The Latest from Boing Boing

An even better Fitbit, the Charge HR I've been a regular Fitbit user for years. The new Charge HR is the best, most complete tracker I've tried. I started with the Ultra, weigh myself daily on an Aria and recently wore the Flex for almost 2 years. Read the rest... The pleasures and sorrows of micro-apartment living I think we can take this small-living-space obsession to the next level Read the rest... Alien life form creates replica of parking meter Last year, redditor Crispy-Snax sounded the warning of the invasion of the parking meter snatchers, but people are still in denial. Read the rest... Beat Blox: wonderful DIY electronic musical instrument Per Holmquist's Beat Blox is a delightful electronic musical instrument where you control the sound by placing wooden blocks on turntables and spinning them. Read the rest... Gent removes his nose to look like Red Skull comic book villain Henry Damon (left), a 37-year-old resident of Caracas, Venezuela, had the tip of his nose surgically removed to look like Red Skull (right), the WWII Nazi comic book villain. Damon also got face implants and tattoos to perfect the look. Read the rest... Megadeth lead guitarist Marty Friedman explains how he taught himself Japanese Yeah, yeah, we've all seen This is Spinal Tap; we've all laughed at its depiction of Japan as the last place where washed-up Western rockers can cash in. Read the rest... New alloy of iron and aluminium as good as titanium, at a tenth of the cost Titanium alloys are lightweight, strong, crack-resistant, and fatigue-resistant. This makes them useful in aerospace applications. Unfortunately Titanium is also expensive - around $3 a pound. Read the rest... Gorgeous portraits of owls The National Audobon Society's magazine has a gorgeous feature on photographer Brad Wilson's incredible portraits of owls of all kinds. "It’s hard to get animals to look at you like humans do,” he says. Read the rest... If privacy was really dead, would everyone be trying so hard to kill it? A reader writes, "SF author Peter Watts writes about the ever-encroaching assault on our privacy and how relocating their arguments from the Internet to meatspace illustrates how ridiculous they are, and reasons to be cheerful because of the governments of the 'free world''s determination to eliminate the last shreds of our privacy." Which leads to a simple metric I use to assess the claims put forth by wannabe surveillers: simply relocate the argument from cyber- to meatspace, and see how it holds up. Read the rest... Images of nearly extinct tribal dress, customs and celebrations in Africa One of my favorite books for reference and inspiration remains the two-volume visual feast entitled African Ceremonies. But it is huge and expensive. Read the rest... WATCH: 1970s Los Angeles in full-color glory and shame Despite having died more than a quarter-century ago, architectural historian Reyner Banham remains as cited an interpreter of Los Angeles as Jonathan Gold. Read the rest... DIY Millennium Falcon drone Olivier C's amazing Millennium Falcon custom drone. Below, his design for the Tie Fighter drone in-the-works. "Radio-Controlled Millennium Falcon" (Reddit) Olivier_C's blog (RC Groups) Read the rest... Brilliant Snoopy graffiti Provenance unknown. (via Wooster Collective) Read the rest... Why you should celebrate your child's first lie: the great ideas of Kim Young-ha Most of us have art in our heads we'd like to make in reality. Many of us would like to write novels. Kim breaks down the reasons why we don't. Read the rest... Leather wristband ruler iLoveHandles' Wrist Ruler is a leather wristband embossed with inch and centimeter marks. Similar to but less permanent than Mikey Sklar's famed forearm ruler tattoo below. Read the rest... Home movie of a Chicago Cubs game in 1938 Baseball fan Jacob Glick shot this footage of a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field in 1938. His daughter Diane and her husband donated the footage and nearly 100 other reels shot by their fathers between 1934 and 1978 to the Chicago Film Archives. Read the rest... Kickstarting a new life for out-of-print sf classics Once again, Brooklyn's wonderful sf bookstore Singularity & Co is running a Kickstarter drive to research and acquire the rights to lost, brilliant science fiction classics, convert them to ebooks, and release them as free or low-cost ebooks (the last campaign rescued 36 books!). Read the rest... Meet Dashan, the China-based Canadian master of Mandarin so many expats love to hate Just look at that guy's grin. Read the rest... An iceberg's underbelly This is the otherworldly underside of an iceberg in Antarctica, photographed by Alex Cornell, a passenger on a National Geographic-operated tour of the region. Read the rest... Words in the mouth: device lets you hear with your tongue Researchers at Colorado State University are mapping human tongues in hopes of teaching the tongue to hear with a new device. Read the rest... Alan Turing's lost notes discovered as crumpled insulation in Bletchley Park huts After the war ended, Churchill ordered all of Bletchley's work -- the computers, the notebooks -- destroyed, but some of Alan Turing's notes were discovered between the walls of Hut 6 during a recent renovation, and are now on display at Bletchley Park. Read the rest... GOP senator: abolish hand-washing regulations in restaurants Instead of mandating that restaurant employees wash their hands between wiping their asses and making your food, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) says the state should only require them to advise the public of any handwashing policies in place. Read the rest... Obama's empty surveillance promises A year after the president's promise to rein in warrantless, illegal mass surveillance, he's revealed a plan that does nothing to fix the most egregious elements of American spying. Read the rest... 1993 MTV video of me and Billy Idol In 1993 Billy Idol hired me to design his album cover, singles covers, and video boxes, and write his PR bio and advertising copy for his Cyberpunk CD and videos. Read the rest... Pat Boone reveals Obama's plan to "release all murderers" In his column for WND, Teenage singing sensation Pat Boone revealed President Obama's diabolical plan to "release all murderers" from prison. Read the rest... Silk Road trial verdict: Ross Ulbricht found guilty on all counts Ulbricht faces a possible maximum sentence of life in prison. Read the rest... Portraits of every U.S. vice president in history but with an octopus on their head If you want to succeed in publishing, write a biography of an American president. They sell. If you want to succeed in visual art, draw a portrait of an American vice president — with an octopus on his head. Read the rest... Photos of bugs and stuff with my USB microscope I'm having a lot of fun with this thing. Here are some images I've captured so far. Read the rest... Philly TSA supervisor Charles Kieser sent a traveller to jail for asking to file a complaint After sending Roger Vanderklok for jail for the audacity of asking to file a complaint, Philadelphia International Airport TSA supervisor Charles Kieser then lied about what happened on the stand in court. Read the rest... Wikipedian corrects 15,000+ instances of "comprised of" Bryan "Griaffedata" Henderson is on a mission to change every instance of "comprised of" to "composed of" or "consists of" -- and he's written a manifesto on the subject. Read the rest...