When I'm away from home, I hate carrying my laptop. There's not enough room to use it in coach seating on an airplane and it weighs more than I care to haul around during a press junket. Typically, I pack my 9.7" iPad Pro, instead. It's great for editing photos with, but as a text generation and editing machine, has its flaws as well: Any keyboard case I use with it proves too damn small for me to reliably type on and that it won't work with a mouse or trackpad really slows my workflow down. I've been looking for something that can stradle both worlds--the portability of a lightweight tablet with the ease of use that a mouse can bring to the party--for some time now. My main work machine is a Mac, but I use Windows 10 on a regular basis, as well. As such, I've got my fingers crossed that Microsoft's Surface Go will be the low-cost, juuuuuust good enough work machine that I've been looking for. From The Verge:

"I swore to myself that if I ever got to walk around the room as manager, people would laugh when they saw me coming, and would applaud as I walked away."

Watch below as a stumbling man falls on the train tracks at Sydney's Berala station. Fortunately, a passer-by acted quickly. Very quickly. From 9News:

Lifehacker’s Virginia K. Smith on the trend of narrating others’ quasi-public interactions for viral attention: “stop posting pictures of strangers.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=JtMte4yguZwIf these WWII era pilot rations are still edible, military snacks from the last century must have been at least as dangerous as going to war.

From wedding proposals to college graduations, there's nothing wrong with reaching for the camera to capture a special occasion, but sometimes a photo isn't quite enough to immortalize life's greatest moments. Whether you walked down the aisle or into your first home, Strellas Personalized Star Maps commemorate your biggest milestones on a stellar scale. You can get your own 18x24 star map today for $38.Strellas Personalized Star Maps depict the exact positioning of the night sky during the time and place of your special moment. Strellas uses NASA Astronomical Data Center's star catalog to accurately recreate the sky view from a time and place you choose. You can personalize your maps with custom quotes and select special color styles before receiving the product as a printed poster or a printable digital file.Strellas Personalized Star Maps are available in the Boing Boing store for $38 for 18x24 sizes and $45 for 24x36 sizes.

For part of the year, my wife has a gig that brings us into northern Alberta. To save money and make the most out of being here, we live off the grid in our RV for weeks at a time, relying on our rig's power system, propane and water tanks to keep us going. I connect to the internet through my T-Mobile phone plan. It’s quiet, I have a beautiful view of the Rocky Mountains and, when I want to go for a hike in the woods, all I need to do is grab my bear spray and step outside. There’s just one thing I’d change about being out here.The frigging mosquitoes. They’re plentiful enough that I can’t step foot out of the RV without for more than a minute in the late afternoon without being chewed on, instantly. They’re small enough that, even when I haven’t opened the door in 24 hours, they still manage to find a way inside. Today’s been a bad mosquito day: we had some pretty heavy rain last week, which resulted in a lot of big puddles being created around where we camp. Mosquitoes breed in standing water. There’s thousands of the little bastards outside right now. Despite having stuffed paper towel into the space between all of my screens and windows to buttress the weather stripping that’s already there, I’ve killed 12 of the buggers since I sat down to work, just over an hour ago. On days like this, I break out my Thermacell and set it up inside.A Thermacell is a device (they pack the technology into a wearable, a bunch of lanterns and a table topper, too) that runs on butane cartridge. The butane provides the juice to power a small burner inside the device, which, as burners do, burns and generates a little bit of heat. This heat is used to scorch a disposable pad impregnated with Allethrin, a synthetic version of a naturally occurring repellent found in chrysanthemum flowers. Mosquitoes hate this stuff. It smells like nothing to me. Within a few minutes of turning my Thermacell on, the mosquitoes that were using me as a buffet inside of the RV, vanish. I can leave the windows open. I can get work done with out slapping a bug out of the air every 30 seconds. It’s bliss. That said, it can be sort of useless outside, sometimes. On a breezy day, the scent of Allethrin it generates gets blown away, leaving you to contend with a horde of bloodsucking freeloaders. But, with the way that I use it, I don’t really need to worry about that, unless it’s hot enough to warrant turning on a fan. The only thing I can say against my Thermacell is that the cost of consumables for it is pretty steep. A box of scent pads and the butane to run it for 48 hours costs around 30 bucks, in Canada. But, given that I only use the device maybe once or twice a week for a few hours at a time, for a six-month period, I look at it as part of the cost of doing business whilst living a nomadic life.

The BBC reports that the last of the boys trapped deep in a flooded Thai cave is out, along with their coach.

