Tattoo by Roy Rowlett of Mama Tried Tattoo Parlour in Louisville, Ky.

In a small village in Michigan, you can catch a ride in the "Amish Uber."This new-fangled horse-and-buggy ride service was started by Timothy Hochstedler, a resident of Colon, Michigan.Local21new.com:

What are we to make of the ’National Enquirer’ front page headline: “Meghan’s Drug Secret Exposed!”You could be forgiven for assuming that the newlywed Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has been caught with a needle in her arm and a crack pipe in her Chanel purse.Not quite.Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle Sr., is reportedly friends with a female neighbor who allegedly has smoked crystal meth on occasion. What has that to do with Meghan Markle? The ‘Enquirer’ has decided that Thomas Markle’s concern for his friend is so great, she is like “Meghan’s secret ‘sister.’”Though Meghan has never met her “sister” and most likely never heard of her, the ‘Enquirer’ cover touts this story under the explosive headline: “Bombshell about ‘sister’ she’s hiding from Harry.”Even further removed from reality is a second ‘Enquirer' story about Megan’s father: “Exiled Dad Living With Drag Queen!” This story claims that a male neighbor of Markle’s is a cross-dresser who wants to transition to become a woman. After almost two years of near-constant paparazzi pursuit of Thomas Markle, this “drag queen” - as if that’s somehow the same as cross-dressing or wanting to transition - has been photographed with him precisely once. But that’s enough for the ‘Enquirer’ to report that the couple “spend so much time together under the same roof, they are as good as living together.” No, they’re not.“Elizabeth Smart Saves Hollywood Star From Evil Cult!” screams another fact-challenged ‘Enquirer’ cover headline. Elizabeth Smart, you may recall, was kidnapped at 14 and held captive for nine months by a deranged Utah couple. Evidently she wrote an email to former ‘Dynasty’ actress Catherine Oxenberg’s daughter India, who until recently was in the grips of the controversial Nxivm cult. The ‘Enquirer’ reports that Smart asked India “if she needed support.” India never responded. That certainly sounds to me like saving a Hollywood star from an evil cult, if by "Hollywood star” they mean an actress’s unknown daughter, and if by “saving” they mean sending an email that’s ignored.“Dying Cher Miracle Cure!” screams the cover of this week’s ‘Globe’ magazine, which after years of reporting that the actress-singer is on the verge of death, has finally decided that her obstinate survival counts as a miracle. Admittedly, it must be hard to keep writing about “Cher’s sad last days” (‘Enquirer,’ June 2017) or about Cher being given “three months to live” (‘Enquirer,’ December 2014) when the world can see her cavorting energetically onscreen in the new “Mama Mia’ movie musical sequel. “Brad & Jen Together Again!” is the ‘Globe’ headline reuniting Pitt and Aniston 12 years after their divorce - and now they are “talking about getting hitched to each other again.” No. Not happening.This is a tabloid fever-dream, one from which they refuse to awake.Fox TV anchor Tucker Carlson’s addictions are also exposed by the ‘Globe,’ which reports: “TV Tucker Has Monkey On His Back!” Given tabloid logic and guilt-by-association, the headline could just as easily have read: “Rupert Murdoch’s Secret Drug Hell Exposed!” Perhaps we should be thankful for small mercies. And what is Carlson’s vice? Heroin? Cocaine? Uppers? Downers? The “truth” is far, far darker.“Fox anchor addicted to nicotine gum,” reveals the ‘Globe.’Oh, the shame.‘Us’ magazine devotes its cover to Britney Spears a decade after her mental breakdown, revealing: “How Real Love Saved Britney.” Thanks for her ten-year recovery is somehow laid at the feet of her boyfriend of just two years, Sam Asghari, the Iranian model 12 years her junior. “He accepts her for who she is, which has been a struggle for Britney in the past,” reports ‘Us.’ It seems the magazine wants to credit Britney’s comeback to a man who hasn’t tried to change her in any way. Her success is all “thanks to love,” raves the mag, overdosing on romantic fantasies. But why credit Britney with her own success, when ‘Us’ can attribute her career revival and happiness to the love a a good man? Nothing sexist in that, is there?Meanwhile ‘People’ magazine gives up its cover to “The Royal Woman of Windsor - Their Lives, Loves & Secrets.”As if the world’s most scrutinized women could possibly have any secrets left. What insights does ‘People’ offer? Meghan Markle’s “secrets” are suitably shocking: Her childhood nickname was “Flower," she was “born poised,” and “she’s smart, she’s glamorous.” Wow. That’s a revelation. Will the Royal Family ever recover?Fortunately we have the crack investigative squad at ‘Us’ mag to tell us that Karrueche Tran wore it best, that Cynthia Nixon is “a natural blonde,” that Amanda Bynes keeps Mentos, Kind bars and a hairbrush in her Maison Goyard tote, and that the stars are just like us: they shop, carry luggage, eat snacks and take mass transit (at least in New York they do - good luck finding any celebrity on a Los Angeles bus or train.)Most squirm-inducing headline of the week goes to the ‘National Examiner’ story about a nine-year-old quadruple amputee given new custom-fitted running blades: “Legless Boy’s Off and Running!”Onwards and downwards . . .

