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If you're worried about menacing gangs of goats roaming the moor, here's how to sweeten the savage beasts: smile. Scientists found that "goats are drawn to humans with happy facial expressions."

Sarah Jeong's book The Internet of Garbage was first published in 2015. Then a timely primer about online harassment, the structure of the internet, and why corporate policies can't and won't deal with it, things have since changed: everything is now worse. The Verge is publishing a new edition, The Internet of Garbage 1.5 [Amazon], which they're also giving away as a free-of-charge eBook. This excerpt about copyright law and harassment—especially the complex dangers of using the former to counteract the latter—is an excellent taster.

All of 2018's latest computer graphics techniques and toys in one eight-minute video. I hope you like ray tracing! More.

Fresh off his role as Prince Philip in The Crown (oh, and a rather obscure British TV show called Doctor Who), Matt Smith has joined the cast of the yet-unnamed ninth installment of the Star Wars saga. He joins Dominic Monaghan, Keri Russell, Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant as newcomers to the series. Episode IX is scheduled to open on December 20th, 2019. Matt Smith Joins 'Star Wars: Episode IX' [Aaron Couch/Hollywood Reporter][Photo: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons]

One of the most baffling superstitions I've ever heard while living in Japan came from my mother-in-law. One day we were walking on a trail with my kindergarten-aged son when we looked down to see there was an earthworm crossing our path. We stopped, but before I could find a stick to nudge him out of the way, my mother-in-law screamed, grabbed my son, and yelled, "Don't pee on it!". I didn't know where to start. I think I started by explaining that her grandson doesn't usually make a habit out of dropping trou and piddling on every bug he happens to come across. But, also, was the looming question, why? I mean aside from the fact it's not a cool thing to do to such a tiny creature. Why? So I asked. She went on to lecture me about how little boys like peeing on worms (It's what she said, really.) and how if they do, their little boy parts will swell up and start itching terribly. It's an awful thing, she told me.Oookay. Keep in mind, this was pre-Internet, so there was no way for me to whip out (heh) my phone and check. I decided it was probably a silly old wives' tale made to keep rambunctious little boys from doing mischievous things. I even heard it a couple times after that fateful day, from different people. But still there was no insight into why this idea even started in the first place. Then one day, many years later, I was watching a Japanese TV show doing a bit about superstitions and this one came up. Some research was done and it turns out there is a kind of worm that when frightened expels some low grade poison that can travel up a urine stream to reach the offending genitalia. Swelling and itching ensue. I've still never met anyone willing to admit this has happened to them, however. Not that I don't ask now and then.

In 1902, chemist Harvey Wiley launched a unique experiment to test the safety of food additives. He recruited a group of young men and fed them meals laced with chemicals to see what the effects might be. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe Wiley's "poison squad" and his lifelong crusade for food safety.We'll also follow some garden paths and puzzle over some unwelcome weight-loss news.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Bears live in Japan, especially Hokkaido. So it’s no surprise that people hunt and eat them from time to time. It’s also no shock that one of these animals might end up in a pot of curry. Bear curry isn’t so entirely surprising. But what is surprising, though, is this new thing I found from Hokkaido, Japan. Zombie Bear Curry. No, wait, that’s Zombear. The curry that makes no promises about possibly being tasty in any way. It says right there on the front of the package in big red font: Decrease Your Appetite! Under that it tells you it’s blue soup curry with the top right-hand corner proclaiming Blue! And guro uma which is a play on words. Guro meaning grotesque/gross and uma short for umai: delicious. Deliciously gross? Still the photo looks good, right? Don’t get your hopes up. The little splotch above the price tag lets you know there are non of those yummy looking ingredients in this bag. It’s just (blue) soup. There aren't even any bears in here. In even finer print: the photo on the box is a serving suggestion. So I tried it and it tastes pretty good, actually. I then did a little research and learned that Zombear has his own website and Twitter account Zombear also has a backstory. He weighs 29 kilos and is 29.9 centimeters tall. His favorite food is fresh salmon. He’s a big stuffed teddy bear who has been wandering the streets of Hokkaido for 70 years looking for the boy that owns him. He’s got a very bad sense of direction, but is lucky nonetheless.Please don’t worry too much about Zombear not having the means to travel around and search for his master. He’s and enterprising little bear, selling all kinds of merchandise from buttons, to t-shirts, to stuffed animals with red intestine cords. The latter of which is very cleverly priced at 4,771 yen. The numbers (4771) can be sounded out to read “shi na na i“, which sounds like different characters that mean “doesn’t die” or “won’t die”. Zombear!

