Tell us how many pizzas you want and where to send them. After that, your pizza fate is in our hands. All orders are fulfilled through Dominos. How your pizza is crafted is completely random, thus the whole roulette thing. We then calculate your order total and include tax, tip, and delivery. ENJOY? Maybe you will, maybe you won't.
Photo: The Sneeze.
In addition, engineers working with the plasma noticed that their cell phones encountered high levels of radio frequency noise—static—while they were in the same room as the experiment. It turns out that the plasma ring emits distinct radio frequencies. "That's never been seen before. We think it's because of the piezo properties of the materials that we used in our experiments," Pereira says, referring to the materials' ability to be electrically polarized through mechanical stress—in this case, the flowing of water.
They've got no idea what it might be useful for, but have already filed a patent on the method for genereating the torus. Commercial proposal: a pretty random number generator to replace the lava lamps in Cloudflare's HQ.
When the USA decided to retroactively extend the term of copyright, it deprived itself of free, open access to important cultural treasures that new creators could build upon as creators have done since time immemorial. (more…)
The 15 Second Horror Film Challenge is an annual competition run by a nonprofit (you have until Oct 2018 to get your entries in for next year). This year's top twenty has some entries that literally made the hair on my neck stand up, especially Luma Films' Good Night, which is an especially good take on a recurring horror theme. More of my favorites below. (via JWZ) (more…)
When Washington State legalized recreational marijuana three years ago, it created a licensing regime that was supposed to protect and encourage small growers, but the data shows that marijuana growing has consolidated into a few large suppliers, even as the price per gram has fallen -- and that the industry's embrace of exotic derivatives like edibles and concentrates is capital-intensive and inaccessible to small, independent providers. (more…)
More than a dozen major US airports are now covered in facial-recognition cameras, installed by the DHS to scan people departing on international flights without the legally mandated federal review process. (more…)
Britain is one of the most unequal countries in the world, thanks to the Tory-in-sheep's-clothing policies of Tony Blair, and the naked banker-coddling and brutal austerity of the real Tories who followed on from Blair. (more…)
If you get a spam email, simply forward it to sp@mnesty.com, and Spamnesty will strip your email address, pretend it's a real person and reply to the email. Just remember to strip out any personal information from the body of the email, as it will be used so the reply looks more legitimate. That way, the spammer will start talking to a bot, and hopefully waste some time there instead of spending it on a real victim. Meanwhile, Spamnesty will send you an email with a link to the conversation, so you can watch it unfold live!
The conversations are indeed posted live, and some are quite funny. It's fascinating how obvious it is when a spammer switches from their own bot to giving a human response, and satisfying to see them fooled.
Have you met Lenny?
Derek DeBrosse, a lawyer specializing in defending gun owners who get in trouble, has interesting advice for those who bear arms: don't carry a pink gun, and definitely don't carry a gun with the Punisher logo on it. Why? Because "the jury is going to see it."
Kind of obvious, when you think about it.
Erica Garner, the daughter of police brutality victim Eric Garner, died early Saturday aged 27. Inspired to activism by her father's killing, she suffered a massive heart attack on Christmas Eve and fell into a coma. ABC News:
Garner's official Twitter account, run by her family and friends since she became ill, asked that she be remembered as a mother, daughter, sister and aunt with a heart "bigger than the world."
Eric Garner was choked to death by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who had attempted an illegal chokehold while arresting Garner for selling untaxed cigarettes. Pantaleo was not charged with a crime despite the death being ruled a homicide, and video of the attack being recorded by a bystander. The NYPD settled the family's lawsuit for $5.9m to avoid a civil trial.
https://twitter.com/NPR/status/947119016296046592
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/947112573899563009
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/947156400958005254
https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/947150195162263552
Photo: The Root
Sometimes I think I've reached the end of the internet, you know, that I've simply "seen it all." Then a video of a humans dressed as sheep -- hunchbacked and bleating, no less -- pops up and I know there's plenty in this world left to surprise me.
This absolutely splendid "human-sheep shepherding" was performed by Toronto's Les Moutons, which is a special troupe within the CORPUS dance project.
Its description is as follows:
Reality meets fantasy in this wordless live installation that recreates a bucolic country scene in a typical urban setting. Travel to a strange & hilarious universe as CORPUS takes you through a carefully studied, surrealistic overview of sheep behaviour. Meet Julie, Marie-louise, Bernadette and César, 3 healthy ewes and a young ram. Routine activities include: shearing, feeding, milking and many more... This truly innovative performance twists reality in surprising ways and takes audience interaction to new heights!
To take a closer look at this mutton madness AND to see an awesome "sheep shearing," watch this performance of Les Moutons: https://youtu.be/CC2Qd3isCuA (reddit)
I'm so utterly charmed by these intricately-cut paper dresses by Ukranian artist Eugenia Zoloto (and, really, all her work). She has a few of these kirigami pretties up for sale on Etsy, starting at $250.
photos via Eugenia Zoloto
I replaced .@realDonaldTrump with his Disney animatronic figure and honestly, it's an improvement pic.twitter.com/o0G12K22bH
— Born Miserable (@bornmiserable) December 29, 2017
Twitter user @bornmiserable is putting their photoshopping skills to good use.
