[Only the tiniest bare beginning of the legal and ethical conundra, folks. -egg]
[BoingBoing]
Report of working 3D printed gun:

Popular Science‘s John Robb reports on a person who claims that his 3D-printed pistol can successfully fire live ammunition, though not with total reliability. The same person then went on to print a working AR-15 rifle (this is a substantial advance on last year’s account of a 3D printable AR-15 automatic conversion kit. This event has raised something of a crisis for Thingiverse, the online repository for 3D printable meshes, which is contemplating whether it will host files that can be printed into “weapons.”

An amateur gunsmith, operating under the handle of “HaveBlue” (incidentally, “Have Blue” is the codename that was used for the prototype stealth fighter that became the Lockheed F-117), announced recently in online forums that he had successfully printed a serviceable .22 caliber pistol.

Despite predictions of disaster, the pistol worked. It successfully fired 200 rounds in testing.

HaveBlue then decided to push the limits of what was possible and use his printer to make an AR-15 rifle. To do this, he downloaded plans for an AR-15 in the Solidworks file format from a site called CNCGunsmith.com. After some small modifications to the design, he fed about $30 of ABS plastic feedstock into his late-model Stratasys printer. The result was a functional AR-15 rifle. Early testing shows that it works, although it still has some minor feed and extraction problems to be worked out.

A Working Assault Rifle Made With a 3-D Printer

“When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks….:

“When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you’re a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin’ down MasterCard. But there’s no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I’m mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.”
– John Waters on the sorry style of today’s rebels  (emphasis mine)

Banksy Goes to the Olympics:


It looks like a potential crackdown on graffiti artists prior to the 2012 Olympics in London didn’t involve the world’s most famous street artist. Two new pieces by Banksy were posted to his website this morning featuring his personal take on the games. I feel the same as Bobby over at The Fox is Black in hoping there’s more to come.
Update: There’s a great article over at The Atlantic Wire about Banksy and the politics of street art during the 2012 Olympic Games.

Big Appetites: Miniature People Living in a World of Giant Food by Christopher Boffoli:









The miniature people inhabiting the fine art photographs of Christopher Boffoli live in a world of enormous food. A place where towering ice cream cones are turned into camping tents, where a field of peppercorns becomes a soccer match, and a savage crawfish threatens a group of men. The photos are as absurd as they are delightful. Based in Seattle, Boffoli says his work comments not only on our fascination with miniature things, but on “the American enthusiasm for excess, especially in the realm of food.” To view more of his photos you can simply scroll through his website, and to see them in person you can check out his Edible Worlds exhibition at Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York through August 24th. All images courtesy the artist.

[This is pretty damn awesome. -egg]
[BB]
CDZA: The history of wooing women (music video):
[Video Link] The latest from Joe Sabia‘s CDZA project: a chronology of “wooing women” in pop music, which subtly points out the arc from sweet ballads to “I want to fuck you like an animal.” Where has romance gone?

[Lemur, anyone? -egg]
[BB]
Pig’s milk, and other difficult dairies:
Writing in Slate, with reference to Deborah Valenze’s Milk: A Local and Global History, Benjamin Phelan discusses the milks of various mammals, wild and domestic, and describes their culinary peculiarities. It turns out that pig’s milk, in particular, is both delicious and awfully hard to procure:

And pig’s milk, alas, is also not quite ready for the American palate. With a little effort, I tracked down the chef I heard about at Whole Foods, the one who’s trying to make pig’s cheese. It’s Edward Lee of Louisville’s 610 Magnolia and Top Chef. “Anyone who farms pigs would say that pigs’ milk would make an incredible cheese,” he says. “The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to milk pigs. When sows are lactating, they get very aggressive. They’re not docile like cows. They’re smart, skittish, suspicious, and paranoid. They do not like you to get up in their business.”

Lee managed to accumulate a few jars’ worth of pigs’ milk, from which he made half a cup of pig ricotta that he says was delicious. Getting even such a small amount of milk required jackal-like derring-do: Lee crept up on the sows while they were sleeping, frantically pinched at their tiny nipples, then ran away when they woke up and started to freak out.

If only there were an industry that made pig-milking machines.

“What we’ve discovered,” says Lee, “uh, what we’ve concluded, you know, is basically that the machine that would fit a pig’s teat is a human breast pump. It fits perfectly.”

Others’ Milk

(via JWZ)

[Yep. -egg]
[BoingBoing]
3D printed “mixtapes” from Makerbot:

MakerBot has a delightful way of reviving the mixtape: a 3D printed MP3 player kit that looks like an old-fashioned cassette. You can either download and print the chassis yourself and assemble the device, or order the whole thing in assembled form. The Makerbot Mixtape holds 2GB, can be used as a thumb-drive, and plays directly through a headphone jack.

The MakerBot Mixtape

July 25, 2012:

WOW! WOW! Thank you ALL so much for helping make the kickstarter a success. It’s gone beyond all my expectations. <3<3<3