Blue as a pigment in nature is incredibly rare. Most animals with blue coloration achieve it through microscopic structures in their skin, fur, or feathers. This helpful explainer delves into the details. (more…)

Film critic Allison de Fren examines some of the complex issues raised in the 2015 Ex Machina. Her voiceover alone makes it worth it, but the insights about how women are depicted helped me get over some of my discomfort with the film's themes. (more…)

Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders on 10 years of io9.

Greg is a Canadian living in Tokyo. He has a YouTube channel called Life Where I'm From, which explores what it's like to be a Westerner in Japan. For the last year or so he has been working on a serious project to understand homelessness in Japan. In the latest video, he interviews older men in Tokyo's skid row to learn their stories, and profiles Sanyūkai, a non-profit group that supports Japan's homeless population.Introductory video:https://youtu.be/Q8vhdQOH-TkPart 1: https://youtu.be/eK--oCVP18APart 2: https://youtu.be/-9RgkZebW1sPart 3: https://youtu.be/kBPyN3LE65g

My daughter loves building LEGO Star Wars anything, so Yoda's Starfighter is just fine by her. At 262 pieces, this is a perfect short afternoon project for a 10 year-old.I wanted the Yoda minifig.LEGO Star Wars Yoda's Jedi Starfighter via Amazon

Sad news from London, where Cranberries' lead singer Dolores O'Riordan died suddently today. The band's official page announced her death at about 1 p.m. EST, with no further details and a statement requesting privacy for her family.https://twitter.com/Hozier/status/952959141894639616https://twitter.com/duranduran/status/952959007219683328https://twitter.com/MayKapes/status/952958441403944961https://twitter.com/louisemcsharry/status/952950887475015680https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Kspj3OO0s

Incredible skill mixed with this paratha maker’s nonchalant demeanor of tossing dough disks across a room full of people may put him in the running for the world’s most efficient worker.At what point did this man decide he would save more time by throwing flatbread dough to the other end of the kitchen, potentially striking patrons in the face? It must have been a risky business decision, but surely production increased.Viewers of the nearly 5-year-old video note how the paratha pitcher bangs his rolling pin to notify the paratha catcher to expect some incoming dough. No sustained eye contact between the two needed.The graceful art form is said to be taking place at a hotel’s restaurant in Tamil Nadu, India, according to the video’s title.

From 1989, Fingers Inc.'s beautiful mix of "Can You Feel It" with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech.

Marriott has fired one of its social media managers because the employee "wrongfully liked" a tweet from Friends of Tibet, a group that supports Tibetan independence from China. (more…)

Crying won’t be needed to fill that bowl of French onion soup as grocery stores begin carrying a cross-bred, non-tear-provoking version of the traditional onion.The “sunion” has been propagated for the last 30 years to reduce onion compounds that create sulphuric acid when they react with eye fluid, according to the Independent. Bayer Crop Science seemingly figured the onion’s natural defense for keeping hungry critters away just wasn’t in line with our mediocre standards for simple living.Following a March release date, only one’s own internal pain and suffering will be the reason for crying in the kitchen, or of course chili-hand-to-eye contamination.Image: skeeze

Triad's Omoshiro Block ("fun block") are blocks of notecards from architectural model company Triad that have been pre-scored by a laser-cutter so that the pages separate to leave behind -- and gradually reveal -- detailed, delicate and exquisite models of Japanese architectural landmarks. (more…)

In 2016, Taylor Weyeneth took a break from his studies as an undergrad law student at St John's University and used the skills he'd acquired organizing a single golf tournament and working in his father's chia seed factory (closed abruptly when his father went to jail for processing illegal Chinese steroids in the plant) to campaign for Donald Trump. Now Weyeneth, at 24 years old, is the deputy chief of staff for Office of National Drug Control Policy, in charge of billions of dollars in spending to curb the opioid epidemic and fight illegal drug use. (more…)

An unnamed, paralyzed prisoner in one of Corizon Correctional Healthcare's for-profit prisons in Arizona chewed part of his left hand off because Corizon refused to give him the correct medication for his pain. (more…)

