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America, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Australia are in a surveillance alliance called The Five Eyes, through which they share much of their illegally harvested surveillance data. (more…)

Kenny Shopsin was the proprietor of Shopsin's, an incredible, storied, secretive, boisterous, tiny restaurant and general store in Greenwich Village, whose cookbook/memoir is a masterclass in sloppy diner chef-craft in the mode of Daniel Pinkwater's Fat Guys From Outer Space. He died this week. (more…)

On September 12th, the European Parliament will vote on whether to include Article 13 with the new Copyright Directive, and if they do, they will destroy the internet. (more…)

Michael Froomkin writes, "We Robot, now heading into its 8th year, is lots of fun -- and it's also the leading North American conference on robotics law and policy. The 2019 edition will be held at the University of Miami on April 12-13, 2019, preceded by a day of special workshops on April 11. We just today opened the submissions portal for paper and demo proposals. Full details are in the Call for Papers.

Arduino is an electronics prototyping platform that makes it easy to build interactive projects without being an electrical engineer. Here's a $16 kit that has an Arduino Uno clone, a solderless breadboard, a charging cable, and lots of components to get you started.

Fred Guttenberg, father of 14-year-old Jamie, who was murdered during the Parkland school shooting, says he was snubbed today by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, nominee for the Supreme Court. (more…)

https://youtu.be/8yLXhUmEENQAndy of How To Make Everything decided to make his own bug spray by growing certain plants and extracting their essential oils. He put the oils into alcohol that he distilled from some foul-smelling crabgrass beer he'd made previously. Then he went to a wildlife preserve with some friends to test out the spray. He deemed the spray to be "moderately effective," but said he is going to order a batch of research mosquitoes and perform a more scientifically rigorous test in a couple of weeks.

The geniuses at Squirrel Monkey are back with another trip down alternate memory lane. This time, they imagine what the online game platform Steam would be like back in the days of modems and floppy disks. Their videos are a great reminder of what it was like to use computers in the 1980s.

These kinds of best-of lists are always highly personal, but this list of great horror novels include several that I love, including World War Z, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Exorcist.18. Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon (1987)

I would watch this show. From Funny Or Die:

The Beauty of Science's "Microworld Unseen" project reveals the hidden beauty and weirdness of everyday objects through the "eye" of a scanning electron microscopes (SEMS). Capable of imaging at 1 nanometer resolution (one billionth of a meter) or less, SEMS scan the sample surface with a focused electron beam to generate topographic data that's used to produce the image. The first specimen in the Microworld Unseen series is a butterfly called the pale grass blue (Pseudozizeeria maha). Below is the butterfly's genitalia.

Over the weekend, a shopper at Trader Joes spotted former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens working at the grocery store. She took photos of Owens (who played the young doctor Elvin Tibideaux), which the Daily Mail and Fox News immediately pounced on, job-shaming the actor in before-and-after tabloid-style stories.Owens went on Good Morning America this morning, where he said, "There's no job better than another...every job is worthwhile..." He said he was devastated by the job-shaming at first, but then became overwhelmed by all of the support he received online.

"Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets." --Ron SwansonI really didn't want more of these in my home. My niece convinced me that having Ron Swanson in the house did actually make me cooler.Make the addiction stop.Funko Pop Television: Parks and Recreation - Ron Swanson via Amaozn

Brandon Presser managed the high-roller suites in Las Vegas's Cosmopolitan. They're reserved for players who front more than a million in the hotel's private casino. In Bloomberg, Presser reveals what happens behind closed doors:

Inspirational speaker and YouTuber Claire Wineland, who had cystic fibrosis, died Sunday night. The 21-year-old activist had a successful lung transplant on August 26, but days later she suffered a severe stroke.According to BBC:

London's Victoria and Albert Museum has digitized and posted two of Leonardo da Vinci's personal notebooks. From The Art Newspaper:

Earlier this year, we were treated to a brief taste of Cyberpunk 2077 – the latest game from the developer of The Witcher, Projekt RED. It had me looking forward to the game, despite the fact that I currently don't own a single piece of hardware capable of playing it. With the release of this 48 minute gameplay video, I'm having lusty thoughts about investing in a new console or gaming computer, for the sake of getting my game on as a cyborg.