Heinz Edelmann (1934-2009) was the German illustrator and designer best known for art directing the Beatles' 1968 animation Yellow Submarine. In 1970, he created this magnificent opening animation for the ZDF broadcast movie series "Der Phantastische Film."(r/ObscureMedia, thanks UPSO!)

Remember last week when we told you that there was some jibba-jabba about the possibility of Brazil sliding back into being a military dictatorship? According to Reuters, far-right leaning presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, has named a retired general as his running mate in the nation’s upcoming elections. Here’s the shit-and-giggle part: the general in question is Antonio Hamilton Mourão. He’s the same fella that told the media that there was a possibility of there being a military coup if the Brazilian government didn’t get its shit together. From Reuters:

In October 2017, Facebook bought the startup TBH, whose product was an enormously successful polling app aimed at high-school students; as part of TBH's integration into the company, they circulated memos detailing the "psychological trick" they developed to maximize their penetration into high-schools and suggested ways this could be adapted for use by Facebook itself. (more…)

Get ready for some Japan posts over the next few days, because I spent five wonderful weeks in Tokyo, Koya-san, and Kyoto. Carla, Jane, and I enjoyed it so much that we were not at all homesick. A few days before the end of our stay we tried to think of what we were looking forward to about Los Angeles. The only thing I could think of was the hangnail nippers I'd forgot to put in my travel kit. I had to use regular nail clippers to trim my hangnails, and they didn't do nearly as good of a job of getting to the nub as these little Tweezerman hangnail nippers ($12 on Amazon). I'll never forget them again.

If flinging yourself off a tall thing and entrusting your body to a tether tied to your legs doesn't feel extreme to you anymore, we've got good news for you. AJ Hackett Bungy New Zealand has got an all new way for you to feel all the terror that comes with risking your life, but with so many safeguards put into place that you're mostly, likely pretty safe. Taking a ride on the company's Nevis Catapult, suspended over the Nevis Valley that it's named for, looks like a hoot. If I'm ever lucky enough to make my way that far south, sign me up.

Marine biologist Greg Skomal got quite a scare while doing shark research off the coast of Cape Cod. While standing out at the end of a research vessel's pulpit, a shark breached out of the ocean directly under him. He yelled, "Did you see that?! Did you see that?! It came right up and opened its mouth right at my feet!" Skomal works for the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and was out filming sharks, using a GoPro camera attached to a long pole, for the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

