For only the third time in its 70-year history, Tito's Tacos has added an item to its legendary menu: a cheese quesadilla.

Tito's is a love-it-or-leave-it restaurant in West Los Angeles. Specializing in deep-fried tacos and long lines, if you think Tito's tacos are great, you are willing to brave the line. — Read the rest

The post Los Angeles' Tito's Tacos adds a menu item appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Melania movie demonstrates two things: Jeff Bezos has fewer scruples than his Venice wedding already made clear, and Brett Ratner has not changed at all. Aside from that, Melania is as boring as everyone suspected.

Apparently created only because obscenely wealthy people needed a vehicle to bribe one another for consideration that benefits their highly dependent businesses on a friendly government, Melania the Movie exists as an embarrassing complication. — Read the rest

The post Surprise! The Melania movie is terrible and serves no purpose appeared first on Boing Boing.

While the rest of the country bellyaches about affordability and cannot find housing or healthcare, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has found $70 million to buy a new warehouse, where they plan to build another "detention center." There is no indication that the agency intends to abide by the document that limits what they can do inside such a prison. — Read the rest

The post ICE finds $70 million for a warehouse, still can't find the Constitution appeared first on Boing Boing.

Hauled out of his stump at Gobbler's Knob, before daylight, by a bunch of oddly dressed men, Punxsutawney Phil has done his thing, while meteorology continues to exist.

The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club says that when Phil is deemed to have not seen his shadow, that means there will be an early spring.

— Read the rest

The post Rodent reaffirms winter, meteorologists undeterred appeared first on Boing Boing.

Convicted felon Trump is once again blaming the dead for state violence and excessive use of force.

The Orange Menace's desire to lower the temperature in Minneapolis lasted less than a week. Trump took to his diminutive social media network to declare Pretti an "agitator" and "perhaps an insurrectionist." — Read the rest

The post Trump back to blaming the victim, business as usual for ICE appeared first on Boing Boing.

I have just finished reading The Uncertainty Principle?, an oddball detective novel (or maybe, as the text says, an "anti-detective novel,") by Robert Anton Wilson's longtime friend, D. Scott Apel. It is quite a wild ride, and I found it hard to stop reading. The hero is private investigator Alec Smart, there are I think three  novels that feature him. 

Several real  people appear in the book under fictional names, including Robert Anton Wilson, Arlen Riley Wilson and Philip K. Dick. Here is one of the descriptions of the RAW character, "Timothy Aleister Finnegan,":

From my perspective, I stood facing an avuncular guy who couldn't be mistaken for anything other than a writer. He was middle-aged, a few inches shorter than my six feet, but well-matched with his wife. He had a large, round face which tapered down to a pointed gray goatee, and he wore his salt-and-pepper hair slicked straight back against his head. He looked like nothing so much as the unlikely offspring of a cherub and a satyr. He had an infectious smile, accentuated by laugh lines radiating around his sharp blue eyes. In those eyes was a hint of endearing devilishness; a touch of the Trickster. The cherub as confidence man. There's an old joke that says, "After you shake hands with him, be sure to count your fingers." I felt like if I counted mine now I might find six. 

The Uncertainty Principle? is available as a paperback (about $15) and a Kindle ebook (about $1).  I have published a couple of interviews with Scott, here is one. 

The Zerowriter Ink is another focus-writing gadget featuring a mechanical keyboard, e-ink screen, and no distracting apps or features beyond simple word-processing tools. Similar to the Freewrite Alpha but with a more minimalist look and a lower price tag, it's reportedly shipping now after a successful crowdfunding campaign. — Read the rest

The post Zerowriter Ink: sleek e-ink typewriter appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get access to over 1,000 courses in IT, design, coding, and more with EDU Unlimited by StackSkills for 92% off at just $19.97 (Reg. $600).

There's a reason the 'curriculum' trend has taken over the internet. The most unlikely suspects — from people you knew once in school to streamers like Kai Cenat or entertainers like Chance the Rapper — are taking their learning seriously. — Read the rest

The post Your monthly curriculum is here — and it's 92% off appeared first on Boing Boing.