According to American Medical Association, the use of heroin as an injected drug, has decreased over the past few years. For those concerned about the harm that sharing needles can do to spread communicable diseases and increase the harm done to at-risk individuals, that's great news. Unfortunately, the use of shooting horse has given way to something that can be just as dangerous to drug users in an entirely different way.In the most recent issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association (paywall, of course,) researchers noted that, increasingly, heroin users are turning to heating the drug so that the resulting vapor can be inhaled. That's called chasing the dragon, ya'll and, just like actual dragons, the practice is very bad news. By inhaling heroin, you might be dodging infected injection sites, collapsed veins or disease, but you're opening the door to serious brain damage. From Gizmodo:

At 111 years old (the video is a few years old,) Richard Overton is the oldest living World War II veteran. He still drinks whiskey, smoke stogies and has lived in the same house, which he bought after coming home from war, since 1945. In this short film, Overton talks about his long life and along the way, extols a few important life lessons. My take away: for a long life, eat a shit-ton of soup and butter pecan ice cream.

HoustonTracker2 is free software that turns your still-overpriced Texas Instruments graphing calculator into a synth. Demo above. Now, you will not only be the nerdiest kid in algebra class, but the coolest as well.

JWZ -- proprietor of San Francisco's DNA Lounge -- writes, "This is one of my favorite events that we do all year: it's time for the Fifth Annual Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge! Come see maniacal Rube Goldberg contraptions pour delicious cocktails for you! Mad Science Guaranteed. You probably won't get wet, probably."

If you’re going to pose as a billionaire Saudi prince (Sultan Bin Khalid Al-Saud, to be exact) who is interested in investing hundreds of millions of dollars in one of Miami Beach’s most legendary hotels, here's a pro-tip: first, bone up on important Muslim traditions.(more…)

YouTube just unveiled a plan to combat phony conspiracy videos intended to manipulate or defraud viewers.(more…)

In Michigan, a woman was arrested on charges that she bit off part of a man's ear, while she was fighting with him at a Chinese restaurant over food she'd ordered. The victim does not speak English as a first language, and had a hard time communicating. The woman who attacked him immediately lost custody of her child as a consequence.(more…)

More horrifying news from Donald Trump's racist 'zero tolerance' war on brown asylum seekers.(more…)

Matt Davies, a foley artist and sound designer for Studio Unknown, is a master of the slurping, squishy, groaning, gross sounds of horror movies. Zombies are his specialty.

In 2001, the Scottish Natural Heritage drew up a plan of action if the Loch Ness Monster were ever to be found. The code-of-practice is in the news again due to a a recent big effort to collect skin and scale samples from Loch Ness and compare those DNA sequences against known animals. From the BBC News:

"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” - Roald Dahl(via DIGG)

This striking and immaculate cross-stitched Macintosh control panel is by Glenda Adams: "This took nearly 6 months, working on and off- so many little pixels to stitch."https://twitter.com/glenda_atom/status/1016085162269036545

British Columbia is a rich Canadian province. As with most places where money flows freely, not everyone is allowed a taste of privilege. British Columbia has one of the highest rates of child-poverty in the whole nation. This lack of wealth to buy the basics of life that most of us take for granted has been giving B.C.’s Ministry of Children and Family Development the excuse it needs to remove kids from their parents. The premise for doing so, sounds logical: If you can’t pay to properly feed, clothe and house your child, you’re neglecting your child. The government will step in to do what you can’t and, in the process, take your child away from you. But once you start picking apart the apparatus that serves to ‘protect’ the kids separated from impoverished families, it’s easy to see that provincial government’s methodology is based in cruel madness, masquerading as concern. Last year, it came to light that a teen removed from his family lived in 17 different foster placements under the watch of 23 different social workers and caregivers over an 11 year period. His final placement: being kept in a hotel room: a practice that was employed on a regular basis, due to the number of children in B.C.’s child protection system and the difficulty in finding suitable foster families. Unsupervised and suffering from a number of mental health issues, he jumped from his hotel window, to his death. In a feature published this week by The Globe & Mail, it was revealed, that this teen, Alex Gervais, was being “sporadically” checked in on by a caregiver paid $8,000 a month. $8,000 for someone to occasionally see if someone's still breathing.This is money that could have been spent assisting Gervais’ family out financial destitution. It could have provided $8,000 worth of therapy to ensure that the Gervais was was in grievous need of. It's money that could have been given to the community that Gervais lived in to help support families, like Gervais', in need.As usual in Canada, those hardest hit by the removals imposed in the name of child welfare, due to poverty, come from our Indigenous communities.From the Globe & Mail:

The Federalist Papers comprises of 85 articles written in the 1780s by founding fathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. They wrote under a collective pseudonym, Publius, so keep their involvement secret. But who wrote what? There is much dispute. Let's try K-Means Clustering.