In this clip, magician Paul Vu spends a few minutes blowing Ellen's mind with his Rubik's Cube tricks. Though, I kind of got the feeling that she didn't like being duped by Vu, even in fun. Did you notice that too?(Likecool)

Using a Google Maps overlay, Solar System Maps shows how large the solar system would be if Earth or other celestial bodies were much smaller than the are. Here's "Earth the size of a basketball," centered on SFO. The outermost ring is Pluto's orbit.If Jupiter were the size of a tennis ball, Pluto's orbit could still encompass the British Library, the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament.

Over fifty years ago, an all-female rock band based out of San Francisco played to "Summer of Love" crowds. The popularity of Ace of Cups grew quickly and, thanks to a good manager, they were soon on the same bill as Steppenwolf, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish, The Band, Jefferson Airplane, and other popular acts at that time.In fact, the weekend after Monterey Pop Festival, they opened for Jimi Hendrix at a concert in Golden Gate Park.Despite their early success, the dynamics of the band changed when the women started having children. Never signed to a record label, they simply didn't have the resources to continue playing music together like their brother bands did.This short documentary by KQED Arts shares their story:

LED bulbs provide incredibly low-power light, and can last way longer than incandescent bulbs (though the lighting industry is trying to make LEDs artificially die more quickly, too). They also face an aesthetics issue: Almost every new form of low-power lighting is regarded as less pretty than traditional, old-school bulbs.The one exception is the "filament" LED bulb, which uses little strings of LED to mimic the look of old-fashioned incandescent bulbs one finds in hipster craft-beer saloons. The sales of these are growing rapidly, as Bloomberg reports:

The Yakima Herald posted this video, shot by Steven Mack, of a growing fissue on Rattlesnake Ridge near Yakima, Wa.I-82, seen in the footage, is only threatened in "less likely scenarios." The county has pre-emptively declared an official disaster.

Remember the botched retouching on those family portraits I recently shared? (Who could forget?!)Well folks, there's already a tutorial on how to retouch images like the photographer Lesa Hall did. Finnish photographer Antti Karppinen shows the way.Do your best (worst?)!

The Financial Times does a long, deep dive into the exploding world of Americans who crowdfund their health-care costs.It's a sad -- if gripping -- document of the wildly inefficient, friction-hot mess of medical care in the US, where one-fifth of household spending is lavished on healthcare, handily eclipsing that of other wealthy countries, while procuring worse results. As the piece notes, crowdfunding for health-care happens worldwide, but in other countries with adequately-funded public systems, it's used for rare, uncovered treatments. "In the US," in contrast, "it is often about paying for the basics."But the really freaky message of this piece?Crowdfunding turns health-care into a reality-TV show performance, where only those charismatic and sympathetic enough can make it work. Everyone in the ecosystem -- from the patients to the platforms -- acknowledges this reality:

Whistleblower and torture survivor Chelsea Manning has filed papers to challenge Senator Benjamin L Cardin for his seat in the 2018 midterm elections. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCAfjVtq_WIFrom 2009's Boston Bootie 21, DJ Faroff's astounding samba remix of the Darth Vader March: put your hands up in the air!

Large German companies are required to give board-seats to representatives from their workers' unions, which makes the companies both more profitable and more equitable, so it's unusual for German workers to go out on strike, but 15,000 members of IG Metall union, the country's largest trade union, are engaged in short-term "warning strikes" against 80 companies for the right to take up to two years' worth of 28-hour working weeks, a kind of "work-life-balance" leave that has evolved out of the country's existing parental leave, but would allow workers to take extra time to care for aging relatives. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMsZ9YtE1j0Glue the spines from an old encyclopedia set to slats of wood, back with a piece of fabric (a "tambour") and top with woodscrews as makeshift rollers that run along a routed track, and voila, you've got a hidden stashbox that slides aside to reveal whatever you want to hide there. (more…)

