“When ordering at Starbucks, people have changed their name to “Black Lives Matter” so that, when their order is up, the baristas have to yell out their new moniker,” reports Taryn Finley at Huffington Post Black Voices. (more…)

The crowdsourced database that was use to seed locations to catch Pokemon in Pokemon Go came from early augmented reality games that were played by overwhelmingly affluent (and thus, disproportionately white) people, who, in an increasingly racially segregated America, are less and less likely to venture into black neighborhoods, meaning that fewer Pokemon-catching landmarks have been tagged there. (more…)

Jan Chipchase has assembled a provocative, imaginative, excellent list of "driver behaviors in a world of autonomous mobility" that go far beyond the lazy exercise of porting the "trolley problem" to self-driving cars and other autonomous vehicles, including flying drones. (more…)

In celebration of Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm released this thrilling teaser trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, in theaters December 16.

Artist Dennis Cooper reports that Google shut down his website, without explanation, erasing 12 years of work.Along with his blog, Google disabled Cooper’s email address, through which most of his correspondence was conducted, he told me via Facebook message. He got no communication from Google about why it decided to kill his email address and blog.Cooper used the blog to post his fiction, research, and visual art, and as Artforum explains, it was also “a platform through which he engaged almost daily with a community of followers and fellow artists.” His latest GIF novel (as the term suggests, a novel constructed with animated GIFs) was also mostly saved to the blog.“It seems that the only option I have left is to sue Google,” Cooper told Artforum. “This will not be easy for me for the obvious reasons, but I’m not going to just give up ten years of my and others’ work without doing everything possible.”You're savvy, you know the drill. You don't have to blame the victim, a nontechnical person who had no idea how or why a data host could screw him. Just keep nagging everyone you know to keep multiple backups of everything and to be wary of becoming dependent on specific online services for reaching friends, colleagues, customers, and audiences.Even people smart to these issues still get suckered, too. For example, consider your "cloud storage". Just as susceptible to Dennis Cooper's experience, which in the coming years many of us will also enjoy.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Mann's Pictorial Dictionary and Cyclopedia Vol. 1 National Library Publications1960, 240 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches $20 and up (used) Buy a copy on AmazonWhat are the different parts of a knife called? How about the parts of a plough? Does anyone know what kind of mousetrap this is? What do Eskimo ice scrapers look like? I’ve got this chrysalis here — what kind of butterfly or moth will emerge from it? Can anyone show me the difference between a bath tap and a double flexible tube cock? How about a White Persian versus a Manx? How did the piano evolve? What kind of ship is that sailing out of the harbor?All of these questions and a ridiculously large number more are answered in Mann’s Pictoral Dictionary and Cyclopedia, 240 pages of the most miscellaneous miscellany out there. Each page poses a not-entirely-naturally-worded question at the top, then answers it with illustrations. If we believe the foreword of this 1960 edition, the original book was found in a bombed-out library in England shortly after WWII. One illustration shows a woman’s hairstyle from 1920, while another list, "To Which Country in the British Empire Does That Badge Belong?” includes Kenya and Gold Cost which, if I know my British history (note: I do not), suggests the book was published sometime between 1920-1957.I’d owned this book for several years before I realized that the pages are not random, they’re alphabetical (as long as you can figure out what category the page has been classified under, which is not always clear). This leads to delightful transitions like going from cat’s cradle games, to cattle breeds, to oak chairs, or from “What Bible Fruit is That?” to “Examples of British Game Birds.”The British dial is set to 11. “What is the Name of That Sedge? The Chief Species Growing in Britain” is a two-page spread on grasses. “What is the Meaning of Those Badges Worn by the Boy Scouts?” asks another page. “Which British Owl is That?” — it turns out that “Ten owls are found wild in England, and by means of these drawings it will be possible to identify any owl that may be seen.” Identify your raptors with confidence, Britain! It’s out of print, but used copies can be found at the link above.– Sara LorimerNote: The book reviewed here is Volume 1, but the link above has offers for both Volume 1 & 2, 240 pages each, starting at $20 for the set.