In 1607, a 15-year-old girl fled her convent in the Basque country, dressed herself as a man, and set out on a series of unlikely adventures across Europe. In time she would distinguish herself fighting as a soldier in Spain's wars of conquest in the New World. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Catalina de Erauso, the lieutenant nun of Renaissance Spain.We'll also hunt for some wallabies and puzzle over a quiet cat.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

In the decade that I've been using iPhones, iPods and iPads, I've never broken a cable, but holy shit am I ever good at losing them. Hotel guests around North America, China, Japan and a good chunk of Europe have all benefited from my slovenly cable tracking. I've lost at least 20 of the things on my travels. When you check into a hotel and have to ask the front desk for a loaner Lightning cable, there's a very good chance that it belonged to me. I don't however, typically lose track of batteries: they're bulky enough that if one's missing from the stuff sack I keep them in when I'm on the road, I'll notice. That's why this Battery Cable from Nomad has quickly become one of my favorite accessories. As its name suggests, the Nomad Battery Cable is an all-in-one battery and – are you ready for this – MFi-certified charging cable for iOS devices equipped with a Lightning port. Sporting a braided nylon sheath, the cable baked into the battery is tough and should stand up to all kinds of abuse. So too the battery itself: its aluminum body will stand up to the sort of casual abuse that mobile accessories often suffer while they're living their lives inside of a purse or backpack. Because cables come out of both ends of the battery – one to plug into your iPhone and the other to plug into a USB-A port to charge the battery, and, with pass-through power, your phone or tablet – its footprint is a little larger than many of the other battery packs I've used in the past. This is especially so when the battery is thick – braided cables are collected and secured with the Nomad Battery Cable's included rubber stay. That said, the cables do have a good deal of give to them, even while secured, and have yet to get tangled up in my bag. With its 2,800mAh capacity, the Nomad Battery Cable doesn't pack quite enough juice to give my iPhone 7 Plus' 2,900mAh battery a full charge, but, the chances of my completely depleting my battery while I'm out for the day are pretty low. For anyone rocking a smaller handset, you'll have power to spare. Given it's solid build quality, reasonable price and utility, I think this thing was a good investment. If I wind up "donating" it to a hotel or hostel in the next few years, I'll let you know.

Lana Sue Clayton allegedly poisoned her husband's drinking water with eye drops, rendering him dead.Via USA Today:

Dinner with pals!

It’s not like I need another reason to eat chocolate. But if I were looking for one, I think the South Korean company Lotte might have found it. Probiotic chocolate. Or more specifically, Lactic acid bacteria - (lactobacillales) fortified chocolate.In Japanese it’s called nyuusankin, and I’ve seen the characters written on all kinds of foods throughout the years. But it was just recently, while poking around the impulse item shelf of my local supermarket waiting to check out, I spotted this box. Of course, I bought it with very little internal debate, even less guilt. I mean, chocolate, right? Healthy chocolate.I went home and searched around online to see what I could find out about Sweets Days Nyusankin Chocola Almond. It only gets better folks. These little chocolate covered almond nuggets of goodness also contain polyphenols and fiber. Lotte, you don’t have to try so hard, you had me at lactic acid bacteria.Photo: Thersa Matsuura

VPNs are essential for browsing the web without your ISP looking over your shoulder. But too many providers deliver this privacy at the expense of your browsing speed, bogging down your connection and making it much more difficult to stream your favorite shows under the radar. Enter Surfshark VPN. Featuring high-end encryption and unlimited data, Surfshark gives you browsing privacy without compromise; and it extends this coverage to your entire family.https://www.youtube.com/embed/g_93KzDGmCIOffering unlimited simultaneous connections, Surfshark lets you and your family mask their online movements and steer clear of hackers on any device. It covers your browsing bases with AES-256-GCM encryption and IKEv2 and OpenVPN protocols while offering access to 500+ torrent-friendly servers and unlimited data. That way, you can sidestep the geo-restrictions that keep you from accessing sites like Netflix and Hulu abroad while streaming your favorite shows at lightning speed.One-year subscriptions to Surfshark VPN are on sale now in the Boing Boing shop for $39.

Why?