Designer Andrew Greenbaum of Venice Beach, California has created a two-piece pink coffin-shaped pool float which people are dying for him to make available for sale.He writes:

With the ability to recognize images, curate playlists, and even hold a decent conversation, we wouldn't blame you if you thought AI innovations like Siri were powered by magic. Of course, the reality is that, rather than shamrocks and pixie dust, these breakthroughs are made possible thanks to advancements in machine learning technology and a handful of programming tools. With the Pay What You Want: Total Python Machine Learning Bundle, you can lift the curtain behind today's AI marvels and work toward creating your own, all for a price you choose.Here's how the deal works: Simply pay what you want, and you'll instantly unlock one of the collection's eight courses. Beat the average price paid, and you'll get the remaining seven.Starting with a simple introduction to Python, you'll get your feet wet with programming and app development. Then, you'll dive into the nuts and bolts behind today's most popular AI applications, like neural networks, unsupervised deep learning, and more.Choose your price, and you can start your foray into the future of AI with the Pay What You Want: Total Python Machine Learning Bundle.

Since moving in, Ted had done nothing to help with the housework. The household tasks assigned to him on the whiteboard in the kitchen have always gone undone. Despite demands that he pick up after himself, Ted leaves food scraps everywhere and never pays the rent on time. On Friday, after finding the leftovers she'd left in the fridge eaten, Sally decided to put an to Ted's bullshit. The quiet of her and Dave's wee flat had been disrupted for long enough.

Undoubtedly inspired by the Archie McPhee's hilarious squirrel feeders, Drew Eldrige of Tennessee has hung out a food-filled Donald Trump mask on their deck for squirrels to find. Not only did squirrels find it, but so did a chipmunk!Thanks, Carollyne!

It's not the store's ATM targeted here by thieves, but the point-of-sale machine right in front of the clerk's eyes. It takes no more time to install a tiny card skimmer than it does to swipe a card, so only a moment's distraction is needed to get the job done.

Mimi Pond is an absolute gem. The matriarch of a family of cool artists, she really knows how to weave a funny tale through her cartoons and graphic novels. Her work has been featured here on Boing Boing, as well as in National Lampoon, Village Voice, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and other well-known publications. Mimi has written for Pee-wee's Playhouse, Designing Women, and The Simpsons.Now, for a new LA Times piece, she's inked a 37-panel cartoon that shares the backstory of the late famous-for-being-famous Zsa Zsa Gabor. It gives a biting, yet humorous, glimpse into the shenanigans she observed at the post-auction garage sale of the Hungarian-born celeb's stuff, which was hosted by her eccentric (and controversial) widower Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt at their Bel Air mansion.I can't show Mimi's entire cartoon here for obvious reasons but it's definitely worth the extra click. I can say this, truth is stranger than fiction.images via Mimi Pond, used with permission

New York City animator and illustrator Wahyu Ichwandardi (aka @pinot) is currently animating Childish Gambino's "This is America" music video in MacPaint (software from 1984) and MacroMind VideoWorks (1985) on a Macintosh SE. On Thursday, he was 375 frames in. He's been sharing his progress on Twitter since June 9:https://twitter.com/pinot/status/1005491222448926720https://twitter.com/pinot/status/1008527316367106049https://twitter.com/pinot/status/1005926397011951617https://twitter.com/pinot/status/10099711558040084498

Ask any IT expert worth their salt, and they'll tell you that certifications speak the loudest when you're climbing the career ladder. However, not all certifications are created equal, and where you decide to get your certification from can have a dramatic impact on your hiring prospects. Cisco is a worldwide leader of networking solutions and plays a vital role in keeping many of today's companies online, making their certifications especially relevant to potential employers. The Ultimate Cisco Certification Super Bundle can prep you to ace a number of their certification exams, and it's on sale today for $49.Across nine courses, this collection will familiarize you with the concepts and techniques essential for passing CompTIA's most popular certification exams and help you work toward netting several coveted certifications, including CICD and CCNA Security. From interconnecting Cisco devices to maintaining network security, this collection will help you foster a host of core IT skills and help you ace the certification exams with flying colors.The Ultimate Cisco Certification Super Bundle is available in the Boing Boing store today for $49.

