Here are some recent game releases of note and some of what I've been up to in hobby gaming over the past month or so.Earlier this year, I wrote a piece about my favorite gaming magazine, UK's Tabletop Gaming. Another gaming mag I subscribe to and enjoy is Casual Game Insider. Where Tabletop Gaming covers all manner of tabletop, miniature, roleplaying, card, and board games, Casual Game Insider focuses on family games, party games, and palate cleansers, games to be played between longer games during a gaming night. In a word, casual games. CSI has something of a fanzine flavor (in a good way). It's obviously a passion and labor of love for those who produce it. They crowdfund the effort and just successfully finished their 7th round of funding. CSI covers every aspect of gaming, from creating, funding, and producing them, to the psychology and sociology of gaming, to gaming history, gaming types, you name it. And they have plenty of reviews and features on currently popular games. A free digital edition of the current issue is available for download (PDF).The Ricks Must Be CrazyCryptozoic Entertainment, $17, 2-4 Players, Ages: 17+Cryptozoic has been killing it with their series of quick, fun, and suitably strange Rick and Morty games. They've released five games so far. Each game is based on an episode of the popular Adult Swim animated series. And each is done in a different style, mechanic, and look and feel, attempting to capture the flavor of the episode it's based upon. In The Ricks Must Be Crazy, 2-4 players travel through four levels of the multiverse (the Rickverse, Microverse, Miniverse, and Teenyverse). To succeed in the game, you need to collect power and victory points and each 'verse (one nested within the other) offers different advantages and disadvantages. Each character has special abilities and each player spends Build tokens to construct contraptions in each 'verse which offer victory points and special abilities. The game proceeds in rounds until the first player reaches a set Victory Point total. One more round is then played and the player with the most VP at that time wins.I love the themes of this game series. It's fun to watch the episode before/after playing the game to see how they interpreted it in game terms. All of the artwork used in the game are stills from the episode and the production on everything is gorgeous and high-quality. The Ricks Must Be Crazy isn't likely the most exciting or smoothest game you'll ever play (doing all of the Power level addition and subtraction on the Power/Victory Point tracker is annoying), but it does a pretty admirable job of capturing the fractal craziness of the episode. Next up: The Pickle Rick Game, housed in a Rick pickle (and due out in early Sept).Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Melee at Murdershroom MarshCryptozoic Entertainment, $26, 2-6 Players, Ages: 15+Epic Spell Wars is a series of wacky and weird psychedelic horror card games featuring dueling "battle wizards" trying to smite the toad stool out of each other. There are currently three games in the series (Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre, Rumble at Castle Tentakill, Melee at Murdershroom Marsh) and a 4th, Panic at the Pleasure Palace, coming later this year. The games are all about bringing the fun--talking cookie-monster/death metal smack to each other over a game of cleverly-stupid, eye-ball-melting spell-casting cards. In each round, players use the cards in their hand to construct a spell with a set syntax. Each spell can be comprised of a 3-part syntax: Source, Quality, and Delivery. These translate to the name of the wizard who first created the spell (Source), a spell descriptor (Quality), and what the spell actually does (Delivery). So, a spell a player might cast could read: Midnight Merlin's Devilicious Power Vortex or King Tut-n-Putts' Smelted LSD. The cards are also further grouped into magical types (e.g. Elemental, Illusion, Primal) and cards can be combined by these magical types to gain advantages. The game basically involves putting together your spell (drawn from the cards in your hand), casting the spell (out loud in a goofy death metal/monster truck rally announcer voice), and resolving the damage as indicated on the cards. Each wizard character, which have names like Zanzabart the Slag Genie and Krazztar the Blood o' Mancer, has a character dashboard for tracking hit points/health. Wizards that die (and they died a lot) still get to draw from a Dead Wizard deck that offers actions the dead wizard can resolve now or that are used in the next round.Mainly what each new game in the series offers is a new setting, a new cast of magical weirdos and dungeon degenerates, and more insanely psychedelic art by Nick Edwards and RS Bixby. You also get special rules or rules tweaks with each new release. Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Melee at Murdershroom Marsh finds the Battle Wizards under the influence of some mind-scouring hallucinogenic drug (the titular "murdershrooms"). They attempt to vaporize each other as usual, but while fighting off hallucinations and madness. New rules for Murdershroom Marsh create some additional card management and play mechanics. Half of the Delivery cards in the deck have two magical types listed, therefore allow you to perform two Power Rolls with that single card. The game also introduces Cantrips. Sources and Quality cards with the Cantrip glyph on them allow you to add cards to your spell (after an indicated number of discards from your hand). And finally, there is Bad Trip, another new glyph found on Source and Quality cards. After you resolve the card as normal, if you have 4 or more different magical glyph types in your spell, you can resolve the Bad Trip card a second time (flashbacks, dude!). As with all of the previous Epic Spell Wars games, you can use the Mudershroom Marsh spell cards and wizards with all of the previous Spell Wars games. In the forthcoming Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Panic