When you're the king, someone is always coming for your crown. Nowhere is that more true than in the tech sector, where a perennial favorite like Adobe and their insanely popular Creative Cloud app suite have to keep innovating to stay on top of the digital media creation software game. Keeping abreast of changes and [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/the-adobe-creative-cloud-is-th.html

Last week when Trump arrived in Wilmington, North Carolina for an appearance, The Animals classic 1964 hit "House of the Rising Sun" blared from the loudspeakers. The Animals' Eric Burdon heard about that and is A-OK with that use of the traditional folk song his band made famous. From Burdon's Instagram post: Even though nobody [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/why-the-animals-eric-burdon.html

On August 21 at the US Smithsonian's National Zoo, Mei Xiang gave birth to a beautiful panda cub. You can check out the Zoo's Giant Panda Cams but for an immediate dose of panda joy, Zoo curators Michael Brown-Palsgrove and Laurie Thompson and panda keeper Marty Dearie selected their "Top Ten Panda Cub Cam Moments." [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/panda-cub-the-best-of-the-nat.html

This is from the 7 Sep 2020 issue of my new newsletter, The Magnet. Sign up for it here! (Before reading further, please draw a simple bicycle without looking at a reference image.) Ten years ago, Andrew Neher invited me to draw a bike from memory for his Bike Drawings website. I asked my wife and daughters to participate, [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/what-do-drawings-of-memory-bik.html

Today I learned about the Houston Vampire Court and the Vampire Court of Dallas/Fort Worth, both member-driven organizations for "Sanguinarians" — humans who sustain themselves through blood (animal, or human) or by "draining" "psychic energies" from other humans. These are, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely off-shoots or goth and/or fetish subcultures, but there's something heartwarming about the [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/meet-the-philanthropic-vampire.html

The "magnificent" home in Berkeley, California, formerly lived in by author Ursula K. Le Guin is on the market for $4.1m. Pictured above, the writing room, though the press releasy stories about it are vague on when and how long she lived there (Wikipedia suggests not past her twenties) . Below, a video tour of [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/buy-ursula-k-le-guins-old-h.html

I recently re-watched the Spielberg-Tom Cruise big screen adaptation of Minority Report. It still holds up as a great sci-fi film about the dangers of the surveillance state, but it also loses something in the way it strays from the source material. I'm hardly an adaptation purist, but Philip K Dick's original "Minority Report" short [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/florida-police-department-trie.html

In 1912, 4-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing during a family fishing trip in Louisiana. Eight months later, a boy matching his description appeared in Mississippi. But was it Bobby Dunbar? In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the dispute over the boy's identity. We'll also contemplate a scholarship for idlers and [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/in-1912-4-year-old-bobby-dunb.html

This short film was an ad for Ghostbusters, filmed by Bill Murray and John Ackroyd (in character as Drs. Venkman and Stantz) to convince independent theater operators to run the forthcoming movie itself. Todd Spence uploaded it to to Twitter, and found a more complete version of the unused original theme tune—but not the complete [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/the-ghostbusters-teaser-shot-t.html

The Broomway is a path over tidal flats near Southend-on-Sea in England, linking the mainland with Foulness Island for at least 600 years. Often shrouded in mist, surrounded by whirpools and quicksand, or simply underwater during high tide, it has claimed countless lives. It has refused all efforts to improve it, finally being replaced with [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/footpath-through-the-sea-m.html

Everyday carry items have to clear new hurdles these days. Because while the number of items we might like to have with us at all times keeps growing, we still only have two hands. And bags start getting pretty darn heavy. To make the cut now, an item usually has to serve a few distinct [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/save-30-on-the-worlds-first.html

This is me, every morning, turning on the internet to see what new delights await.

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/manatee-crash-test.html

Theodor Kittelsen was a neo-Romantic and fantasy artist famous in Norway but relatively unknown beyond it. Here's a brief documentary featuring and explaining some of his most distinctive work. Narrator Sindrelf posted an accompanying article explaining his fondness for Kittelsen, whose cosy yet unsettling perch rests somewhere between victorian fairy art and the towering gloom [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/5-minute-documentary-about-the.html

Today I learned: Flamingos feed with their heads upside down and that their beaks are adapted for this purpose.  This essay on flamingo feeding from Stanford explains: In most birds a smaller lower beak works against a larger upper one. In flamingos this is reversed; the lower bill is much larger and stronger, and the [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/watch-flamingos-filter-feed-un.html

What's brown and white and tastes nothing like Christmas? Archie McPhee's Shiitake Mushroom Candy Canes, of course. Not sure what to do for the holidays this year? Give a shiitake! Shiitake Mushroom Candy Canes may seem odd at first, but they're sprouting up all over the place. How do they taste? Like shiitake. After all, [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/now-there-are-candy-canes-flav.html

Finally, all this new technology put to useful purpose: film stars manipulated by an evil AI into singing "All Star". The software that does the magic is Wav2Lip [github]. Highlights Lip-sync videos to any target speech with high accuracy. Try our interactive demo. Works for any identity, voice, and language. Also works for CGI faces [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/ai-used-to-make-movie-characte.html

Being a mortician means getting asked a lot of interesting questions, especially ones on keeping a skull or other memento mori after a loved one shuffles off this mortal coil. The answer is interesting and takes gentle viewers into the arcana of corpse desecration laws. The short answer is that you will need to find [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/can-you-keep-a-dead-loved-one.html

Impeached U.S. President Donald Trump was accused by his Democratic rival Joe Biden of causing mass deaths with incompetent handling of the coronavirus crisis. So, on Monday, Trump did what he does best: DARVO. He called Biden "stupid," then demanded an apology for what Trump nonsensically called anti-vaccine rhetoric (Biden is pro-vaccine-science, this is false). [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/07/trump-who-is-stupid-falsely.html

"The wildfire that has burned more than 7,000 acres in Yucaipa and surrounding areas was caused by an explosive used during a gender reveal party, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection." — KTLA One of many fires burning in California on Monday is the El Dorado Fire in San Bernardino County. [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/07/california-8600-acre-el-dora.html

While Labor Day is a moment to solemnly consider the role that work serves in all of our lives, there are certain workers among us who will not benefit from a day of celebration and reflection. Robot vacuums, you just keep working like normal this weekend. Look, it's not that we don't appreciate you. But [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/09/07/from-robot-vacs-to-window-wash.html