jimko

This year's Cards Against Humanity secret Xmas surprise has begun, and on day one, they've delighted buyers (I'm one!) by sending us a share certificate for an infinitesimal fraction of a stretch of US/Mexican borderlands, along with details of their plans to keep the land secure from Trump's attempts to seize it and build a stupid wall on it. (more…)

In 1995, Penn and Teller released Desert Bus, the worst game ever made, a "VeriSimulator" that challenged you to keep a bus moving between the white lines on an eight-hour Arizona/Nevada drive. If you made it, you got to spend another 8 hours driving back. The bus had just enough veer in its steering that you had to correct it periodically, so you couldn't just tape the controller button down. (more…)

OK Go is known for their complicated, flashy music videos, so when the quirky four-man band launched "Obsession" Thursday, the internet took notice. With over a million views already, the video is an impressive visual feast that uses walls of printers (567 of them to be exact) spitting out sheets of paper as its backdrop.

It comes with a warning though. The band writes:

This video has a lot of flashing colors. If you’re susceptible to seizures, be careful, please. Your viewing experience will look significantly better if you manually set your YouTube resolution settings to 1440p or 2160p (for desktop, click the gear icon in the lower right). Just leaving it on “Auto HD” results in some pretty intense distortion during a few sections, because when the the colors and patterns get crazy, there’s actually just too much information flying by for YouTube’s normal HD compression. We broke the matrix. The good people of YouTube have been working with us to solve this (it’s a bit rate limitation issue) over the last 24 hours, but there’s no quick fix, and now it’s Thanksgiving in the US, and we’re all with our families.

The song is from their new album, Hungry Ghosts.

And yes, a lot of trees died in the making of this video but, calm down, the band has already recycled the paper and given the proceeds to Greenpeace.

Dan of the Slow Mo Guys had never used a katana sword before, but he did a great job using it to slice 10 plastic bottles of water in half. He said it felt like he was slicing butter.

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I have long wondered about the secret meaning behind the numbers and lines on barcodes. Now there's this video by YouTuber Half as Interesting that spells it all out, including how barcodes can be read even if they're scanned in upside down.

Though the real lesson of this video might be the learning the art of smoothly transitioning into your sponsor's ads.

(Holy Kaw!)

For the price of a few trays of Taco Bell, these Taco Bell Forever 21 clothes can make you look like a character from Idiocracy: (more…)

Brian Upton is an old hand in the game biz, from design to dealmaking, and presented "30 things I hate about your pitch" at the Game Developers' Conference. Though it concerns the specific interests of independent and small-business game outfits trying to raise money, the lessons seem oddly universal to science fiction and fantasy in general. Number 1: "I don't give a crap about hearing ... 20 minutes of the political situation on some fantasy continent." (If, on the other hand, you love just sitting there drooling over elaborate yet generic fantasy backstories, you might be interested in the procedurally-generated fantasy map-maker that Upton used to illustrate his point.

What do computer programmers not want to code in?

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Click to view the below full-size; or download as a a high-quality digital poster (4MB) for detailed scrutiny; or proceed for the plain text, abstract and analysis...

Note that data for this 2017 survey, like all good science, is transparent, open, and available for further analysis. This includes access data from previous candy hierarchies (for, you know, longitudinal studies). Here’s the link, and we invite you to tag public remarks with #statscandy so we can find your awesome analyses.

TRANSCRIPTION OF THIS MORNING’S CONFERENCE PROCEEDING DISCUSSION, WITH COHEN AND NG.

BC: Someone was going on about horehounds and salmiak, Dave.

DN: What?

BC: Horehounds and salmiak.

DN: No, I heard you, but I don’t know why I care.

BC: I guess they’re obscure and terrible candies, we didn’t have them in the survey. Like Andes Candies, we forgot to put them in. Again.

DN: Yeah, no, I know, I know, but we’re recording, couldn’t you have brought that up before?

BC: I know, but people were talking about this stuff in the comments.

DN: ffs Cohen, you’re reading the comment thread?

BC: I thought you wanted me to.

DN: How do you not know not to read comment threads.

BC: I know in general, I mean, I know that. But candy, Dave. By the way, I won’t let you ignore my passing reference to Andies Candies which are, Dave, a chocolate + mint combo.

DN: (pause) This again.

BC: And chocolate + mint remains at the apex of modern candy success.

DN: Except that it doesn’t Ben. It just doesn’t. This isn’t fake news, Ben. I mean, we don’t even know how to use Facebook. This is real science! Just look at the rankings – mint isn’t even in the top ten.

BC:

DN: Every year. Beschizza and I have a month’s long text chain about just this thing.

BC:

DN:

BC: So let’s talk candy data then.

DN: No shit, dude. That’s what it’s for. And science.

BC: Yeah, and science.

DN: We can finally make longitudinal comments.

BC: You keep saying that, by the way. You use that term way too easily.

DN: Longitudinal?

BC: Longitudinal. Explain yourself.

DN: Year over year. That’s all. We have year-over-year data. We can say something about patterns over time.

BC: Did our current moment, you know, with the debasement of western Democracy and all that, did that change anything since last year, is that what you mean?

DN: I’m Canadian.

BC: Meaning what? You haven’t heard what’s going on down here in the USA?

DN: Meaning I’ve long watched bemused at whatever’s going on down there.

BC: Well, so give me the rundown. Has “whatever’s going on down here” trickled into the hierarchy?

DN: I don’t think so, actually.

BC: You’re shitting me, then why all this “longitudinal” junk?

DN: I mean I think the data, at first glance, looks relatively consistent. At least the stuff at the top, and the stuff at the bottom.

BC: What’s that mean for hierarchies?

DN: It means that maybe our love/hate relationship for certain candies is just, you know, stable and universal. It means you’re going to have to give up your chocolate-mint thing.

BC: It means my commitment to the chocolate-mint combo is now stronger than ever because now it’s a memory.

DN:

BC:

DN: Are you happy with Peanut Butter Cups move to the second slot, after full-sized bars?

BC: Honestly? Couldn’t care less.

DN: Are you happy that Candy Corn’s approval has once again dropped, to below 20%?

BC: Is it mint-based?

DN: Nope.

BC: Then there’s your answer. No, I am not happy about that. I’m not even listening by now. I just got caught in a daydream about losing funding.

DN: For scientific research?

BC: Well yeah, in the larger sense, you know. But also for our own contrived “scientific” candy pretensions.

DN: You know I’m an actual scientist right?

BC: And we love you for it, Dave, really, we do. But I’m worried we’ll lose funding, or we’ll be banned from saying “science” or dredging up that whole David S. Pumpkins thing.

DN: I move we get on with it.

BC: Seconded.

DN: Late.

Holy moly, this kerosene-fueled full GFK* body RC speeder has a turbine engine that generates 40.50lbs of thrust at 125,000 rpm, letting it reach speeds over 450 miles per hour.

Perhaps even more impressive is that the pilot is able to maintain control at those speeds. Mindboggling!

* Fun fact: GFK stands for Glasfaserverstärkter Kunststoff, the German name for this type of glass-fiber reinforced component. I had to look it up!

Here's a POV shot of this type of RC jet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H74rXkQBeR4

• FASTEST RC TURBINE MODEL JET IN ACTION 727KMH 451MPH FLIGHT TRAINING WORLD RECORD TRAINING PART 2 (YouTube / RC MEDIA WORLD)

Robert Wardhaugh of London Ontario was 14 when he started a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Thirty five years later, he's dungeonmastering the same campaign. His miniature sets are amazing! From Great Big Story:

In 1982, when he was only 14 years old, Robert Wardhaugh sat down to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Thirty-five years later, that same game is still going strong. Based out of Wardhaugh’s basement in London, Canada, people from all around the country gather each week to join in the decades-long campaign. And with over 20,000 figurines and dozens of terrains, Wardhaugh keeps the game fresh and exciting, adding to the everlasting adventure.

Remember last year? Remember the above figure (direct link), where all was laid out? This is how SCIENCE ranks your Halloween haul. Kit Kat and actual cash at the top, dental floss and anything whole wheat near the bottom.

Well, now it's time for the 2017 Candy Ranking Games. Go and fill out this 10 minute survey into the best and worst Halloween candies. Do it for science. Do it to fight #fakenews. Go forth, go go!

Note that data will be collected for analysis until noon, PST, Oct 25th.  This year’s Candy Hierarchy will be published on October 27th.

THINGS TO CONSIDER

You probably thought all we’d talk about this year is David S. Pumpkins and candy corn. Ask David S. Pumpkins to guest co-author, they said. He’s got a Wikipedia page and you don’t, they said. Just because that’s a year-old and only half-interesting reference, still, it’ll never get old and it’ll never die, they said, and by then they’ll forget you said something about candy corn in the first sentence. Because what the hell is going on with candy corn debates this year? How did 2017, of all years, become the one where candy corn blew up? It’s not a bell curve, it’s bi-modal, you know. People love it or hate it and never the twain shall meet. No twain meeting. You do know that don’t you? This comes up every year, obviously, given its importance, but wow, it’s all over the place this time. And then some dude told us they’re making Hershey bars with candy corn in them? What the dip-shit is that?

We don’t care, that’s what the dip-shit it is. We leave it up to you. That’s where we were headed with this. It’s up to you. Because David Ng and B.R. Cohen (that’s us) are again re-presenting the official universal survey about your candy favorites for The 2017 Candy Hierarchy.

If you want to spend your BoingBoing time reading about our vaunted methodology and sharp insights about survey logistics, if you feel like you need more debriefing on our statistical acumen and scientific ambitions, if you like talking about longitudinal studies and you’re not thinking of maps, go on ahead, read the back catalog. You’ll find that in just the past two years, we’ve tabulated 6000+ individual responses with over 600,000 preferences. But maybe you don’t care for numbers. Maybe you care only for the enormous skill the industry has for congealing sugar into bar, disc, dot, glob, cluster, dud, chip, wafer, cup, jack, cap, egg, or Donald Petersen. If you’re just here to define a candy hierarchy, that is, then have it. We give you the Fourth Annual Candy Hierarchy Survey. Go forth. Rank. We’ll be back next week to present this year’s hierarchy in full.

YouTuber DoodleChaos spent over a month configuring a track in the 2006 hit game Line Rider. The result is a delightful harmonic pairing of Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” to the originally silent flash game.

The tiny sledder dips and bounces on lines drawn to hit Grieg’s musical notes. The adventure grows more treacherous for the sledder as the tempo picks up and the rider reaches an increasingly louder and sled-less end.

Ignoring the fact that the upholstery is hideous and the beds look like prison cots, this bunk bed sofa sleeper is a mechanical marvel.

Awesome Sofa King

Garrett Clark & Micah Morris post a lot of cool trick shots, but the between-the-legs ricochet shot below is a testament to their friendship. (more…)

In which Jerry Wang posits a way to finally get some utility out of babies:

Juggling several email inboxes can be a hassle. Luckily, all the main email providers — Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo — let you combine your email accounts into one single inbox, to send and receive email all from one place on the web. This will come in particularly handy to those of you who don’t like the idea of using a desktop client. Are you wasting too much time by checking several inboxes every morning? Stop it! Follow our step-by-step guides for Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo, and you’ll have all your emails in one unified inbox. Gmail With Gmail, getting all of...

Read the full article: Combine Your Email Accounts Into a Single Inbox: Here’s How

A dungeon master scrapped the pen and paper and created a touchscreen tabletop version of Dungeons and Dragons.

Tumblr user Caethial recently posted photos of the full build that he and two other players put together in 2016. A 40-inch Samsung smart TV paired with a Dell Precision 5720 27-inch 4K workstation runs about $2,800.

Don’t worry, an outdated wood table and basement location can still make you feel like a social outcast.

See all of Caethial's step-by-step photos here.

Image: Caethial/Tumblr

Someone on the D&D 5th Edition Facebook group posted a link to these really lovely and very playable-looking 5e character sheets. The designer of the sheets, William Lu, posted them on ArtStation and writes:

Custom, combat-oriented character sheets for the Dungeons and Dragons 5th ed. tabletop game. Designed to be a familiar sheet for veteran players, while retaining its unique look and strengths.

Features a design inspired by Celtic interlace art. Incorporates the feedback from many hours of playtesting to make sure the sheet's utility matches its beauty.

You can download the 7 pages of the character sheets here.

It was an incredible honor and privilege to contribute a story to this anthology. We were given the opportunity to write a story about a minor character in the Star Wars universe, and I chose the guy who watches ships fly away from the rebel base.

My editor pointed out that one of the guys (who I call Rebel Base Bucket Guy, because that amuses me) is already named, so my Rebel Base Bucket Guy is a different guy. I have to point this out, because the Star Wars Nerds are going to force choke me if they think I renamed their canonical Rebel Base Bucket Guy.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to write, and I titled it for my friend, Laina, who is best known for her hilarious YouTube videos.

"Jeff is a renaissance man, drilling down to the core issues and pushing the envelope." That's just one of the funny real-life examples of cliched and otherwise awful writing that cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shared in this entertaining presentation on poor language usage and how it affects the way we think (or cease to think).

A gentleman cut in line at an ATM, which turned out to be a mistake. Whether or not this is real, it's high comedy on the level of The Three Stooges.

Cutting in line from funny

Marcin Wichary posted "an abridged list" of vague and therefore terrifying error messages from a 40-year-old word processor.

Don't you just hate it when very bad footnote distribution failures happen?

This all has me looking forward to "error messages generated by a recurrent neural network," or a science fiction thriller where the crew must contend with an increasingly psychotic word processor.

"Detachment successful"

There’s nothing worse than discovering you’ve lost your laptop or had it stolen. Fortunately it has become easier to locate misplaced devices thanks to location services, and Windows 10 comes with some great security features including the ability to locate a missing laptop. But you have to turn it on before your laptop is stolen! Go to Settings > Update & Security > Find My Device. If you already have location services turned on, go to step 3. If you don’t, you’ll see a link: Turn on location settings to use this feature. Click the link. This will take you to the page for location settings. Under Location...

Read the full article: How to Set Up Windows Laptop Tracking in Case Yours Is Lost or Stolen

Dungeons and Dragons Beyond is an official digital companion to D&D, with a free character-generator and a bunch of paid additions, from access to hyperlinked editions of the rulebooks ($30/each), and a $3/player, $6/DM subscription service that lets DMs share their books with players. (more…)

This snazzy looking bipedal robot is off to a good start, but things go haywire in short order. It has trouble setting a package on a cart. Then it knocks things off the shelf, drops the package on the floor, knocks over the cart, and falls down. As one Reddit user said, "I would watch Gordon Ramsay yelling at a group of these things for hours."

He's trying his best ok from Unexpected

Maker Federico Tobon of WolfCatWorkshop wanted to test out a 24-frame flip box animation he was working on, so he attached his art to a power drill.

Here's a closeup: https://youtu.be/t9afE9iEds0

Tobon told Doodlers Anonymous that he was inspired by mutoscopes, "old-timey coin-operated machines" that are animated using flipbooks, to test his work out on a drill.

I wanted to make my own from scratch so I started building it. When I had the frames mounted on the spindle I wanted to test it and since I didn't have a box yet, or any other plans for a crank or a motor, I mounted it on the drill to get a smooth rotation. The drill seemed like the easiest thing that was lying around at the moment.

This flip box isn't quite finished. You can follow its progress on Tubon's Instagram.

(Nerdcore)