Australian skater Jackson Pilz is making the internet go wild with his latest skateboard trick. Watch it first in slo-mo, then at regular speed. Either way, prepare to be impressed.If you liked that, here's a reel of more of his tricks:https://vimeo.com/201239856Previously: Tony Hawk at 50 performing 50 tricks from his youth(Digg)

Look at this table. LOOK. AT. IT. Why haven't we put the person that designed this thing to work on world peace or figuring out how to make an air freshener that smells like a turkey dinner? Maybe expanding tables like this are old hat to you, but my mind is absolutely blown.

Actor Wagner did indeed admit that he felt like ending it all after his wife’s death in 1981 - but that confession came more than 30 years ago, and he has repeated it in countless interviews, and in his memoirs. He’s not suicidal now, and police aren’t exactly closing in. But a decades-old story can look like new, if you assume your readers have forgotten it, which seems to have become a tabloid credo this week.Angelina Jolie’s divorce from Brad Pitt gets the hope-you-don’t-remember-this treatment in the ‘National Enquirer,’ under the headline “Angie Has Dirt Dossier on Brad!” Unsurprising as this is, it’s also been written about almost since they split, like the ‘OK!’ magazine story “Brad Pitt Desperate to Keep Angelina Jolie’s ‘Dirt File’ On Him Secret,’ from December 2016. The ‘Enquirer’ should know, since the “dirt file” story broke on its online sister site RadarOnline.comHow fresh is the ‘National Enquirer’ spread about Scott Peterson under the headline: “New Death-Row Confession: ‘I Killed My Wife!’”? Ancient. Peterson allegedly confessed to strangling his pregnant wife Laci on Christmas Eve 2002, according to Donna Thomas, who published her book ‘I’m Sorry I Lied To You: The Confession of Scott Peterson,’ in 2008, claiming he admitted the killing during visits to his San Quentin prison cell. It’s also the same claim made a year later by Peterson’s cellmate, James Soares, who was the source for the ‘Globe’ story in November 2003 under the headline “Fellow Inmate Claims Scott Peterson Made Shocking Jailhouse Confession.” It’s the same James Soares who this week repeats his 15-year-old allegations to the ‘Enquirer.’ Naturally, it earns the tag: “Enquirer Exclusive.’Prince Harry’s new bride is too thin and pregnant, according to the ‘Globe’ cover story: “Meghan 98 lbs & Pregnant!”Even as inaccurate speculation goes, this is old. The ‘National Enquirer’ reported four weeks earlier that Markle was pregnant “with twins.” Whatever happened to the now-missing twin? As for her weight, calculated by the trained fairground Guess-Your-Weight experts at the ‘Globe.’ Markle long ago joined the catalogue of “dangerously thin” celebrities including Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Calista Flockhart, Kate Middleton, Portia De Rossi, et al, who miraculously appear to be thriving despite the fact that “friends fear” they’re at death’s door.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at ‘Us’ magazine to tell us that Julianne Hough wore it best, that novelist Danielle Steele loves teddy bears, that actress Selenis Leyva carries an evil eye talisman necklace, Lysol spray and blotting powder for oily skin in her Primary New York bag, and that the stars are just like us: they paddle-board, watch the World Cup, sip frozen drinks, and eat pasta. Exciting, as ever.Reaching back the furthest for news is the ‘Examiner,’ which relies on supposed Bible prophecies to warn that “The End Times Are Here!” Bible “scholars” claim that the good book predicts nuclear fallout, an oil spill, a volcanic lake of fire amid Yellowstone National Park (seriously, I don’t remember Yellowstone being mentioned in my childhood Bible), and an asteroid hurtling into the Atlantic Ocean, which evidently is not a good thing for anyone on the Eastern seaboard, or any aliens possibly hitching a ride on the asteroid.Onwards and downwards . . .

To the uninformed, essential oil diffusers may come off as nothing more than glorified air fresheners, but there are a few core differences that separate these devices from their aerosol-powered peers. While air fresheners tend to douse the air with irritating chemicals, diffusers revitalize your living space with natural oils and are even known to help improve sleep, reduce stress, and prevent illness. The Smart Alexa-Compatible Ultrasonic Aromatherapy Diffuser lets you bring these benefits to your living space on command. It's available in the Boing Boing store for $41.Engineered with advanced vaporizing plates, this smart diffuser is designed to evenly distribute oils in your home. It features a 400ml water tank and is capable of producing up to 12 hours of continuous mist. Using your phone, you can control features like LED color, mist intensity, timer settings, and scheduling, or if you're looking for a more hands-off approach, you can integrate the device with Amazon Alexa and control it with your voice.The Smart Alexa-Compatible Ultrasonic Aromatherapy Diffuser is on sale in the Boing Boing store for $41.