Secret Headquarters, Los Angeles's best comics shop (previously, has published "Monster Manual," a limited-run, 64-page zine collecting the art from their show of the same name, in which artists were challenged to create their own rue and satirical entries for a notional Dungeons and Dragons bestiary from an alternate timeline. (more…)

“WTF!” My friend Jon Letman in Hawaii tells us about the terrifying false alarm he and his wife and son just received that their island, Kauai, was being bombed.(more…)

In 2010, The Royal Society featured the "Desiderata" (previously) of Robert "Boyle's Law" Boyle, a list of dozens of scientific discoverie and breakthroughs that Boyle hoped would be discovered by scientists.

Back in 2016, we published a good technological explainer about Intel's Management Engine, an evolution of the decade-plus old idea of "Trusted Computing," in which a separate, isolated system-on-a-chip lives alongside of your computer, performing cryptographic work and overseeing the functions of your computer. (more…)

Here's a paper outlining a way to make logic gates out of nothing but links and rotary joints.It's quite ingenious -- binary states are indicated by the lean of the mechanisms, so you do calculations via entirely mechanical means, with the links shifting back and forth on the joints. They've worked out how you'd build everything from AND gates to NAND, NOR, NOT, OR, XNOR and XOR.The picture above is a model that illustrates what the mechanical circuits would look like if you built them out of pegboard-mounted links and joints -- but the real promise, the authors note, is in using these techniques to make micro- and nano-scale computational machines:

When the Zaring family had their family portraits done, they had no idea they'd end up looking like cartoon characters in the photographer's final edits.(more…)

Knowing how to write isn't just handy for keeping embarrassing typos out of your emails. The truth is that companies are in dire need of talented copywriters who can tell the story of their brands, and they're willing to pay top-dollar. You can join the ranks of other copywriters who make their living creating fun and accessible content both in-house and remotely with the Copywriting Mastery Bundle, available in the Boing Boing Store for $24.Boasting four comprehensive courses, this collection guides you through the nuts and bolts of being a successful copywriter. From basic creative writing skills to advanced instruction on writing content that boosts conversion rates and traffic, you'll discover the techniques essential to drafting compelling copy. What's more, this collection even includes tips on starting your own freelance copywriting business, so you can hit the ground running when you complete your training.You can pick up the Copywriting Mastery Bundle on sale for $24, and please know the irony of this Boing Boing Store post is not lost on us.

Claude Mellan's copper engraving "Face of Christ" (1649) consists of a single line starting at the tip of the nose and spiraling out with varying thickness to create the image. The copper plate is approximately 17" x 12.5". From ArtGallery.nsw:

I was once invited to attend an event in Dubai, but after I read stories of people going to prison there for stupid reasons (like a man from Britain who received a four year prison sentence when customs officers found a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and a another man who went to prison for "possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport") I bowed out. (You can also be imprisoned for having sex if you aren't married.)Here's another reason never to set foot in Dubai: You can be imprisoned for complaining about being ripped off. Yaseen Killick, 29, was working as an estate agent in Dubai and bought a used VW Golf for £6,000. It broke down the same day he bought it, and then he learned that the car had been a write-off. So he sent a Whatsapp message to the dealer that said: "How do you sleep at night knowing you are ripping people off?" He was arrested and imprisoned for three weeks.From The Sun:

The Rusty Spotted Cat of Sri Lanka weighs two pounds when it is an adult.(more…)

Donald Trump, who once said, "I think I'm much more humble than you would understand," was careful not to be too boastful in this Wall Street Journal interview about his successes:

Luxturna is a gene therapy drug to treat a hereditary blindness. The FDA approved it last month, and the one-dose treatment costs $850,000.From Oddity Central:

Talking to the dead has never been easier or more closely tied to a hit TV show than with this Stranger Things Ouija board. Its letters match the makeshift wall alphabet-lights that Joyce made to communicate with her son (who was in the "upside down," not dead) in season one. It's available for $19.99, if you dare.(Super Punch)