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

All Disney resort workers will be paid at least $15 an hour by 2021, reports Charles Pulliam-Moore.

Atlantic reporter Rosie Gray obtained emails that show a former Homeland Security employee was involved in planning social events with white supremacists, self-described racists, and 'white advocates'. The DHS response: "This type of radical ideology runs counter to the Department’s mission of keeping America safe."Emails reveal that a former Homeland Security Official official was connected to white supremacists. Ian M. Smith has since resigned from his position at the DHS. (more…)

Jacob Soboroff of NBC News has been covering the story of migrant kids separated from their families by Trump's violent policy at the Mexico border. Soboroff is in Florida today, where he stopped by a “temporary” HHS shelter for unaccompanied minors who entered the United States illegally. (more…)

Congressman Devin Nunes, who is an oddly enthusiastic supporter of President Donald Trump's personal legal interests and chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, unsuccessfully tried to meet the leaders of Britain’s three intelligence agencies on a recent trip to London, report multiple news agencies today citing sources familiar with Nunes' travel schedule. (more…)

In 2017, nearly 2.3 million STD cases were diagnosed in the USA, the highest number ever reported, topping previously highest year of 2016 by 200,000 cases.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today released new numbers on STDs in America. (more…)

ICYMI: Today, Pretend President Donald Trump feuded with an algorithm after Googling his own name.Today the Trump administration threatened to regulate Google and internet search results, based on an early morning vanity search by Donald Trump. Democrats and Republicans said that would be a violation of free speech protections. So, Trump's "re-election campaign" [aka slush fund for whatever he wants] went and fundraised off the whole thing.(more…)

CALLING ALL EARTHLINGS, the new documentary from filmmaker Jonathan Berman ('Commune,' 'The Schvitz') has it all: UFOs, a mystical dome in the Joshua Tree desert, psychic experiences, time travel, Howard Hughes, Nikolai Tesla, communists, eternal life, murder-- oh yeah, and Nazis. (more…)

I'm not sure what the functional advantage of having a door like this is, but it looks like fun.

Epic Nerd Camp is a 5-day summer camp for adults in Pennsylvania's Poconos Mountains that celebrates cosplay, LARPing, RPGs, Quidditch, escape rooms, swordplay, wizarding, and many other special interests popular among geeks. The Washington Post's Karen Heller paid a visit:

Cardinal Blase Cupich offers a distinctively Catholic response to the church's renewed abuse crisis: the Pope "has a bigger agenda" than going down the "rabbit hole" of allegations. "He's got to get on with other things."

Police in Montgomery County, Texas are searching for this mysterious woman who was apparently ringing multiple doorbells in the middle of the night at subdivision over the weekend. (more…)

This is absolutely the best pet watering dish we've ever had. (more…)

The Information reports that Google's self-driving automobile division is having trouble making progress and has blown at least one major deadline. Among the key problems: its vehicles have trouble turning left at intersections.The article is paywalled, but Amir Efrati sums it up: "The truth about Waymo in suburban Phoenix starts here, at a T intersection at East Fairview St. and South 56 St., the closest one to Waymo’s vehicle depot in Chandler. Waymo’s vans sometimes have trouble finding a gap in traffic to turn left, frustrating people who say they get stuck behind them."