at the Pleasure Palace, the Battle Wizards fight off each other (and MTDs: Magically Transmitted Diseases) in a monstrous whorehouse.Conspiracy Theory: Freedom from InformationSteve Jackson Games, $30, 3+ Players, Ages: 13+Conspiracy Theory is Steve Jackson's paranoid answer to black and white card games (*cough* Cards Against Humanity *cough*). As with similar games, a rotating judge chooses a black card with a statement and 1 or 2 missing words on it and players use words from their white-card hand to try and cleverly, creatively, hysterically complete the phrase. The judge for that turn votes on who had the best response. Conspiracy adds a third deck to the mix, a red deck. The red deck, which the judge can pick from, has themes for the responses (funny, serious, insane, etc). Adding this wrinkle makes coming up with worthy responses more challenging. The rules sheet points out that the 500+ cards in this deck can be incorporated into similar games (don't make me fake-cough again).Tiki ToppleGamewright, $14, 2-4 players, Ages: 10+If you've noticed, this month has something of a theme: casual games. One of the companies that rules in the casual/party game space is Gamewright. They know how to make games that are easy to learn, exciting and fun to play, and they produce games that are beautifully illustrated and produced and cleverly marketed. The latest in this party game fare is Tiki Topple, a simple abstract strategy game with a Polynesian flare. 2-4 players try and "stack" (despite "topple" in the title, you build your tiki totem horizontally) their tiki idols in a sequence as it is indicated on a secret card that each player draws. Additional drawn cards indicate what moves players can make to try and arrange their tikis at the top of the totem in the sequence indicated on their secret card. Players do this while trying to avoid Tiki Topple (a card that sends their idol to the bottom) or Tiki Toast, a card that destroys your tiki outright. And that's basically it. This is a great game to play with people who aren't gamers and might be intimidated by a more complicated rule set or longer games. The little plastic tiki idols and all of the game's components are lovely and add to the ambience. Mai Thais, Fog Cutters, and Navy Grog optional. Frostgrave: Maze of MalcorOsprey Games, $20, 2-8 players, Ages: 12+Maze of Malcor is a substantial expansion to Frostgrave, the hit fantasy skirmish game of battling wizards and their warbands fighting over magical items and treasure amongst the thawing ruins of Felstad, a once-frozen city of magic. Maze of Malcor contains rules tweaks and clarifications, an adventure setting in the Collegium of Artistry/Maze of Malcor, a lauded magical school before the fall of the city, and 5 new magical schools, known as The Pentangle. You don't actually play these schools, but your wizards can cast spells from them. As always, the supplement also includes new treasure and new additions to the growing Frostgrave bestiary. For those who got The Grimoire spell deck I wrote about in June, this book explains all of the spells included there that are from The Pentangle schools.Frostgrave MatPWork Wargames, ~$40, 3' x 3'Play mats are all the rage in tabletop gaming. You can now buy neoprene gaming mats (think: giant mouse pads) with art on top simulating just about any gaming terrain you want to play on. PWork Wargames has partnered with Osprey Games to create a line of mats with the bricks, snow, and ruined fragments depicting everyone's favorite frozen city. The mats are available in 3' x 3', 4' x 6', 4' x 4', and 3' x 6'.Snake-MenNorth Star Military Figures, $32I am a huge fan of North Star Military Figures Frostgrave miniatures line. Their boxed sets of multi-part miniatures are some of the coolest, most versatile minis I've ever modeled. Their latest boxed set includes parts to make up to 20 snake-men, a tribe of deadly adversaries found in Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago. Although created for this sister game of Frostgrave proper, the snake-men could easily be used in Frostgrave itself, D&D, or many other fantasy games.https://youtu.be/mrW3P_T41DM Frostgrave Watch It Played seriesThe folks at the YouTube channel, Watch It Played, have put together a really excellent series of videos on learning how to play Frostgrave. If you want to get a feel for this fantasy skirmisher, check them out.I kind of hate Instagram Stories. Most postings there seem like a complete waste of my time. But there are a few makers and miniature painters that I follow and enjoy the temporary videos they post. One of my favorite painters is Malev_Minis. Malev Da Shinobi is a young rapper from SLC, UT who is also a talented pro mini painter. He often does live Instagram painting sessions where he free-raps while he paints. I know, I know... trust me, it's better than it sounds. He's good at both. And his painting is jaw dropping. One night, I'd just put together a Frostgrave archer. I checked my phone and was shocked to see that he had assembled an almost identical model and was beginning to paint it. I watched, transfixed, as he, within an hour or so, painted that figure to a standard I have never achieved. In contrast, my bowmen probably took 5 times as long and only looks half as good.Fantastic MapsOne of the first things that drew me to D&D in my youth was the opportunity to design dungeons and draw maps. I love maps and map-making. This website and YouTube channel offer an excellent series of tutorials on every aspect of map-making, dungeon design and rendering. I think it would be impossible to spend any time here and not dramatically up your cartographic rendering game as a result.Both Cory and I have written about our attraction to Gaslands, the post-apocalyptic vehicular combat game you play with modified Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. This YouTube gamer just launched a series about Gaslands that looks very promising. This is the best Gaslands battle report I've seen to date.

