Boing Boing

Impeached U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce on Sunday the emergency authorization of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 patients. On Saturday, one day ago, Trump tweeted: "The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. […]

Yet another fantastic take on current events by the folks at Juice Media. I have been voting for mail by years and in California it is easy to confirm your ballot was sent and received.

Activist art collective INDECLINE have dropped the trailer for their upcoming documentary (Fall 2020), The Art of Protest. "INDECLINE was founded on the idea that no matter how bad things get, there are concrete actions that can be taken as a form of resistance. They might not always be legal or polite, but that doesn't […]

Since 2018, Japan has been replacing its manhole covers with Pokémon designs, in an effort to boost local tourism throughout its lesser-frequented locales. Casey Baseel reports for SoraNews 24, that a new collection of Pokéfuta (as they're called in Japanese) has just debuted in Tokyo's Serigaya Park, an off-the-beaten path destination in Matsuya.

I've been using this Wen rotary tool for a few years. It has plenty of power (I've never turned it up to full speed for anything I've used it for), comes with a bunch of tool bits, and costs a tiny fraction of the price of a similar Dremel tool.

Brattleboro, Vermont has initiated an innovative project leveraging CARES Act funding to keep local restaurants in business, while at the same time supporting local farmers and feeding members of the community hit with the economic impact of the Covid health crisis. The project is called Everyone Eats!, and it's a program that integrates the diversity […]

Watch Overdriver Duo's impressive ukulele rendition of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." They also did GNR's "Sweet Child o' Mine." Via Kottke

One of the more unexpected racial reckonings in the wake of George Floyd's killing is the collapse of Bon Appétit magazine's YouTube channel. As Jack Saint says in his terrific analysis, "This was a burgeoning giant of online video, and it just completely shit the bed because it couldn't stop being racist." As a palate-cleanser, […]

Twenty years ago, Cameron Crowe wrote and directed Almost Famous, a fantastic, coming-of-age rock-and-roll tale based on his teenage years as a journalist for Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s. Rolling Stone published a new interview with Crowe in which he shares stories of screening it for Led Zeppelin, the magic of "Tiny Dancer," and […]

Primates of all kinds find bugs fascinating, including this father and son. Image: YouTube

Someone shot a video of bats hanging upside down to see things from their perspective.

Derek Muller from Veritasium uses some Google-fu to look into the common claim that dust is mostly dead skin. While a significant amount is, about half of typical household dust in one study was other things like clothing and carpet fibers, pollen, and other small floaty bits. Grossly engrossing! In addition, he found out that […]

Up The Blunx is a comedy podcast by the Black punks, for the Black punks, and about a wide range of topics from cops to condiments. But if you're expecting each episode to stay on track, you've come to the wrong place. Though you might officially be listening to an episode about straight edge, the […]

Heritage Auction's upcoming comic art convention has lots of drool-worthy items on the block, including: Lee Elias' cover for Chamber of Chills #19 (1955) — "One of the all-time greatest covers-not only for all Golden Age horror, but for the entire history of comics — that portends the coming of death and which burned an […]

Who are the writers for this season of America's reality? I mean, this is so over the top. Donald Trump's former advisor Stephen Bannon was today charged with fraud and other crimes. Bannon was arrested. On a boat. The USPS was involved. From NBC New York: A law enforcement source tells NBC New York that […]

As we get closer to the election it appears the Trump Campaign is dropping all pretense: "The reason he called for the boycott was over MAGA. MAGA is pretty much unanimous with blue lives matter these days," said White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. WATCH : White House press secretary defends Trump's attack on Goodyear/PBS […]

Last night, US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former schoolteacher, gave her 2020 Democratic National Convention speech from an early childhood classroom. Just beside her left shoulder, you can see three wooden alphabet blocks spelling out B L M for Black Lives Matter. And that wasn't the only subtle message in the background. From ABC News: […]

"Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone. Now Bannon," notes the NYT's Adam Goldman. The noose is tightening. "Each of Trump's 2016 campaign managershas now faced criminal charges," writes Philip Bump in the Washington Post today, a most notable of days: One takeaway from the Bannon indictment, though, is this: Each of […]