Whizard Handguard

These Spectra/Kevlar gloves are used in the restaurant industry to defend against knife and mandolin cuts, as well as handling trash that may have protruding bits of glass and fish bones. I read about them in a cooking magazine, and bought one glove after cutting myself on a mandolin.

find the glove allows for ample movement and dexterity. It's definitely flexible enough to carve with and feels a lot like wearing a winter Thinsulate glove. These days, when I use the mandolin, I find I can get in closer for a few extra slices. Although the glove hits the blade, my hand's always safe. My gloved hand has even survived an errant cleaver (Fortunately I didn't hit myself not too hard).

I've used mine about five times a month for the past three years. I've washed it and haven't noticed any deterioration, though it does feel a little stiffer at first. Bonus: The weave is much tighter than with a pricier chain mail glove, so it also seems better for guarding against knife pokes. — Steve Golden

Chain Mail Glove

If you enjoy carving wood or just working with sharp tools, this glove can save you countless boxes of band-aids as well as a nice chunk of change - and gas money — from all the trips to the local emergency room for stitches. The chain mail (just like the type medieval knights and shark divers use) is a great safety tool that not only keeps you from slicing your hand open, but also makes you feel pretty tough while wearing it. Much more comfortable and easier to work with than any heavily-padded safety glove. These are similar to the butcher's gloves and also those advertised for shucking oysters, but they're half the price. — Josh G.

Tuffcoat Work Gloves

I was left about a dozen pairs of these rubber dipped kevlar gloves by the former owner of my house. Good thing, too! I've removed 4 crabapple trees, buried electrical cable, dug up hundreds of ferns, trimmed pine trees and done yardwork for the whole neighborhood. And these gloves look exactly like they did on day one.

That's not to say they're pretty, because they're surely not, but they can stand up to all kinds of abuse and not seem any worse for the wear. The rubber is flexible enough to grip small objects like nails and screws yet plenty sturdy for sharp thorns and other pokey things. The yellow kevlar mesh on the top makes the gloves feel light and breathable. The gloves pull on and off very easily and they hug the wrists so not much dirt gets inside of them.

The colors may not be pretty but they help make them more visible when you're looking for a pair in your crowded garage or basement. I gave away a few pairs before I realized how valuable they are. Now I just tell other people about them! — Matt O'Hara

Glacier Gloves

The quest for warm hands in a cold demanding environment is a long and frustrating one. The general rule is it takes carrying three pairs of gloves to have one dry pair on your hands. I have not found that to be true with Glacier Gloves, which is hands down the best glove I have ever used. The 824BK is 2mm neoprene lined with a thin fleece nap on the inside; the two layers feel fused together somehow (not sewn or glued), which gives them a comfortable fit, allows easy on and off, and provides excellent dexterity.

I have bought several different waterproof gloves from various makers, including the previously-reviewed SealSkinz, other neoprene rubber gloves and a pair of thinsulate-filled gloves with a "waterproof" exterior. Some are OK and allow for moderate dexterity, but I find my hands get cold after working in the water and I then have to switch out to a different glove — and if you have to put some of them on with wet hands, forget it.

With the Glacier Glove, the Velcro strap secures them to your wrist, minimizes heat loss through the cuff, and minimizes water entry through the cuff. I find the cuff, when tucked inside the sleeve of your coat, also prevents rain water from running down your jacket and into the glove from the topside.

My hunting partner bought a pair years ago and was quick to brag about how warm and dry his hands were whenever we complained about how cold and wet ours were. I now wear mine while duck hunting and will generally keep my left glove on all day long, and swap between a thin shooter's glove and my Glacier on the right (that's just my preference; other hunters use them on both hands with no complaints). While I've only used these gloves while hunting, I would recommend them for any cold and wet environment. — Max Tullos

Youngstown Waterproof Winter Plus Work Gloves

I received these gloves about six years ago from my wife, in one of those rare intersections of need and availability. It was Christmastime and I needed to shovel, so I broke these out and went to work. I never gave them a second thought, until I realized I had done a fair amount of ice chopping, opening the garage, and manipulating other things without ever removing the gloves. This is somewhat of a rarity for me since I usually cannot work in gloves. Fast-forward to spring, and I used them to protect my hands when chopping and stacking wood; working on the car; working in the garage. I *far extended* the prescribed use of these, despite the fact that they were winter gloves and waterproof. In a pinch, I've even used them when moving flaming logs in an outdoor fire pit.

A short word about the waterproofing: I tend to agree with other owners in that these aren't strictly waterproof. If I was a long-line fisherman I may not use them. However, as a north Jersey resident who works on his cars, shovels snow, and builds snowmen for the kids, I can attest to their warmth and utility in the cold and wet.

With respect to function, they fit my slightly larger hand size well, and the back strap does seal in against cold and snow. The palms and fingers are textured and I am able to pick up bolts, thread nuts, small tools and sockets, and work with wrenches rather easily. The fingertips are boxed, not tapered, but in some ways the fingertips work to my advantage in picking up things on the ground.

When they get *really* dirty, you can toss them in the wash. The construction is such that the inner glove liner is not sewn to the shell, but it is a huge pain in the posterior to re-fit the glove components back to original fit. I used a wooden spoon and patience to eventually restore it to normal comfort. — Christopher Wanko

Glove Guards

The problem is keeping my work gloves with me at all times. I've tried putting grommets in the gloves and clipping them with a carabiner, but this isn't as easy as it sounds and is a pain to do all over again when a glove gets lost or worn out.

Years ago I saw someone out there with a large battery-terminal clip holding his gloves, and I've been searching for a similar clip for years with no success. This year, though, I found these Glove Guards.

The clips have a "breakaway" feature, so that you won't be trapped if your gloves get caught in machinery or something. This caused me some worry when my gloves got caught in the truck door and seemed to break away too easily but the two pieces of the clip reconnected with ease, and have continued to hold firm ever since.

At less than $5 apiece, I can wholeheartedly recommend getting several if keeping your gloves handy is important to you. — Bill Emmack

Xikipedia is an experiment in user experience: Wikipedia content formatted into an infinite-scroll mobile-friendly feed. So you can doomscroll it. It was created by lyra rebane and the source code is available on GitHub.

Xikipedia is a pseudo social media feed that algorithmically shows you content from Simple Wikipedia.

— Read the rest

The post Wikipedia made doomscrollable appeared first on Boing Boing.

"All the Young Dudes," written by David Bowie for Mott the Hoople and a number 3 hit for that band in the summer of 1972, is the greatest glam record of all time. This according to Uncut magazine.

More hopefully, though, glam could be a key to self-discovery.

— Read the rest

The post "All the Young Dudes" the greatest glam song of all time appeared first on Boing Boing.

Story Bowl

I'm a Patriots fan who was pained for the Seahawks when a bad play call (blame coaches) snatched defeat from the jaws of victory the last time the two teams met in the Super Bowl. So I won't be too bummed if the Seahawks win this one. The Revenge Bowl will be a good story. So will the Redemption Game story for Sam Darnold. But there are good stories for the Pats as well. The MVP story for Drake Maye. The Huge Turnaround story for Mike Vrabel. The Nobody Believes in Us story for the team. My expectation: Patriots by less than a touchdown.

Wikipedia maintains a list of inventors killed by their own inventions.

Franz Reichelt, a tailor, designed a wearable parachute coat. In 1912, he tested it by jumping off the Eiffel Tower. It did not deploy. Marie Curie discovered radium and died of aplastic anemia from years of radiation exposure — her papers are still too radioactive to handle without protection. — Read the rest

The post Wikipedia's list of inventors killed by their own inventions keeps growing appeared first on Boing Boing.

In a crumbling 11th-century church in Halberstadt, Germany, an organ has been playing the same piece of music since 2001. It will finish in 2640. The composition is John Cage's ORGAN²/ASLSP — "As Slow As Possible" — and the organizers took the title literally. — Read the rest

The post A 639-year organ performance is underway in Germany appeared first on Boing Boing.

David French's latest New York Times column asks readers to imagine something that shouldn't require much imagination: it's October 2026, Trump's approval is abysmally low, Democrats are leading generic ballot polls by a wide margin, and none of it matters because ICE is running large-scale operations near polling stations in Democratic cities, purging voters with Latino, African, or Asian names from the rolls, while the FBI raids election offices in swing states. — Read the rest

The post The 2026 midterms are already in peril appeared first on Boing Boing.

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are a 43-year-old Border Patrol agent and a 35-year-old Customs and Border Protection officer, according to government records viewed by ProPublica, which published names of both men. The two agents were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, the immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent armed, masked agents across the city. — Read the rest

The post The two CBP agents who killed Alex Pretti have been identified appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ammon Bundy — who led two armed standoffs with federal agents and became the face of the Patriot Movement — now calls the Trump administration's immigration crackdown a "moral failure." In November, he wrote that "to call such people criminals for lacking official permission" to be in the country "is to forget the moral law of God, the historical truth of our own founding, and the Constitutional ideals that continue to define justice." — Read the rest

The post Ammon Bundy called ICE "tyranny." His militia allies disagree. appeared first on Boing Boing.

This is Star Trek before Star Trek. It is Alien long before Alien. It is the template for so much modern science fiction. What it is not is particularly good.

I don't intend to dump on the classics (and this is undoubtedly a classic) but 1950s sci-fi takes place in an almost alien media environment. Even if you ignore the anachronisms (like having to develop film in order to see photographs) and the archaic language (lots of vibrators being used against a big pussy) it is hard to get over how unconvincing it all is.

In the first story, the crew of the Space Beagle find an alien monster. It probably killed one of them. They bring it aboard and just let it lounge about in the library! Yes, all the science is fun, and the "competency porn" of the professional crew is suitably heroic, but the characters and their motivations are frequently bizarre. It is only through the complete absence of girls (urgh!) that there's no interstellar sexism.

The protagonist, Grosvenor, is a cipher for every geeky kid who ever felt he was smarter than everyone else. He is a sneering, taciturn, and deeply unpleasant character. When given the opportunity, he relishes the chance to become dictator.

Because the book started life as a set of short stories, it works reasonably well as a "monster of the week" show. It is episodic, with well-placed cliffhangers. The science is very sciency with some excellent speculative elements. You've got aliens planting eggs in people (like Alien) and a ship's engineer who says "Nooo! The walls couldn't stand it. They'd melt." (like Scotty) and any number of concepts you'll recognise from your favourite TV shows.

The obsession with hypnotism and mind-control feels a bit icky, especially when understood in association with the author's dalliance with the pseudoscience of Dianetics.

The language (when not steeped in 1950's idiomatic phrasing) can verge on the poetic. Every story includes a chapter or two from the alien's viewpoint. They are deliciously weird and elevate this book beyond what might be a slightly forgettable slice of sci-fi.

It is absolutely worth reading - if only to see how influential it has been - but it can be a bit of a weird slog at times.

The New York Times used a proprietary search tool to find more than 5,300 files containing over 38,000 references to Trump, his wife, Mar-a-Lago, and related terms in the Epstein documents released Friday. The files include unverified tips submitted to the FBI — some accusing Trump and Epstein of sexual abuse — as well as interview notes where victims describe interactions with Trump. — Read the rest

The post NYT finds 38,000+ Trump references in released Epstein documents appeared first on Boing Boing.

In April 1951, Jack Kerouac taped together sheets of tracing paper to avoid the interruption of changing pages, then typed the first draft of On the Road in a three-week burst. The scroll — 121 feet of continuous typescript with no paragraph breaks, using the real names of his friends before the publisher made him change them — goes to auction at Christie's on March 12, with an estimate of $2.5 to $4 million, reports The Guardian. — Read the rest

The post Kerouac's 121-foot scroll of On the Road goes to auction for up to $4M appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 2007, Ibrahim Diallo switched to Dish Network and got an RF remote — the kind that doesn't need line-of-sight. A few months later, his loud neighbor switched to Dish as well. Same remote, same frequency.

"One day, I was in the living room watching TV when the channel just flipped," Diallo writes. — Read the rest

The post His neighbor was too noisy, so he used an RF remote to train him like a circus animal appeared first on Boing Boing.

Trump announced Sunday that he plans to close the Kennedy Center for roughly two years for construction, with the closure beginning on July 4 — America's 250th anniversary. "I have determined that The Trump Kennedy Center, if temporarily closed for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World," he wrote on Truth Social, reports The Washington Post. — Read the rest

The post Trump shuts down Kennedy Center; nearly all programming heads have quit appeared first on Boing Boing.

The newly released Epstein documents include over 1,000 files naming Vladimir Putin and nearly 10,000 mentioning Moscow, reports the Daily Mail. Intelligence sources told the paper they believe Epstein was running "the world's largest honeytrap operation" on behalf of the KGB when he procured women for his network of associates — and that he secured audiences with Putin even after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution. — Read the rest

The post Epstein files contain 1,056 documents mentioning Putin and 9,629 mentioning Moscow appeared first on Boing Boing.