Audible -- Amazon's audiobook company -- dominates audiobooks, controlling 90% or more of the market; their ACX platform is tailored to indie, self-published authors, and, until recently, it paid them handsomely for any new customers they brought into Audible's fold. (more…)

Two days ago, a source leaked the existence of "Project Dragonfly", a super-secret Google plan to create a censored search-tool for use in China. (more…)

Back in 1977, middle class, white New Yorkers got frustrated over being criminalized for smoking weed, so they got the state legislature to decriminalized simple possession of weed -- merely having weed in your possession became a civil infraction and if you were caught, you might get a ticket, but that's it. (more…)

Epic Games is offering $100 million dollars in prizes at their Fortnite competitions, over the next year or so. The Friday, August 3rd, 2018 installment begins at 2pm PST. (more…)

In the course of my work as a documentary filmmaker, I sometimes find hidden gems. Samuel Fuller’s “The Naked Kiss” is one of them. (more…)

If you're one of the millions of (disproportionately black and brown) people who have been put behind bars in America, there's a good chance you use Jpay (previously) to communicate with your family. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBYQ7cMJhkQ&feature=youtu.beAaron Oppenheim writes, "I made a lil lazy mashup of Legs and Where The Streets Have No Name (just tempo and key matching) because someone on twitter pointed out that they are basically the same song. It works incredibly well." (more…)

SIM Swapping is a powerful form of fraud in which criminals convince the phone company to switch your phone number to a SIM they control; once they have your phone number, they can bypass the SMS-based two-factor authentication protecting your cryptocurrency wallets, social media accounts, and other valuable systems. (more…)

The official story of the Trump administration's family separation policy is that it came about as a result of "zero tolerance" in which every person who could be charged with a crime would be, and that meant that parents were arrested too, and since the parents were going to jail, their kids had to be held somewhere. (more…)

