The Latest from Boing Boing

Standards bodies explain why they think the law should be copyrighted and paywalled Public Resource is being sued for publishing building standards that the public is legally required to follow. These standards were developed by private-sector industry bodies who make millions off of access fees charged to the public. Read the rest... Audiobook memoir of Disney Imagineering legend Rolly Crump: More Cute Stories Jeff sez, "After the success of It's Kind Of A Cute Story, Disney Legend Rolly Crump's memoir, Bamboo Forest Publishing is proud to announce the release of More Cute Stories, Volume 1: Disneyland History (CD/MP3). Read the rest... Free tickets to Boing Boing: Ingenuity, August 18 in San Francisco On Sunday, August 18, Boing Boing: Ingenuity will transform a former Masonic Lodge into a living cabinet of curiosities featuring the likes of Adam Savage, Barn Owl, Seth Shostak, Tom Vanderbilt, Shovelman, Chris Noessel, and many other happy mutants! Read the rest... Some real math on the real risk of shark attacks Shark attack stats: "The real threat is humans. For every one human killed by a shark, there are approximately 25 million sharks killed by humans." About 200 million people go to U.S. Read the rest... Spectacular Haunted Mansion re-creation with Rollercoaster Tycoon This astounding, amazing, spectacularly detailed recreation of the Walt Disney World Haunted Mansion was built using the Rollercaster Tycoon 3 engine by the hoopy froods at Strange and Frightening Sounds, who released it in Jan 2012. Read the rest... Follow Boing Boing on Twitter, Facebook, and dive in to our BBS forums If you like what you read, hear, and watch here on Boing Boing the blog, you'll love us on your favorite social media services, too. Read the rest... Knitting as computation K2G2 -- a wiki for "krafty knerds and geek girls" -- has a marvellous series of posts about "Computational Craft" through which traditional crafting practices, like knitting, are analyzed through the lens of computer science. Read the rest... How America's paint industry escapes responsibility for lead poisoning Mike Mechanic of Mother Jones says, "We're running this piece by Lilly Fowler of FairWarning about how the lead paint industry, whose products are still poisoning kids, mostly poor kids, all over America, has managed to fend off nearly every lawsuit seeking money to help clean up the this mess. Read the rest... A 'Betting Bad' update, a few days before Breaking Bad's final episodes begin As I mentioned here a few weeks ago, Boing Boing video collaborator Joe Sabia created a fun online game for Breaking Bad fans, titled "Betting Bad." The basic idea: you bet on what will happen in the show's final 8 episodes. Read the rest... This Day in Blogging History: Mexico-US unauthorised migration static since 50s; Crafting with junkmail; First location-tracking system for mobile phones One year ago today Mexican-US illegal migration has been largely static since the 1950s: His research is the only rigorous census of Mexican-American illegal immigration flows, and its conclusions are that the US perception of Mexican migration is completely backwards, and that the major immigration problems are the result of bad policy, not changes in volume. Read the rest... HOWTO bake nested, hemispherical cakes Cakecrumbs, who created the amazing Jupiter Cake and Earth Cake, has posted a tutorial (with video) explaining in detail how to bake nested, hemispherical cakes so you can create your own. Read the rest... Margaret Pellegrini, original Oz Munchkin, RIP Margaret Pellegrini, one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz (1939), died today at age 89. Pellegrini was just 16 when she appeared in the film. Read the rest... Terrorism experts: evacuating embassies is "crazy pants," "absurd hyperbole" By an amazing coincidence, the worst terrorist attack that never happened since 9/11 is not happening right now, proving that everyone who was worried about out-of-control NSA spying had lost the plot. Read the rest... Children's choir sings Crystal Castles London's Capital Children's Choir covers "Untrust Us" by lo-fi electronica duo Crystal Castles. Read the rest... Engineered audio in cars The sounds a modern car makes are deliberate, designed, and a deception: the clicking of the turn signal