Kurt Hughes, a talented naval architect, built this delightful lunar lander home on the banks of the Columbia River in Central Washington State. He was inspired by his daughter's experience in a space camp at Seattle's Museum of Flight. "I wanted to build a fishing shack, even though I don't go fishing," he says. From […]

Because there have been too many "What coronavirus?" parties at properties rented through its service, Airbnb is banning house parties worldwide. Airbnb has also filed preliminary paperwork for public stock offering, which is rather a bold move in 2020. The company is trying to clean up its reputation and comply with coronavirus-related limits on gatherings […]

Judge rejects Trump’s latest attempt to hide tax returns from Manhattan DA

This deeply bizarre, uncomfortably funny, and surprisingly compelling clip is "Dreams" from the second solo album, also called Dreams, by Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane aka Jefferson Starship aka Starship. Released in 1980 before the launch of MTV, the video is uncomfortable operatic performance art at its best (and worst). The song itself hit #104 […]

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is reportedly in a coma Thursday after falling ill during a flight, which made an emergency landing in Omsk. Navalny, 44, started feeling unwell while on a return flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter. The plane later made an urgent […]

Former Trump White House official Stephen Bannon has just been indicted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. "Brian Kolfage, Stephen Bannon, and Two Others Alleged to Have Funneled Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars From the Organization to Kolfage," reads the SDNY document. Department of Justice U.S. Attorney's Office Southern District of New York FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE […]

Cecilia D'Anastasio reports on the life and death of Rudy Ferretti, a retrogaming star whose life beyond adding high-scores was dedicated to removing his enemies from the retrogaming scene. Enabled and abetted by fellow-travelers and spineless moderators, he was extraordinarily successful in this respect, held up as a hero even as he constantly harassed women, […]

Flaws in Boeing's 737 MAX jet led to the deaths of hundreds of passengers in two accidents, the plane's worldwide grounding, and an investigation that revealed the spreading rot of corporate incompetence and horrifying lapses in oversight. Even with fixes, no-one wants to get on the 737 Max. The solution? Rename it. Boeing has today […]

The drama channels have been all over the developing war in LA between influencer jagbags and city officials over massive house parties in the middle of a pandemic. The worst of the worst is Bryce Hall, whose swimming-pool-temp IQ and blatant disregard for humanity have set him apart in a crowded field of young imbeciles. […]

Real Engineering takes a look at the feasibility of space elevators, and the short answer is, yes it is possible. It is primarily a materials challenge; namely, a tensile strength challenge for the cable that engineers would need to solve. Any space elevator would have to be situated on the equator, and we would first […]

There aren't many video games that my wife and I agree on as we do with House House's Untitled Goose Game. That the game is receiving a free two-player cooperative upgrade on September 23rd? Bliss.

Loup Barrow plays the haunting Hans Zimmer composition on a cristal baschet, a rare instrument made of glass and metal. The instrument was created in 1952 by brothers Bernard and François Baschet. Each key is a glass rod attached to a metal rod. It's played in the way someone can make a tone by rubbing a […]

It’s been said that truth is the first casualty of war, but it now appears to be the first casualty of peacetime too.

The Black Cauldron nearly killed Disney animation, taking so long to make that its true budget is incalculable, appearing to startled reviews in 1985, and taking in only $21m at the box office. Drew Taylor charts how the disaster lumbered on for more than a decade, splitting the company generationally and coming to manifest its […]

This is one of these videos where it's cool, then kinda lulls in the center, but the pay-off at the end is totally worth it.

