The Latest from Boing Boing

Easy to Make Solenoid Engine I want to make one of these. Read the rest... ELO's "The Whale," with whales "The Whale" is one of the spaciest tracks on Electric Light Orchestra's Out of the Blue, an already very spacy album. Read the rest... Book of seashell scans bound in a seashell Lauren Bishop made an "artist's book" of scans of seashells she found in Florida, bound inside a scallop shell. It's beautiful. (via Ellen Kushner) Read the rest... Breville One-Touch Tea Maker brews perfect tea every time It is amazing how different the same tea tastes when you have the ability to consistently experiment with the brewing temperature and steeping time. Read the rest... Magnificent structures built by architects from the animal kingdom If you can photograph the architecture of the original builders in the animal kingdom with the same professional clarity and precision used to photograph human architecture, you’ll see that the work of animals stands up to anything we’ve made in our cities. Read the rest... How to Make Cuban Coffee Making Cuban coffee is an art that's passed down jittery generations. And now you can do it too.I've been making coffee like this for the last thirteen years. Read the rest... Sunrise, Muir Beach Pretty morning. Read the rest... Music: "If I Only Had A Brain," MC 900 Ft. Jesus (1994) "If I had a clue, would I still be here with you?" Read the rest... News organizations and Digital Security: solutions to surveillance post-Snowden I'm in Washington, D.C. today with the Freedom of the Press Foundation for a day-long event, "News Organizations and Digital Security, Solutions to Surveillance Post-Snowden." Heavy hitters are present, talking about encryption and security in real-world practice--including including Dana Priest, investigative reporter, Washington Post; James Risen, investigative reporter, New York Times; Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist and senior policy analyst, ACLU; Julia Angwin, investigative reporter, ProPublica; all of The Intercept's security team and others. Read the rest... Photos of Studio 54 (1978-1980) Photographer Tod Papageorge's new book Studio 54 documents the infamous 1970s New York City disco during its coke and boogie-fueled heyday. Read the rest... The Manic Pixel Art of Paul Robertson Paul Robertson's pixel art comes from a profane electric neon universe, Miyamoto on mushrooms. Hyper-kinetic and psychedelic, if you stare too long you may never come back.Read the rest... Bruce Springsteen plays "Something in the Night" live in Oakland An enterprising fan of The Boss stitched together different clips of Bruce and the E Street Band at an Oakland concert performing "Something in the Night," a less often played cut from Darkness on the Edge of Town. Read the rest... Loch Ness Log photographed Photographer Jonathan Bright may have snapped the clearest picture yet of the legendary Loch Ness Log, a mythical column of cellulose and lignin said to lurk amid the Scottish lake's waves. Scientists, however, have poured cold water on the sighting, saying that the indistinct form is clearly just a plesiosaurus. Read the rest... Cannibal "tries to eat woman" Police in Wales confronted a man who was "trying to eat the eyeball and face of a woman". He was tased but became unresponsive; both the man and the victim were subsequently pronounced dead. Read the rest... The snacking, sassy heroism of Madeleine Flores's Help Us Great Warrior In the webcomic Help Us Great Warrior, a green blob with a bowtie quips quips her way through a savage world of swords, magic, and monsters. Read the rest... Study: wind turbine noise annoying Though the noise of wind turbines has no measurable effect on illness or chronic disease, Health Canada confirms that "The louder the noise was, the more people reported being very or extremely annoyed." Read the rest... Cat vs Owl Frank Platt via Arbroath. Read the rest... Biscuit Monster visits the UK with John Oliver Sesame Street via io9 Read the rest... Inside Nature's Giants: The Giant Squid In this episode of the PBS documentary series, a team of scientists dissect and examine one of the ocean's rarest creatures: Architeuthis, the giant squid. Read the rest... History of pop music ads Over at Cuepoint, a fascinating study of vintage print ads for popular music like this one from the late 1960s, pitching far out avant-classical recordings by Terry Riley, Charles Ives, Edgar Varese, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Walter (now Wendy) Carlos. Read the rest... Nerd is not a tribe "By imagining nerds as a race of their own," writes Christopher Tan in The New Inquiry, "Silicon Valley tries to disguise its white supremacy." Read the rest... POLLYANNA: An Animated Earthbound Tribute This video is an exquisitely detailed homage to the cult Super Nintendo RPG Earthbound, Mr. Saturns and all. Earthbound is in what some would consider the holy trinity of the 16-bit generation's roleplaying games, along with Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. Read the rest... How love and integrity made Welcome to Night Vale a massive success To celebrate the release of my new book, Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age, I've invited some of my favorite creators and thinkers to write about their philosophy on the arts and the Internet. Today, Jeffrey Cranor, co-writer of the amazing Welcome to Night Vale, shares the secret of his success. -Cory Read the rest... New Net Neutrality tool connects you directly to the phone of senior White House staffers Did Obama Break the Net? -- from the good people at Demand Progress and Fight for the Future. Just enter your phone number and a few seconds later you'll get a call that connects you to the direct line of a senior White House or Commerce Department staffer, so that you can discuss your disappointment with the Obama-appointed FCC chair's proposal to allow the cable companies he used to shill for to engage in rampant Cable Company Fuckery. Did Obama Break the Net? (Thanks, David!) Read the rest... The military training camp at Stonehenge During World War I, the largest military training ground on Earth was located at Stonehenge.Learn about that curious bit of military and monoliths history in this BBC News video with English Heritage's Senior Historian Paul Pattison. Read the rest... Gerrymanderers and the Dark Art of Redistricting The Republican Party is in control of both the House and Senate, and the redrawing of Congressional districts is one of the tools that led America to its current fate. Read the rest... BREAKING: Mark Frauenfelder's cat Louis likes to sleep on a doll bed It's not a circle. But it'll do. Read the rest... Fighting Ebola through music: Sierra Leone's Jimmy B and “Ebola 4 Go” In his music video "Ebola 4 Go", Sierra Leone music star Jimmy Yeanie Bangura, aka “Jimmy B,” pays homage to the fight against Ebola. Read the rest... 90 Year Old Man Faces Jail Time for Feeding Florida's Homeless Ninety year old homeless advocate Arnold Abbot and a pair of clergymen among others were cited by Fort Lauderdale police for violating the city's newly enacted food sharing ordinance, which aims to criminalize distributing meals to the poor and dispossessed. Read the rest... Lizzy Caplan sings "You Don't Know Me" In this clip from the first season of Showtime drama Masters of Sex, Freaks and Geeks and Party Down actor Lizzy Caplan sings a cover of the tune most popularized by Ray Charles. Read the rest...