We used to have a lot of guitars, ukuleles, and cigar box guitars leaning against walls, stacked in closets, and hiding under beds. I bought this four-pack of guitar hanger hooks for $8 in January, now they are priced at $7 for four (You can also buy two for $6 or six for $9). They come with wall mounting hardware. They're highly rated on Amazon.

Goaded by a tweet from writer Drew Olanoff, Tesla CEO Elon Musk again insinuated that the cave diver who mocked him during the Thailand cave rescue operation is a pedophile. (more…)

Cops use Stingrays—fake cellular towers that fool cellphones into connecting to them instead of the real thing—to track people and hack into their devices. Sen. Ron Wyden, in a publicized letter to the U.S. Department of Jusice, exposes the fact that these devices disrupt and disable attempts to call emergency services.

Over the course of my life, recently departed Senator John McCain has had me both cheering, and screaming, but he was absolutely due the same trappings as any other sitting US Senator who kicks the bucket.Via Talking Points Memo:

Oopsy.This lowered Toyota FR-S got stuck on a speed bump earlier this month at the Clean Culture ATL car meet in Duluth, Georgia. A bunch of folks stepped in to help the driver get his ridiculously low vehicle unstuck.Dumb question: How does this guy drive around town?(Digg)

Sadly for you, someone has already bought this rare Calcupen from Japan. But there's always another. From the Vintage Calculators Web Museum, which reports that it received weak reviews back in '75:

Of the 200 original Apple I computers ever made, only 60 or so are thought to have survived. One of them is now on the auction block. Expected to bring in $300,000, it includes an original Apple Cassette Interface and cables, Operation Manual, a period ASCII keyboard, a video monitor, and new power supply. Also, it works. From RR Auction:

Did you know that cats like to be squished? In this now-viral video, YouTube's Helpful Vancouver Vet, Dr. Uri Burstyn, shares advice on how to handle a cat. Introduce yourself and then be prepared to support and, yes, squish it.(MNN)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPTC-gJT1eM&feature=youtu.beA Magic:The Gathering pre-release kit [Amazon] is about $25 and contains six booster decks and a D20. What would you think if you bought 14 such kits from your local game store, received not one good card, then bought another kit at a grocery store and spotted that it was shrinkwrapped differently? To YouTube with the evidence!

There's no shortage of coding training online. But, if you're looking to get your skills to an employable level, you'll need to get your hands dirty creating your own projects. Taking a practical approach to coding education, the Interactive Coding Bootcamp not only teaches you the fundamentals of coding staples, like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript but makes you put your skills to use creating a number of web app projects that you can actually add to your portfolio. It's on sale today for $39.Across 400 lessons and 60 hours of content, this massive bootcamp walks you through the web development process from start to finish. Using the industry's essential development tools and languages, you'll build a number of real projects to refine your skills. You'll get exposed to object-oriented programming by creating your own browser-based tic-tac-toe game and gain firsthand experience integrating an API by building a cryptocurrency tracker. Plus, this bootcamp even has you create your own practice startup, so you can build a web app with features you'd find on Facebook or Dropbox.You can catalyze your coding education and add several powerful projects to your portfolio with The New & Improved Interactive Coding Bootcamp, on sale for $39.

"Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media," Trump tweeted this morning.

Jimmy Kimmel recently challenged Bill Hader to perform his most obscure impression, the one he knows few will appreciate. Hader turns to the audience and says "I love Dateline. You guys watch Dateline?"Previously: Saturday Night Live's classic parody of Dateline's Keith Morrison

NBC cutting abruptly from a solemn John McCain tribute to masturbating dolphin-masked comedians will go down in the annals of mind-bendingly inappropriate segues. But my favorite is this from DJ and actor Casey Kasem, who loses his temper at "coming out of a fucking uptempo record every time I do a God-damned death dedication."[h/t GhastlyGil]

John Oliver's big enough to admit when he's wrong. He's so damn large, in fact, that he sat down behind his gigantic desk just to post this series of retractions to YouTube.Thank you, Kaiju John Oliver, for taking your giant time to make these giant corrections. We, the small people of the earth, salute you.

