The adorable stop-motion video from 3D printed toy makers Makies is a spooky Hallowe'en treat with a well-deserved comeuppance for Barbie. Read the rest

Darius Kazemi's XOXO talk, in which he explains how he became a successful lottery player, is a brilliant send-up of the "how I succeeded as an artist" talk.

Kazemi's point is that most people who set out to earn a creative living fail, and that the thing that distinguishes the successes from the failures is a combination of luck (winning the lottery) and persistence (buying a lot of lottery tickets). This is a hugely important and vastly underappreciated point -- you can try and try and try and never succeed, through no fault of your own (but the more you try, the more chances at success you have).

(via Metafilter) Read the rest

Wondermark's instant classic "Terrible Sea Lion" strip is getting a fresh lease on life as a perfect parable for the experience of posting about #Gamergate and then being haunted by endlessly persistent entitled jerks. Read the rest

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's annual "Who Has Your Back?" scorecard tells you which services will resist spurious attempts to censor your communications through baseless copyright accusations. Read the rest

Did you hear the one about the Kentucky GOP candidate who asked his attorney general to investigate the state Democratic Party for allegedly sending out the Republican’s Social Security number and more personal information to thousands of constituents? Sorry to say, there’s no punch line here, because according to recent reports, it actually happened. By Adam Levin.

Craig Engler writes, "It's a dirty, gritty story about magick, monsters and the occult. It takes place in a modern-day world where H.P. Lovecraft the writer never existed but where all the horrors he wrote about are real. In this story, the man named Lovecraft is the world's foremost magician and alchemist who maintains a secret library of forbidden knowledge which includes books like the Necronomicon. Read the rest

NASA's launch of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket and Cygnus resupply spacecraft for the International Space Station today ended abruptly when the rocket exploded in smoke and flames shortly after liftoff. This was to be Orbital's third resupply mission to the ISS. Such an incident is referred to in NASA parlance as a "Catastrophic Anomaly." An Accident Investigation Board (AIB) is being assembled to review the mishap. Read the rest

UPDATE: The rocket exploded at liftoff. Updates here. Read the rest

Pro wrestler Buff Bagwell made a valiant effort to start up a motorcycle chariot racing league a few years ago, building this amazing prototype inspired by rigs from the 1920s. Read the rest

Someone in the waiting area for AA's LAX-London flight created a network called "Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork," so "out of an abundance of caution," everyone ran around like headless chickens for a while trying to figure out where the network name was coming from (cue horror music: "He's broadcasting from INSIDE THE TERMINAL!" Dun dun DUUUUN!). Read the rest

At Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference today, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said YouTube is in the early stages of exploring new subscription services. Read the rest

Just look at 'em with their evil chocolate chip eyes. Part of Let's Go Chipper's series on healthy Halloween snacks in the run-up to Saint Beetus Day. Also: Read the rest

The U.S. government today filed a lawsuit against AT&T, accusing the nation's second-largest wireless carrier of selling users unlimited data plans, then slowing down Internet speeds after they hit a certain data use threshold. Read the rest

Mark Khaisman creates remarkable images using common packing tape and light boards. Since his early portraits with basic white and brown tapes found in any office, he has expanded to other colors and themes, below. Read the rest

Michael writes, "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Future Tense hosted a panel discussion on post-USA/NSA controlled Internet possibilities.

The United States has signalled its willingness to give up its unofficial stewardship role of the Internet. Who should take over, and who will?" Read the rest

In 1958 when Jerry Lee Lewis brought his tour to London, the big story broke the moment the rocker stepped off the plane: the young girl on Lewis's arm was his wife, and she was 13-years-old. Over at Cuepoint, Alan Light talks to Lewis's ex-wife, Myra Lewis Williams, now a real estate broker in Atlanta.

“The only problem was that nobody told me anything,” she says. “So when a reporter asked me, Who are you?, I was the one who let the big ol’ cat out of the bag. It was a perfect storm—it couldn’t have happened at a worse time, at a worse place. Everything just came together and a major explosion happened.”

"Ballad of the 13-Year-Old Bride" (Cuepoint) Read the rest

This video from the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre is oversaturating my cuteness receptors! Read the rest