Kyler Davies is in the seventh grade in the Coldwater Community Schools district in Coldwater, MI; his mom buys her kids (whom she fosters) some of their school supplies used at Goodwill, including Kyler's backpack, which turned out to have a knife in it. (more…)

The lovely brown hues in Eugene Delacroix's 1830 painting above, titled "Liberty Leading the People," were actually pigments made from ground-up mummies from Egypt. From National Geographic:The use of mummy as a pigment most likely stemmed from an even more unusual use—as medicine. From the early medieval period, Europeans were ingesting and applying preparations of mummy to cure everything from epilepsy to stomach ailments. It's unclear whether Egyptian mummies were prized for the mistaken belief that they contained bitumen (the Arabic word for the sticky organic substance, which was also believed to have medicinal value, is mumiya), or whether Europeans believed that the preserved remains contained otherworldly powers.What is clear to researchers is that early artist pigments were derived from medicines at the time, and were commonly sold alongside them in European apothecaries. And just as mummy was waning in popularity as a medical treatment, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt at the end of the 18th century unleashed a new wave of Egyptomania across the Continent.Tourists brought entire mummies home to display in their living rooms, and mummy unwrapping parties became popular. Despite prohibitions against their removal, boatloads of mummies—both human and animal—were brought over from Egypt to serve as fuel for steam engines and fertilizer for crops, and as art supplies.By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the supply of quality mummies for pigment appears to have dried up. A 1904 ad in the Daily Mail requests one "at a suitable price," adding: "Surely a 2,000-year-old mummy of an Egyptian monarch may be used for adorning a noble fresco in Westminster Hall…without giving offence to the ghost of the departed gentlemen or his descendants.""Was This Masterpiece Painted With Ground Mummy?" (Nat Geo)

Mylan, the company with a monopoly on FDA-improved epinephrine auto-injectors ("epipens") has quintupled the price of their life-saving technology since 2004, to $600/unit (and they have the be thrown out and replaced every year); for this, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch (daughter of US senator Joe Manchin, who secured her initial job interview through political connections while he was Governor of West Virginia, moving her laterally from her gig as an aerobics instructor) received a 671% raise , bringing her compensation up to $18,931,068. (more…)

@whostheidiotnow maintains a carefully curated selection of tweets: ones where the author types the exact phrase "your an idiot." One man's automated blocklist is another's breakfast entertainment! [via @saladinahmed]

The first terabyte SD card will soon be sold by Sandisk. They were apparently first to 512GB too (don't, PNY's is cheaper), but no-one cared because that's not as arbitrarily interesting a number. No release date, no price. It'll be about $700.Hitachi sold the world's first one terabyte hard disk drive in 2007, according to Wikipedia, one sixth of which would fit in a terabyte, assuming you're just counting the plain text of articles.I wish there was an SD card format in the exact shape of tiny 3½-inch floppy disks, complete with a sliding metal hatch over the connectors and a free bootsector virus

Jeremy Leaird-Koch lovingly recreated the opening title sequence to the Netflix series Narcos, but with dogs. The result: Barkos. (more…)

I just saw Oliver Stone's Snowden. It's an excellent film, no doubt, and also an important rebuttal to ongoing efforts by propagandists to limit America's conversation to who Edward Snowden is, rather than what this whistleblower revealed. (more…)

Twitter has been struggling to attract new users and retain existing ones. In a long-awaited update for the social network, Twitter announced today that video, still images, animated GIFs, polls, and quotes will no longer apply to the 140-character limit for tweets. (more…)

Well, that's one way to re-use pizza boxes. (more…)

WARNING: The video in this post is graphic and documents a violent death.In Tulsa, Oklahoma, police have released video that shows a white police officer shooting and killing an unarmed black man. In the video, Terence Crutcher can be seen raising his hands above his head. (more…)

https://youtu.be/ZH1ObUcBuV4It would be a shame if anything happened to her. (more…)

Federal auto safety regulators today said that self-driving cars “will save time, money and lives,” but also sent a clear signal that they want the power to inspect and approve technology before it hits the highways, rather than each U.S. state setting its own safety standards.U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said on a press call today that a new federal premarket approval system "would require a lot more upfront discussion, dialogue and staffing on our part." The government's statement today is big news for Uber, Google, Apple, and other Silicon Valley firms pouring millions of R&D dollars into figuring out how to swap human drivers for smart machines, or at least allow us to share control in “semiautonomous” setups. (more…)

