creative Bloq, Tripwire Magazine, and more big-name sites, and they include built-in SEO to help you get to the top of those crowded Google searches.Normally retailing for $100, lifetime memberships to Dessign Premium WordPress Themes are on sale for $29, saving you over 70% off.

“Despite claims the Kremlin is driving a campaign to disclose an anti-FBI memo, a source says an early in-house analysis concludes the hashtag has been mostly pushed by Americans,” reports Daily Beast.“If these reports are accurate, we are witnessing an ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors directly acting to intervene and influence our democratic process,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, two California Democrats, wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier on Tuesday.#ReleaseTheMemo has been trending widely since late last week.Snip:

In 1944 George Orwell wrote an essay called “Benefit of Clergy,” in which he calls Salvador Dali a “disgusting human being.”(more…)

As the saying goes, "New year, new you." But what's going to be different about the 2018 version of yourself? What if you kick off the new year by adding a new skill or two to your repertoire? From coding to writing, and even photo editing, we've rounded up five of the best learning resources on the web right now to help you enter the new year with an in-demand skill. They're all on sale for $19 each.1. Python 3 Bootcamp BundleWhen it comes to getting the most bang for your buck, learning how to code may very well be one of the most valuable skills you can learn. Whether you want to create a personal website or earn some extra cash on the side by building someone else's, learning how to code can open up a myriad of opportunities, and when it comes to that first language to learn, Python is one of the best.This bundle features more than 30 hours of training in Python and its related tools. Regardless of your experience level, you'll learn how to use this language to develop websites, scrape data, create apps, and much more.Get this deal here > $192. Ultimate Adobe Photo Editing BundleAsk any graphic designer worth their salt, and they'll tell you that Adobe and its suite of tools are king for editing and creating digital content. Photoshop and Lightroom, in particular, are two tremendously powerful tools for editing photos, and knowing how to use them can net you some pretty lucrative side work as a photo editor.This 8-course collection boasts more than 40 hours of training in these two programs and will guide you through the essentials of using them to create stunning images. You'll discover how to tinker with layers and selections and correct photos for color. Plus, this collection even includes a course on making it as a freelance editor, so you can get that extra revenue stream up and running faster.Get this deal here > $193. YouTube Mastery BundleTimes are changing, and now people can make a cozy living entirely from producing videos on YouTube. Whether you have ambitions of becoming the next Jenna Marbles or just getting your name out there, understanding the ins and outs of this platform can pay big down the roadThis collection features five courses designed to help you earn money by creating content on YouTube. You'll learn how to increase your reach with marketing techniques, add color to your channel, and much more to create a presence on this platform.Get this deal here > $194. Copywriting Mastery BundleTexting and memes may be systematically eroding the English language as we know it, but understanding the conventions of writing and conveying a message is still invaluable. Whether you're trying to promote your own business or publish your creative work, this four-course collection has you covered.Jump in, and you'll get a crash course in the many facets and applications of creative writing. You'll discover how to structure a story properly so that you can get published, and you'll dive into drafting compelling sales copy as a copywriter, allowing you to earn some extra cash on the side.Get this deal here > $195. Ethical Hacking A to Z BundleCybercrime is no joke, and while most of today's headlines focus on hackers stealing information from companies, we're all at risk of getting attacked. That's why everyone should know how to protect themselves online, and this eight-course collection will show you how.You'll discover how to detect common hacking threats, like phishing, cross-site scripting, and email hacking. And, you'll train to sniff out vulnerabilities in networks, so you can patch them up before they get breached, giving you an extra layer of protection against hacking attacks.Get this deal here > $19

Here's a short National Geographic video about a crying therapy service. Women pay a "handsome man" to make them cry, then gently wipe their tears away. The practiced is said to relieve stress.