This board game was found in Poprad, Slovakia inside a German prince's tomb that dates to 375 C.E. Now, researchers at Switzerland's Museum of Games are trying to figure out how to play it. From Smithsonian:

danah boyd (previously) writes enthusiastically about Virginia Eubanks's forthcoming book, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, which she calls "the best ethnography I’ve read in years," "on par with Barbara Ehrenreich’s 'Nickel and Dimed' or Matthew Desmond’s 'Evicted.'" (more…)

Sandra Louise Garner, 55, of Maypearl, Texas, was arrested this week for allegedly murdering her husband, Jon Garner. On January 2, she had called 911 to report that a masked intruder in her home had shot her husband. That story became suspect when police found a gun with matching bullets inside Ms. Garner's Ford Mustang and also found the following Google search in her browser history: "How to kill someone and not get caught."(Star Telegram)

Every Friday on SundayMagazine.org, Jesse Rifkin posts fascinating articles from the New York Times Sunday Magazine from that weekend 100 years ago. Two recent examples are below. (Click to see a PDF.) For background on the project, read this 2011 Slate article about it by original curator David Friedman.

Ben Lorica, O'Reilly's chief data scientist, has posted slides and notes from his talk at last December's Strata Data Conference in Singapore, "We need to build machine learning tools to augment machine learning engineers." (more…)

Thank you, DJ Cummerbund. Thank you for perfectly combining Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" and Kenny Loggins' Footloose theme (and a little of Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" too) into "Jereloose." That was thoroughly enjoyable.YouTube commenter Ramanan amusingly calls it "the jauntiest song about a school shooting since Pumped Up Kicks!"(The Awesomer)

Vestaboard is a clever app-controlled version of the old split-flap display that you'd see in train stations of yore. It's the same electromechanical analog display technology used in old flip alarm clocks, but with Vestaboard you change the text using your mobile device. Below is a demo of one of the display "bits" in motion and another video teaser of the full sign, measuring 37" x 21". You can pre-order one for $1800.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99c10pFgw08https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl3hk5VFHL8

Wall Street consultants Quinlan & Associates have published "Fool's Gold: Unearthing The World of Cryptocurrency," a $5000, 156-page report that predicts that Bitcoin will drop to $1800 by next December, and down to $810 by 2020 (it is currently trading in the $14,000 range). (more…)

The New York Times has assembled a suite of charts that help visualize the data from pollsters Morning Consult, who've been tracking Trump's approval rating every day since he took office as the least popular president in US history. (more…)

Tide's laundry detergent pods look good enough to eat. In fact, since the brightly-colored product's introduction (a bestseller for its creator, Proctor & Gamble) six years ago, children have frequently gotten sent to the ER for consuming them. Despite the dangers, the "eating Tide Pods meme" remains strong.In March 2017, this CollegeHumor "Don't eat the laundry pods" video emerged:https://youtu.be/pM6wanZOLtkNow, in 2018, we finally have "Tide Pods" you can actually eat, in the form of vegan sushi. While recipes for Tide Pods candy and a gelatin-based dessert have been floating around, Hilary, a friend of Redditor dweron, has attempted to crack the "edible pods code." Her sushi retains the squishiness of the swirling "purple" and "orange" sections using truly edible foods like carrot, cabbage, and rice paper.I say "attempted" because, in my opinion, Tide Pods would taste like candy or frosting not vegan sushi. Solid try, though!(Mashable)

Among the millions of disgusted reactions from around the world to yesterday's dumbshit "shithole countries" remark by trump, The Daily Show's Noah Trevor had this to say last night: "As someone from South Shithole, I'm offended, Mr. President. Okay? I'm offended."And, “Because not only does he think brown countries are s—holes, he thinks, what, we’re never going to know what he said? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it might take a few weeks, but as soon as the news donkey reaches our village, we’ll be so mad.”Watch his full rant above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em4LhTdnHk0The latest launch from Japanese entertainment corporation Cinderella Academy is Kasotsuka Shojo "Virtual Currency Girls," who are billed as the first cryptopop band. (more…)