https://youtu.be/pqnzqH7FvZUThere are a of Nut Wizard videos on YouTube. People use them to pick up all kinds of spherical objects.Here's a multi-headed Nut Wizard that makes short work of 40lbs of pecans on the lawn:https://youtu.be/Dz_3F0ZW4ogHere's a fellow who uses one to pick up shell casings. True to YouTube form, he doesn't show how it works until the video is half over:https://youtu.be/Vbf8ZNY1DKw

The Royal Society, once presided over by Isaac Newton, is one of Britain's most respected learned institutions: that's why it matters so much that the organisation's new report, "Progress and research in cybersecurity," begins by demanding that government "must commit topreserving the robustness of encryption,including end-to-end encryption, andpromoting its widespread use. Encryptionis a foundational security technology thatis needed to build user trust, improvesecurity standards and fully realise thebenefits of digital systems." (more…)

French President Francois Hollande's taxpayers are delighted to spend $11,000 a month on their beloved leader's haircuts.From NPR:"I can understand the questions, I can understand that there are judgements," said [French government spokesman Stephane] Le Foll, as AFP reported. "Everyone has their hair done, don't they?"The amount Hollande pays his personal hairdresser is roughly the same as a government minister's salary, according to The New York Times. The job comes with significant responsibilities: the hairdresser is "committed to secrecy and needs to be available 24/7," France 24 reported.French citizens are showing their support for Hollande's haircut budget on Twitter:Quand on flambe l'argent du contribuable on s'attend à un minimum de résultat. #CoiffeurGate pic.twitter.com/lxY7vZLezq— Patrizio Cantello (@TheOwLisWatchin) July 13, 2016Les photos privées qui justifient le salaire du coiffeur de #Hollande sont enfin dévoilées #CoiffeurGate pic.twitter.com/6BgkpdJkkq— Sarkoziste #NS2017 (@Sarkoziste) July 13, 2016Pour la moitié du salaire proposé je veux bien m'occuper de la coiffure de François Hollande. #CoiffeurGate pic.twitter.com/GsDmHJ8Ao6— Rashmaninoff (@RasheedDaci) July 13, 2016

Newt Gingrich, the best loser in the quixotic race to be Donald Trump's pick for Vice President, has a plan to make sure America is safe: make it a federal crime to read websites sympathetic to terrorism, test suspected Muslims on their religious beliefs, and deport all those who believe in "Sharia." (more…)

One of Theresa May's first act as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was to shutter the Department for Energy and Climate Change, moving the climate change to a new entity called the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, with Andrea Leadsom -- who, as Energy Minister, celebrated her first day on the job in 2015 by asking the civil service "Is climate change real?" and giving the UK coal industry a role in answering the question -- as Environment Secretary. (more…)

They put Infinite Yul on proper TV and the inevitable has happened: is has been improved. Enjoy this disco remix, courtesy of Dean Caldicott. https://twitter.com/medeanc/status/753910084430864384

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIdAgftgP5QFresno cops pulled over Dylan Noble, an unarmed 19-year-old, and shot him because he failed to comply with orders to get on the ground. Then they approached him as he lay squirming on the asphalt, and executed him with a shotgun. The pretext: his continued failure to put his hands where they could see them.California police were looking for a man in camouflage walking down the street carrying a rifle when they decided to pull over a man in a truck who was not wearing camouflage and not carrying a rifle. An unarmed man named Dylan Noble whom Fresno police shot and killed anyway.Today, after viewing body cam footage of the shooting, Noble’s family filed a claim to sue the Fresno Police Department, stating that they had no justifiable reason to shoot the 19-year-old man on June 25.Fresno's police chief, Jerry Dyer, was unable to explain to CNN why his officers killed Noble. "I do not have the answer for that today," Dyer told reporters in the central California city of 520,000 people.An internal affairs investigation will look into whether police procedures were followed and whether there were other options. A review by the district attorney will determine whether the two Fresno police officers should be criminally charged."We're shocked and appalled that the city of Fresno would continue to defend the actions of its officers," said Stuart Chandler, an attorney for Veronica Noble, Dylan's mother. "Clearly the only appropriate response is to accept responsibility and commit to changing practices of the police department."