The $77 Pizzacraft PC0601 Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven is a clever design: it's a stovetop oven that has a large thermal mass (thanks to a cordierite pizza stone) and other good thermal properties, allowing it to hit 600F in 10 minutes of pre-heating on your gas burner; it gets top marks in Wired's pizza gadget guide, too.
The web blew up at the same time as the Reagan/Clinton/Bush financial bombs were detonating, leading to a huge private equity bubble in which super-wealthy Americans used debt financing and other forms of financial engineering to buy out successful companies, then hollowed them out, selling off their real-estate and plant, loading them up with debt, and raiding their reserve funds. (more…)
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani campaigned for re-election last year on a reform platform, and in the wake of his successful campaign, the police in the Iranian capital of Tehran have notified women that failures to adhere to the country's brutal religious dress-code will be treated as civil offenses and punished with fines, not jail sentences. (more…)
The early days of the Chinese national internet strategy were dominated by the 50-Cent Army, so-called because they were reputed to be paid 0.5 RMB for ever patriotic message they posted to social media; but as the volume of quackspeak astroturfing rose, the army's composition changed to patriotic government employees putting in extra time off the clock to support their country. (more…)
Until the GOP tax plan came along, rich people who donated to religious schools only get partial tax write-offs for their gifts, because the constitutional principle of separation of church and state obliged them to use special scholarship funds that were not under direct state control. (more…)
Eight of Trump's 17 cabinet secretaries do not release any information about their travel schedules -- a standard practice under the Obama and GW Bush administrations; 4 others only release incomplete, "sporadic" information; Treasury only started releasing Munichin's schedule in November and six departments illegally withhold details on who their cabinet secretaries meet with (two released some information after being sued). (more…)
Swatting is the practice of tricking police SWAT teams into storming your victim's home by phoning in fake hostage situations; it's especially prominent among cybercriminals, gamers and was a favored tactic of Gamergater trolls. (more…)
Google has long maintained that it must keep the workings of its search and ad-placement algorithms a secret, lest they provide a roadmap to the kinds of bad actors who'd like tweak the results and give their bad ideas (or sleazy products) pride of placement on its pages. (more…)
I chanced upon an ancient backup of my RSS feed subscriptions, a cold hard stone of data from my time at Wired in the mid-2000s. The last-modified date on the file is December 2007. I wiped my feeds upon coming to Boing Boing thenabouts: a fresh start and a new perspective.
What I found, over 212 mostly-defunct sites, is a time capsule of web culture from a bygone age—albeit one tailored to the professional purpose of cranking out blog posts about consumer electronics a decade ago. It's not a picture of a wonderful time before all the horrors of Facebook and Twitter set in. This place is not a place of honor. No highly-esteemed deed is commemorated here. But perhaps some of you might like a quick tour, all the same. (more…)
UK Etsy seller Retromend (who specialise in vintage VW-related gifts) sell this Stranger Things-themed Upside Down doormat (coir fibers with rubber backing) for £20/USD27. (via Geeky Merch)
A friend asked me to follow the flow, and write this hashtag #metoo. Cavafi, the Greek poet who lived all his life by the sea and wrote about everything but the sea, before dying he said: Let me too say something about the sea. (more…)
Jay Malsky knew he'd never get close enough to Donald Trump to heckle him in person, so he did the next best thing, chanting "LOCK HIM UP, LOCK HIM UP" when the Trumpbot took the stage at Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents. (more…)
Zephyr Teachout's (previously) 2014 book Corruption in America is an incredibly important, timely book about the way that American policy and politics have been distorted by money, something that's gotten steadily worse as it is supercharged by (and supercharges) wealth inequality. (more…)
Alice Maz was part of a small group of players who came to have near-total mastery over the internal economy of a popular Minecraft; Maz describes how her early fascination with the mechanics of complex multiplayer games carried over into an interest in economics and games, and that let her become a virtuoso player, and brilliant thinker, about games and economics. (more…)
Mr Bopposov, who is a cattle farmer, likes to make art out of the dung from his animals to attract visitors during the long Siberian winter. It is not the first time that he has created art to mark the Chinese New Year.
This appears to be an old photo doing the festive rounds again; I can find copies from at least 2013. The photo is credited to Narrya Bopposova (with an 'a') and appears to have been published by RIA Novosti, a now-defunct Russian news agency. [via]
Marvel is launching a website that allows visitors to create their own comics using the company's pantheon of famous characters. They insist, however, that certain topics not be addressed: social issues, death, farts, and so forth. You wonder: if the trap is so obvious, why walk into it?
Here are some highlights from the very long list of no-no’s:
“Content that could frighten or upset young children or the parents of young children.”
Prescription drugs or over-the-counter medication, vitamins, and dietary supplements.
