The Come Back With a Warrant" doormat is an American classic (I prefer my suburban take on the motif). (more…)

Last week, security researcher Chris Vickery discovered a database containing 3.3 million accounts from Sanriotown, a commercial Hello Kitty fansite operated by Sanrio, Hello Kitty's corporate owners. (more…)

Online communities like Ravelry's "Knot a Problem" invite knitters to ship them their most tangled yarn, which they patiently unravel and wind into usable skeins, as a kind of knitting-adjacent hobby, one that combines problem solving with topology. (more…)

Ever since the TSA broke the law and abused him, Sai has been suing them over their illegal conduct, forcing them into court and then demonstrating to the court that the agency refuses to play by any rules, even its own. (more…)

South African photographer Paul Shiakallis produced a series of photos, "Leathered Skins, Unchained Hearts," of the "queens" of Botswana's heavy metal "Marok" scene, mostly in their homes. (more…)

Follow @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.

Please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and more.

And/or buy Ruben Bolling’s new book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here.

More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

What Is EFF Reading? Books, Movies, and TV Shows of 2015 : a media diet for Internet freedom activists. ]]>

What Is EFF Reading? Books, Movies, and TV Shows of 2015 : a media diet for Internet freedom activists. ]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/effs-roundup-of-internettish.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/my-family-went-to-the-alchemis.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/my-family-went-to-the-alchemis.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 23:23:39 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441177

Escape rooms are popular. I'm not surprised. I've been to three of them with my wife and kids, and have enjoyed them all. The latest one we participated in was called The Alchemist, at Escape Room L.A..

On Sunday afternoon the four of us went to a nondescript building on 8th Street in downtown Los Angeles and pressed the button on the intercom next to the locked door. We got buzzed in and rode up to the third floor, where we met the six other players we were going to be locked in a room with. After a staff member explained the rules (no phones, no bathroom breaks, no brute force attacks on combination locks) we were led into a small room with a long table and a wall of old books. The door was locked behind us. We had one hour to figure out how to unlock the door and get out.

This is the smallest escape room yet, I thought. Were we going to spend an hour cramped together in here? I put the thought out of my head as I joined the others in going over the clues that would lead to the solving of the various puzzles. It didn't take long for us to crack the first puzzle. As soon as we did, one of the walls slid away to reveal a much larger room: the mysterious laboratory of of the Alchemist, an unseen evil being who was in the final stages of concocting a Philosopher's Stone to take over the world. It was our job to foil the Alchemist by solving a series of puzzles that would unite the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water and let us escape from the room before our time ran out.

The Alchemist's lab was so cool looking that I wanted to just stand there and admire it for a while. There were shelves of potions, strange looking devices, and intriguing contraptions on the walls and ceilings. But the clock was ticking (or rather, the sand in the hourglass on a table was running out) so I went to work on the puzzles.

Part of the challenge of an escape room is just trying to figure out what the puzzles are. Written clues are rare. Not everything in the room is part of a puzzle. Some items are just there for decoration, but it's not always obvious. It really helps to think out loud so everyone can work together. Linus's Law – "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" – applies in escape rooms!

This was the first time I did an escape room with my 18-year-old daughter. She doesn't like playing games, but she surprised me by how much fun she was having and how much she was interacting with everyone else. She figured out quite a few puzzles that had everyone else stumped. A month earlier, she had been riding in a car that got hit head-on by a drunk driver going 110 mph. She broke her wrist, mangled her ankle, got deep cuts on her face and head, and got whiplash in her entire body. She hasn't felt right physically since the wreck. She has also been dealing with the psychological trauma of the event (her friend who was in the car with her suffered massive brain damage and has been in a coma for 37 days and it is very hard on her) so it was great to see her having fun. She told me that the best part of the escape room was the aha! experience of figuring out how to solve a puzzle and how it would lead to another puzzle, like a chain of surprises. For one hour, she wasn't thinking of anything else other than the strange new world we had entered. I felt the same way.