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.RESIST! ...the temptation to fail to JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, extra words, and much more.AND, ALSO: GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

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Nike hired Kap for an ad campaign: a satisfying yet bathetic result of his de facto expulsion from professional football for protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. Conservatives are mad, obviously, and are expressing it by destroying the Nike-branded gear that they have already paid for.https://twitter.com/sclancy79/status/1036749717206691840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/johnrich/status/1036751396002050050?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwLife is but a dream.

The latest trailer for Universal Pictures' First Man packs a whole lotta action and drama into a 2-minute 14-second package. The movie chronicles the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong, his first manned mission to the Moon, and the cost this mission took on Armstrong's family in the days leading up to the launch.I don't head to the theater often these days, but I'm down for this.

I've got a lot of pals that maintain a vegan diet. Some do it for ethical reasons. Others dig it simply because removing animal products from the menu has had a tremendous effect on their overall health. Hell, I recently started a diet where I've had to eliminate carbs, reduce my meat intake, and take the majority of my proteins from nuts and other sources that haven't mooed, clucked or swam at one point or another. In just a few weeks, I found that switching it up provided me with more energy, less trouble with my guts and a significant amount of weight loss, thanks to my body entering ketosis. Yet, as much as I respect veganism, and the various shades of vegetarianism out there, I have to agree with a recent op-ed from the aptly named Isabella Tree, published in The Guardian: eating plants isn't going to save us from global warming or other environmental disasters. From The Guardian:

https://youtu.be/0rJHC6nY4F8?t=17Jevh M and his mates noticed that there were no asians among the happy, smiling subjects of McDonald's corporate wall art. So he created a professional-looking fake with himself and one other, snuck it onto a blank wall at a local McDonald's, and reports that it is still there 51 days later.https://twitter.com/Jevholution/status/1036415320959930368I wonder how long my own fake McDonalds poster would stay up:

When Twitter was the only major social network not to boot the hateful, violence-advocating conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the company struggled to explain that decision in terms of its already flexible policies. The Wall Street Journal reports that in fact Alex Jones was to be permanently banned, but CEO Jack Dorsey personally intervened and overruled the decision.

The B2 Spirit Stealth Bomber looks like one of Batman's rides. In service since the mid-1990s, the B2's distinctive flying wing shape, even after decades in service, still looks like the future – and an expensive future, at that. Each B2 costs $2.1 billion. As such, only 21 of the stealthy aircraft were ever made. Congress, even in the heyday of "what about potential war with Russia," refused to pay for any more. It's an aircraft with a mystique that comes both from its exotic design and how little information we have on the pilots who fly it, and their experience of flying one of them.Recently, journalist William Langewiesche was given the opportunity to become familiar with the bomber and those that pilot it. More intriguingly, given that the bomber scarcely has space in its cockpit to accommodate a pilot and co-pilot, Langewiesche, by the sound of things, was allowed to join a B2 flight crew on a mission that would take them all the way from the United States to a bombing run on an ISIS camp in Libya.From The Atlantic:

A grim reminder that in the upper echelons of journalism, white supremacists are at worst wayward tribesmates and at best very interesting men: Steve Bannon is to headline The New Yorker's October festival.From The New York Times:

If you've ever taken an extended vacation, you know all too well the hassle that is packing clothes for a trip. In an effort to avoid steep baggage fees, we cram our luggage to the limit, not only making it a nightmare to pack our clothes back up for the return flight, but also burdening ourselves with awkward, bulky bags to carry. Capable of shrinking your clothes by up to 70%, the Dr. Save Vacuum Travel Kit makes packing for trips much easier, and it's on sale for $39 today.Designed to be compact, but powerful, the Dr. Save Vacuum Pump removes air and compresses items placed inside the provided reusable bags, making it significantly easier to pack for your travels. The kit is also great for long-term storage at home, as you can take your bulky winter clothes—or last season's swimwear—and shrink them down for easier storage.You can get your hands on your own Dr. Save Vacuum Travel Kit today, available in the Boing Boing store for $39, 44% off the usual price. Plus, plug in the code LABORDAY15 to save an additional 15% off!

VoCore2 is a one square inch-size computer with support for USB, Ethernet and video. It has a 580 MHz CPU, 128MB of RAM and built-in Wifi, yet remains smaller than just about anything you might use it as a brain for.On the video below, you can see it running DOOM at the margins of playability with the VoCore2 Screen, one of several official add-ons.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9iKbsRa5EkMakes a great router, apparently! I imagine that the systems-on-a-chip inside WiFi SD cards are slightly smaller than this, but you sure as hell ain't running DOOM on one of those.