Contraceptives
“Suggestive or revealing images,” including “bare midriffs”
“Sensationalism,” which is not defined but elucidated with the examples “killer bees, gossip, aliens, scandal, etc.”
“Obscenity, bad or offensive language” or “proxies for bad or offensive language.” E.g. no “X@#%!”
“Noises related to bodily functions.”
No politics, including “alternative lifestyle advocacies”
Death
“Misleading language”
“A copy or parody of current or past Marvel advertising creative”
Any “controversial topics,” including “social issues”
Double entendres
Any amusement parks that aren’t Disney amusement parks
Any movie studios that aren’t “affiliated with Marvel”
Guns
I can't wait to play with this.
https://twitter.com/alexdecampi/status/946554968504438798
The web came of age with no-holds-barred finance capitalism, so it's hard to decide which of the last twenty years' worth of changes are the result of the tech industry, or of financialization, or a toxic mix of both. (more…)
Church Clarity set out to report the policies and structure of America's churches, a project doomed to anger Christians. It results in "three explosive insights," which are fairly easy to guess: evangelical churches are universally hostile to LBGTQ people, 93% are led by white pastors, and 99% by men.
“Part of the reason we chose to release this now is because the New Year is a time when people decide to reengage with religion by attending church,” said Church Clarity’s co-founder Tim Schraeder. “As people of faith commit to new resolutions, we wanted to set them up for success by helping them make the most informed decision.”
Church Clarity’s leaders added that their decision to analyze race and gender in addition to sexuality also hints at the organization’s expanding mission. In the future, they plan to also report on race and gender inclusion among church leadership. So this is not the first time Church Clarity has created a stir, and neither will it be the last.
The trailer-trash myth took off after World War II, when soldiers coming back from the war were faced with a housing shortage. Much of the travel-trailer and mobile-home industry got its jumpstart at that time. Confronting the housing situation, a lot of returning servicemen chose to move into RVs and mobile homes, at least for the short-term. It’s unfortunate that our veterans were also then associated with this notion of being “trailer trash.” In the ’40s, people living in “regular” homes also looked upon those in RVs and mobile homes as “trailer trash” because they had to go to the outhouse or the campground wash facilities just to use the toilet. We have hundreds of postcards in our trailer-themed collection just about outhouses.
Trailers are stigmatized because the poor can afford them, and when the first generation of Tiny House dwellers start selling up in earnest, Tiny Houses will be stigmatized too.
This quiet genius from "SardineWhiskers" returns the sinister potential to Nintendo's love of midcentury charm. Make musak grim again!
Charlie Stross's keynote at the 34th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg is entitled "Dude, you broke the Future!" and it's an excellent, Strossian look at the future we're barelling towards, best understood by a critical examination of the past we've just gone through. (more…)
Softbank's bid to buy Uber shares based on a valuation 30% lower than the company rated in its last round has been largely successful, with about 15-20% of shares changing hands at that price. (more…)
The Republican tax plan -- more than a 1,000 pages covered in last-minute scribbled annotations and pastebombs, passed without any substantial debate or analysis -- is a fucking mess. (more…)
Extreme housing prices in California -- driven by a combination of speculation, favorable legal/tax positions for landlords, foreclosures after the 2008 crisis, and an unwillingness to build public housing -- has created vast homeless encampments, but there's a less visible side to the crisis: working people in "good jobs" who have to live in their cars. (more…)
Trump won the election by welding together a coalition of racist rich people who wanted tax breaks and racist poor people who'd been living in Fox-induced terror for decades and believed the world was ending and thought that Trump would at least make brown people and liberals as miserable as they were on the way to total collapse. (more…)
When a billionaire Koch heir announces that he's taking a break from suing ex-fiancees to give back their engagement rings and playing tennis at Mar-a-Largo in order to produce designer shirts covered in money-bags, it's worth asking: did capitalism turn this guy into a useless asshole, or does capitalism find the useless assholes and shower them with money? (more…)
If you want to just shut yer mouth and let them think it, go to page 1933.
If you want to engage the dangerous mix of political obsession and ignorance, go to page 1789.
Posted by one Noah Nicholls to YouTube with the title "I was in a wedding and smashed my face," this video depicts the perfect ceremony. [via Reddit]
Britain's largest supermarket chain has refunded customers who said the Tesco turkeys tasted like they were soaked in bleach or were rotten.
https://twitter.com/Kirsten_Shore/status/945461819681968129
Among them was events manager Kirsten Shore, from Stafford. The 29-year-old was hosting eight guests alongside husband Dan. Her mother had bought and prepared the turkey which was kept in the fridge until it was cooked. She said it wrecked the meal, which had cost £250, and made guests sick. She took to Twitter to contact Tesco. Image caption Events manger Kirsten was one of a number of people to take to Twitter to complain about Tesco turkeys
She said: "I took a mouthful of turkey and spat it out. It tasted of bleach and everyone else realised the reason everything was a bit funny was because the gravy was made from the giblets.