Alok Menghrajani is a master player of the game of Code Golf, in which you challenge yourself to do something useful in as few characters as possible; his latest triumph is fitting a bootable CDROM image including a fun little retro game into a single tweet. (more…)

Amazon has, over the past few years, become known as a notoriously bad company to work for. Workers from their fulfillment centers, worldwide, complain of low wages, dangerous working conditions, and a stressful environment that tracks every single move that their employees make, right down to how long it takes them to go to the bathroom. Thanks to this in-depth report from The Guardian, you can go on ahead add the company’s refusal to care for their employees in the wake of a workplace injury to the list of reasons to never go to work for Jeff Bezos’ crew. The Guardian frames the report by telling the story of Vickie Shannon Allen: a 49 year-old woman who was employed by Amazon at one of their warehouses in the southern United States. Last year, Allen was injured at work, as the station that she manned was missing a piece of equipment designed to keep the packages she was handling from falling to the floor. With Amazon refusing to resolve the issue, Allen positioned a bin to catch any parcels that might fall and be damaged—she made the mistake of giving a shit. By making the change to her work station, she was forced to stand in a manner that was not as ergonomic as it could be. As a result, over time, she ended up with a back injury. The injury made it difficult to move her arm which, in turn, made it difficult to do her job. Her managers began to send her home on a regular basis as she was unable to keep up with the hectic pace they demanded. She ended up on worker’s compensation.From The Guardian:

Joe Parris (@KTVBJoe) lit the internet on fire today with this tweet:

Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell! Where the banshees live, and they do live well. Stonehenge! Where a man's a man, and the children dance to the Pipes of Pan.Science has uncovered more about who built the 'Henge and who is interred there.Via CNN:

Colbert does a wonderful job of tearing apart the latest Trump family distraction. Ivanka is a waste of America's time.

Shopping for new headphones usually turns into a compromise between power, portability, and price, but in the case of TREBLAB's Z2 Wireless Noise-Cancelling Headphones, you can come out ahead with all three.Named an Amazon's Choice Product, the Z2's earned their name because they boast two times the sound, battery life, and convenience of competing headphones. Featuring top-grade, high-performance neodymium-backed 40mm speakers and T-Quietâ„¢ active noise canceling technology, these headphones drown out unwanted sound, all the while maintaining comfort thanks to their ergonomic fit and secure design.What's more, these headphones boast a colossal 35-hour battery life, allowing you to listen to your music for several days at a time without missing a beat.TREBLAB's Z2 Wireless Noise-Cancelling Headphones normally retail for $259.99, but you can get your own pair on sale today for $78.99 in the Boing Boing Store.

NUTCASE is a deceptively simple cast metal puzzle by legendary puzzlemaker Hanayama. If you're not planning to try it yourself, here's how to solve it. (more…)

Armando Frank, 44, refused to get off his tractor when stopped by police. He demanded to see an arrest warrant. But the cops arresting him didn't have time for that sort of legal stuff. So they attacked him, then killed him when he resisted.

People. Pot. Pies.

Returning to the stores in June, Nintendo's NES Classic game console—a miniaturized version of the 1985 original—outsold the PlayStation, XBox One and its own Switch to rule the hardware charts."The NES Classic was June 2018's highest unit-selling hardware platform, while the PlayStation 4 led the market in dollar sales," wrote Mat Piscatella, an analyst with the NPD Group. "This is the first time a Nintendo Entertainment System console has led in monthly unit sales since NPD tracking began in 1995."Granted, it's only $60 (at least when you can find it) with dozens of free games, but that's not bad for a 33-year design. Now, about that credit-card sized Gameboy Classic everyone's dreaming of...NES Classic [Amazon link]

Microsoft's compact Surface Go is a low-end 2-in-1 laptop, but it's getting rave reviews from sites such as Gizmodo and The Verge thanks to excellent design and balance of price—just $400, but see below—and capability.Giz:

In an interview with Democracy Now, Noam Chomsky talks about Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's bullshit and what responsibility the United States bears for the current state of the South American nation.If you're interested in reading a transcript of Chomsky's comments, you'll find it, here.