It sure didn't feel like we were in the room for an hour. It felt like 15 minutes. It didn't even matter that we weren't able to escape in time (although we got really close by combining three of the four elements and solving all but one problem remaining to unlock the Fire element and the door out). A staff member went over the game, recapping what we did right, and showed us how to solve the parts we missed.

We are going to make escape rooms a regular thing.

For more information about The Alchemist visit Escape Room L.A.

]]>

Escape rooms are popular. I'm not surprised. I've been to three of them with my wife and kids, and have enjoyed them all. The latest one we participated in was called The Alchemist, at Escape Room L.A..

On Sunday afternoon the four of us went to a nondescript building on 8th Street in downtown Los Angeles and pressed the button on the intercom next to the locked door. We got buzzed in and rode up to the third floor, where we met the six other players we were going to be locked in a room with. After a staff member explained the rules (no phones, no bathroom breaks, no brute force attacks on combination locks) we were led into a small room with a long table and a wall of old books. The door was locked behind us. We had one hour to figure out how to unlock the door and get out.

This is the smallest escape room yet, I thought. Were we going to spend an hour cramped together in here? I put the thought out of my head as I joined the others in going over the clues that would lead to the solving of the various puzzles. It didn't take long for us to crack the first puzzle. As soon as we did, one of the walls slid away to reveal a much larger room: the mysterious laboratory of of the Alchemist, an unseen evil being who was in the final stages of concocting a Philosopher's Stone to take over the world. It was our job to foil the Alchemist by solving a series of puzzles that would unite the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water and let us escape from the room before our time ran out.

The Alchemist's lab was so cool looking that I wanted to just stand there and admire it for a while. There were shelves of potions, strange looking devices, and intriguing contraptions on the walls and ceilings. But the clock was ticking (or rather, the sand in the hourglass on a table was running out) so I went to work on the puzzles.

Part of the challenge of an escape room is just trying to figure out what the puzzles are. Written clues are rare. Not everything in the room is part of a puzzle. Some items are just there for decoration, but it's not always obvious. It really helps to think out loud so everyone can work together. Linus's Law – "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" – applies in escape rooms!

This was the first time I did an escape room with my 18-year-old daughter. She doesn't like playing games, but she surprised me by how much fun she was having and how much she was interacting with everyone else. She figured out quite a few puzzles that had everyone else stumped. A month earlier, she had been riding in a car that got hit head-on by a drunk driver going 110 mph. She broke her wrist, mangled her ankle, got deep cuts on her face and head, and got whiplash in her entire body. She hasn't felt right physically since the wreck. She has also been dealing with the psychological trauma of the event (her friend who was in the car with her suffered massive brain damage and has been in a coma for 37 days and it is very hard on her) so it was great to see her having fun. She told me that the best part of the escape room was the aha! experience of figuring out how to solve a puzzle and how it would lead to another puzzle, like a chain of surprises. For one hour, she wasn't thinking of anything else other than the strange new world we had entered. I felt the same way.

It sure didn't feel like we were in the room for an hour. It felt like 15 minutes. It didn't even matter that we weren't able to escape in time (although we got really close by combining three of the four elements and solving all but one problem remaining to unlock the Fire element and the door out). A staff member went over the game, recapping what we did right, and showed us how to solve the parts we missed.

We are going to make escape rooms a regular thing.

For more information about The Alchemist visit Escape Room L.A.

]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/my-family-went-to-the-alchemis.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/infomercial-for-90-power.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/infomercial-for-90-power.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 22:03:35 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441169

Dr. Linda Salvin is a "spiritual doctor, famous psychic, healer, medium" who sells Wicks of Wisdom, $90 candle sets alleged to have special powers. The Rebound Power candle "reverses negativity to the sender" and the Sweetening Judgment Power candle is "excellent for court cases, legal issues and brings them in your favor." (Martin Shkreli should hock his Wu-Tang Clan album on load up on that one.)

"I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe in the power of Wicks of Wisdsom" says Salvin in her spectacularly avaricious infomercial. "I have testimony after testimony, and I would not be wasting my time, my energy, or my reputation on national TV. Wicks of Wisdom works, like a prescription for your soul."

The infomercial co-stars Kris Jenner (who she?) as product pitchman.

The YouTube comments on the video will have you weeping with shame for the human race.

Here comes JR "Bob" Dobbs to set things straight:

Slavin's retort:

[via]]]>

Dr. Linda Salvin is a "spiritual doctor, famous psychic, healer, medium" who sells Wicks of Wisdom, $90 candle sets alleged to have special powers. The Rebound Power candle "reverses negativity to the sender" and the Sweetening Judgment Power candle is "excellent for court cases, legal issues and brings them in your favor." (Martin Shkreli should hock his Wu-Tang Clan album on load up on that one.)

"I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe in the power of Wicks of Wisdsom" says Salvin in her spectacularly avaricious infomercial. "I have testimony after testimony, and I would not be wasting my time, my energy, or my reputation on national TV. Wicks of Wisdom works, like a prescription for your soul."

The infomercial co-stars Kris Jenner (who she?) as product pitchman.

The YouTube comments on the video will have you weeping with shame for the human race.

Here comes JR "Bob" Dobbs to set things straight:

Slavin's retort:

[via]]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/infomercial-for-90-power.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/1980s-teenagers-gleefully-reco.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/1980s-teenagers-gleefully-reco.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 21:35:55 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441166

The Bowman family shot this excellent home movie of the odometer on their family van reaching 100,000 miles. Can anyone who isn't car-blind like me figure out exact year this was made? [via]]]>

The Bowman family shot this excellent home movie of the odometer on their family van reaching 100,000 miles. Can anyone who isn't car-blind like me figure out exact year this was made? [via]]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/1980s-teenagers-gleefully-reco.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/12-recipes-that-will-let-you-e.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/12-recipes-that-will-let-you-e.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 21:18:36 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441161

As a kid I’d watch my dad as he’d throw (his unit of measurement) some olive oil, onions, garlic, lemon, and olives into a pan to make a quick pasta. It’s learning to cook this way that gave me a love and appreciation for food and cooking. That’s what was so amazing about Twelve Recipes. When you read it, you feel like you’re getting that private cooking lesson from a family member. A family member who happens to be a really really good cook.

Through the book Cal Peternell, chef at renowned restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA, lays out twelve-ish basic foods and techniques that he believes will let you eat well for the rest of your life. If you’re a novice in the kitchen, the first chapter eases you in by teaching you how to make toast. No, seriously — toast. I was skeptical at first too, I consider myself to be somewhat of a toast veteran, but after reading a few pages I actually learned something. I had no idea that to make thin crisp toast you should actually use a loaf of stale bread since it’s easier to cut. That’s the beauty of the book – even if you’ve been making toast, grilling meat, or cooking rice all your life, there’s still something to learn.

In the best way, this isn’t your standard cookbook. You won’t find a single recipe on each page, you’ll actually find two or three, interweaved by a story about a family ping pong game. The photos are beautiful, but they’re not your standard food-porn shots that make your home cooking feel insecure. Then there are the sweet little illustrations that were done by Peternell’s wife and kids peppered throughout (see what I did there?). All these ingredients add up to a beautiful book that’s sure to inspire your inner cook. – JP LeRoux

Twelve Recipes
by Cal Peternell
HarperCollins
2014, 320 pages, 7 x 9.1 x 1.1 inches
$16 Buy a copy on Amazon

“The Victorians had some really strange ideas about what served as an appropriate Christmas greeting,” says Bo Wreden, who recently organized an exhibition of holiday cards for the Book Club of California. “They liked to send out cards with dead birds on them, robins in particular, which related to ancient customs and legends. There’s a famous quotation from the Venerable Bede about a sparrow flying through the hall of a castle while the nobility is celebrating Christmas: The moment from when it enters until it flies out is very brief, a metaphor for how quickly our lives pass.” Apparently, killing a wren or robin was once a good-luck ritual performed in late December, and during the late 19th century, cards featuring the bodies of these birds were sent to offer good luck in the New Year.

Researchers at the ETH Game Technology Center of the Swiss national technical institute in Zürich, have applied their considerable talents to the critical problem of immersion in 2D side-scrolling, 8-bit era games. Witness in this video the splendor of a 360° projected Mario world that unrolls across the walls as players reveal each subsequent tile of the game map.

Robert Sumner, founder of the GTC explains:

 ...we observed that the 8-bit era of gaming had a huge collective influence on so many people, but the actual gaming experience was typically an individual one. We wanted to turn this idea upside down, and elevate the NES console experience into a group experience where the game surrounds a large event, allowing multiple people to play in a collaborative setting. The panoramic stitching and 8-way controller multiplexing hardware were the main ways we accomplished this task.

The group submitted the paper "Unfolding the 8-bit Era" to the European Conference on Visual Media Production, and then built the system to unveil at the Eurographics Conference. Utilizing a vintage 8-bit Famicom/NES system and a PC with a point-correspondence vision tracking algorithm, the researchers developed methods to detect the edge of each screen segment, adding it to a continuously expanding texture map in real-time. This panoramic texture is then seamlessly displayed on eight aligned projectors. The vision algorithm requires no prior knowledge about the game, so it is possible to play any side-scroller on this system, such as Super Mario Bros., Castlevania, Metroid, and the like.

In order to increase the number of participants in the fun of this large-scale gaming spectacle, the researchers created novel eight-controller multiplexing hardware based upon Arduino that hands the controls from one player’s gamepad to the next at a fixed time interval. Knowing that you’re about to grab the reins and inherit the state in which the previous player has left the hero surely adds a new twist to venerable games.

You can check out technical implementation details in the paper.]]>

Researchers at the ETH Game Technology Center of the Swiss national technical institute in Zürich, have applied their considerable talents to the critical problem of immersion in 2D side-scrolling, 8-bit era games. Witness in this video the splendor of a 360° projected Mario world that unrolls across the walls as players reveal each subsequent tile of the game map.

Robert Sumner, founder of the GTC explains:

 ...we observed that the 8-bit era of gaming had a huge collective influence on so many people, but the actual gaming experience was typically an individual one. We wanted to turn this idea upside down, and elevate the NES console experience into a group experience where the game surrounds a large event, allowing multiple people to play in a collaborative setting. The panoramic stitching and 8-way controller multiplexing hardware were the main ways we accomplished this task.

The group submitted the paper "Unfolding the 8-bit Era" to the European Conference on Visual Media Production, and then built the system to unveil at the Eurographics Conference. Utilizing a vintage 8-bit Famicom/NES system and a PC with a point-correspondence vision tracking algorithm, the researchers developed methods to detect the edge of each screen segment, adding it to a continuously expanding texture map in real-time. This panoramic texture is then seamlessly displayed on eight aligned projectors. The vision algorithm requires no prior knowledge about the game, so it is possible to play any side-scroller on this system, such as Super Mario Bros., Castlevania, Metroid, and the like.

In order to increase the number of participants in the fun of this large-scale gaming spectacle, the researchers created novel eight-controller multiplexing hardware based upon Arduino that hands the controls from one player’s gamepad to the next at a fixed time interval. Knowing that you’re about to grab the reins and inherit the state in which the previous player has left the hero surely adds a new twist to venerable games.

You can check out technical implementation details in the paper.]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/swiss-researchers-solve-side-s.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/33636-gun-deaths-visualized.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/33636-gun-deaths-visualized.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 19:41:23 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441117

Matt Haughey says: "What follows are gun emoji shown at about 28pt using Apple’s emoji font in Textedit screencaptured. Every single one represents a person that died by gunshot in the US in 2013."]]>

Matt Haughey says: "What follows are gun emoji shown at about 28pt using Apple’s emoji font in Textedit screencaptured. Every single one represents a person that died by gunshot in the US in 2013."]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/33636-gun-deaths-visualized.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/if-you-think-self-driving-cars.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/if-you-think-self-driving-cars.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 19:11:47 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441113

In my latest Guardian column, The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?, I take issue with the "Trolley Problem" as applied to autonomous vehicles, which asks, if your car has to choose between a maneuver that kills you and one that kills other people, which one should it be programmed to do? (more…)

The Salvation Army has struggled to distance itself from its reputation for homophobia, but a 2014 memo on "LGBT issues" by midwest Commissioner Paul Seiler spells out a number of ways in which the organization discriminates against LGBT employees. (more…)

Google's lawyers fought strenuously against the DoJ's demands for access to the Gmail account of Jacob Appelbaum, a journalist, activist and volunteer with the Wikileaks project; they fought even harder against the accompanying gag order, arguing that Appelbaum had the right to know what was going on and have a lawyer argue his case. (more…)

A film by Jake Rasmussen]]>

A film by Jake Rasmussen]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/curb-your-miss-universe.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/listen-whistleblower-story-th.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/listen-whistleblower-story-th.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 18:29:26 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441090

Phil Demers worked as an animal trainer at Niagara Falls, Ontario's Marineland for 12 years before resigning because he believed that the animals in his care were being mistreated and he did not believe that his employers would listen to him or his colleagues' warnings about this. (more…)

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Did Kim Kardashian lose 45 lbs in one day? This and other unassailable tabloid facts.

While the rest of the world is over-indulging during the festive season, weighty matters obsess this week’s tabloids and celebrity magazines.

Kim Kardashian “lost 75 lbs in 3 weeks” post-pregnancy, says the National Enquirer, while Star magazine says she lost 30 lbs in 20 days.

They could both be right, if Kardashian lost another 45 lbs on her 21st day, which seems entirely plausible.

Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton is the “Queen of Lean” and “starving herself to death” as her weight plummets to 98 lbs, says the Enquirer.

Tabloid watchers will recall that only six weeks ago the Enquirer warned that Kate weighed 99 lbs and was “wasting away,” so clearly the loss of another 16 precious ounces is cause for grave concern.

Meanwhile George Clooney’s wife Amal is “scary-skinny” says the Enquirer, though it doesn’t tell us how much she weighs because they’re too busy explaining how this brilliant human rights lawyer has transformed into "the wife from hell,” cutting Clooney off from old friends and making him sell off his former “love nests,” while she spends $4,695 on an Alexander McQueen dress and $4,000 on a vintage coat.

If the Star magazine is right in claiming that Amal has been sobbing to friends that “her career has been on the decline since marrying George,” who could blame her? It seems that some folks just can’t win in the tabloid weight wars.

Ice-T’s wife Nicole ‘Coco’ Austin gained a mere 13 lbs in her pregnancy and is now almost back to her pre-baby 137 lbs, she tells Us magazine, but complains of “body bullies” who have accused her of "everything from liposuction to faking her pregnancy.”

People magazine piles on with a recipe for a California Almond Cake, which looks like it could single-handedly put back all of Coco's lost poundage in one sitting.

How appropriate that the tabloids’ weight-obsessed readers can turn to NBC’s dubious new series, ‘My Diet Is Better Than Your Diet,’ starting on January 7.

Meanwhile, Charlie Sheen gives an exclusive interview about his HIV status to the Enquirer - one can only imagine what fresh horrific scandal they unearthed to force him to such humiliation - while Us magazine celebrates Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s “Christmas reunion.”

People magazine asks who burned alive 19-year-old Jessica Chambers in Courtland, Mississippi, over a year ago, which is a strangely belated and decidedly unseasonal cover story, as if they’re waited 12 months for the slowest celebrity news week of the year before running this.

The Walking Dead actress Emily Kinney carries keys, lip balm and a Starbucks gift card in her purse – this exciting feature page never gets old, it’s always so full of surprises. Robin Roberts wore it best (which may be unwanted praise in an “ugly sweater edition”) and the stars are just like us: they play at the beach, chat on their cells, visit markets, run in pairs, and use caulk guns.

Wait a minute – what self-respecting celebrity caulks their own floor fixtures, instead of having their personal assistant hire a minion for such menial work? Melissa Gorga, apparently, I had to Google “Melissa Gorga" to learn that she is one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Seriously, I think Us magazine is stretching the definition of the world “star” a bit too far here.

Onwards and downwards . . .]]>

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Did Kim Kardashian lose 45 lbs in one day? This and other unassailable tabloid facts.

While the rest of the world is over-indulging during the festive season, weighty matters obsess this week’s tabloids and celebrity magazines.

Kim Kardashian “lost 75 lbs in 3 weeks” post-pregnancy, says the National Enquirer, while Star magazine says she lost 30 lbs in 20 days.

They could both be right, if Kardashian lost another 45 lbs on her 21st day, which seems entirely plausible.

Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton is the “Queen of Lean” and “starving herself to death” as her weight plummets to 98 lbs, says the Enquirer.

Tabloid watchers will recall that only six weeks ago the Enquirer warned that Kate weighed 99 lbs and was “wasting away,” so clearly the loss of another 16 precious ounces is cause for grave concern.

Meanwhile George Clooney’s wife Amal is “scary-skinny” says the Enquirer, though it doesn’t tell us how much she weighs because they’re too busy explaining how this brilliant human rights lawyer has transformed into "the wife from hell,” cutting Clooney off from old friends and making him sell off his former “love nests,” while she spends $4,695 on an Alexander McQueen dress and $4,000 on a vintage coat.

If the Star magazine is right in claiming that Amal has been sobbing to friends that “her career has been on the decline since marrying George,” who could blame her? It seems that some folks just can’t win in the tabloid weight wars.

Ice-T’s wife Nicole ‘Coco’ Austin gained a mere 13 lbs in her pregnancy and is now almost back to her pre-baby 137 lbs, she tells Us magazine, but complains of “body bullies” who have accused her of "everything from liposuction to faking her pregnancy.”

People magazine piles on with a recipe for a California Almond Cake, which looks like it could single-handedly put back all of Coco's lost poundage in one sitting.

How appropriate that the tabloids’ weight-obsessed readers can turn to NBC’s dubious new series, ‘My Diet Is Better Than Your Diet,’ starting on January 7.

Meanwhile, Charlie Sheen gives an exclusive interview about his HIV status to the Enquirer - one can only imagine what fresh horrific scandal they unearthed to force him to such humiliation - while Us magazine celebrates Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s “Christmas reunion.”

People magazine asks who burned alive 19-year-old Jessica Chambers in Courtland, Mississippi, over a year ago, which is a strangely belated and decidedly unseasonal cover story, as if they’re waited 12 months for the slowest celebrity news week of the year before running this.

The Walking Dead actress Emily Kinney carries keys, lip balm and a Starbucks gift card in her purse – this exciting feature page never gets old, it’s always so full of surprises. Robin Roberts wore it best (which may be unwanted praise in an “ugly sweater edition”) and the stars are just like us: they play at the beach, chat on their cells, visit markets, run in pairs, and use caulk guns.

Wait a minute – what self-respecting celebrity caulks their own floor fixtures, instead of having their personal assistant hire a minion for such menial work? Melissa Gorga, apparently, I had to Google “Melissa Gorga" to learn that she is one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Seriously, I think Us magazine is stretching the definition of the world “star” a bit too far here.

Onwards and downwards . . .]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/celebrities-are-wasting-away.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/chris-christies-bizarre-tran.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/chris-christies-bizarre-tran.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 18:06:55 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441076

Here is New Jersey governor Chris Christie's explanation why trans children shouldn't be given the right to use the school restroom they feel most comfortable in:

“Life is confusing enough right now for our children. Think about those kids in Los Angeles who last week had their entire district closed because of a threat. Think about what they felt like the next day when they went back to school. Did they feel completely comfortable, did they feel like they were safe? How did their mothers and fathers feel when they sent them to school that day?”

I cannot wait for the Bridgegate trial to begin in April.

[via] ]]>

Here is New Jersey governor Chris Christie's explanation why trans children shouldn't be given the right to use the school restroom they feel most comfortable in:

“Life is confusing enough right now for our children. Think about those kids in Los Angeles who last week had their entire district closed because of a threat. Think about what they felt like the next day when they went back to school. Did they feel completely comfortable, did they feel like they were safe? How did their mothers and fathers feel when they sent them to school that day?”

I cannot wait for the Bridgegate trial to begin in April.

[via] ]]> https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/chris-christies-bizarre-tran.html/feed 0 https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/howto-make-a-glowing-bottle-o.html https://boingboing.net/2015/12/23/howto-make-a-glowing-bottle-o.html#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2015 18:00:03 +0000 http://boingboing.net/?p=441079

Redditor MymlanOhlin shares their method for making a glowing bottle Nuka Cola Quantum from Fallout 4, a fiendishly difficult videogame whose brilliant storytelling and gorgeous, explorable landscapes have totally colonized our household. (more…)

Sylvia Allen, the GOP state Senator from Snowflake, AZ, believes the Earth is 6,000 years old. She will run the state Senate's committee to oversee educational legislation. (more…)

iSafe Drive Lite is the first MFI-certified, ultra-high-speed drive to safely store 32GB of data and employ the same encryption used by the US federal government. It’s the fastest and easiest way to transfer between your computer (Mac or PC) and your iOS devices. Since it’s a two-way transfer device, you can swap out music and contacts between your phone and desktop. Better yet, you can stream movies and songs directly from the drive without eating up data. Making this gadget a road trip dream come true.

• Quickly transfer videos, music & more between your iOS devices and computers
• Back up your important files
• Keep your data private w/ AES 256 bit encryption
• Stream movies & music without using the internal storage of your laptop or iPhone
• Transfer data between your iOS device & computer at a rate of 8MB per second
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The Washington Post takes a fond look back at 15 people who became briefly infamous for one reason or another. Some of these villains are new to me, like prankster Sam Pepper, who pretended to execute a man in front of the man's best friend. Others aren't villians at all, such as Ellen Pao, who was harassed out of her job as Reddit's CEO for helping shut down a number of hate speech subreddits, such as r/fatpeoplehate, r/transf*gs, and and r/shitni**erssay.

10. Belle Gibson

The villain: The 24-year-old Australian blogger and entrepreneur behind “The Whole Pantry” app.

The offense: Rose to fame, in large part, by claiming that a healthy diet and alternative medicine had cured her metastatic cancer — when, in fact, she’d never been ill. Gibson also repeatedly said that a portion of the sales from her app, The Whole Pantry, and its accompanying cookbook went to charity, though later investigations suggested that she’d pocketed those funds. Gibson’s fan base imploded almost overnight, and both her former fans and outside observers began demanding explanations.

Where she is now: Since March, Gibson has been under investigation by a regional Consumer Affairs department, which, per the Herald Sun, is looking into claims about her fraudulent fundraising practices. Gibson’s publisher has withdrawn her cookbook and Whole Pantry is gone from the app store. In a June interview, she told 60 Minutes she had “lost everything” — an admission for which she was reportedly paid $45,000 AUS.

Many have remarked upon the parallels between Santa's naughty list and mass surveillance, but the idea that a supernatural being is watching your every move and judging you for it is a lot more pervasive than just the Santa story: it's the bedrock of Christianity. (more…)

Whether you think you might win over the crowd who're watching from the sidelines or change a denialist's mind, John Timmer's flowchart presents tried-and-true tactics for using science, reason, and facts to overcome ignorance and fear. (more…)

The UK police and security services have frequently touted the necessity of "equipment interference" techniques -- cyberweapons used to infect suspects' computers -- in their investigations, but they have refused to release any information about their use in response to 40 Freedom of Information requests from Motherboard. (more…)

The Mast Brothers, a pair of bearded chocolatiers in Brooklyn, have built an empire on beautifully packaged "artisanal" chocolates that run $10/bar, billed as "bean to bar" confections. (more…)