Even with the drugs I take for my PTSD, I'm still hyper alert than the average person--the car is always kept running, just in case I need it. This makes it hard for me to get to sleep, most nights. Small noises, like our home contracting as the night draws colder, animals outside and passing cars, all conspire to keep me awake. To get around this, I've been using a noise app called Rain Rain on my Android handset and iPhone, for years. But there's nights where even that doesn't work to drown out the aural stimulation keeping me awake. Things like my wife's snoring or my dog getting up for a drink of water are present enough that they cut through the noise. Next thing you know, I'm up until dawn, reading a book or playing video games. Enter Bose's noise-masking Sleepbuds.A few months back, Bose brought me to New York to check them out. During their PR team's presentation, it was explained to me that they had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to make an appliance that'd help people to get a good night's sleep. The Sleepbuds use a combination of passive noise cancellation (the block up your ear canals) and a selection of noise loops to block out sounds that might keep someone like me, awake. It was explained to me that the Sleepbuds can't be used for listening to music--they're not designed for that. Sending music to a set of cans, via Bluetooth, uses up a lot of battery power. Instead, the Sleepbuds, using Low Energy Bluetooth, connects to Bose's Sleep app. The Sleepbuds' user picks the sounds they want to fill their head with--rain, a babbling brook or white noise, for example--and the audio loop of said sound is sent to the Sleepbuds's, which have a small amount of onboard flash memory. You can set an alarm and fire the information over their flash memory as well. Once installed, the sound loop and alarms do their thing with a minimal connection to your smartphone. By going stream-free, Bose was able to make the batteries in the Sleepbuds small enough that they will fit way deep inside of your ears. For a side-sleeper, like me, that means I can wear them, comfortably, even with my ear jammed up against my pillow. Bose let the journalists at the event test their new drowsy-time cans out, under controlled conditions, for a few minutes. I've never trusted controlled conditions. So, I requested that a set be sent out to me once they became available. Over the past few weeks, I've been using the Sleepbuds on a nightly basis. They in turn, work really well and drive me a little nuts. They offer around 16 hours of use before they need to be charged. So, there's no issue getting through a night's sleep with them. When it's time to juice them up, just pop them into their charging case. You can leave the case connected to a wall outlet next to your bed, or take them with you on a trip, cored-free: an internal battery will provide the Sleepbuds with two full charges. This is all excellent. So to is their ability to block out noise. When I've got them in, the sound of the fan in our bed room, my partner's breathing and the other noises of our home all melt away. When set to their default volume level, I can't hear a damn thing. It'd be blissful, if my mind would let me enjoy what the hardware has to offer. When I first put them in at night, I find myself lulled to sleep by the sound of a gentle rain storm being piped into my skull. I get drowsy. It's great! Until I start to worry about all of the sounds that I'm not hearing becasue of the Sleepbuds. Maybe someone would try to break in and I wouldn't hear it. There was a possibility, in these dry conditions that there could be a forest fire nearby and I'd never hear it. What if the dog was trying to alert us to something--my wife's a sound sleeper. WE WILL DIE IF I LEAVE THESE THINGS IN MY SKULL.So yeah, most days, I wind up taking them out of my head halfway through the night. This likely isn't an issue that someone with a brain that's on their side would have. And Bose warns in their Sleep app that, if you turn up the volume to the buds too far, you might not hear noises you'd definitely want to be woken up by. I want to believe that I'll get use to using the Sleepbuds, because they work so well. If you have issues sleeping, whether it be because of noise at home or being put in a hotel room too close to the elevator, you'll likely love these things (provided you can get past their $250 price tag.) I know I do. I just wish that my brain would go along with my plans to wear them.Image via Bose

Unless I'm in a cafe, hotel or staying at someone's home I connect to the internet over a tethered connection to my smartphone. I've got an unlimited data plan--but only the first five gigabytes of information that I send or receive is at LTE speeds. After that, things turn slow as molasses flowing uphill in January. To try and keep my data useage under control and, thus, my speeds higher for as long as possible, I use an application called TripMode 2. It's available for MacOS and Windows ten and, priced at eight bucks, it's ridiculously inexpensive to purchase a copy. Once installed, TripMode is stupid easy to use. Activate the app, locate it in your Menu Bar (MacOS) and click it to get at its drop-down menu. There you'll see every piece of software on your computer that's begging for access to the interwebz. If you're not using the apps you see on the list, de-select the check mark next to it. Boom, they're cut off from using your tethered device's data. You'll note that at the bottom of the list, you can see how much data you've used since you started your session, during the course of a day, month or year. If you're on a plan with limited data, having that information is pure gold.Best of all, when you're not using it, TripMode 2 can easy be shut off. It's easily up there with Scrivener, ProtonMail Bridge and Adobe Lightroom as one of the most important bits of software that I use on a regular basis.

Adobe Creative Cloud is undeniably king when it comes to making amazing digital content, but it's famously complicated, and most beginners struggle to get past its most basic functions. For those of us looking to create beautiful designs without spending an entire weekend deep inside Adobe CC tutorials, PixTeller Pro is a solid alternative, and it's on sale in the Boing Boing Store for more than 90% off its usual price.With PixTeller Pro, you can create and customize images for use on websites, social media, and print using 74,000 pre-made designs, 1.5 million photos, and 100,000 shapes. You'll have access to a trove of fonts, gradients, and tools to make your own designs, and can easily make your images look great at any dimension with the clipping-crop function.Lifetime subscriptions to PixTeller Pro normally retail for $405, but you can sign up for $34.99 today in the Boing Boing Store, saving more than 90% off the usual price.