After all the noise made over Weezer covering Toto's Africa, it was only a matter of time before Joseph Williams and the rest of the lads decided what's good for the goose is good for the gander: at a concert in Vancouver, Canada earlier this week Toto unleashed their cover of Hash Pipe upon an undeserving world.

The Miniglobelet series by Beauty of Science shows all the wondrous math and physics occuring at the micrscopic level as crystals form, chemicals combine, and new forms take shape. (more…)

If you’re from just about anywhere in the world, with the exception of the United States, beginning this week you'll find that visiting Canada will feel a whole lot more invasive. Moving forward, it will be necessary for all foreign nationals to provide Canadian Immigration officials with their fingerprints and photographs, if they're applying for a visitor's visa, work permit, want to attend a Canadian university, or if they wish to apply for a work permit or status as a permanent resident.From The Daily Hive:

From the apt metaphor department, Romanian illustrator Andrei Lacatusu's series titled "Social Decay" renders 3D images of logos for social media giants as rusting derelict signs. (more…)

This should be interesting. Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly asking to interview Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who says he helped set up the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. (more…)

"Anna Wintour is staying," leads the New York Times, in the journalistic despite of the century: staggering losses, insane mountains of cash blown on everything from failed websites to occupying 23 floors of 1 World Trade Center.

In New York today, a judge rejected a lawsuit brought against Fox News by the parents of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staff member who was killed in 2016. (more…)

,The Fields medal, mathematic's most prized award for mathematics, was stolen from Cambridge Professor Caucher Birkar just moments after he received it.Via the Independent:

The spokeswoman for the president of the United States won't say whether the American press is or is not “the enemy of the people.” This phrase was used to similar effect by the Nazis and in the Soviet state under Stalin to designate who should be murdered. It's un-American, and so is she, and so is Trump. (more…)

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, FBI Director Chris Wray, Secretary of State John Bolton, and NSA Director General Paul Nakasone spoke today as a group for the first time about “election meddling” -- the information warfare attacks being carried out against the United States right now, a little more than 90 days before the midterm elections, by the adversary we all know is Russia. (more…)

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Tots!: 50 Tot-ally Awesome Recipes from Totchos to Sweet Po-tot-o Pie is the tater tot recipe book to rule them all. (more…)

In 2002, Microsoft security researcher Peter Biddle (previously) published The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution, a paper that argued that DRM would always fail and that traditional forms of censorship would be harder and harder to execute online (it also coined the term "Darknet"); today, in honor of America's mass freakout over 3D printed guns, he's published an updated version, which mostly consists of adding "this applies to guns, too" over and over again, for people who are unclear on the concept. (more…)

Like Linus Van Pelt searching the pumpkin patch for a really sincere pumpkin, Facebook has been scouring its political organizing pages for really sincere protesters, and loudly and performatively purging any activity it deems to be "inauthentic." (more…)

Less is more, especially when it comes to earbuds. While most manufacturers tend to pack their earbuds with excessive features that drive up their prices, Cresuer's Touchwave Bluetooth Earbuds focus on simply producing crisp, wireless audio without weighing you down. They're available in the Boing Boing Store for $44.99 today.Engineered with Bluetooth 4.1 and CVC Noise Cancellation, the Touchwave Earbuds let you enjoy your favorite playlists while filtering outside distractions. Their uncluttered, lightweight, and minimalistic design makes them easy to transport, and you can count on them to stay in place thanks to their secure-fitting ear tips. What's more, the Touchwaves boast a solid three-hour battery life that can be recharged up to four times with the included charging case.Upgrade your Bluetooth listening to a more convenient listening solution with Cresuer's Touchwave Bluetooth Earbuds, available in the Boing Boing Store for $44.99—55% off the usual price.

