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Pompeii is a vast archaeological site that continues to yield treasures buried beneath the pumice. This summer, workers discovered new murals and artifacts at the site of a wealthy homeowner's estate, nicknamed House of Jupiter for a statue of the god found there. (more…)

I’ve known Richard Kadrey for a number of years. We generally mouth off at each other about technology, injuries we acquired while we were young/dumb, barbecue, tiki drinks and movies. There’s not much jibba-jabba, however, about what either of us does for a living. He writes constantly. So do I. It’s nice to talk about anything but your gig, from time to time. That said, the rent must be paid, so here we go. On August 28th, the tenth book in Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series, Hollywood Dead, will be available in the United States. Last last week, after reading an advanced copy that was sent out to me, I got on the horn for a chat with him about the new book, his plans for Sandman Slim and what he’s got cooking beyond the massively popular urban fantasy series. SB: I read Hollywood Dead over the weekend. I think one of the things I enjoyed the most about the new book is how the tension ramps up as Stark came to understand how screwed he really was. RK: I really wanted him off-balance. He felt off-balanced in The Kill Society—Stark was basically hiding who he was. But I wanted him to be genuinely fucked up in this book. He thinks everything’s going to be fine now and nothing is fine. Everything is fucked up. There’s no problem he can solve by punching it. Yeah, there’s bad guys, but his overall situation can’t be solved with violence. In the book, a lot of the truth of what[Stark]is comes out of Kasabian’s mouth, the way it always has. The world without Stark has been better, in some ways, so he’s begging Stark to just not be there. If nobody wants you there, that’s kind of it. There’s no way of getting around it. None of Stark’s abilities will help him work through that. SB: You’ve had a long time to live with this character. How does a character that’s traditionally solved problems with blood and fire, grow?RK: I’m growing and changing with the character. So, I’m seeing the world differently, too. I’m seeing the stuff that my friends are going through, for instance. That’s how the issue of PTSD with Stark came up. Stark’s never going to be OK unless he deals with his own trauma. That was never in my head when I started writing the character. But if I’m going to deal with somebody like him over a long period of time and have some kind of truth in it, first, he has to admit that he has PTSD. The second thing is that he has to, at least, attempt to do something about it. Of course, the world conspires against him. Every time he says that he’s going to try and do something about it, something awful happens and it stops him. But he’s at least acknowledging that there’s something he can do to be more of a human being. Becoming more of a human being is at the core of what this series is about. In the first book, Stark is a genuine monster, just back from Hell and wanting to kill everything. Wanting to kill the world. Over the course of the books, that’s changed. I want to keep exploring that. I don’t know how far I can take that or how far I want to. I’m following what I think Stark would do and Stark would want. I’m hoping I’m getting that right, in letting the character lead me a bit in the rest of the series. SB: Every time you set out to write a new book you crack out a new Moleskine to plot it out. Did you have any idea of what the series was going to look like or do you sort it out as you go? RK: I worked out what happens to the end of the series. I know where it’s going, although there are questions on how it’s going to get there. I know what has to happen for the rest of the series because I needed to. The things I’m doing now, I can’t just wing it forever, although there were points at which I was doing that. There’s a certain amount of the series that I had to come up with as a matter of panicking, because originally, Harper only bought three books. I thought that might be it. When I finished the third book, and they were doing OK, they said that they wanted more. Suddenly, I had to get a lot deeper into the situation. That’s when I started creating more. More of an arc than I had before. Where I left it in book, three, it could have stopped, easily. For it to go on, and again, for Stark to deal with who he is, back in the world, I needed to do a lot more homework. The last half of the series, I’ve pretty much mapped out what needs to happen and now we’re getting towards the end of it. It’s all coming together. SB: Are you able to say how many books are left in the series?RK: I could say it, but I don’t want to.SB: Let’s talk about the movie. How does it feel to have someone else manhandling your characters after spending so much time with them. Do you have your fingers in the production?RK: I’m doing some consulting on it. There’s a brand new screenplay. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard really good things. Kerry Williamson is doing the screenplay. She’s worked with the director, Chas Stahelski a lot, so I like that. Plus, you know what man? I’m really happy to have a woman working on the screenplay for this. Its been such a dude-heavy project all the way through. To have a woman with [Williamson’s] credentials and her point of view is why Chad though of her as a good person to do it. Apparently, she worked in stunts: she has a writer’s point of view and understands action. In her body, not just intellectually. I think that’s great. I have a lot of faith with what they want to do with it. I have talked with Chad about the direction he wants to take things in. I’m excited. I trust this team completely. Top to bottom, I think they’re really quality people.SB: What are your plans do you have once you’re finished with Stark? The books you’ve been writing outside of the series have been doing pretty well. Is getting past Sandman Slim something you’re looking forward to or more of a ‘shit, what do I do now? You’ve spent a long time with this stuff, man.RK: It’ll be weird to end it, but there’s the movie is moving forward and there’s the talk of a comic and things like that, which I’ve discussed with the movie people. If they want to do a comic, I have ideas of what it should be. And what it shouldn’t be, which I think is more important. And yeah, I have a lot of stuff that I want to do afterwards. It’s why I’m working very hard on this new book right now, called The Grand Dark. In the way that Sandman Slim reestablished my career, I want to take a chance towards the end of Sandman Slim of rebooting myself. I love writing Sandman Slim. I love writing violence and action—pulp sensibilities. But I don’t want to be locked into that for the rest of my life. I want to do larger things, and that’s what the Grand Dark is.SB: Tell me more about The Grand Dark. Whatcha got? What’s going on?RK: I’m doing a massive rewrite right now, it’s driving me crazy. It is the story of a young man in a very different world, a world that feels…some people would use the word ‘steampunk.’ I never used to like the word, but I’m ok with it now. I’m going to use that word, which I used to not like, to say “Steampunk-Kafka.” That’s what I’m working on now. It’s not going to be a huge book, but it’s been a huge undertaking because there’s no aspect of it that’s like my previous work. It’s right down to my use to my use of language and the way that I write the book. With Stark there’s very specific rules of how the text appears on the page. This is sort of the opposite of that. It’s much more straightforward in someways and far more twisted in others than anything I’ve ever written.SB: It sounds like you’re challenging yourself. That’s where it’s at. If you get bored, whats the point?RK: That’s exactly it. It’s me pushing myself to do something new and hoping to establish myself to a broader audience while trying to bring my current audience into a new kind of work that I want to do. Certainly, there’s action and guns and crazy stuff going on. But it’s not presented in the hyperbolic way that Sandman Slim is.Headshot via Richard Kadrey, photographed by Tristan Crane; Book photo via Séamus Bellamy