So much of what we know about spaceflight, the moon and beyond can be attributed to mathematician Katherine Johnson. During the United States' race to the stars against the Soviet Union, Johnson served as one of NASA's "Human Computers," noodling out complicated math problems with nothing more than the brawn of her brains, a bit of chalk and an immeasurable amount of will. From Space.com:

Randy Rainbow is on a roll. Last year he took on Omarosa and this week he's going one on one with Trump. He sings a new parody song called "If You Ever Got Impeached" to the tune of the Wizard of Oz's "If I Only Had a Brain."

Not a good day for the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. (more…)

On Monday, the Burning Man Webcast team shot some amazing high-res footage of this year's Burning Man using a drone. (more…)

Roger Stone's Instagram sure is weird. In an Instagram video he posted today, longtime Trump consigliere Roger Stone said that a Ronan Farrow story soon to be published in The New Yorker reports that Stone explicitly told Donald Trump in October 2016 that WikiLeaks had obtained and was preparing to dump John Podesta's emails. (more…)

Senator John McCain, who died on Saturday at age 81 from an aggressive form of brain cancer, wrote a farewell letter to America. The letter was read by family spokesman Rick Davis this afternoon. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNTe_G-Xc0s?start=1019&w=560&h=315]Full text:

Baylor University infiltrated sexual assault survivor support groups, reports PR Week, using an employee to keep tabs on survivors and provide "PR strategy and talking points" to influence proceedings. Baylor, a private Christian university in Waco, Texas, faces a Title IX lawsuit.

Today Trump pretended to get rid of NAFTA, and the best part of the show was his attempt to get President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico on speakerphone to ceremonially announce the virtually identical imaginary replacement. Fortunately, he doesn't actually know how his phone works and an aide has to do it for him.

Ithaca's free alt-weekly The Ithaca Times printed a New York State voter registration form on their cover this week. The medium is the message.

New PhD student Samuel Gillis Hogan and colleagues at the University of Exeter are launching a deep study of 15-17th century spell books to understand how people attempted to summon fairies throughout history."Fairies were thought of as wondrous and beautiful, but mostly dangerous. But people wanted to summon them and harness that power for their own gain," Hogan told the BBC.Hogan, a lifelong fan of the supernatural (see photo above) and, yes, Harry Potter, received a fellowship to move to the UK after completing his master's degree at the University of Saskatchewan. His thesis topic? The history of chiromancy, aka palm reading.From the Canadian Press:

https://youtu.be/64X_G0R0MtII'm not really interested in catching mice, but I like learning how different kinds of no kill mousetraps work. This simple but ingenious trap attaches to a 2-liter soda bottle. The mouse crawls through an opening and has to push a plastic ball up to get into the bottle. One it gets past the ball, the ball drops and blocks the exit path, trapping the mouse inside. Shawn Woods tested one out and learned that it works as advertised.

Here's a stunning air guitar performance by Nanami Nagura, who won first place at the Air Guitar World Championships last week (she won the top prize four years ago as well). It's so cool, I had to watch it twice. From Digital Trends:

Asian Boss hit the streets of Tokyo to ask Japanese people what they thought of English curse words, oaths, insults, and epithets compared to Japanese ones. One person pointed out that English swear words are more direct (e.g., "Go fuck yourself"), whereas Japanese swear words are "more like insults and very indirect" (e.g., manuke, which literally means "out of rhythm" and is used to describe a loser). This is in keeping with the Japanese concept of aimai, which stresses implicitness over explicitness.

Neurologist Steven Laureys is an expert on the mysteries of consciousness. A researcher and clinician at the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research he's known for testing comatose patients for any hidden signs of consciousness. From Scientific American's interview with Laureys:

Look at this rotating brush, called the Happycow. From the manufacturer's description: