Conjurer’s Kitchen created this anatomical wax-model cake for the mad bakers at Eat Your Heart Out. Delicious and educational!

Anatomical Wax Model Cake

StoopidTrooper's "Backstage Disneyland" Imgur set is as good a collection of images of the behind-the-scenes action at Disneyland as I've ever seen. I'm especially gratified by all the pics from backstage at the Haunted Mansion, interacting with the animatronics and effects. Also included are some great shots of horseplay with the animals and human animatronics in the Jungle Cruise, and many shots of utility areas, such as boat-storage for the Jungle Cruise. I'm also delighted by all the shots of the control panels for the rides, which are pretty fascinating looks at the one-off interfaces developed by Imagineering to allow semi-trained Orange County teenagers to safely usher some of the wealthiest children on Earth through the bowels of dangerous heavy machinery.

Backstage Disneyland (Thanks, skwiggly!)

Phil Are Go! spotted a beautiful Gloria Vanderbilt outfit from 1968. As Phil explains it:

It all begins with basic black leggings of black velvet. Everyone knows that less is more.. and less is WAY more when it's velvet. Add to that some thigh-high pirate boots for high-seas practicality and you've got the foundation that will have everyone hoisting their flags! Don't forget some pilgrim buckles or the indians won't share their maize with you.

The blouse is an eighteenth century burial gown with a kicky lace lampshade sewn on as a collar. As you can see, Gloria felt that it was pretty fancy already, but not quite fancy enough without some multicolored ribbons adorning the elegant multi-tiered doily sleeves. We're on a hovercraft to classytown!

Its time for a splash of color, so grab some three-inch satin ribbon and make yourself a bandolier, or sash or whatever. Then, choose a belt of classic simplicity from your belt vault. As you can see, Gloria has chosen her opalized ruby and gold filigree girdle. It gives her a +3 modifier when making saving throws against psionic attacks AND really pops against the red sasholier! The pendant was made from six smaller pendants. If you don't have six pendants, you can just use six of your bottle openers. Be careful when soldering. It's hot!

Top it all off with a shoulder-draped set of striped curtains and you're ready for any occasion. You can wrap the curtains around you if the evening turns chilly or simply give it a shake to punctuate particularly incisive observations.

Gloria Vanderbilt - Relaxed, simple fashion for any occasion.

NASA orbiter Endeavour is squeezing her way through tree-stripped streets of Los Angeles this weekend, en route to a permanent retirement home at the California Science Center.

Here's a Google Map of the route, with stopping points. Big shuttle is big. Bigger than the streets that must accommodate her. Basically, the whole thing is like the ultimate slow-speed car chase, but with fewer live news choppers overhead.

Above: BB reader Troy B. Asher caught Endeavour parked in a parking lot today. More of his pix here.

Endeavour as she moved past the shops, not sure if the crew stopped for a massage twitter.com/CNNkimsegal/st…

— Kim Segal CNN Miami (@CNNkimsegal) October 12, 2012

Ward Jenkins dressed up little Ezra as a Tusken Raider for Hallowe'en, and the effect is WARSOME.

Halloween 2011

Gawker's Adrian Chen unmasks Violentacrez, the man behind subreddits such as "Jailbait", "Creepshots" and "Chokeabitch".

A troll exploits social dynamics like computer hackers exploit security loopholes, and Violentacrez calmly exploited the Reddit hive mind's powerful outrage machine and free speech values at the same time. It was this pattern, repeated to various degrees dozens of times, that made Violentacrez an unlikely hero to many of the white male geeks who make up Reddit's hard core. They saw Violentacrez as a champion in the fight against the oppressive schoolmarms: "He upheld a certain amount of freedom for the worst of us to ensure freedom for all of us," wrote one user in a post mourning his departure. Fans followed him wherever he went on the site.

Reddit should take control of its reputation. Its "common carrier" aspirations—already proven to be unsustainable—seem to prevent it from exercising some much-needed quality control over what moderators do in top subreddits. And lest you think that its hands-off policy is about preventing censorship, remember that links to Gawker are currently banned on some top Reddit-promoted areas such as /r/politics.

Letting creeps and criminals speak for you is no defense of free speech: it's just an invitation to be measured by what they say and do in your name.

These sort of attacks are so shocking/upsetting because they break the social contract we have come to expect decent people to adhere to: that people don’t attack your personal relationships, that they don’t sneer not just at your friends but at the idea that you might have friends, that they don’t attack the way you look or your family or your ethnicity/religion. The thing is, to the hate bloggers, and to the kind of people who send anonymous hateful messages, the object of their hate isn’t a person. To them, I am not a human being. My family are not real people.

Been there. It sucks. (via Maureen Johnson)

LocalWiki's Philip Neustrom says,

My non-profit, LocalWiki, has been working on this really incredible project to help document the continent of Antarctica. Most notable, at least right now, is this custom map we've pieced together from very-hard-to-find NASA aerial imagery and coastline datasets. It's probably the most beautiful thing I've ever worked on.

Check out the LocalWiki for Antarctica. The project "aims to document the full extent of human involvement on the continent," and for now is focused on a two-mile region surrounding Palmer Station.

You may argue that pop culture has always drawn heavily on nostalgia, and you’d be right, but things have changed. What was once a dim memory, a wobbly VHS tape, a slice of warped vinyl, or a bootleg DVD or CD trading hands amongst enthusiasts has become a towering digital midden so huge that it threatens to impede our view of the future. The growth of online media channels means that the near-entirety of our cultures’ pasts have been excavated and placed on display for anyone to watch, hear, or read in an instant. Hence, hauntology.

At the heart of the musical micro-genre of hauntology is the sense of atemporality that underpins our present culture. Whether it’s musicians pastiching multiple vintage styles in a single track, the endless cycle of remakes and sequels in cinema, or historical genre mashups in pop literature, our future is looking increasingly like our past, which now looks like the future, which looks increasingly like the past, and so on.

Read the rest

2600's Emmanuel Goldstein sez, "Another 78 videos of historical hacker talks have been restored and posted online. The Fifth HOPE conference in 2004 brought together Steve Wozniak, Kevin Mitnick, Bruce Schneier, Jello Biafra and many more in an eclectic and enlightening mix of technical information, security challenges, social issues, and a spirit of fun and rebellion that now can be shared globally for the first time"

THE FIFTH HOPE VIDEO ARCHIVE NOW ONLINE

The fine folks at Twig Case created a new iPhone bamboo case with one of my illustrations on it. I love the way it turned out. (Twig Case also has a stunningly cool Jim Woodring case.)

Pussypus Case - Bamboo $49