I spent a few days in beautiful Victoria, Canada last week. What a fantastic city! One of the highlights of my trip was spending some time with Andrew and Christina, two of the principles at Robazzo, a one-stop-shop eco design studio. They do everything from logos to large architectural installations:On the flight home, the guy sitting next to me had a small pouch in his lap. Before the plane took off, he unfolded it and blew on a valve a few times to inflate what turned out to be a travel pillow. He slept the entire time. I have a travel pillow, but it is bulky so I don't usually bring it with me. This inflatable pillow looks perfect. After looking around I think I found the one the guy was using. It's $6 if you use coupon code QZJWYQLF. I bought two (one for my wife), and the discount worked for just one pillow.

One of the wackiest, most fun movie predictions of the future came from Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future Part II. The film took 80s trends and cast them forward perfectly! I've often felt ripped off that Marty McFly's polychromatic hat and awesome light up sneakers were never part of every day fashion. While the wild predictions about 80s fashion permutations have yet to arrive, it is easy to go as Marty this year! Sadly the automatic jacket doesn't automatically adjust to fit, and the hoverboard doesn't hover, but this costumery does look great. I just love the dorky hat, I remember hating it as a kid!I would rather have Marty's Gibson ES-345.Back to the Future 2 Jacket / Marty McFly 2015 costumevia AmazonBack to the Future: Part II: Marty McFly Cap Replicavia AmazonBack to the Future 2 Light Up Shoes via AmazonBack to the Future Hoverboard - ST via Amazon

September 20th, at 2amPST, Bungie's year three update for Destiny, their massively multiplayer FPS, Rise of Iron goes live!Sporting some of the best FPS game play ever, and a huge online following, Destiny is seeing some major changes in Year 3. Private match-making in custom games is probably the most anticipated, and longly awaited community feature. Destiny: Rise of Iron appears to become a fantastic tournament platform! A new story mode focusing on the Iron Lords, a legendary band of near extinct Guardians will provide ample opportunity for Bungie to confuse the incredibly disjointed backstory even more, but will likely be AWESOME. It appears Destiny is headed back to a Close-Quaters-Combat meta and the new adventures and weapons will encourage that.https://youtu.be/7WR3eL_skCoFans are super excited! There've been lots of community made videos made, eagerly anticipating the launch, but none as much fun as "Rise Up!" by Crucible Radio's Bones. If you play Destiny, the Crucible Radio podcast is a must!

I'm much more comfortable with Adobe Illustrator than Photoshop, but I enjoyed this short video about Photoshop users talking about the powerful image editing application.For over two decades, Photoshop has been an essential part of the digital artist's toolset. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, we've taken a look back at Photoshop's history: from the rise of desktop publishing and digital photography, to the evolution of Photoshop's tool palette and its sometimes controversial but necessary role in modern photojournalism.We interview early adopters and pioneering artists such as Bert Monroy, Chris Orwig, and Douglas Kirkland, as well as the people responsible for guiding Photoshop's development: John Nack, Russell Brown, and current product manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes. Konrad Eek and Sean Adams also explain what life was like before Photoshop and how this beguiling tool has democratized design and darkroom photography.

Johannes Grenzfurthner writes, "My cinematic tour de farce through nerd culture comes to the West Coast. Upcoming Bay Area and L.A. premieres!" (more…)

Much of this wonderful video could have been shot at Cincinnati's Metro/Clubhaus where I spent the late 1980s, but it's actually from Stratus in San Diego, California. This is the first in a series of vintage Stratus videos that you can watch here.

DJ Jesse Jarnow polled a bunch of "hardcore music nerds" to get their feature wish-list for a music-centric phone for Wired; here's what I suggested: (more…)

The UK's Brexit Minister, Boris Johnson, has proposed a new immigration regime for a post-EU UK, in which the "white Commonwealth" countries (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) will have a relatively easy time migrating to the UK, while EU nationals, Africans, and post-colonial, racialised people will be excluded. (more…)

Over at Medium, BB pal Mitch Horowitz, author of the excellent Occult America and One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life, writes about how "if America loses its smiley-faced coffee mugs and ethic of better tomorrows — themes extolled by presidents ranging from Ronald Reagan ('nothing is impossible') to Barack Obama ('yes, we can') — we also risk losing a basic part of what makes our nation work." From Medium:Consider online banter. The level of invective is bottomless on Twitter, comments sections, and virtually everywhere in the perpetual open-mic night of digital culture. Americans once turned to books like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) to learn how to behave appropriately in professional environments and get things done inside large organizations. (Key insight: agreeable people win.) Yet our generation is almost hostile to the lessons of civility held by the previous one.The original positive thinkers were actually a cohort of mystics, freethinkers, proto-psychologists, and religious seekers in New England in the mid-to-late 19th century. Their movement was often called New Thought, and they believed that thoughts, in some greater or lesser measure, affected health, happiness, fortunes, and relationships.Remember the oft-mocked mantra “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better”? It was a confidence-boosting formula popularized in the early 1920s by French hypnotherapist Emile Coué. Although Coué won thousands of followers, critics mocked his method for its singsong simplicity. Today he is forgotten. But placebo researchers at Harvard Medical School recently validated one of the mind theorist’s most important insights."Losing The War On Unhappiness: A Historian of “Positive Thinking” Declares Surrender — Almost"

For nearly a decade, the CIA kidnapped people from over 20 countries, held them without trial or counsel, and viciously tortured them, sometimes to death -- but the only person to serve jail time for the program is the man who blew the whistle on it, and that's thanks in part to Obama's insistence that "Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." (more…)

The Washington Post was one of the newspapers that participated in the initial Snowden disclosures; Barton Gellman won a well-deserved Pulitzer for his work on them -- but now the paper's editorial board have called on the US government to imprison Edward Snowden, making it the first paper in US history to demand the prosecution of its own source, specifically to punish him for bringing them the story they published. (more…)

Technologists have a dismal pattern: when it comes to engineering challenges ("build a global-scale comms platform") they rub their hands together with excitement; when it comes to the social challenges implied by the engineering ones ("do something about trolls") they throw their hands up and declare the problem to be too hard to solve. (more…)

Kevin Kelly and I interviewed Tim O'Reilly on the Cool Tools podcast.Our guest this week is Tim O'Reilly. He's the founder of O'Reilly Media, a company the spreads the knowledge of innovators through technology books, online services, magazines, research, and tech conferences.Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single pageShow notes:Unix regular expressions"This is an enormous power - you can write scripts that allow you to do magic with text."Amazon Echo's Alexa"Whoever did the design work on Alexa did it brilliantly."Gan Mao Ling and Black Elderberry"If you feel like you are coming down with a cold, take these in combination. I have found it incredibly reliable in knocking out colds."Also: Astragalus Supreme as an immune system booster, and Juvenon ("I felt like it took 10 years off my life, in a good way, making me 10 years younger. I take a generic version called Anti-Aging LX")Altra Men's Instinct 3.5 Running Shoe"Running shoes with a really wide toe box. It's a bit like running barefoot inside the shoe.""These books have become part of my mental toolchest:"The Way of Life, According to Laotzu translated by Witter Bynner. "My personal religious philosophy, stressing the rightness of what is, if only we can accept it. Most people who know me have heard me quote from this book. 'Seeing as how nothing is outside the vast, wide-meshed net of heaven, who is there to say just how it is cast?'" (From Books That Have Shaped How I Think)The Meaning of Culture, John Cowper Powys“This book is a part of my regular mental toolbox. Powys makes the point that the difference between education and culture is that culture is the incorporation of music, art, literature, and philosophy not just into your library or your CV but into who you are. He talks too about the interplay of culture and life, the way that what we read can enrich what we experience, and what we experience can enrich what we read.” [via]The poetry of Wallace Stevens"Stevens is my favorite poet, and this is the most commonly available collection of his poems. His meditations on the relationship of language and reality have entranced me for more than thirty years. I keep reading the same poems, and finding more and more in them. Also someone I quote often. Special favorites are 'Sunday Morning,' 'An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,' and 'Esthetique du Mal.'" [via]Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, by Alfred Korzybski"OK, General Semantics was the 30s equivalent of pop-psychology in the 70s, but there are some great concepts there. 'The map is not the territory.' The idea is that people get stuck in concepts and don't go back to observation. My friend George Simon applied General Semantics to psychology, and gave me a grounding in how to see people and to acknowledge what I saw that is the bedrock of my personal philosophy to this day. There are many popular introductions to General Semantics on the market, and also a fun science-fiction book, A.E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A." [via]