Marilyn Hartman (66) flew from Chicago to London on a British Airways jet last week. She didn't have a ticket or a passport. How did she do it? She simply walked past TSA security officers and airline ticket collectors!From The New York Times:

It's a political no-brainer for Trump, who gets to clobber the renewables market, rattle his saber at China, extend the viable economic life of climate-destroying hydrocarbon fuels (like coal) and rile up the libs. (more…)

Governor Steve Bullock [D-MT] has signed an executive order banning state agencies from procuring internet service from ISPs that violate net neutrality principles like throttling, blocking and paid prioritization. (more…)

When the £5m Autosafe Skypark opened in Edinburgh, it was heralded as the UK's most technologically advanced car park, but in 2003, the owners went bankrupt and turned off the computers that controlled the lifts that raised and lowered cars into their bays. (more…)

South Korea has one of the world's highest suicide rates -- it has steadily mounted since 2000, rising to 25.6 per 100,000. (more…)

The "addictiveness of smartphones" is the latest technology moral panic, sending parents off with furrowed brows over whether theire kids' "brains are being rewired" by their phones. (more…)

Watch Talking Heads legend and happy mutant superhero David Byrne's delightful new lecture earlier this month in New York City! The subject, "Reasons to be Cheerful," is intertwined with Byrne's first album in 14 years, "American Utopia," due out in March.He's just announced that he's taking the talk on tour for a series of free shows in Europe.“I began to look for encouraging things that are happening anywhere in the world, and if they have been tested, if they have been proven to work, if they can be transferred and adopted in other places, if they can scale up,” Byrne says. “[T]hen, I thought to myself, why not hold them up for consideration, and also invite others to add to this project. There are actually a LOT of encouraging things going on around the world – they’ve given me hope, they’re a kind of therapy, given what’s happening in the world, and I’d like to share them."(Thanks, Julie Muncy!)Previously: "To do in NYC: David Byrne's Reasons to Be Cheerful"

The best way to avoid the many trolls, Russian agents, and nazis that Twitter is eager to host is to stop using Twitter. The next best thing might be to use "soft blocks," as described by Barry Ritholtz on his The Big Picture site.

LegalFling is a Dutch app that's supposed to protect partners in sexual liaisons from miscommunication by recording both parties' consent to sexual activity in an indelible, public blockchain entry. (more…)

Ed Neumeier, the writer behind Paul Verhoeven's classic 1987 family comedy Robocop, is working on a direct sequel to it that ignores the poorly-received sequels and the forgettable 2014 reboot.

In New Braunfels, Texas, State District Judge Jack Robison walked into the jury room, twice, during deliberation in a teen sex trafficking case and told the jurors that the defendant shouldn't be convicted. Why? Because God told him to.

Artist Yuki Tatsumi created Japanese Tip, an installation of the 8,000 origami "tips" left by customers at restaurants. (more…)

When I first watched 9 1/2 Weeks in 1986, I pined for Mickey Rourke's minimalist loft with its Breuer and Meier furniture and, most of all, the magical tape-flipping Nakamichi RX-505 cassette deck playing Brian Eno. In fact, I still dream of owning that Nakamichi. You holding?"Breuer, Meier and Mackintosh furniture in 9 1/2 Weeks" (Film and Furniture)

Let's hope if Tarantino actually gets a piece of the action, his Star Trek film is this fun.(Nerdist)

Tanja Brandt shares her videos and photos of Ingo the German shepherd and Poldi the owl. The two have been fast friends since Poldi was a hatchling. (more…)

NHS Digital has issued guidance to the independent authorities and businesses that make up the UK's National Health Service, setting out the case for storing extremely sensitive patient data on public cloud servers. (more…)

David McCandless meticulously charted dog breeds by six scores: intelligence, costs, longevity, grooming, ailments, and appetite. The big loser: bulldogs. (more…)

By using this mental trick developed by mathematician John H. Conway, you can figure out the day of the week for any date, past or future, in a few seconds with just one hand. And no, that one hand is not looking to Google for the answer.It uses an algorithm he devised called the Doomsday Rule:

The Pudding's Music Map shows the number 1 song all around the world. It's like a weird game of Risk, a world of brief new empires rising in the wake of Despacito's worldwide domination. The data comes from YouTube's API and is tracked by city.

Spewing like massive tentacular light sabers, steel mill cobbles are unpredictable workplace mishaps that represent "extreme manufacturing danger."

Dan Baker:

Probably the best cyberpunk anime ad for stout ale in the world. [via Tim Soret]

Remember Spaghetti, the corn snake with that snazzy tube sweater?Well, now you can mimic his look with this cozy "Chunky Mohair Tube Scarf" available at Bulgaria-based online hand-knitting store Dukyana for $280.According to the site, huge sweaters are hot.

Dastardly cybercriminals. Is there nothing they won't do?(more…)