FOR THE KIDS IN YOUR LIFE, AND THEIR SUMMER READING: Get Ruben Bolling’s hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures."The EMU Club inhabits exactly the world I always hoped to live in when I was 12, when the answer to questions like 'Where did I put my toy' led inevitably to alien conspiracies and secret underground tunnels. A book for the curious and adventurous!" -Cory Doctorow, author of "For the Win" and "Little Brother""The type of non-stop action and improbably hilarious fun that only a kid could dream up. ... The EMU Club's adventures perfectly capture the intersection of imagination and wonder - the crossroad that's so often found in cardboard boxes, pillow forts and backyards everywhere." -GeekDadGet Book the First, "Alien Invasion in My Backyard," here.Get Book the Second, "Ghostly Thief of Time," here.—RESIST!! The temptation to fail to join Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE!More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Three adults dug out their childhood Yu-Gi-Oh! card collection for an expert appraisal, and all were surprised, albeit one unpleasantly so. (more…)

OMG, what did I just watch?!Rolling Stone:

Dogs are great. They just are. They're a source of happiness, joy and unconditional love. I know mine is (pic above). However, they have a mind of their own which sometimes can be frustrating and other times a true danger. The good news is that with a little patience and knowledge you can hack your dog's brain. (more…)

A gray area exists between stars and planets, and what was thought to be a failed brown dwarf star has now been determined to be a massive rogue planet with an enormous gravity field. (more…)

Bioengineering future Martian colonists may be easier than taking the many difficult steps to reduce radiation exposure. But is it ethical? (more…)

The Hollywood studio that crushed Lance Bass' dream of buying the Brady Bunch house has been revealed. It's HGTV. But the amount they paid has not yet been disclosed.

The AP: Man who jumped out of freezer and died was cold-case suspect.

Hobbyist gold miners are a joy to behold. Their enthusiasm in panning for gold and running sand through sluices is clearly a labor of love. Watch as they put all their gear through its paces, with their delight and fascination never waning. (more…)

Skipping stones takes a little practice and finesse, so Mark Rober enlisted his extended family to help build the perfect rock-skipping robot. Their creation, named Skippa, ended up helping humans learn, too. (more…)

"When you tap the tape, it sounds like a electro-magnetic drum." The open Open Reel Ensemble created this cool instrument by stringing several tapes and engaging in tape tapping. (more…)

A kindly sheriff's deputy in Clare County, Michigan kept her community safe by locking up an 80-year-old woman who had a small amount of marijuana and an expired medical cannabis note. The senior uses weed to relieve her arthritis, diverticulitis, muscle, and bone pain.From Marijuana Moment:

It’s nearly impossible to go anywhere these days without tripping over a Funko Pop. The vinyl toys have taken the pop culture world by storm, with characters ranging from Star Wars and Game of Thrones to Rick and Morty and RuPaul’s Drag Race. They’ve been referred to as “Precious Moments for Generation X,” and there could be some truth to that. Like Jason’s purchase of a single Mr. Rogers Pop, I once purchased a single Pop of Jax Teller from Sons of Anarchy, with the intention of never buying any others. 300+ Pops later...With all the madness surrounding Funko, Precious Moments decided it didn’t want to be left out of the nostalgia game. You remember what the figurines look like, right? Those sugary cute pastel colored ceramic figurines of little kids and old couples? Well, these figurines are coming straight out of Saturday detention. Cue Simple Minds. My first reaction when I saw this was to feel very old. After all, The Breakfast Club is one of the defining movies of my adolescence, which doesn't feel that freaking long ago. The second was to see if I had any extra shelf space. Precious Moments also offers a set of Princess Bride characters and one of Marty McFly from Back to the Future. A Golden Girls set is rumored to be in the design stages. And speaking of the Golden Girls, the merchandise license to the 80’s NBC comedy is red hot right now. Just over the past few months, we’ve seen Golden Girls Monopoly, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Funko Pops and Dorbz, t-shirts and even hot sauce. 
And then there’s this, arriving on shelves just in time for the holidays. Is it just me or does Dorothy look like Phil Spector?[Images: Bradford Exchange/Geekologie]

Heritage Auctions announced the sale of Frank Frazetta’s Escape on Venus for $660,000.

With L.A.'s iconic Eddie Blake's Tail o' the Pup hot dog stand set to reopen, LAist posted a brief photographic history of the city's fantastic history of "'programmatic architecture,' buildings designed to look like food, animals or other items.""LA's Awesome History Of Weird, Food-Shaped Restaurants" (via NextDraft)images: Los Angeles Public Library Collection

In 1960, Sister Rosetta Tharpe performed this rousing rendition of "This Little Light of Mine" at France's Festival de Jazz d’Antibes Juan-les-Pins. Most of us are familiar with "This Little Light of Mine" as a lovely children's spiritual, but the 1920s tune, written by Harry Dixon Loes, became an anthem of the Civil Rights movement.Learn more about the song's history at NPR: "'This Little Light Of Mine' Shines On, A Timeless Tool Of Resistance"(via The Kid Should See This)

This $75 air fryer is getting an awful lot of use in my kitchen. (more…)

There's been a lot of news freakout over Defense Distributed (previously) and "3D printed guns" (a term that confusingly encompasses milled guns, 3D printed guns, and files that describe the shapes of guns). (more…)

New research suggests that a key cause of poverty is poor parents' lack of engagement with neonates and toddlers. Brazil is trying to change that by showing parents the importance of interacting meaningfully with young children through eye contact and activities. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oKym79Q2pwResearchers have harnessed popcorn to drive simple robotic actuators. Cornell University engineers Steve Ceron, Kirstin H. Petersen, and colleagues demonstrated mechanical devices that exert force or change shape when their internal kernels pop. From Cornell:

Know who loves Trump? Folks in Russia who make asbestos.Nearly a thing of the past, asbestos causes lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma. The Trump Administration is eager to bring asbestos back, because sanity had almost eliminated it. New EPA regulations are opening up opportunities for Russians to sell asbestos in the US.Via EWG.org:

Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has become a honeypot for vandals, MAGA-hat cretins, and all sorts of shenanigans, so the West Hollywood City Council unanimously voted to remove it permanently. (more…)

HTGV (Home & Garden Television) bought the iconic Brady Bunch house at 11222 Dilling St. in North Hollywood, California. This is the home that was used for exterior shots on the TV show. (The interior was built in a Hollywood studio.) From CNN:

As part of its efforts to source its materials more responsibly, LEGO is launching a line of plant forms made from sustainable sugarcane plastics instead of petroleum-based plastic. (more…)

I'm on the latest episode of Torrentfreak's Steal This Show podcast (MP3), where I talk with host Jamie King about "Whether file-sharing & P2P communities have lost the battle to streaming services like Netflix and Spotify, and why the ‘copyfight’ is still important; how the European Copyright Directive eats at the fabric of the Web, making it even harder to compete with content giants; and why breaking up companies like Google and Facebook might be the only way to restore an internet — and a society — we can all live with."

The City of New York has declared that all from its city jails will henceforth be free; meaning the city will forego the $5,000,000 it took from prisoners and their families every year. (more…)

Mitochindrial replacement techniques, which produce "three-parent babies," promise to allow infertile couples to have babies, and even allow people with debilitating genetic disorders to have healthy babies. The largely unregulated tech is already producing babies despite the unknown long-term risks. (more…)

Pablo Defendini (previously) writes, "Fireside Magazine’s editor, Julia Rios, is part of The Mexicanx Initiative, a scholarship fund John Picacio put together for sending Mexicanx and Mexican-American sf/f authors to Worldcon. A few of the Mexicanx Initiative authors decided to create an anthology to commemorate the occasion, and had been planning on subsidizing the cost of printing and shipping themselves. When Fireside got word of this last week, we decided to pitch in, and we put together a Kickstarter campaign to raise the $1500 they needed."Well, we blew past our funding goal, and we decided that any money left over would be split evenly among all the participants (Fireside isn't making a cent off this). So now we're trying to reach a stretch goal of $7500 by the end of the campaign this Friday, so that we can not only cover their production costs, but pay every author, artist, designer, translator, and editor who donated their work a SFWA-qualifying pro rate."Mexicanx Initiative Anthology [Fireside/Kickstarter]

When Josh Black quit his job as Obama's director for U.N. and Multilateral Affairs after the 2016 election (citing "growing disillusionment"), he found a sweet job as Associate Vice President for International Advocacy at Phrma, the global lobbying group for the pharmaceutical industry, which meant that he still got to work at the UN, but now he'd be advocating for giant, rapacious corporations that hold peoples' lives hostage to their profits! (speaking as a former NGO observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization from the era of the Access to Medicines treaty, Phrma are effectively public health war criminals). (more…)

UK artist Lucy Sparrow is back with a new shopping opportunity for lovers of her fantastic felt products. Until August 31, at The Standard hotel in downtown Los Angeles, Sparrow is showing her most ambitious exhibit yet: the Sparrow Mart Supermarket. This is her fifth and largest all-felt installation (it features 31,000 handmade products) and her first West Coast one. She writes, "As a child, I was obsessed with the exotic, turbo-charged technicolour glow emanating from across the Atlantic. The source of this neon rainbow was Los Angeles – a seemingly mythical place to a child growing up in grey, post-recession Britain – and one that has hugely influenced my artistic practice. Thanks to the amazing team at The Standard, Downtown, the felt is finally coming home to the city of endless possibilities and colour.”The store is quite spectacular. There's aisles of handmade awesomeness, including a felt ATM, as you can see here:According to Sparrow (in this video), it took her and five assistants exactly one year to create all the items in the shop.https://youtu.be/EB3qR5WGjVUSpecial thanks to my friend Michael Fleming for the heads up on this! I hope I can get myself down to LA before the end of the month to check it out for myself. For those of you who don't know, I'm a Fluff superfan (long story). So, when Michael texted me from the store to see if I wanted one of Sparrow's felt Fluff jars, I was ecstatic. He delivered it today and it already as a special spot in the Fluff section of my trophy case.One funny thing: I was surprised to hear Sparrow chose Los Angeles to include Fluff, as it's an East Coast product and has been difficult to source on the West Coast for many years (pro-tip: Cost Plus usually has it). I'm not complaining though.photos by Michael Fleming, The Standard, Downtown LA, and Rusty Blazenhoff

https://youtu.be/vFHzrmk5Md0Qanon is a person or group behind an unhinged right-wing conspiracy theory that is really too stupid to elucidate (you can listen to this Reply All if you're really interested); it's a kind of trumpian Pizzagate successor that includes great, unhealthy lashings of secret Democratic pedophile rings (because far-right assholes are more worried about imaginary children in nonexistent pizzeria basements than they are actual children in ICE cages). (more…)

When the FCC announced its intention to kill Network Neutrality, it had to accept public comments, and what followed was bizarre even by Trump-era standards: first, millions of living, breathing Americans sent so many pro-Net Neutrality comments to the FCC that the website crashed; then bots spammed the FCC with millions of obviously fake anti-Neutrality comments, stealing the identities of real Americans (including two US Senators!) to do so; despite the overwhelming evidence that humans loved Net Neutrality and bots hated it, the FCC declared that it would give the bot comments equal weight with the human ones; and then it stopped accepting comments, claiming that its website had been hacked. (more…)

What used to take an artisan months can now be done with laser precision in minutes. Watch as this high speed laser array engraves an intricate pattern. (more…)

The UK Committees of Advertising Practice changed the rules for ISP advertising: where once the ISPs could advertise speeds of "Up to" some incredibly high number so long as 10% of customers ever achieved that speed, now ISPs can only advertise a speed promise if 51% of their customers attain that speed at all times. (more…)

Trump's economic statistics are all about stock growth and low unemployment numbers, but more than two thirds of the US economy is driven by consumer spending, so if you want to know where we're headed, you should be looking at the average American's ability to buy things. (more…)

Emails tend to fall through the cracks, especially when you're managing multiple accounts. Sometimes it's just spam, and other times it's a job offer or important reply that disappears down the inbox wormhole. For those of us looking to minimize vanishing emails, Mailbird Pro lets you manage all of your emails and contacts from multiple accounts easily in one unified inbox. Lifetime plans are available in the Boing Boing Store for $14.99.With Mailbird Pro, you don't have to hop back and forth between different email accounts, apps, or windows online. MailBird bakes them all into one streamlined application and lets you work through you emails even faster with intuitive shortcuts for archiving and forwarding, and it even boasts an integrated speed reader. What's more, MailBird can also integrate with built-in apps like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Dropbox for added versatility.Lifetime plans for MailBird Pro are available in the Boing Boing Store for $14.99.