art This portrait of Pee-wee Herman is made with old toothbrushes, light bulbs, and other junk Rusty Blazenhoff

Science "My dad launched the quest to find alien intelligence. It changed astronomy." David Pescovitz

tabloids The Man Who Knew Too Much! Why China murdered its own ambassador, in this week’s highly dubious tabloids Peter Sheridan

Gadgets Let a bunch of robots help you get your house cleaned while you are stuck at home Boing Boing's Shop

V/H/S The Internet Archive has a treasure/trash trove of 20,000 VHS recordings from the 1980s and 1990s Mark Frauenfelder

kitchen tools Good, inexpensive silicone kitchen sink strainer Mark Frauenfelder

tabloids Adjectival overload, and the tabloids finally get one right, in this week’s round-up of the rags Peter Sheridan

police A bunch of rookie cops have recently been fired for doing bad things. Let's think about that for a moment. Thom Dunn

john waters Kathleen Turner, Patty Hearst and Mink Stole will be counselors at Camp John Waters in 2020 Rusty Blazenhoff

Funny Dumpster diving bear rescued from trash can Xeni Jardin

art Tim Biskup: new interview and book from the great pop surrealist David Pescovitz

the briny deep A rare encounter with the freaky Deepstaria jellyfish Clive Thompson

if you can't open it you don't own it Inside NYC's slowly-vanishing repair shops Clive Thompson

Funko Funko's Lion Force Voltron is mighty Jason Weisberger

Business Chinese environment ministry finds widespread pollution coverups and corruption at the local government level Cory Doctorow

litterbirds Bald eagles are taking trash from a Seattle landfill and dumping it into suburban yards Carla Sinclair

late stage capitalism The weird grift of "sovereign citizens": where UFOlogy meets antisemitism by way of Cliven Bundy and cat-breeding Cory Doctorow

Gadgets Great deals today on Logitech stuff at Amazon Rob Beschizza

picks Joshua Tree National Park to close because Trump's shutdown led to damage Xeni Jardin

picks Brett Kavanaugh called Hillary Clinton a bitch Rob Beschizza