I use TripIt for travel planning, but I'm going to give the new Google Trips a try. It stores your travel plans offline, so you don't need to have a Wi-Fi or cellular connection to find directions or access your itinerary.When I installed it, it scanned my gmail and did a great job of finding my upcoming flight, restaurant, and hotel reservations.Google Trips makes exploring the world easier by organizing your essential info in one place and making it available even offline. Get activity suggestions based on what’s nearby, customizeable day plans, and your travel reservations from Gmail. AUTOMATIC TRIP ORGANIZATIONYour travel reservations are automatically gathered from Gmail and organized into individual trips. Each trip contains day plans, things to do, food and drink suggestions, and more. BUNDLED RESERVATIONSSee your flight, hotel, rental car, and restaurant bookings in one place without having to search for them individually.DAY PLANSFor several hundred of the world’s top places, find popular day plans organized on a map that you can customize based on your interests and available time.NEARBY ATTRACTIONSFind out when you’re near popular attractions (and whether they’re open) as well as reviews and ratings from other travelers.THINGS TO DOEvery trip contains ideas for things to do automatically organized into useful categories like Top Spots and Indoors or Outdoors. For many of the world’s top places, you’ll get curated local suggestions and travel tips. OFFLINE ACCESSNo Internet? No problem. Google Trips is available offline, so you’ll always have access to your info.

On September 13, owners of HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X began contacting third-party ink vendors by the thousand, reporting that their HP printers no longer accepted third-party ink. (more…)

Wired's Emma Grey Ellis runs the numbers on HB2, the anti-transgender North Carolina law that requires bearded blokes to use the womens' bathroom because they have an F on their birth certificate. "It’s North Carolinians, most of whom don’t even support the legislation," Emma writes, "who get stuck with the bill. "Adding all that up, the total cost to North Carolinians so far from HB2 protests is slightly more than $395 million. That’s more than the GDP of Micronesia. And the bulk of it is from sporting organizations, who even five years ago would likely not have waded into political territory like this. But experts aren’t that surprised that the NBA, NCAA, and ACC have taken this step now. “They’re not out on a limb here,” Durso says. “They’re in line with their base.” The near unanimous outcry against HB2 and in support of the NCAA and ACC confirms that. Legislating discrimination has become an expensive bad habit.The sports-media business often imposes audience consensus upon local authorities. If usually a bad thing--think "taxpayers hooked into building private stadiums"--there are silver linings.

After 1954's landmark Brown v Board of Ed ruling, America's (largely racially segregated) cities began racially integrating their schools by busing black kids to white neighborhoods, a project that hit its stride at the start of the 1970s. It worked. (more…)

Few things match the delight of my dogs and myself at the sight of Floor Food. When it happens we're like "Ooo! Floor Food!" and compete to dive on it and eat it first. Sadly, The New York Times reports that the Five Second Rule—the cherished belief among some humans that it is 'safe' to eat Floor Food so long as it has been in contact with the floor for less than five seconds—has been debunked.Professor Donald W. Schaffner, a food microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said a two-year study he led concluded that no matter how fast you pick up food that falls on the floor, you will pick up bacteria with it.The findings in the report — “Is the five-second rule real?” — appeared online this month in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.They tested stainless steel, ceramic tile, wood, and carpet, with four different traditional floor foods: bread, buttered bread, watermelon and gummi bears. All resulted in the transfer of a salmonella-like bacterium.HOWEVER. They also noted that while "bacteria can contaminate instantaneously," it was also the case that "longer contact times resulted in transfer of more bacteria," so I figure we're still good.Photo: reader of the pack [CC BY-ND 2.0]

During the siege of Leningrad in World War II, a heroic group of Russian botanists fought cold, hunger, and German attacks to keep alive a storehouse of crops that held the future of Soviet agriculture. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Vavilov Institute, whose scientists literally starved to death protecting tons of treasured food.We'll also follow a wayward sailor and puzzle over how to improve the safety of tanks.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Mother Jones profiles Lynda and Stewart Resnick, central California megafarmers who grow water-intensive tree nuts, mostly almonds and pistachios. During a 1980s drought, they bought distressed groves, now part of a farming conglomerate grossing $4.8 billion annually, according to the article. (more…)

Whether this is your first language or another notch on your coding resume, this Complete C Family Programming Bundle is a great way to become an intelligent coder. Packed with 43 hours of content, this package of lessons teaches you C, C# and C++. Some of the courses included are:C# Comprehensive Course - Dive into this Microsoft-developed programming language that’s used for a plethora of business applications that run on the .NET framework.C Programming Course - C is one of the oldest and most widely used programming languages. This course will teach you how to harness it to express common coding ideas in an accessible way, making you an invaluable member of any programming team.C++ Comprehensive Course - Become fluent in this in-demand programming language that is used in the gaming industry, Adobe and Microsoft applications, and large portions of Mac OS/X.It may take time and effort, but you'll truly understand the building blocks of the code by the end of this bundle. Plus your foundation in C will prepare you to take on other popular languages like Python and Javascript. The Complete C Family Programming Bundle is now in the Boing Boing Store for just $39.

"Canadians have until October 7, 2016 to provide their feedback to the Parliamentary Special Committee on Electoral Reform, which is studying the possibility of national online voting, along with having consultations about using electronic voting machines in national elections." (more…)

The Chelsea Manning Support Network contacted us by email to inform us that:1) The date of Chelsea's disciplinary board hearing has been changed to Thursday, September 22 at 9:30 am CST. (more…)

CEOs whose businesses are complicit in human rights atrocities -- like the mass murder of people who object to land-grabs by mineral extraction companies -- can now be tried in the International Criminal Court in the Hague. (more…)

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Jasmina Tesanovic (previously) and Bruce Sterling did a residency at The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UCSD, working with the students on design fiction and futurism. (more…)

The Vicod 5G Vaporizer is advertised as easy-to-use, and it's a really solid vaporizer for beginners. One thing that immediately impressed me was its solid construction. Unlike other vapes, Vicod feels truly high-end, like it won't just fall apart after a few uses.You just click open the chamber, pack it, and you’re ready to go. The OLED screen even displays the temperature you’re lighting up at, and shows where the battery life stands.Another great feature is that you can control the temperature to the degree (from 300F - 435F). This type of precision is rare and allowed me to really find my personal sweet spot for a perfect vaping experience. Thanks to the vents on both sides, I was able to create some impressively large vape clouds too.All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this little vape, which is actually conveniently compact enough to fit in my pocket. The manufacturer also offers a good 5-year warranty which adds a lot of value to the deal.You can find it in the Boing Boing Store for just $84.95 - 34% off the original price.

On Saturday, the city of Oakland, California will launch a website where authorities can collect reports of people who patronize sex workers. The reportjohn.org snitch site created by city officials is an odd development in a town plagued by sex abuse scandals within its own law enforcement ranks. It will be interesting also to see what sort of security or privacy measures the site offers to those who use it to submit photos, names, license plates, or other sensitive information to authorities. At the time of this blog post, reportjohn.org is not yet online. (more…)

Today a court in London okayed the extradition of a British hacker with autism to the United States, where he will face trial for breaking into high-security U.S. government computers. (more…)

On Sunday, pioneering underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger and occultist/artist/musician Brian Butler are staging their performance piece Technicolor Skull at The Regent in Los Angeles. From the event announcement:Unleashing a 60,000 watt sound system and several tons of equipment for this special hometown performance, the duo are at the pinnacle of their powers and look forward to reestablishing dominion over these and other united states.Artistic contemporaries and longtime friends, Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler work in a wide variety of mediums, though none perhaps more visibly than light and sound. The Regent is proud to host these two visionary artists in person to perform the newest installment of their radical project Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull. Both artists are continually pushing the limits of their aesthetic and creative capacities towards exceeding characteristically human capabilities. To witness this in a live setting is to experience one of the most important discoveries of the twentieth century.