isn't a mechanical tick-tock; it's an MP3 of a mechanical tick-tock, played back through hidden speakers. Read the rest... New York Times editorial board trashes Edward Snowden "What's the Point of a Summit?," asks the New York Times editorial board, when "on top of all the other legitimate grievances with Mr. Read the rest... Check out the latest hand-picked videos in Boing Boing's video archives Some of the most recent video selections you can find on our video archive page: • What would it be like to fall in love with an OS? Read the rest... Monsters of New York Facebook link. Created by Sadi Tekin, who's also on Instagram. Here's a non-Facebook link to a partial gallery of these fanciful photo-illustrations. Read the rest... Crowdfunded mosquito-confusing patch to be sent to Uganda The Kite Patch is the subject of a very successful Indiegogo fundraiser, and holds the promise of a lasting peace between mosquitoes and humans. Read the rest... Kazakhstan's Satanic earthwork This pentagram visible on Google Maps is located on the shore of the Upper Tobol Reservoir in Kazakhstan. It's either an evil etching created by the ancient astronauts who were also Satan's minions, or the outline of a park built in the shape of a star during the Soviet era when that symbol was quite popular. Read the rest... Stephen Fry to David Cameron and IOC: a Russian 2014 Olympics would be a repeat of the 1936 Berlin games Comedian and national treasure Stephen Fry has written an open letter to UK Prime Minister David Cameron and the International Olympic Committee calling on them to move the upcoming Winter Olympics from Russia to another country, specifically, any country in which homosexuality is not criminalized and LGBT people are not violently scapegoated as they are in Russia. Read the rest... Her: Spike Jonez's new film Her is Spike Jonez's forthcoming film about a man who falls in love with Siri, played by Scarlett Johansson. It actually looks quite delightful! Read the rest... Tokyo's "unmanned stores" - honor-system sheds where farmers sell their surplus produce In Japan, farmers sell their blemished, surplus and otherwise unmarketable vegetables in unstaffed, honor-system roadside stalls called "Unmanned stores" ("mujin hanbai"). Read the rest... Revealed: the questing, flexible, ramified business-end of a mosquito Valérie Choumet at Paris's Institut Pasteur anaesthetized a mouse, stuck a microscope in a flap of its skin, and induced a mosquito to bite it. Read the rest... Ikea catalog made from found hardcore porn footage A tumblr called just another ikea catalog [VERY NSFW] consists of clips from hardcore pornography in which Ikea furniture appears, converted to animated GIFs with catalog-style product names and pricing superimposed as appropriate. Read the rest... This Day in Blogging History: Rescuing out-of-print sf; Goatee-preserving faceclamp; Mass "Do-Not-Call" signups One year ago today New SF bookstore devoted to rescuing out-of-print sf books and making them into free ebooks: the store is devoted to rescuing one customer-chosen, out-of-print sf book from obscurity by buying the rights to publish it online as a free ebook. Read the rest... Town swallowed by sinkhole Bayou Corne, Louisiana is being swallowed by a massive sinkhole. Yes, the whole town. OK, it is a small town. But it's definitely a massive industrial disaster. Read the rest... Boing Boing Ingenuity: Seth Shostak and the search for ET Seth Shostak is senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, a scientific organization seeking evidence of life beyond Earth. Seth, whose job is to listen for ET's call, will be speaking at Boing Boing: Ingenuity on August 18! Read the rest... Warhol gravesite livestreamed to celebrate 85th birthday Yesterday would have been Andy Warhol's 85th birthday. To mark the occasion, the Warhol Museum and @EarthCam are livestreaming footage of his gravesite. Read the rest... S.F. tomorrow (8/8): Boing Boing, the Beats, and Underground Publishing If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, I hope you'll join me tomorrow evening, August 8, for "Boing Boing Presents: The Beats' Influence on Underground Publishing," a panel discussion at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Read the rest... Follow us online:   forward to a friend   unsubscribe from this list