Enjoy this footage of a security guard frisking visitors without actually touching them, top of Reddit today after the site got hacked and its management learned that "SMS-based authentication is not nearly as secure as we would hope." [via]

Wagashi are traditional Japanese confections. Archivists have digitized a lovely multivolume illustrated catalog of the sweet treats, many of which still look the same as they did hundreds of years ago when the art form flourished in the Edo period. (more…)

They aren't for throwing, but an art gallery in Los Angeles is selling Molotov cocktails from a vending machine. Think Tank Gallery on Melrose Ave. writes:

Trump's former campaign boss Paul Manafort is on trial this week, on charges related to his political work in Eastern Europe. The most spectacular single item mentioned was a $15,000 "ostrich" jacket, bought using a foreign wire transfer and posed by prosecutors to insinuate the spendthrift ways of the grifter. But no-one had seen it. Was it feathery? There was a hint of fabulous possibility. Sadly, the official government exhibit reveals something best described as douchebag casual, plainly inappropriate for a man of Manafort's age and bearing, too bland to even be tacky, something that could stay on the Goodwill rack for months before anyone looked close enough at the tailoring to see it wasn't bought from Asos for $39.99. It is, in other words, very Manafortian. [via]

Reddit announced to users that the site had a "security incident."

The East Cut is a neighborhood in San Francisco invented by a branding agency. Such things usually wither on the local-business bullshit vine, but thanks to Google Maps, it's now the plain reality of that part of town. Another in Detroit is now known by a mispelling, made by the mysterious cartographers who run the service. And one LA community now there was cooked up by a realtor to make a hilly part of Silver Lake sound fancy, and somehow ended up enshrined on the service after he began using it in listings.

Pathé shot this cool documentary of British artisans turning gold blocks into gold leaf. There's clearly a lot of remarkable skill involved, but there's also a remarkable lack or hearing protection around some very noisy machines. (more…)

Not only does Rachel have excellent diction, she gives some interesting history about how the standard phonetic alphabet was developed. Watch and learn! (more…)

Matt Kason, a fungi researcher at West Virginia University, has discovered that cicadas whose bodies have been corrupted by the fungus Massospora keep flying around, have tons of energy and get really horny, because the fungus is doping them with meth and shrooms.Via the Atlantic:

Kevin Kelly and I interviewed Theodore Gray the co-founder of Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha. He’s also the founder of App publisher Touch Press and the author of many books that Kevin and I own and love, including The Elements, Molecules, Reactions, and Mad Science. He’s also the proprietor of periodictable.com.Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single pageShow notes:GU Eagle BF-1309 Laser Cutter"I used to have a lot of different tools that I really liked. I like tools. I'm kind of tool guy. But once I got this laser cutter, it's like everything else has fallen by the wayside, because this thing is just so much more fun and more enabling of things that any other tool I've ever had. ...Their smallest and cheapest model is a 130 watt CO2 tube with a 51 by 35 inch working area. I mean, this thing is the size of a grand piano. And it's like it's huge. It's way, way bigger than I had any intention of getting, and frankly more than I had planned to spend on a laser cutter. … . It's just huge, and it's very powerful, and it's very fast, and it can cut half-inch acrylic like butter. You can actually cut inch-thick acrylic if you're willing to go a little slow."Milwaukee M18 Fuel Deep Cut Band Saw"A handheld bandsaw. This was probably, I don't know, more than 20 years ago when I was building a house. I had just bought a farm, like a farmstead. And I was building stuff, big things out of wood. We built a greenhouse and docks, floating docks on a lake and a whole house. So I had every kind of tool there was. And then I saw this bandsaw. It's like, 'Oh my god. It's a bandsaw you can hold in your hand.’ … The bandsaw is like a precision surgical instrument compared to the demolition saw. You can just go up to the side of a building and just gently and calmly saw through whatever you want to saw through. And so I just love the concept of this saw. And it worked great. And what I love about it now is that it's over 20 years later, and I really don't take care of my tools, right? I'm not a tool care person. But this thing is perfect. It just runs. It's never given me the slightest trouble…. I abuse it, and the blades pop off, and they just go right back on again. It seems to be indestructible, and I still use it regularly whenever there's something that needs hack sawing but on a larger scale."LED photo lights“When I started photographing things, it was, I didn't go quite back as far as gas lights or arch lights or whatever. But incandescent photo lights, you know, 500 watt quartz halogen bulbs and even 1,500 watt halogen bulbs. That was what you used. They were just, the cliché is how hot they were which has been an issue forever. … And now there's LED lights. It's just a complete night and day because, well, you know, you get day you get really, really, really bright light with almost imperceptible heat. I did an experiment once where I set up every single one of the LED lights we have. And we've got some extra fresnel lenses to go on past the end of the regular focusing lenses, the light and sort of concentration everything down to a couple of inches across. Just blindingly bright concentrated light. And you stick your hand in there, and it feels very slightly like there's a bit of warmth coming on your hand. But basically no heat. And that's been revolutionary in our ability to do filming of particularly sort of delicate substances, like wax. Because in the case of Elements it was all elements. But now that we've moved on to Molecules, a lot of these things, they're sort of, they're delicate objects. They might catch fire. They might melt. There's all kinds of things that might happen.”Wolfram Language“Every day I'm using it for something. And I'll give you one example is quilting patterns. So this was actually a project I did a few years ago with a currently ex of mine making stitching patterns for elaborate art quilts. The problem with quilting is that you can't cut the thread. Like it's bad to, you want to make a continuous line to, you know, to stitch your pattern without stopping. And if you have to stop you can but it slows everything down and it's a pain. So you end up with a problem of, here is some line art. Here's a vector file and it's a illustrator with a very complicated pattern of lines that cross each other and that hit each other and T connections and things like that. And you want to find a single path, a single line path, that traces out all the lines that are in the original design in the optimal way … Like you have a city with streets in it and it snowed and you want to plow out all the streets, but you don't want to run over the same street twice anymore than necessary. So anyway, this is a mathematical optimization problem, and it turns out that the commercially available software for doing embroidery design and quilting designs … is mathematically unsophisticated, shall we say. So now I do it in [Wolfram Language]”Also mentioned:MechanicalGifs.comMechanical gifs are physical models you can hold in your hand“There are things like differentials, transmissions, rack and pinion steering, steam engine, and you get these beautiful laser cut acrylic parts and then assemble them, and then you have these, exactly what it says, they're mechanical gifs that show how these things work in action.” — MarkWe have hired professional editors to help create our weekly podcasts and video reviews. So far, Cool Tools listeners have pledged $337 a month. Please consider supporting us on Patreon.

Unhinged conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been leading a psychotic crusade against the Sandy Hook victims' families since before the crime scene tape was even removed from the building. For five years, Jones and his followers (insert drinking the Flavor-Aid reference here) have accused the government of conducting a false flag operation in Newton in order to overturn the Second Amendment. This, of course, is utter bullshit. But that hasn't stopped them from cyberstalking the families, accusing them of lying about their dead children, and in some cases, sending death threats. The harassment has been severe enough to cause some of the families to relocate.In Texas this week, a defamation claim by the family of Noah Pozner will be heard in court. The Pozners, whose 6-year-old son Noah was one of the victims, have been forced to move seven times due to the harassment of Jones and his Infowars infantry. The case is one of several related to Sandy Hook that has been filed against Jones. But it is the Pozner case that seems to have gotten under Jones' skin. He is suing the Pozners for $100,000 to cover his legal costs.

Last week, Nicaraguan president and dictator-in-training Daniel Ortega had the gall to declare that the violence and protests that have plagued his nation since April had come to an end. His nation's doing just fine! At the time that this bullshit dribbled out of his cakehole, protests against government corruption, cronyism and the government’s slow role into fascism were still ongoing. To date, approximately 300 people have died as elements of Nicaragua’s police and paramilitaries loyal to Ortega have attempted to put a bloody end to the growing voice of dissent and disgust for his administration. Not everyone in the South American country wants a piece of this action.According to Al Jazeera, upwards of 23,000 Nicaraguan citizens have fled to neighboring Costa Rica, seeking refugee status, due to the escalating violence surrounding the demand that Ortega step down from power and his refusal to do so.From Al Jazeera: