The Latest from Boing Boing

What gall these parasitic wasps have Lazy parasitic wasps make trees build homes for their larvae. "What Gall! The Crazy Cribs of Parasitic Wasps" (KQED) Read the rest... Home-sprucing tips A cheap DIY list to make home a little more welcoming. [Popsugar] Read the rest... Uber investor and noted dingdong Ashton Kutcher: what's so bad about investigating “shady journalist” [sic] BREAKING: Ashton Kutcher, an actor with 16.5 million Twitter followers who is also an investor in Uber, said something dumb on Twitter today. Read the rest... Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor As with other books from DK, Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor is filled with high quality photographs along with neatly organized informative captions. Read the rest... Uber launches internal investigation over privacy violation involving Buzzfeed reporter Buzzfeed: “Uber said Tuesday that it is investigating its top New York executive for tracking a BuzzFeed News reporter without her permission in violation of what the transit giant says has long been its privacy policy.” Read the rest... Come ask me questions on IO9! I'm doing a live Q&A on IO9 about my book Information Doesn't Want to Be Free at 1PM eastern/10AM Pacific today -- come on along! Read the rest... Uber can track your one-night stands Uber's bad PR just got worse. A few years ago, Uber posted a blog entry titled "Rides of Glory." Uber searched its data, looking for anyone who took an Uber between 10pm and 4am on a Friday or Saturday night. Read the rest... Scratch-built, incredibly detailed Millennium Falcon Thomas Richner spent more than 140 hours scratch-building a spectacularly detailed cardboard model of Star Wars's Millennium Falcon, working with scrap cardboard boxes and then shooting his model on a green-screen and compositing onto backgrounds from the movies. Read the rest... WATCH: Inside the gay wing of LA Men's Central Jail Ani Ucar of LA Weekly visits the gay wing of LA Men's Central Jail. It's no fun to be in jail, but the gay wing looks better than being in the general population. Read the rest... Uber updates logo to reflect new attitude When you've lost John Hodgman, you've lost America. Parody of Uber logo by Boing Boing BBS member M_dub. Read the rest... World's oldest photograph, and more cool "oldest" objects Smithsonian posted a gallery of "ten of the world's oldest everyday objects," including the above photo by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce from 1826 or 1827, thought to be the oldest surviving photograph. Read the rest... Used Aliens, The Galactic Pool Comedy Adventures Book 1 M. Sid Kelly's Used Aliens is a fantastic, hilarious tour of what can go wrong when prospecting planets for admission to the Galactic Pool. Read the rest... Air traffic porn from the UK skies Hot on the heels of their hit visualizations Europe 24 and North Atlantic Skies, air traffic management firm NATS returns with "UK 24 – your guided tour to some of what makes UK aviation work." Read the rest... Router for gamers lets you filter games by distance The forthcoming Netduma router has a geofilter that lets you restrict the games you join by distance, so you only play against nearby gamers, eliminating a leading cause of lag. Read the rest... HEADCON '14: proceedings of a brainy gathering of social scientists Over at Edge.org, evidence of HEADCON '14, legendary book agent, cultural impresario, and Boing Boing pal John Brockman's recent gathering of cutting-edge social scientists exploring the social, moral, and emotional brain. Read the rest... The trippiest room in Las Vegas Over at Medium, Eric Meltzer writes about temporarily destroying his depth perception in Akhob, James Turrell's Ganzfeld light installation tucked away on the top floor of the massive Louis Vuitton store in Las Vegas. Read the rest... Luxury South African safari train where work is forbidden The 3-day, $2750/person Rovos Rail train safari from Pretoria to Durban is pulled by 1930s steam trains; features giant, luxurious staterooms with their own bathtubs; offers high tea; and, true to its Edwardian time-warp, passengers are prohibited from working in public areas, lest this break the atmosphere of idle wealth and privilege. Read the rest... Paramahansa Yogananda, and the legacy of India’s mission to enlighten America When Steve Jobs departed the world, he had One Last Thing for those who attended his memorial service — a copy of Autobiography of Yogi by the Hindu guru Paramhansa Yogananda, the man who introduced America to yoga and meditation. It wasn’t as paradoxical of a gift as it might have seemed. By Jason Louv Read the rest... TOM THE DANCING BUG - Bob Buys Soup. You Won't Believe What Happens Next. Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Bob has adventure involving New England Clam Chowder.Read the rest... Unpublished Gor Books Rob Beschizza presents these delightful and unexpected finds in the long-running saga of female humiliation and slavery. Read the rest... Molly Crabapple animation on the lessons Ferguson teaches us about policing in America Molly Crabapple writes, "On August 9th, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot a black teenager named Mike Brown. Since then, the city has been protesting. Read the rest... TRAITORS Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Barrasso (R-WY), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coats (R-IN), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Flake (R-AZ), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Hoeven (R-ND), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (R-WI), Kirk (R-IL), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Moran (R-KS), Nelson (D-FL), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Vitter (R-LA), Wicker (R-MS). Read the rest... How to fold the world-record-setting paper airplane "Suzanne" Here's John M Collins narrating the technique he used to create "Suzanne," his world-championship-winning paper airplane, which set a distance record in 2012 -- the whole thing, along with many more super-advanced paper aviation techniques are laid out in his book, The New World Champion Paper Airplane Book: Featuring the World Record-Breaking Design, with Tear-Out Planes to Fold and Fly. Read the rest... Superman branding iron The $34, 3D printed branding iron snaps onto a standard Bic lighter and is perfect for pretending that you are a tiny, vain Superman whose heat-vision is used to tag random burnables with your awesome graffiti mark (please do not use this on animals or non-consenting humans). (via Geeky Merch) Read the rest... WATCH: Star trails and stone trails merge in beautiful Arizona timelapse, “Wavelight” Star Trails and Rock Trails Collide at Arizona's legendary WAVE in this new timelapse film by Gavin Heffernan. Read the rest... 1922 cutaway drawing of the Washington Evening Star Building Seen at full size, this hand-drawn cutaway of the Historic Landmark building is a wonderful way to visualize how the building was designed to convert people, information, power and water into newspapers. This building is an organism for making newspapers [Kottke] Read the rest... Uber driver to cancer patient: you deserved cancer and are "an animal" What's as bad or worse than threatening journalists whose stories you don't like? Threatening cancer patients on their way home from radiation. Read the rest... Director Lexi Alexander explains why she sides with pirates The actor, writer, producer, director, and martial artist Lexi Alexander drew fire for a cracking blog post explaining why she support copyright reform; even better than the post is her interview with Torrentfreak, where she explains what brought her to write it: TF: What’s your main motivation to support file-sharing and copyright reform?? Read the rest... Brian Ewing show at Chicago's Galerie F Brian Ewing's delightful, monstrous art has been a regular feature on Boing Boing, and there's a ton of new work to be seen at Galerie F in Chicago this month. Read the rest... Whatsapp integrates Moxie Marlinspike's Textsecure end-to-end crypto It's the largest-ever deployment of end-to-end crypto, and assuming they didn't add any back-doors or make critical errors, this means that hundreds of millions of users can now communicate without being spied upon by governments, crooks, cops, spies or voyeurs. Read the rest...