When Amazon released the Echo Dot, the mini-me version of the Echo, the only way you could by it was through an Amazon Echo. It was $90 and almost always on backorder. But Amazon just announced the 2nd Generation Echo Dot, and it's available to anyone for $50. After seeing how much my parents use and enjoy their Echo ($179), I was about to buy one, but the Dot is a lot cheaper and it seems to do everything the Echo can do. The thing it doesn't have is the Echo's full size speaker, but you can connect a speaker to the Dot via Bluetooth or auxiliary cable. I just preordered one.

80's great Corey Feldman is helping the angels that have helped him. I can only describe this as a visual masterpiece and a lyrical adventure. I bet Chunk loves it.

Muckrock today announced a $1,000 grant for projects to increase public understanding of noted Donald Trump supporter and anti-Gawker-lawsuit-funder Peter Thiel. Motherboard matched the Muckrock reporting grant funds, and now the grant is $2,000. Apply to MuckRock’s Thiel Fellowship here. “Applications are on a rolling basis with the first deadline of October 1, 2016. Applicants should email the following to info@muckrock.com with the subject line'MuckRock Thiel Fellowship,'” says the announcement.From Muckrock's Michael Morisy:Peter Thiel - co-founder of both PayPal and Palantir and an early Facebook investor - has profoundly reshaped industry after industry and, ultimately, remade the world to fit his radical vision of the future. Unfortunately, despite his impact in industries ranging from digital payments and mass government surveillance to radical life extension and seasteading, the media has done relatively little reporting on the details of his companies, often leaving the public in the dark on his contributions to society.But maybe you can change that.With MuckRock’s Thiel Fellowship, we want to help journalists and researchers better understand this pivotal figure’s work and share what they learn with the world.MuckRock is offering a grant of 250 requests (a $1,000 value), plus our invaluable FOIA expertise, to between one and three inaugural Thiel Fellows who propose projects that help the public better understand organizations or areas of research and public policy connected with Thiel. Even better, Motherboard has agreed to double that, providing an additional $1,000 to fund FOIA request fees, research, potential stipends, or other related costs of the fellowship. Maybe your proposal will look into the adoption of Palantir by local governments — often the result of no-bid contracts based on confidential presentations. Maybe it will shed light on Palantir’s federal work: Private contractors make up about 70% of the United State’s intelligence budget, but the work they do is often under appreciated by the public.Or maybe you think that the public could benefit from better understanding of Thiel’s bold, nuanced vision of free speech.“I want to help the CPJ defend the rights of online journalists,” Thiel has previously stated, announcing his substantial support for the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. That support overlapped with the time PayPal famously froze WikiLeak’s account at the request of lawmakers, and before he was revealed to have secretly bankrolled a series of lawsuits to bankrupt the independent publisher Gawker, an act he called “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done.”And Thiel could become an even more important force in the American way of life: The Huffington Post reported that he is being considered for a Supreme Court spot by the Donald Trump campaign, although he has since denied the report.Prospective fellows could also help bring greater appreciation, attention, and understanding to a number of other fields that Thiel has shown interest in, from life extension to the creation of new nations at sea.

The Svenpad is a hugely successful magic prop: it's a "Svengali pad," that, like a Svengali deck of cards, selectively shaves down alternating leaves so that a performer can seemingly riffle all the pages but only display every second page. (more…)

Wikileaks has tweeted an offer for founder Julian Assange to leave the Ecuadorean embassy where he has been a political asylum seeker since 2012, and turn himself in for a US jail sentence, if President Obama grants clemency Chelsea Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence for providing documents to Wikileaks while serving in the US Army. (more…)

The largely tax-free religion industry is one of the biggest in America, worth $1.2 trillion/year, a number that includes religious "healthcare facilities, schools, daycare and charities; media; businesses with faith backgrounds; the kosher and halal food markets; social and philanthropic programmes; and staff and overheads for congregations." (more…)

The Transport for London tube map, building on Harry Beck's pioneering work in 1931, is rightly hailed as a masterpiece of simplification and clarity in data visualisation. (more…)