The Royal Ocean Film Society examines and contextualizes the beach party movie genre formula perfected and then milked dry by the genius marketers at schlock house American International Pictures. (more…)

My daughter and her cousin are watching Muppets From Space, a $2 DVD bin find last weekend. It is well worth rewatching.There is a low quality version free on YouTube, or you can stream it in HD from Amazon.

Zuckerberg -- who says privacy isn't a value that's important to most people any more -- owns the four houses on either side of his Silicon Valley house so that no one can use them as a perch to spy on him; he bought 100 acres around his Hawai'ain beach house, suing native Hawai'ians to force them to sell to him, so that he could have a buffer between him and the world. (more…)

Brock Turner, convicted of sexual assault after attacking an unconscious woman in 2015, lost his appeal Wednesday.

There are more people who want to make art than the market would support, and the arts are a highly concentrated industry: combine those two facts and you get a buyers' market for artists' work, controlled by intermediaries, who take almost all of the money generated by the work. (more…)

Quicksilver is a machine-learning tool from AI startup Primer: it used 30,000 Wikipedia entries to create a model that allowed it to identify the characteristics that make a scientist noteworthy enough for encyclopedic inclusion; then it mined the academic search-engine Semantic Scholar to identify the 200,000 scholars in a variety of fields; now it is systematically composing draft Wikipedia entries for scholars on its list who are missing from the encyclopedia. (more…)

Millennial doctors are killing predatory health-care capitalism! (more…)

In certain circles, it's become popular for brides to ruin their wedding dress after the wedding, leading to more and more elaborate and risky photos. Pierre Violle specializes in the genre, and he's captures some amazing underwater couples over the years: (more…)

Johnathan Movie is losing his shit and it's all our fault.

Wakuneco uses wool felt to make amazingly detailed custom-ordered cat portraits that look uncannily like the subjects. Here are how the finishing touches like whiskers get done. (more…)

One of the holy grails of computer science is unsupervised machine learning, where you tell an algorithm what goal you want it to attain, and give it some data to practice on, and the algorithm uses statistics to invent surprising ways of solving your problem. (more…)

When we worry about free speech, we mostly worry about governments suppressing speech, not private actors. It's one thing to say that the US government shouldn't have the ability to arbitrarily censor some speech, but it's another altogether to say, that, for example, Boing Boing shouldn't be able to kick jerks off its message boards -- that has as much to do with "compelled publication" as it does with "free speech." (more…)

Andre Ferreira says: "My scissors handle broke, I was devastated! And then I thought, I could throw them away and buy some new ones for around $1. Or... I could spend 4 hours planning, measuring, CADing, 3D printing, fitting, glueing, and finishing a replacement handle. The choice was clear :)"[via Maker Share]

Astronaut Alexander Gerst captured the above photo of Northern California's Carr and Ferguson fires five days ago. Below is the blanket of smoke from the Mendocino Complex Fire, the largest fire in California's history, as imaged by the Aqua satellite. Horrifying and tragic no matter how you see it.From NASA:

Those of us who eschew a phone case take a lot of abuse in this cruel world. Finally, a send-up of all the things we endure from case freaks and their misguided fanaticism. Note: some spicy language that reflects what we have to deal with. (more…)

Yesterday, the FCC published an admission that it had lied about a supposed hack-attack that it blamed for the collapse of its public comments portal that led to the agency eventually shutting down public comment and announcing that it would give equal weight to obviously forged anti-Net Neutrality comments and the pro-Neutrality comments it received. (more…)

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…)