Ever since Rosetta Stone kickstarted the online language learning craze, there are now almost as many language learning services out there as there are languages to learn. Yet while many of their methods vary, most of these programs come back to the tried and true online learning model: instruction through an app and YouTube videos. […]

From The Independent: The Lindt & Spruengli company confirmed local reports on Tuesday that there was a minor defect in the cooling ventilation for a line for roasted "cocoa nibs" in its factory in Olten, between Zurich and Basel. […] Combined with strong winds on Friday morning, the powder spread around the immediate vicinity of the factory, […]

TMZ reports that a 3-foot-tall dildo, weighing in at 40 pounds, was stolen in the middle of the day from a sex shop in Las Vegas. The dildo, which is affectionately known as "The Moby," as in Dick, for reasons that I suppose are rather obvious, retails for $1250. However, it's also available on Amazon […]

SPOT (NYSE) Taking something boring and turning it into something beautiful is a real talent, and that's exactly what Gladys of Stoxart has done. She's turned stock charts into lovely illustrations of landscapes. It's easy to see why she calls herself a "data visual insights innovator." The stock market is a story worth telling so […]

As the name suggests, Kookslams is a curated collection of watersport noobs (aka kooks) getting slammed by waves, other kooks, immovable objects, and what-not. It may be the most apt metaphor for this year. Image: Instagram / Kookslams

Apple today became the first 2-trillion dollar American company, after becoming the first trillion dollar US company just two years ago. Microsoft ($1.59T) and Amazon ($1.65T) are in second and third place, respectively. Breaking News: Apple is now worth $2 trillion. It doubled its value since the pandemic-induced recession, cementing its dominance in the global […]

It's been a year since the last season of Stranger Things and production of season four has obviously been held up by the pandemic. According to the show's creators Ross and Matt Duffer, season four, when it finally does happen, won't be the forever finale. From the Hollywood Reporter: What's the status of shooting season […]

In response to Goodyear Tires corporate policy that allows folks to wear items that display their support of racial justice and other issues of equity, but not racist red baseball caps, Orange Julius rages forth on Twitter! The sitting President of the United States is calling for a boycott of an American company. I run […]

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on a live feed just before her Democratic National Convention speech: "It's Shark Week, motherfuckers." I love it when politicians break character.

Jack White and Third Man Records are holding an online auction for all the crap (and some good stuff) they dug out of the recording studio, storage space, and personal collections. The showpiece is obviously the red drum kit used in The White Stripes' "Hardest Button" video but there are more than one hundred other […]

The dazzling new version of Microsoft Flight Simulator is finally out, and virtual pilots are exploring a realistic and detailed world generated algorithmically from mapping data. This procedural technique allows one to fly anywhere on planet Earth, but it results in oddities when the system misinterprets the data. Oddities such as an uncanny and vaguely […]

California governor Gavin Newsom ordered a statewide state of emergency Tuesday, as at least 30 separate wildfires blaze uncontrolled throughout the state. In the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday thousands of people in the potential path of wildfire are under orders to evacuate their homes. In San Francisco, and other California cities, the skies […]

Tay Zonday, your meme is ready! This week in Olten, Switzerland, cocoa powder fell from the sky. The strange and delicious phenomena was the result of a ventilation system malfunction at the Lindt & Spruengli confection factory. From UPI: The company said strong winds in recent days caused the powder to spread around the surrounding […]

Health-related disinformation content on Facebook received an estimated 3.8 billion views over the past year, and has surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, says advocacy group Avaaz in a new report released Wednesday. Read the Avaaz Report: "Facebook's Algorithm: A Major Threat to Public Health" From Reuters: The report found that content from 10 "superspreader" sites […]

"Look at the horizon glow." Created by Teo Domani. (YouTube, thanks Lux Sparks-Pescovitz!)

A German icebreaker ship carrying scientists on a year-long international expedition through the high Arctic finally reached the North Pole, after melting sea ice forced an emergency detour. From AP: Expedition leader Markus Rex said Wednesday the RV Polarstern was able to reach the geographic North Pole because of large openings in sea ice that […]

Martin Shkreli's ongoing jail term isn't the end of his legal troubles, and a federal judge rejected his latest effort to bring them to a close, allowing a lawsuit against him filed by New York's attorney general to proceed. The lawsuit accuses Shkreli, a former pharmaceutical executive, of illegally "trying to monopolize the lifesaving drug […]