The Latest from Boing Boing

Cigar Box Guitars: the ultimate DIY guide for makers and players As one of the founders of MAKE magazine, I’ve made quite a few physical objects. Nothing has been more fun than making guitars out of cigar boxes. Read the rest... Music: "30 Days In The Hole," Humble Pie (1972) Durban poison may indeed be the solution for urban noise. Read the rest... Interviews with active people in their 80s and 90s NYT Magazine has short interviews with a bunch of very old people who are still going full steam ahead. Inspiring, and beautifully photographed by Erik Madigan Heck. Read the rest... Blogville, a virtual world where you can read blogs Philipp writes, "In Blogville, you can read blogs... including Boing Boing! This is part of Manyland, the browser-based MMO universe where you can draw and script anything to build the world." Read the rest... City maps with streets colored by orientation LA and Chicago are most uniform; San Francisco and New York look like patchwork;London and Tokyo look like explosions in a fuzz factory. [Datapointed via JWZ] Read the rest... Denim maintenance thread A raw denim aficionado, sick of trying to clean his deathless jeans by freezing them or washing them in seawater, developed an antibacterial odor neutralizer especially made for the blend of sweat, grime and bacteria found in pants. Please, wash your jeans. Read the rest... 10 years ago, a TV flub flattened a career How a 'lip-sync debacle" (the bungled, recrimination-filled aftermath moreso than the even itself)ended Ashlee Simpson's career and became a metaphor for how modern media, not merely piracy, threw nails into the music industry's prefab production line. Read the rest... Kickstarting a new edition of the classic game Paranoia Eric writes, "Paranoia is a cult classic tabletop roleplaying game that has sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, won the Best Role Playing Game of the Year award, and been inducted into the Origins Award Hall of Fame." Paranoia is light-hearted game of terror, death, bureaucracies, mad scientists, mutants, dangerous weapons, and insane robots, which encourages players to lie, to cheat, and backstab each other at every turn. Read the rest... King Tut's maladies and shortened life attributed to incest Scientists have performed a "virtual autopsy" of King Tut using a 3D model based on more than 2000 digital scans. The model has revealed many previously unrecognized congenital deformities, including a sizable overbite, skewed face, and malformed hips. Read the rest... WATCH: Slow Loris eating a rice ball Watching this classic video of Kinako, born in a Japanese pet shop, eating a rice ball is a delightful way to start my Friday. Read the rest... Interview with my wonderfully eccentric friend, Rick Rosner, parts 2 and 3 In-Sight has published parts two and three of a massive six-part interview with Rick Rosner, my high school friend who went to high school for a decade, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, was the subject of an Errol Morris documentary, and became a writer for Jimmy Kimmel. Read the rest... Disney Princesses Are My (Imperfect) Feminist Role Models With the recent success of Frozen and the anticipation of Moana, Caroline Siede examines the power of the Disney princess. Read the rest... Twitpic to vanish, taking 800 million images with it Imagine you live in a big town, in the pre-internet era. For years, a local newspaper has provided a neat service: it'll process your photos, so long as you let it publish them and keep the prints in its permanent archive. Read the rest... WATCH: Burmese cats return from brink of extinction in Myanmar One of the casualties of Myanmar's 1962 coup was the Burmese cat, which had to be repatriated from from foreign pedigreed stock about ten years ago. Read the rest... UK Tories propose life sentences for using a computer to "damage the economy" Under a proposed "computer crime bill," if you use a computer in the commission of an offense that damages "national security, human welfare, the economy or the environment" you could face a life sentence. Read the rest... WATCH: Sugar in liquid nitrogen glows when exposed to UV light Mikhail Svarichevsky demonstrates an interesting phenomenon: supercooled sugarcubes briefly glow green when exposed to UV light. Don't tell Insane Clown Posse about this baffling miracle.Read the rest... WATCH: Sharks' shoreline feeding frenzy on school of fish Fisherman Donnie Griggs captured the scene at North Carolina's Cape Lookout National Seashore. Below is a similar frenzy in the Bahamas. Read the rest... Interactive map: World population by latitude and longitude André Christoffer Andersen created this nifty interactive map that estimates world population at any coordinate. Andersen was inspired by Bill Rankin's data visualizations. Read the rest... U.S. senator to Internet providers: promise me you'll commit to Net Neutrality The creation of so-called “fast lanes“ on the internet “would destroy everything that has made it one of the greatest innovations in human history,” wrote Patrick Leahy (D-VT). Read the rest... “Kitty help,” a photo shared in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool Nicholas Longtin shares this photo of “A dirty farm cat reaching for help while in the clutches of a small child” in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool. Read the rest... Portraits + introduced organisms = "Impermanence" by Seung-Hwan Oh South Korean artist Seung-Hwan Oh's "Impermanence" depicts "the visual result of the symbiosis between film matter and organic matter." He takes developed portrait photos and immerses them in water containing microbes, sometimes for a year or more. Read the rest... Brad Pitt, Louis C.K., and Zach Galifianakis on a most awesome episode of Between Two Ferns Wait for the part where Brad Pitt spits gum at Zach Galifianakis. I love this webshow. Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: Brad Pitt from Zach Galifianakis Read the rest... Dark drawings by Kristofer Porter We're loving these pen and ink sketches by the Brooklyn-based artist. Read the rest... Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, in 20 minutes Piketty's bestselling economics book is seismic, a vital infusion of data into the ideological debate over economics -- but it's also 700 pages long. Read the rest... 60-ton underwater sculpture to become reef home for tropical fish Eco-sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor's latest work, "Ocean Atlas" is inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Titan Atlas who supported the weight of the heavens on his back. Read the rest... Gareth Branwyn interviewed by Leo Laporte Great fun to watch our pal Gareth Branwyn (senior editor of bOING bOING when it was a zine) interviewed by Leo Laporte on the most recent episode of Triangulation. Read the rest... EFF launches a new version of Surveillance Self-Defense Hugh from the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes, "We're thrilled to announce the relaunch of Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD), our guide to defending yourself and your friends from digital surveillance by using encryption tools and developing appropriate privacy and security practices. Read the rest... A chair that spills its guts Cao Hui, “Visual Temperature — Sofa,” 2008. Mixed Materials: Resin, Fiber, etc. 98x106x108 cm. [via] Read the rest... Chocolate replicas of Jessica Joslin’s animal bone sculpture Jessica Joslin collaborated with Annabel de Vetten-Peterson of Conjurer's Kitchen to make a delicious Belgian chocolate replica of her sculpture, “Morrigan.” Handmade from white chocolate, this exquisite piece of edible art comes beautifully packaged in a black box with a small print of the original sculpture. Read the rest... Hungary's Internet tax arouses mass opposition The economically precarious country has a remarkably low rate of corporate tax, and makes up the difference with high, regressive consumption taxes, including the one of the highest rates of VAT in Europe. Read the rest...