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The flags really make this sign

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:03:53 +0000

USA USA USA

Hit cancel to retry; hit retry to cancel

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:59:13 +0000

Snapped this weekend at a movie theater in London: an automated ticket machine (confusingly abbreviated to "ATM" -- namespace collision ahoy!) with a sign on it explaining that if you don't want to cancel your transaction, you should press "cancel," while if you want to cancel your transaction, by all means, press "retry."

Rainbow over the Andes (photo)

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:36:06 +0000

Boing Boing reader Ben Leshchinsky shares this wonderful photo in the Boing Boing Flickr pool and says, "About 10 km from the ancient city of Machu Picchu, we had the good fortune of seeing a magnificent rainbow over the Rio Urubamba in the Andes Mountains of Peru. Moments like this evoke remarkable feelings of introspection and wonder."

China: Statue in public square appears to show pigs having incestuous sex

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:05:25 +0000

"I can explain this." Pigs Depicted Having Sex Doggy-Style In Zhengzhou Public Square Are Said To Represent Filial Piety.

Cthulhu balloon

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:59:47 +0000

Redditor Frostbite795 asked a Bar Mitzvah balloon twister for a Cthulhu, and the twister delivered.

Asked for a Cthulhu. Balloon guy at bar mitzvah delivers. (imgur.com)

Einstein's slippers

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:01:18 +0000

And now here's a picture of Albert Einstein wearing fuzzy slippers. Clearly the inspiration for the Val Kilmer slippers in Real Genius.

EINSTEIN AT HOME (via How to Be a Retronaut)

(Photo: Einstein sitting on the front steps of his home in Princeton, wearing his fuzzy slippers. Photo courtesy of Gillett Griffin.)

MEPs vote down ACTA: "HELLO DEMOCRACY, GOODBYE ACTA"

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:40:32 +0000

Here's an image that is destined to be truly iconic: Members of the European Parliament vote down ACTA in dramatic fashion, hefting signs that read HELLO DEMOCRACY, GOODBYE ACTA.

(Thanks, Rene!)

Here are some pictures of a giraffe swimming in a pool

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 20:31:37 +0000

Ah, the infinite surreal comedic potential of a giraffe in a swimming pool

There she was. Long legs, long neck and all she wanted to do was swim. (imgur.com) (via Super Punch)

Building covered in old clothes

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:58:30 +0000

The Guardian's Deborah Orr is probably right that the Marks and Spencer "shwopping" initiative is "an ugly word for a dubious enterprise", but I am rather taken with this promotion for the program. M&S is encouraging shoppers to "shwop" -- swap their old clothes for discount vouchers when they buy new clothes at M&S, with the old clothes going to charity -- and to promote the affair, they covered this large Truman Brewery warehouse building off Brick Lane with used clothes, to great effect.

Shwop

Occupy Dagobah

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:02:49 +0000

A little bit of Star Wars-meets-Occupy street art, snapped near my flat in Hackney, London.

Occupy Wall St The 99% We Are, Yoda stencil, Great Eastern Street, Hackney, London.jpg

Inadvertent art-photos of the Soviet-era Czech secret police

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 01:30:42 +0000

In 2010, Vice Magazine commemorated the publication of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes' "Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police" with a set of photos taken by the Soviet-era Czech secret police. As noted, these photos, shot blindly with hidden cameras, are actually pretty good art-photography.

They were spying full-time on average citizens, hoping to catch them in a situation that could lead to a swift arrest and a lengthy incarceration in some dank, hidden cell. With their cameras secreted in a suitcase or under a coat, the agents had no idea what was being captured while they were taking these pictures. Their negatives, in which one finds brilliant snatches of street life from a time that few outsiders were able to see, are full of unexpected gems. Total art from a bunch of Communist lackeys and thugs. Who would have thunk it?

State-Sponsored Voyeurism (via How to Be a Retronaut)

Shredding company's awesome logo

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:26:49 +0000

Snapped yesterday near my flat in east London, this Irish shredding company's logo on the back of their truck. Talk about "does what it says on the tin!"

Awesome logo on hard-drive-shredding service's lorry, Brunswick Place, Hackney, London, UK

Anonymous set of photos labelled "Pics from a Chinese gangsters phone" show torture, cars, puppies, piles of money

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 05:17:49 +0000

An unattributed, anonymous set of images on Imgur purports to be an album of photos recovered from a "Chinese gangsters phone." They show a heavily tattooed man lounging with enormous piles of money, hanging out with a series of luxury cars, and participating in the torture of an unnamed man. They also show a pile of luxury goods, and the man hanging out with a cute dog. ABC's Karson Yiu notes that one of the man's cars has a Beijing number plate, another a number plate from Tianjin, and that the recurrence of "8888" in the plates is an indicator of status within the system, as "All 8 license plates are usually reserved for the especially privileged whether by power, fortune or connections."

Viral Pics Show Chinese ‘Gangsta’ Fondling Porsches, Puppies and Purse (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Just look at this mutant triple banana.

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:04:59 +0000

Just look at it.

I see your double banana, and raise you another banana... I introduce MUTANT TRIPLE BANANA! (i.imgur.com)

X-rays of flowers

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:12:14 +0000

Avi sez, "Brendan Fitzpatrick has made a beautiful series of x-ray photographs of flowers." And he's selling prints!

Floral X-rays (Thanks, Avi!)

Sax-playing gorilla at your party

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:15:33 +0000

There's little provenance for this photo and the distinctive service offered therein (just a note that it was "donated" by Andrew Wightman), but it appears to date back some while. I don't suppose musical gorillas are still on offer in this hurly-burly modern age.

My kind of party. Donated from Illustrator extraodinaire and friend of the waves Andrew Wightman.

Kim Jong-Un got a Gun

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:20:06 +0000

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un aims a rifle at the Sporting Bullet Factory, built in 1996 at the order of the North's late leader Kim Jong-il. The factory produces "sporting bullets" for developing military sports. Its exact location is undisclosed. Undated picture released by the North's KCNA news agency in Pyongyang, on February 23, 2012. Wonder what sort of computers those are, and what they're running? (REUTERS/KCNA)

Ambiguously ironic superfluous grocer's apo'strophe

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:55:34 +0000

Alice spotted this coffee cart from the (above average) London coffee chain Apostrophe, which includes a superfluous apostrophe. It's either ironic or too clever by far.

Oh the irony.

RFID blocking at the point-of-sale

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:02:34 +0000

Spotted by the cash-register at London Drugs, a giant discount pharmacy-cum-big-box-store in downtown Vancouver, these cheap RFID-blocking credit-card sleeves.

RFID-blocking wallet, point of sale, London Drugs, Vancouver, BC

Italian Isaac Asimov graffiti

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:17:21 +0000

Chrisperfer sez, "I randomly came upon this Isaac Asimov graffiti when attending a birthday party in Rome for my 4 year old daughter's friend."

Isaac Asimov

When the sky crashed in Odessa

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:12:17 +0000

This 2009 image captures the scene on a foggy night in Odessa, Ukraine, when a digital billboard crashed and displayed a floating error warning in the night sky.

Windows Error Box Floating in the Air (5 pics) (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Caturday: Alfalfa Haz a Hungry

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:34:59 +0000

Image: Alfalfa, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by photographer David W. Oliver.

Alaskan town has 176 inches of snow on the ground

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:44:16 +0000

Hey, guys, I figured out where all of Minnesota's winter snow went. It's in Cordova, Alaska.

Since Nov. 1, storms have dropped 176 inches of snow and more than 44 inches of rain on the town, about 150 miles southwest of Anchorage.

Temperatures warmed overnight, and residents awoke to standing water because of stopped-up drains. The rain also made the existing snow heavier.

The warmer temperatures - about 35 degrees midday Wednesday - brought another hazard to the Prince William Sound community of 2,200 people: avalanche danger.

There's one road leading out, and it was closed though it could be opened for emergency vehicles.

"We have the National Guard right now using the standard shovel, and they're getting pretty trashed every day - not the shovels but the Guardsmen themselves," he said.

That's from an AP story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the whole thing to learn about the intricacies of snow shovel design, and why a standard shovel just ain't enough to deal with 176 inches of snow. Better ones are being airlifted in.

The image above—taken by the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management—gives you an idea of what it's like to dig out of a snow pack like this. I will admit, as much as I realize what a disaster it would be to live in Cordova, Alaska right now, there is a part of me (the part that is approximately 5 years old) that just looks at this photo and thinks, "I will build the most AWESOME fort EVER!"

London, eerily empty on Christmas morning

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:18:08 +0000

Every year, Ian takes to the streets of London early on Christmas Morning to photograph the normally thronged streets in their state of eerie emptiness. The project was inspired by the scenes of empty London in the film 28 Days Later. He's posted his third set, from this year's Christmas.

Photos of an Empty London on Christmas Morning (via MeFi)

London cops apologise to young photographer who was told that shooting Armed Forces Day parade was "anti-social," "gay," "stupid" and an offense under the Terrorism Act

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:33:00 +0000

Back in 2010, I blogged the video of Jules Mattsson, a 15-year-old freelance photographer who was stopped by police while shooting an Armed Forces Day parade in London. The police inspector took down his details, told him it was an offense under the Terrorism Act to take pictures of soldiers, told him that the police could stop public photography without recourse to any law, and then told him that photographing soldiers was "gay," "anti-social behaviour," "silly" and "stupid."

Finally, Mattsson has gotten justice: the police have paid him an undisclosed settlement and issued an apology.

"The inspector told [Jules] he was a public hazard and said that photographing in public was 'anti-social behaviour'," he said.
"He described the act of taking photographs as 'silly' and 'gay' and 'stupid'," said the spokesman.
"When [Jules] continued to state the lawfulness of his behaviour, the inspector declared it was 'dangerous' as he was 'likely to be trampled on by soldiers' from the parade."
Ms Cotton, head of the police misconduct department at the law firm, said: "The treatment of the police towards our client, a 15-year-old, was shocking. The inspector's comments were designed to belittle."

Metropolitan Police compensate parade-ban photographer

An octopus, in need of sunscreen

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:40:24 +0000

Floating just below the surface of the water near Italy's Mt. Vesuvius, an octopus suns its head lump in this National Geographic Picture of the Day.

Thanks Maggie Fitzgibbon!

Grandad's fancy, duded up fleas

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:29:09 +0000

SammichesBeCrazy, a redditor, posted these fancy fleas that his grandpa dressed up in tiny clothes, back in olden times.

Found these fleas in an old box. Apparently my grandpa caught and dressed them... When he was TWELVE. (i.imgur.com)

Split-second high-speed photos of dogs shaking their jowls

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:44:16 +0000

Photographer Carli Davidson catches high-speed frames of dogs shaking their jowls. Insane landscapes of weird and cute.

Shake (via Making Light)

(Image: downsized thumbnail from Shake6.jpg, by Carli Davidson)

Baby naps peacefully atop enormous, plush Totoro

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 14:08:25 +0000

Redditor Honestly_ snapped this pic of a tiny baby sleeping peacefully atop a giant, plush Totoro from the Studio Ghibli masterpiece My Neighbor Totoro. Dawwww.

I hope he appreciates this when he's older... (i.imgur.com) (via Super Punch)

Occupy News Bins: miniature Lego OWS, complete with pepper-spraying cop

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:40:25 +0000

"No property was harmed during this installation," DocPop tells us about this hilarious teeny-tiny Lego Occupy. "From what I understand the piece has already been removed though I don't know by whom."