Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.
A good read in The Daily Dot about a "major piece of the puzzle" in Tumblr's origin myth that’s often overlooked: "[Founder David] Karp wasn’t the first person to create a tumblelog, the term used to describe the stripped-down blogging and content curation he has become known for. He wasn’t even the second. The true origin of Tumblr involves a German and an American, hundreds of lines of code, and their common desire to change the way we think about blogging." — Xeni
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• Conversations with my 2 year old: a web video series.
• 3D printing saved a baby's life.
• Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" music video.
• New Boards of Canada video!
• 3D printed shotgun slugs (suck).
• Law Enforcement's Guide to Satanism, 1994.
• Open source hardware 3D printer for pizza-on-demand.
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Nikola Tesla pitches VCs.
A first music video from the long-awaited new album 'Tomorrow's Harvest' by Boards of Canada. New album due Monday June 10 worldwide except for North America, where it will be released one day later on June 11. Pre-order on Amazon here. Video directed by Neil Krug.
"I feel like I have been force fed tranquillisers and cake," says one YouTube commenter. "This is fucking beautiful."
Here is the full text of President Obama’s May 23 speech on national security, as prepared for delivery today. The President was interrupted by Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, who challenged him on the urgency of closing Guantanamo Bay prison. He then spoke off script, allowing his heckler to speak at length, and he responded to her statements. A footnote: Ms. Benjamin, whom the President addressed as “that young lady interrupting me,” is 60 years old.
The New York Times Editorial Board: "The United States, which supported [General Ríos Montt] and his regime during the war and apologized for that in 1999, provides aid for the justice system. It should urge that the case be pursued through an independent process. It would be a travesty if a mishandled legal proceeding were to deny victims justice now." — Xeni
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[Click for larger size]. Google today announced a new adventure with the Street View Trekker: The Galapagos Islands. In early May, Google representatives traveled to the islands to collect 360-degree imagery on land and in water. The imagery will be available on Google Maps in late 2013. Here are more photos of the data collectors in action, sometimes while eyed by local creatures.
You know those inspirational text-wall photos that friends of friends post to Pinterest and Facebook, full of blithe clichés and maudlin motivational monologues? Dude. Fengi, on livejournal, fixed them for you. [UPDATED: And here we go.] — Xeni
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Why, yes, a project called Soylent Corporation, promising a "default meal product" called Soylent, did just raise a quarter million bucks: crowdfunding is also made of people.
* Correction: an earlier version of this post erroneously stated that the campaign was on Kickstarter. "It was actually rejected by Kickstarter, they specifically forbid nutritional supplements and energy drinks in their guidelines," Andy Baio tells us.
** Update: And Ajay Mehta of Crowdtilt, the crowdsourcing tool used for this project, says: "Just to further clarify, the Soylent page is actually one of the first campaigns to launch on Crowdhoster, our new open-source tool for putting up a Kickstarter-esque page. Soylent went with us because Crowdhoster is totally open and customizable (e.g. they were able to put the page on their own domain)."
"I was 14 years old, all on my own because my friend bailed on me at the last minute, and relatively clueless," says science writer Steve Silberman in the story of how he became a Grateful Dead devotée. "Then the Dead came out... I knew I had never heard music as beautiful, adventurous, and alive as this in my entire life. That was the moment I became a Deadhead, and I never stopped." — Xeni
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Charlie Savage at the New York Times: "One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan." But don't worry, guys, it's fine: they were all brown bad guys with weird names. — Xeni
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A first music video from the 
Kate Doyle of the 