Kirin Sekai no Kitchen has recently started selling a product they call Melting Chaos Soup. It's sold beside the bottled water and teas. Now, I'm not a fan of tomato soup or juice, but I liked the label so picked one up. I noticed the small pictures of tomatoes, cheese, and what I thought was basil running around the bottle. But it wasn’t until I got home and read it and then really looked that I noticed the basil wasn’t basil, it was mint, and there was one item I missed. Peaches. Yes. Melting Chaos Soup boasts a brand new genre in drinks. It says it’s like a smoothie soup that changes flavor from moment to moment. Shake well, open and give it a sniff, then bottoms up. It’s a mix of tomato (55%) and peach juice (12%), cream cheese, and mint. After opening and tentatively smelling, it actually took me a few minutes to get up the nerve to take the first swig. It really did smell exactly as promised, like tomato mixed with peach juice then throw in a hint of mint. I did finally take a sip, and then another. Another. I'm not sure if chaos would be how I’d describe the taste, although it did changed from moment to moment. The surprising thing was I didn’t hate it. I kind of liked it. If I could change one thing, though, it might be they add more cream cheese. Photo: Thersa Matsuura

Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, opened in 1818 and home to over 20 million artifacts has been completely destroyed by fire. The three-story museum was closed when the fire quickly consumed the building. Founded by John VI, the King of Brazil and Portugal, the museum celebrated its 200th anniversary earlier this year. The cause of the fire is currently unknown. Brazil's President Michel Temer called it a tragic day for Brazil. "200 years of work and research and knowledge are lost." [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3wnkmCKcnw&w=560&h=315]Rio's 200-year old National Museum hit by massive fire [Bruno Federowski/Reuters][Photo: Twitter/@arielpalacios]

When we ran out of bullets the noise from "Rave Camp" became intolerable.After eating all my mushrooms I watched some dudes burn a poorly built mannequin thing.A half-naked woman,out of her head on MDMA,whom I'd never met before and never will again,snuggled up and fell asleep in my lap.I drank a huge rum and coke. There was no ice.A woman was carrying a live goldfish in a cup. The van I borrowed from motorcycle.com mysteriously acquired bullet holes.There were dogs....Burning Man, 1996.Image via Ryan Powers

Do you own an iPhone 8? Is it borked? Like REALLY, unusably borked? Good news: There might be a free fix in the cards for you!From The Verge:

You won't find Nick Burbridge's music charting on any Top 20 lists and, to the best of my knowledge, he's never toured extensively, by himself or with his band McDermott's 2 Hours. But his music, once you hear it, is hard to stop listening to. Burbridge sings of the disenfranchised, the marginalized, and those working underground to subvert the status quo. These are protest songs and songs for the working class from the depths of a poet's heart, and its on constant rotation in my home.

Are you one of those people who use your voice a lot? Work, home, a side hustle like a podcast perhaps? If you are, then I've got the candy for you. While searching for chocolate one day, I ran across these Voice Care Throat Lozenges (by the Japanese company Kanro). The Japanese is fine, but I love the English tagline: "Let's Sing in Your Best Voice!". Now I'm like you and just guessed these are like any other cough drop or hard candy. The package tries to tell you differently though. The front boasts that the candies were developed jointly with the Tokyo College of Music (Ongaku Daigaku), and it sounds like they spent a lot of time trying to develop a product that really does do wonders for your throat. The back notes they are for people who “talk a lot, sing a lot, people who want a clean throat or just want to feel refreshed.” [caption id="attachment_657693" align="alignnone" width="600"] Photos by Thersa Matsuura[/caption]Along with various unidentified herbs (the ingredients only mention "herb extract" along with orange, apple, and olive leaf essence), propolis seems to be the special sauce of Voice Care Candy. Propolis, if you don’t know, is sometimes called bee glue, think bee spit mixed with beeswax. It is used by bees to seal small gaps in the hive. Traditionally, it was also used as a medicine to treat cold sores, genital herpes, and mouth pain after surgery, not that there was much evidence showing that it worked for any of those things. Propolis is also sometimes used as a varnish for makers of stringed instruments or even in car wax. All of these examples makes me think that maybe, yes, Voice Care Candy would be good to coat, soothe, and perhaps freshen my throat. I do a little podcasting and mouth noises are the bane of my (and my tech guy's) existence, so I decided to give these a try. I don't want to get too excited yet, but after one recording (post sucking on a Voice Care Candy) my tech guy said, "I don't know what you did but do it again." When I told him what I'd done he told me to buy all the bags of Voice Care Candy. It seems like all those squishy and popping mouth noises were significantly reduced. Again, this is still early in the testing, but I have bought a couple more bags and plan to use them. Oh, and they taste really nice, too! Photos by Thersa Matsuura