Steve Ditko, the pioneering comic artist who co-created Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, has died. He was 90 years old. From The Hollywood Reporter:

In 1994, Brazilian singer Vânia Bastos released this scorching cover of Sade's "Sweetest Taboo" sung in Portuguese. Most recently, the track is included on the new compilation "Onda De Amor: Synthesized Brazilian Hits That Never Were (1984​-​94)" from Soundway records.

If you love New Orleans-style piano or simply subscribe to joy, the music of Henry Butler would be welcome in your home. Gospel, old school rhythm and blues, Caribbean-tinged jazz and, of course, that signature syncopated New Orleans sound made renowned by musical luminaries like Jellyroll Morton and Professor Longhair--Butler could play it all.And he did. His playing challenges the ears, turning well-known standards up on their ends to show listeners what's inside of them. Sadly, we're all given our time to go. There'll be no more Henry Butler for us to enjoy, save what has already been recorded. Butler died in a hospice facility this week, in Brooklyn. He was 69 years old.From the New York Times:

Boston Symphony Orchestra principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe is suing her employers for $200,000 in damages. The reason: her closest counterpart in the orchestra, a man, is making a shitload more money for doing almost the same damn job as she does. Rowe’s lawsuit was filed one day after the state of Massachusetts brought its equal pay law into effect. Before slamming the Boston Symphony Orchestra with her suit, Rowe attempted, on a number of occasions, to sort the issue of the pay gap out amiably and out of court. Since the Orchestra wouldn’t own up and do the right thing, I suspect they will now be skinned alive under the state’s wicked harsh new pay equality laws. From NPR:

Charges brought by the U.S. government against more than 200 people who protested on the day Donald Trump was inaugurated President were abruptly dropped today.The government's case amounted to threatening 234 people with a maximum sentence of 70 years in prison for 6 broken windows. It's great that reason prevailed. It's not great that it took a year and a half, and that exercising their right to free speech cost these people so much.https://twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1015315645460832256Keith Alexander at the Washington Post:

Printable human skin analogues have a number of important real-world uses, particularly as current replacements for animal models used in testing things like cosmetics. (more…)

Am digging this Pomplamoose cover of the late-70's hit "Rich Girl." Lead singer Nataly Dawn writes that it's the band's third Hall & Oates cover.Here are the other two:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev-eP-54p9oYou Make My Dreamshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye2yQbVUPxcManeaterPreviously on BB: Pomplamoose covers other songs

Tim McCormick, a cop in Fort Myers, publicly accused a local Burger King of serving him dirt on a burger. But after an investigation, the "dirt" was found to be the burger seasoning.

Unity 3D game-engine lies at the heart of Glass Brain, data visualization of real-time brain function. (more…)

PDFs remain the undisputed king for transmitting documents, but they're not exactly the easiest to edit and customize, especially on a Mac. PDF Expert for Mac is working to reduce the hassle and expand your Mac's capabilities with a suite of essential new features. It's available today in the Boing Boing Store for $24.99.An Apple Editors' Choice and Top Paid App in the Mac App Store, PDF Expert for Mac allows you to seamlessly edit text, images, links, and outlines in PDFs. You can annotate your PDFs with a host of different tools and merge them with minimal fuss. PDF Expert lets you seamlessly sign documents and even fill out PDF forms like taxes, applications, and orders. Plus, you can share your PDFs across multiple platforms, ensuring your documents can reach the people they need to.PDF Expert for Mac is available in the Boing Boing Store today for $24.99.

Comedian Hannah Gadsby is single-handedly opening up a new era in comedy with her breathtaking comedy special 'Nanette,' which won Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 before being filmed in her native Australia. It dissects the toxicity in the self-deprecating humor minorities are often expected to perform, and it will undoubtedly stand as one of the great performances of the decade. (more…)

From Cartoon Research:

Tommy Lee Deep plays a lovely solo bass cover of The Cranberries' “Zombie."And as a bonus, Deep's version of Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-b3zCttPSw(via Laughing Squid)

They're not dog bowls or flower pots, though DEVO's iconic red plastic vacuum-formed helmets, their "Energy Domes," have been mistaken for such things. On the fan-site DEVO-OBSESSO, DEVO's co-founder and bass player Gerald ("Jerry") Casale explains their original intent (outside links mine):

Al Ridenour, co-founder of Krampus LA and host of the Bone & Sickle podcast, has just announced that he'll be hosting an eight-day tour of authentic European Krampuslaufs (the Krampus Runs). This winter, from November 30 to December 7, he'll be taking folks to Austria and southern Germany to catch runs in Salzburg and Graz. All the details can be found at the Kristmas with Krampus tour's site.photo by Rusty Blazenhoff