Nearly ten grand. That's what it will cost to get the STAR WARS Millennium Falcon Hyperspace Jump Experience bouncy house into your life. Magic Jump, the company behind this 1,100 pound officially-licensed monstrosity, also offers financing for $237.38/month. Or you can find an entertainment company with one in their inflatable jumper repertoire to bring you this:

Passengers will encounter a Chewbacca inflatable as they enter and an R2D2 inflatable replica and C-3PO graphic as they jump their way around the ship. Passengers will feel the rush as they imagine piloting the Millennium Falcon like Han Solo and Chewbacca as they explore the cockpit area; pretend to operate the cockpit's master control panel with its gears, switches, and buttons; and eject themselves down a small slide. In the main cabin, they'll come across inflatable pop-up obstacles such as a bunk, storage container, and holo-map where they can see a holographic-like rendering of the Death Star. Passengers can step up to the laser cannon turret where they can pretend to defend against Imperial forces, and they can also pretend to play dejarik at the hologame table. The pi`ece de r'e·sis·tance is the climber/slide in the center of the ship with ceiling hatch graphic showing explosive battle with a Star Destroyer and TIE fighters.

(Geekologie)

images via Magic Jump Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/tVmtspEKaPk/own-this-massive-millennium-fa.html

If you were hoping that 2020 would mean less superficially amusing yet disquieting videos from me, I'm afraid you're on the wrong timeline. Happy New Year! Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/6UbWrjAI0pU/what-is-the-best-name-to-ask-s.html

For over 20 years, Barbara Walters anchored ABC's newsmagazine 20/20. So, there was PLENTY of material to make this supercut of her saying, "This is 20/20."

Or, as the folks behind the New Year's Eve countdown site, www.thisis2020.com, want you to think, "This is 2020."

This all led to this... Anderson Cooper losing it on air at the Times Square ball drop:

Happy New Year, Happy Mutants!

View this post on Instagram

The most shareable moment of 2019 happened in the 90s #thisis2020 #BarbaraWalters #barbarawalters2020 #2020

A post shared by This Is 2020 (@thisistwennytwenny) on Nov 19, 2019 at 9:30am PST

screenshot via This is 2020 Read the rest

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Anne Innis Dagg was the first female biologist to study giraffes; while all the men who preceded her had observed firsthand that male giraffes are super queer (their primary form of play is a game dubbed "penis fencing," which is exactly what it sounds like), only Dagg was willing to write it down and publish it.

Dagg's work on giraffes -- several of the seminal books on the animals -- was initially mocked or ignored, partly because of her pioneering approach of living among the animals (as opposed to observing them at a distance) offended the establishment; partly because of her gender.

Though Dagg earned a PhD and taught for decades, she was denied tenure. She continued to produce challenging, brave, brilliant work at the intersection of biology and gender politics, ranging over both scholarly and popular works. In particular, she specialized in pointing out the lack of rigor in her male colleagues' work when discussing sex and gender among animals, and how that spilled over into the way the field was organized, and gender bias within research institutions and in research publishing.

Her 2004 book, Love of Shopping is Not a Gene, is an absolute must-read book on the subject, addressing the total absence of rigor and falsifiability in hypotheses from male biologists to explain human gender and power roles with reference to animal behavior and/or the imaginary lives of early hominids -- howlers like "Rape is genetic" or "Black people are genetically destined to have lower IQ scores than white people." Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/M7ZhY7GfnO0/love-of-shopping-not-a-gene.html

NASA Earth Observatory's Lauren Dauphin captured this lovely portrait of the Marree Man, a 2.2 mile (3.5 kilometer) tall illustration of a person etched into a South Australian plateau, southeast of Lake Eyre. A pilot first spotted Marree Man in 1998 but to this day nobody knows for sure who created the geoglyph.

While an Alice Springs artist reportedly confessed on his deathbed that he is the artist behind the geoglyph, there are other clues suggesting an American origin. Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith has offered a $5000 reward to anyone who can definitively solve the mystery of the Marree Man.

From NASA:

In August 2016, local business owners, concerned about the loss of what had become a tourist draw, decided to restore the fading geoglyph. With accurate GPS coordinates for the original in hand, they used a construction grader to redraw Marree Man over a period of five days.

The restoration team thinks the updated geoglyph will last longer than the original because they created wind grooves, designed to trap water and encourage the growth of vegetation. Over time, they hope vegetation will turn the lines green. The OLI acquired this image of the feature on June 22, 2019.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/C_42zXrQjnM/beautiful-nasa-satellite-image.html

For the last couple weeks, residents of Colorado and Nebraska have reported squadrons of large drones flying overhead. The drones are large, with a reported 6-foot wingspan, and their operators and purpose remain a mystery. The Federal Aviation Administration has now opened an investigation into the matter. From the New York Times:

Some have suggested they might be part of a simple mapping operation, or a land survey conducted by an oil and gas company — but why would such flights run at night?...

The drone sightings started in northeast Colorado around mid-December and have only grown more widespread since then. Almost all the sightings have occurred between sunset and about 10 p.m., though (Palisade, Nebraska resident Missy) Blackman said she had seen them out later one night in Nebraska and, for the first time on Wednesday, during daylight hours. She said she had looked at them through binoculars and did not see any markings, just plain silver and white coloring.

Across the state line in Colorado, Captain Yowell tried to photograph the drones on Tuesday night with the camera he uses to document crime scenes, but came away without a clear image. He estimated that up to 30 drones were flying each night, though not all in the same place...

Sheriff Todd Combs of Yuma County, Colo., said in a Facebook post Tuesday that the drones appeared to be staying at least 150 feet from buildings or people, based on the footage he has seen.

“There are many theories about what is going on, but at this point, that’s all they are,” he said.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/L07cF9Aq0lE/mystery-drone-squadrons-flying.html

Randy Lubin (previously) writes, "New work is entering the public domain and Mike Masnick and I are hosting a game jam to celebrate. Designers have all of January to design analog and digital games about, inspired by, or remixing works from 1924. We have amazing judges, great prizes, and are excited to see what you make!"

This jam is open to both digital and analog games – choose the medium that excites you!

For digital games, we’ll only be judging games that are playable in the browser. This includes interactive fiction using frameworks like Twine. You can submit desktop or mobile games but we won’t consider them for prizes.

For analog games, we’re looking for tabletop RPGs, larps, board games, and everything in between. We encourage you to design something short and quickly playable. Our judges are only committed to reading the first four pages of your submission. Golden Cobra and Game Chef contain great examples of brief, compelling games.

Don’t worry about making a highly polished game! We’re more interested in your ideas and how you use the public domain.

Gaming Like It's 1924 [Randy Lubun/Itch.io] Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Sxilt7jly1A/irving-berlin-george-gershwin.html

Brush up on those interview skills all you like, but all the charm in the world won't help you past the primary obstacle for modern job seekers: Applicant tracking systems. These bots comb online applications before a human ever sees them, searching for keywords that would indicate particular titles or skills.

That's where Rezi R'esum'e Software comes in handy.

It's a fine line: You don't want your resume to read like an SEO checklist, but you do want it to be flagged by the right companies. Rezi allows you to do this by providing simple forms for your job experience, skills, education and other essentials. It then organizes them in a way that puts your best traits front and center, letting you customize it at every step so you can still maintain your unique voice. The results will bump up your score on ATS algorithms while still providing a compelling "best foot forward" once that manager gets their first look.

A lifetime subscription to Rezi is now available for a full 94% off the retail price. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/6OioP43oKb4/outwit-applicant-trackers-with.html

As a teenager, Mark Holmgren of Edmonton, Canada lost all use of his arm after a motorcycle accident. Last year, he decided to have the nonfunctional arm amputated. But he also had a curious request of his physicians: Holmgren wanted to keep the lost limb.

“I carried it out of the hospital in a garbage bag,” Holmgren told CTV News Edmonton. “I actually kept it in my freezer for about a month.”

Apparently it wasn't easy to find a taxidermist willing to remove the flesh and prepare the bones for display.

“A couple of them told me no, like right away. There was no way that they were going to touch human body parts.”

Eventually, he found a taxidermy shop willing to do the job.

“I’m just going to keep it probably behind the sink in the kitchen," Holmgren says. "I’m happy I did it. It’s just not for everybody.”

More: "This Edmonton man had his arm amputated. Then he kept the bones." (CTV News Edmonton)

Read the rest

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Thinking it was a really old bottle of alcohol, Antiques Roadshow expert Andy McConnell took a tiny drink of some brown mystery liquid in a 2016 episode. Repulsed by the taste, the glass expert said, "I think it's port - port or red wine... or it's full of rusty old nails and that's rust." In a new episode, the show's host, Fiona Bruce, has now revealed that he was partially right. There was rust, as well as urine, a single human hair, and a couple other things.

Independent:

"Inside were these brass pins, all of these dating from the late 1840s, and the liquid – urine, a tiny pit of alcohol and one human hair," explained Bruce.

"And a mysterious little creature called an ostracod, which is like a little cockle. So [this] was not a bottle of port or wine, but a witches bottle.

"So buried in the threshold of the house as a talisman against witchcraft, against curses, against misfortune coming into the home."

McConnell replied: "Yummy. Such good news."

screenshot via News 247 Live Read the rest

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Shardcore (previously) writes, "I took Godley & Creme's seminal 1985 video and sent it through a StyleGAN network."

Every time I see a GAN face morph, it makes me think of the Godley & Creme video, so I decided to see what would happen if the two met.

I split the Cry video into its constituent frames and asked the network to try and produce a portrait of each one.

I then asked it to produce a slightly older version of the same face. Often this seems to involve adding a pair of glasses.

Each frame of the video is a portrait ‘painted’ by the network. The output influenced by all that it has experienced before.

Cry, but everyone’s a bit older [Shardcore] Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/O1thc7TPDJw/godley-and-creme.html

There was an inspiring sight for indigenous and women's rights in the mountains of Chiapas this week, as more than 3,200 women from 49 countries reportedly gathered together for the second annual International Gathering of Women Who Struggle.

Words from the #Zapatista Women at the Opening of the Second International Gathering of Women Who Struggle - #ezln #Chiapas #feminism #antireport - Read here: https://t.co/9MYftJy78K pic.twitter.com/6v7YyLUT89

 Enough 14 (@enough14) December 31, 2019

From the opening statement at the event:

As the Zapatistas that we are, we know that they will give us many examples of women who have advanced, triumphed, won prizes and high salaries—who have been successful, as they put it. We respond by talking about the women whom have been raped, disappeared, murdered. We point out that the rights they talk about above are won by a precious few women above. And we respond, we explain, we shout that what is lacking is the most basic and most important of rights for all women: the right to live. We’ve said it many times, compa~nera and sister, but we’ll repeat it again now:

Nobody is going to grant us our right to live and all the other rights we need and deserve. No man—good, bad, normal, or whatever—is going to grant these to us.

The capitalist system is not going to give them to us, regardless of the laws it passes and the promises it makes.

We will have to win our right to live, as well as all our other rights, always and everywhere.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/8pPvskHtBKo/thousands-of-zapatista-women-g.html

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Billy Billings learns that his pal God-Man is a jealous God-Man.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/wzTjRW67E5c/god-man-scorned.html

Cartoonist Mimi Pond recently discovered that her local Costco sells Costco-themed pajamas for women!

Look closely at the pattern. It depicts, using cute illustrations, their famous sample food carts, and customers hauling oversized products like a pizza slice, bottle of wine, jar of peanut butter pretzels, steak, and more. Plus, tires and big-screen TVs! I don't even have a Costco membership but I want a pair of these.

Available online at Costco for $23 (includes matching socks). Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/UO2qiwfP5Zo/costco-themed-pajamas.html

Tales of piss-headed police officers dominated the news in the week before New Years (at least, in my social circles, if we discount everything related to Star Wars). In West Virginia, the governor has finally recommended the firing of the full Hitler Heil-ing cadet class. In Kansas, another cop was (allegedly) terminated after writing "Fucking Pig" on his own McDonald's coffee cup and trying to blame it on the hard-working, underpaid workers whom he should be theoretically serving and protecting. (Some cops in Alabama also made a mocking "homeless quilt" that the department later apologized for, though the officers weren't actually reprimanded as far as I can tell.)

On the surface, this is largely a good thing. Although these are somewhat-minor acts in the grand scheme of police behaviors, the fact that there are actually repercussions for police misconduct already represents a sea change from the way things have been. Police departments across the country have kept secret lists of criminal crops who remain in their employ; typically, when cops are caught lying about things (even as dumb and small as a McDonald's coffee cup), the rest of their testimony is still given weight. Hell, the National Center for Women and Policing found that at least 40% of police officers self-reported domestic violence in the home … and still keep their jobs.

But these guys in West Virginia and Kansas? They might actually lose their jobs over a couple of pictures.

The public outrage towards unfair and overly aggressive policing has noticeably swelled alongside the raise of the Black Lives Matter movement, and particularly in the aftermath of that obscene military occupation in Ferguson. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/pI-a7AcosGI/a-bunch-of-rookie-cops-have-re.html

Six months ago, Propublica began beating the drum about "Free File," a bizarre, corrupt arrangement between the IRS and the country's largest tax-prep firms that ended up costing the poorest people in America millions and millions of dollars, every single year.

The scam is one of those baroque, ultimately boring and complex stories that generally dies in the public imagination despite its urgency, because "boring and urgent" is the place where the worst people can do the worst things with the least consequences.

With that warning, here's a short summary: in most wealthy countries, the tax authority fills out your tax return for you, using the information your employer already has to file every time it pays your wages. If all the numbers look right to you, you just sign the bottom of the form and send it back, without paying a tax preparer. If, on the other hand, you want to claim extra deductions, or if something complicated is going on with your finances, you can throw away that free tax return and fill in a form from scratch, either on your own or with the help of a professional.

When Americans asked to have the same courtesy extended to them -- a move that would save the vast majority of Americans millions and millions of dollars they were currently paying to the likes of HR Block and Intuit/Turbotax, every single year of their entire working lives -- the tax-prep industry mobilized to kill the proposal. The industry (which is highly concentrated and dominated by a small handful of firms whose top execs have mostly done time in all their competitors' board rooms, making them into essentially one giant company whose different divisions have different shareholders) lobbied the IRS very hard, and won a resounding victory. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/fucAnyqwzC0/go-propublica-go.html

Details are the bane of any manager. It's tough to innovate when you've got invoices to approve, gripes to address and countless fires to put out on any number of projects.

Here is where technology can actually help you, because businesses run better when they integrate all their procedures, inflow and outflow under one system. ProjectDue.co aims to be just that system, and it's got the functionality to do it.

This business suite has all the nuts-and-bolts essentials that let you keep track of employees and clients, but it also integrates that info in a way that allows you to work dynamically. You can track progress with any lead on the fly and communicate their needs to the right people on you team.

Invoices are approved with the click of a button, inventory gets tracked at a glance, and projects can be managed much more efficiently with all the relevant info at your fingertips.

A lifetime subscription to ProjectDue.co is already more than 95% off, but you can take an extra 20% off that final cost with the discount code 20SAVE20. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/kMHsYzj-m1g/projectdue-handles-your-busine.html

You may have heard of air fryers, but they're a lot more versatile than the name implies. Healthier (and quicker!) french fries are just the tip of the iceberg with these innovative cookers, and here are six of our favorites. As if they needed any additional highlighting, you can save an extra 20% off the final price on any of them by using the coupon code 20SAVE20.

GoWISE USA® 12.7QT Electric Air Fryer Toaster Oven

This premiere unit in the GoWISE line lets you take full advantage of the Rapid Air Circulation tech that cooks food fast with minimal amounts of oil. With a 12.7 quart capacity, you can roast and fry everything up to a full chicken while the 15 presets make it easy to make a variety of meals on the fly.

MSRP: $159.99

Sale Price: $149.99

Price after 20SAVE20 coupon: $119.99

GoWISE USA® 11-in-1 Programmable 12.7QT Electric Air Fryer Toaster Oven

Here's another high-capacity model from GoWISE USA that's designed to save space. There are three removable racks that allow you to make multiple dishes at the same time, and a recipe book that shows you how to refine them.

MSRP: $180.00

Sale Price: $159.00

Price after 20SAVE20 coupon: $127.20

GoWISE USA® 8-in-1 Programmable 4.6QT Stainless Electric Air Fryer

This smaller air fryer lets you cook a wide array of meals (even desserts) in a PFOA-free stainless steel pan. There's even a crisper tray that allows for more efficient toasting, frying or warming up.

MSRP: $149.00

Sale Price: $89.99 Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/adSZ8bB5Ycg/hack-your-cooking-in-2020-with.html

Wanda Diaz Merced is an astronomer at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Office for Astronomy Outreach in Mitaka, Japan. Diaz Merced is blind and uses a technique to transform data from astronomical surveys into sounds for analysis. Over at Nature, Elizabeth Gibney interviewed Merced about how "converting astronomical data into sound could bring discoveries that conventional techniques miss." From Nature:

How did you begin your work with sonification?

Sonification has been around for a long time. In 1933, for example, US physicist Karl Jansky reported detecting the first radio waves from space, as an audible hiss in his antenna. But at some point, visualization came to dominate the way we interpret astrophysical data. When I was an intern at NASA in 2005, my mentor, Robert Candey, wanted me to create a prototype data analysis tool that would familiarize blind people with space-physics data. So we developed software that could map astronomical data into sound — its pitch, rhythm and volume. Then, in my 2013 PhD dissertation at the University of Glasgow, UK, I proved that it is useful....

Can you describe a real-world example?

There are many. Sonification can help us to study the habitability of an exoplanet, by understanding how much high-energy cosmic and solar rays interact with its magnetic field or atmosphere. Such interactions cause fluctuations of electromagnetic emission from that star system that vary in a way that relates to frequency . BBut because astronomers usually separate out different frequency components into many graphs, this is easy to miss.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/B9zp2IerJCI/wanda-diaz-merced-is-a-blind-a.html

In 1978, Japanese electronic music maestro Osamu Shoji (1932-2018) released this killer analog synth reimagining of the Star Wars soundtrack. I find Shoji's take on the familiar themes to be far groovier than the disco exploitation of Meco's US chart-topping "Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk" released the previous year.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/S8LQGQQ9vSQ/groovy-synth-star-wars-soundtr.html