Agalmatophilia, a sexual attraction to dolls and other human figures, is nothing new: people have been attracted to and humping dolls for as long as there have been locks on doors – not that the practice needs to be kept a secret. Human sexuality is a weird attic to stumble around in. If your kink hurts no one and leans towards watching wee plastic people get it on, I say it's fair game. Apparently so do a lot of other folks.

Home security cameras give us an extra pair of eyes to keep tabs on our home when we're out and about. But, if you're not smart about which device you use, your camera could turn against you, as hackers can easily tap into your feed if it's not secured. Encrypted against hacking threats, the iPM World HD 360 Degree 1080p Wireless IP Camera watches over your home and keeps hackers from peeping in.In addition to its hacker-resistant design, this WiFi camera gives you 360 degrees of uncompromising coverage that you can view straight from your smartphone. It's small enough to tuck away in tight spaces, and you can rotate it to get the perfect viewing angle via the app. The camera also comes equipped with infrared night vision, so you can even monitor your place when the lights are out.The iPM World HD 360 Degree 1080p Wireless IP Camera usually retails for $129.99, but it's on sale today for $44.99. Plug in the LABORDAY15 coupon code at checkout, and you can save an extra 15% off the sale price.

America, we needed this. Stevie Wonder performs at the funeral of Aretha Franklin, August 31, 2018, in Detroit, Michigan.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LUPQE-y8K0[YouTube Link]https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1035655673705508864Read the lyrics below. Read them.When Stevie performed this at the Queen of Soul's funeral, my beloved and I were watching, yesterday, surrounded by our dogs, mourning her loss along with the world. When he sang the spoken word part, man. Chills.

Remember the stories over the past year or so about mysterious attacks at U.S. embassies harming diplomatic staff and their families? William J. Broad's story in the New York Times today reports that doctors and scientists are now coming to the conclusion that microwave weapon strikes capable of causing “sonic delusions” and brain damage are to blame. (more…)

There’s a gelatinous, slightly chewy, delicious-when-served-chilled dessert in Japan called warabi mochi. It is made from starch, water, and sugar. Simple. The usual way it's served is generously covered in soybean flour and then squirted with some brown sugar syrup.It's interesting to note that the original starch used for making warabi mochi was derived from the bracken plant (a fern-looking thing). However, that method proves a bit time consuming in these days of immediate gratification as it takes 10 kilos (22 lbs) of bracken root to extract a mere 70 grams (2.4 ounces) of starch. These days, other similarly textured starches are being used instead. Think sweet potato starch and tapioca. Now, warabi mochi is often considered a summer treat because it's light and served cold, perfect for hot days when you don't have much of an appetite. You know something else that has become a summer treat in Japan? Chocolate mint everything. It's like you can't find anything chocolate mint flavored until August first and then the chocomint floodgates are opened. I guess it was inevitable that East should meet West and some genius at 7-11 would dream up a chocolate mint warabi mochi dessert. This sounds like a bad idea, but I bought one anyway. I found tucked inside the jelly-like warabi mochi exterior mint whipped cream and loads of chocolate chips. It turns out chocolate mint warabi mochi is amazingly good and it might be only reason I'm sad to see this typhoon-riddled, flood-plagued, heatwave-infested summer end. Photo: Thersa Matsuura

This guy worked for DHS. This is really bad stuff:“Smith responded to a group dinner invitation whose host said his home would be 'judenfrei,' a German word used by the Nazis (...) to describe territory that had been 'cleansed' of Jews. Smith replied, 'They don’t call it Freitag for nothing.” (more…)

In-N-Out, the popular California burger chain, just dropped $25,000 on the California GOP under Donald Trump. (more…)