Incredible Photos of the National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico

The jaw-dropping photo series “Tultepec” by Thomas Prior documents the fireworks-fueled chaos of the 2013 National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico. The nine-day festival celebrates the main industry of Tultepec—handmade fireworks—through firework competitions, a parade of pyrotechnic bulls, and apparently, loads of fireworks in the streets.

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_____ as _____, Food Idioms Visualized in Lettering Made out of Food

“Warm as toast”

In her photo series “_____ as _____,” designer Christine Kawasaki-Chan visualizes food idioms like “cool as a cucumber” using lettering made out of actual food items. Check out her Dribbble page for more of her photography.

“Cool as a cucumber”

“Easy as pie”

“Keen as mustard

Paula Deen admits to using the n-word, but only for "bad" black people

I grew up in the South, and I know all about "not racist" white people who use that racist slur against black people, but "only the bad ones." Guess what. Those white people are racists. Some pretty great Twitter jokes coming out of this one, though. And American shitrag National Enquirer says they have video. Here's the court transcript. And HuffPo picked out the awful bits and served them up on top of an SEO-optimized plate of warm grits and butter. Enjoy, y'all!

Actor James Gandolfini of Sopranos fame dies suddenly, in Italy

Actor James Gandolfini, 51, has died of what early reports say was a massive heart attack.
He was in Italy at the time.
HBO

How to Make Toy Animal Corn on the Cob Holders

Using cheap plastic animal toys, Instructables’ play editor and community manager Mike Warren created super cute corn on the cob holders. He even cleverly designed the holders to reconnect when not poking corn (tutorial).

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Hairy Stockings For Young Chinese Girls To Fend Off Perverts

ChinaSMACK is reporting that a user on China’s microblogging site Sina Weibo has invented “hairy stockings” as a way for young girls to fend off perverts. It’s hard to tell if these are real or imagined but given that some people in China have been putting dogs in pantyhose, these might just be the former.

Blunders of Genius: interesting errors by Darwin, Pauling, and Einstein

Charles Darwin, Linus Pauling, and Albert Einstein made great contributions to science. They also made large blunders. In this original essay Mario Livio, astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and author of the new book Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe,

Game of Thrones Character Art Prints by Adam Spizak

“Fire and Blood” (Daenerys Targaryen)

London-based illustrator Adam Spizak created three fierce art prints that depict characters (Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow) from the hit HBO television series, Game of Thrones. Prints are available to purchase online from Funkrush. Previously we wrote about Adam’s collection of television show character art prints.

“Hear me Roar” (Tyrion Lannister)

“Winter is coming” (Jon Snow)

Verizon: Oh yeah, we can definitely hear you now.

Photo: Verizon Can Hear You Now, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 60976844@N00's photostream, shared in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool.

Incredible Origami Animal Sculptures by Cuong Nguyen

Vietnamese artist Cuong Nguyen creates beautiful origami animal sculptures out of single sheets of paper. Nguyen’s style varies between exacting detail and minimalism, and he has crafted his favorite subjects—gorillas and scorpions–in many different styles over the years. For more on Nguyen’s work, see his interview with All Things Paper.

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Ranch Dressing Soda Tasted and Reviewed on ‘Don’t Put That In Your Mouth’

“If you were to take like a Dorito and wring it out and just get all the Dorito juice…”

In episode 7 of the web series Don’t Put That In Your Mouth, host Mark Cersosimo tastes and reviews Ranch Dressing Soda with Meghan Oretsky.

It would be mostly awesome if the Sun went out right now*

Today's XKCD What If? explores many of the benefits that would accrue to the human race if the Sun were suddenly extinguished.

Reduced risk of solar flares: In 1859, a massive solar flare and geomagnetic storm hit the Earth.[1] Magnetic storms induce electric currents in wires. Unfortunately for us, by 1859 we had wrapped the Earth in telegraph wires. The storm caused powerful currents in those wires, knocking out communications and in some cases causing telegraph equipment to catch fire.[2] Since 1859, we've wrapped the Earth in a lot more wires. If the 1859 storm hit us today, the Department of Homeland Security estimates the economic damage to the US alone would be several trillion dollars[3]—more than every hurricane which has ever hit the US combined.[4] If the Sun went out, this threat would be eliminated. Improved satellite service: When a communications satellite passes in front of the Sun, the Sun can drown out the satellite's radio signal, causing an interruption in service.[5] Deactivating the Sun would solve this problem. Better astronomy: Without the Sun, ground-based observatories would be able to operate around the clock. The cooler air would create less atmospheric noise, which would reduce the load on adaptive optics systems and allow for sharper images. Stable dust: Without sunlight, there would be no Poynting–Robertson drag, which means we would finally be able to place dust into a stable orbit around the Sun without the orbits decaying. I’m not sure whether anyone wants to do that, but you never know. Reduced infrastructure costs: The Department of Transportation estimates that it would cost $20 billion per year over the next 20 years to repair and maintain all US bridges.[6] Most US bridges are over water; without the Sun, we could save money by simply driving on a strip of asphalt laid across the ice.

Kickstarting a Bluetooth-controlled cyborg cockroach

Alan sez, "Who wouldn't want their very own cyborg roach? And who wouldn't want to be able to control that cyborg from their mobile? Fund this Kickstarter and maybe you can. The robo-roach - manufactured in a hackerspace, like you do - is intended to serve as a high school science experiment. However, if you think that's what most people are going to use it for then you have not met nearly as many fratboys and office pranksters as I have

Don’t Mess With a Chipmunk’s Nuts

To promote their show North America, Discovery Channel has made “Don’t Mess With a Chipmunk’s Nuts,” a video clip from episode 3 of the series that tells the serious business of nut collecting for chipmunks.

hey, it's summer 2

Han Solo in Carbonite Pop-Tarts

Last October, IGN's Brian Altano announced a bold design fiction: an imaginary line of "Han Solo in Carbonite" Pop-Tarts. Several months have gone by and this is still not a thing. The world is broken

hey it's summer no 1

All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Rock 

“All the Young Dudes,” glam rock’s rallying cry, turned 40 last year. David Bowie wrote it, but Mott the Hoople owned it: their version was, and will ever remain, glam’s anthem, a hymn of exuberant disenchantment that also happens to be one of rock’s all-time irresistible sing-alongs.
Bowie, glam, and “All the Young Dudes” are inseparable in the public mind, summoning memories of a subculture dismissed as apolitical escapism, a glitter bomb of fashion and attitude that briefly relieved the malaise of the '70s.
Now, cultural critic Mark Dery gives the movement its due in an 8,000-word exploration of glam as rebellion through style, published as a Kindle e-book (and Boing Boing's first published e-book): All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Matters. As polymorphously perverse as the subculture it explores, “All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Matters” is equal parts fan letter, visual-culture criticism, queer theory, and true confession.
In bravura style, Dery teases out lines of connection between glam, the socioeconomic backdrop of the '70s, Oscar Wilde as a late-Victorian Ziggy Stardust, the etymology and queer subtext of the slang term “dude,” the associative links between the '20s-style cover of the Mott album on which “Dudes” appeared and the coded homoeroticism of the '20s magazine illustrator J.C. Leyendecker (considered in the context of the 1970s fad for all things 1920s), and Dery’s own memories of growing up glam in '70s San Diego, where coming out as a Bowie fan -- even for straight kids -- was an invitation to bullying.
Glam emboldened kids in America and England to dream of a world beyond suburbia’s oppressive notions of normalcy, Dery argues, a world conjured up in pop songs full of Wildean irony and Aestheticism and jaw-dropping fashion statements to match. More important, glam drew inspiration from feminism and gay liberation to articulate a radical critique of mainstream manhood---a pomosexual vision of masculinity whose promise remains only partly fulfilled, even now.