Pete from Doctors Without Borders writes, "Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders have today launched MapSwipe, an app that enables anyone with a smartphone to map the most vulnerable communities in the world. Geo-data is vital for aid agencies responding to emergencies such as disease outbreaks and natural disasters and MapSwipe now gives everybody the ability to contribute directly to these responses. So, instead of Angry Birds or Candy Crush, you can now do something meaningful on your commute! (MSF has developed MapSwipe as part of the Missing Maps project, where thousands of volunteers assist NGOs by mapping their areas of operations on OpenStreetMap.)" (more…)

A truck crashed into a crowd of people in Nice, France, leaving an unknown number of people dead and many others injured. Authorities are calling it an act of terrorism, and treating it as an active attack. Early reports placed the number of people killed immediately at 30 or greater. (more…)

Today, Nintendo announced the NES Classic Edition, a little console loaded with 30 classic titles, including Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, and Kirby's Adventure. It plugs into your TV's HDMI port and includes one NES gamepad controller. It's coming November 11 and retails for $60.Included titles:Balloon FightBubble BobbleCastlevaniaCastlevania II: Simon's QuestDonkey KongDonkey Kong Jr.Double Dragon II: The RevengeDr. MarioExcitebikeFinal FantasyGalagaGhosts'N GoblinsGradiusIce ClimberKid IcarusKirby's AdventureMario Bros.Mega Man 2MetroidNinja GaidenPac-ManPunch-Out!! Featuring Mr. DreamStarTropicsSuper CSuper Mario Bros.Super Mario Bros. 2Super Mario Bros. 3Tecmo BowlThe Legend of ZeldaZelda II: The Adventure of Link[via](Thanks, Calvin!)

Two weeks ago, pioneering futurist Alvin Toffler died. Over at Medium, my colleague Marina Gorbis, executive director of Institute for the Future, reflects on Toffler's vision and why it's more important than ever for futures thinking to be a massively public endeavor. Marina writes:Disorientation. Irrationality. Malaise. These were the sensations that in 1965 famed futurist Alvin Toffler, who died two weeks ago, suggested would run rampant in the face of the “revolutionary transitions” facing our society. According to Toffler, we would all suffer from a condition not unlike the culture shock experienced by travelers to foreign countries. He called it “future shock.”“Imagine not merely an individual but an entire society — including its weakest, least intelligent, and most traditional members — suddenly transported into this new world,” Toffler wrote in a Horizon magazine article titled “The Future as a Way of Life.” “The result is mass disorientation, future shock on a grand scale.”Arguably, we are living Toffler’s future today. Many of us are in a state of shock as social media enables the rise of political figures who we could never imagine as viable presidential candidates, software eats people’s jobs (according to some), massive data leaks allow loosely organized networks of journalists to uncover stories of global crime and corruption, and surveys consistently point to the loss of trust in most institutions across the globe. We are quick to marvel at Toffler’s foresight. I would argue, however, that our “future shock” is highly unevenly distributed....We need to make futures thinking a way of life for more people outside of the enclaves like Silicon Valley, corporate boardrooms, and academic think tanks. To accomplish that, we must distribute the tools of futures thinking and futures-making more widely. Envisioning and making the future must be a massively public endeavor."The Future as a Way of Life: Alvin Toffler’s Unfinished Business"

It is all about maintaining etiquette and protocol in Scott Meyer's Master of Formalities! Watch cultures clash as two space empires come together in what feels like Downton Space Abbey.Dry humor and wry wit fill this story. House Jakabitbus is taking on the scion of its chief rival, the less steeped in fine tradition Hahn Empire, as a ward. Can Wollard, the titular Master of Formalities, hold society together? He's really not up to it.I really enjoyed Scott Meyer's Magic 2.0 series, and found this book a fun change of pace. Both are available via Kindle Unlimited.Master of Formalities by Scott Meyer via Amazon

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Death is Stupid by Anastasia HigginbothamThe Feminist Press at CUNY2016, 64 pages, 8.5 x 8.6 x 0.5 inches $13 Buy a copy on AmazonDeath is Stupid does what so many grown-ups struggle to do with their kids. It tells them the truth that they already know. In collages of illustrations and dialogue, Anastasia Higginbotham walks readers through the confusion and questions that come when someone dies. Using two concurrent narratives, one that broadly voices and validates the feelings and fears kids have around death, the other focusing on a little boy whose grandmother has died, Higginbotham masterfully draws connections for young audiences and their grown-ups. The story opens, gracefully straight-forward, “When a loved one dies people can say some stupid things.” The line stretches over the course of three pages in which the boy goes from surprised to sad as he hears, “I know exactly how you feel." "Don’t cry." "Just be grateful for the time you had with her.” We follow him through the funeral and days after, through the rituals of grief and remembrance, through the fumbling adult attempts to explain and comfort. Through his experience and the narrator’s staccato interjections (“Dying is not a punishment. But it mostly doesn’t feel fair.”), readers are given the space to explore the well-intentioned answers and advice that grown-ups pat into the palms and shoulders of the kids they love, and the ways in which those hugs and kisses can land like blows.Just as the boy tries out different ways to stay connected to his grandma while accepting her death, like caring for her garden, readers can explore suggested activities at the back of the book. Higginbotham offers templates for personalized remembering of both pets and people, simple instructions (“Read what they read. Make what they made.”), and the loveliest reflection on the power of speaking someone’s name. I know that when we are inevitably grieving a loved one’s death, I will be grateful to have this book on hand to read with my daughter.– Marykate Smith Despres

One afternoon in 1954 Ann Hodges of Alabama was napping on her couch when a meteorite the size of a software came through the ceiling, bounced off a radio and hit her in the thigh. She escaped with a giant bruise, but the meteorite inflicted much harsher damage in an unexpected way. The Air Force took the meteorite. Hodges and her husband Eugene fought to get it back, but their landlord, Birdie Guy, said the meteorite belonged to her and she sued to get it back. She settled with the Hodges, taking $500 in exchange for the rock.From National Geographic:Ann later suffered a nervous breakdown, and in 1964 she and Eugene separated. She died in 1972 at 52 of kidney failure at a Sylacaugan nursing home.Eugene suspects the meteorite and frenzy that followed had taken its toll on Ann. He said "she never did recover," according to the museum.From Slate:That rock, even at the time, was worth a fortune. To give you an idea, a second piece was found not far away by a farmer on his property. He was able to sell it and buy a new house and a car. And his piece was less than half the mass of the Hodges chunk, with less notoriety as well. Were something like that to happen today, the meteorite would sell for a lot of money.Hodges’ legal problems were so great that her mental and physical health suffered. She and her husband divorced, and she died of kidney failure in 1972 at the relatively young age of 52. It’s easy to wonder how much the event led to her decline.The meteorite now resides at the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa.

In 1998, TranDirect Holdings created this video pitching an online home banking system that ran on Nintendo's Super NES. Ah, another 16-bit dream that didn't quite become real.

In 1988 Kevin Kelly (my friend and business partner at Cool Tools) edited Signal, a book about “Communications Tools for the Information Age.” With articles about smart phones, artificial life, computer viruses, interactive literature, online databases, teleconferencing, image processing, and the “world information economy,” Signal was years ahead of its time. (In 1993 it served as the prototype for Wired, the magazine Kevin co-founded.) Signal changed the way readers thought about technology – we weren’t in a computer revolution – we were in a communications revolution. Kevin understood that people were co-evolving with technology, transforming the way we received, processed, and transmitted information, both as individuals and a society.Kevin has never stopped thinking about the implications of the communications revolution. He co-founded the first Hackers Conference in 1984, was a founding board member of the WELL (an early online service launched in 1985) and in 1990 he launched the first virtual reality conference. His first book, Out of Control, about technology’s lifelike patterns and behavior, was called “essential reading for all executives,” by Forbes. His latest book, released in June, is called The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. This clear-eyed guide explains the twelve inevitable, interrelated technological trends (including robotics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality) that are already disrupting every imaginable human activity, from the way we work, learn, and play, to the way we exist as a species. Kevin Kelly's The Inevitable is available from Amazon.In this excerpt from The Inevitable, Kevin imagines a future were people own nothing but have access to everything-- MarkIn the coming 30 years the tendency toward the dematerialized, the decentralized, the simultaneous, the platform enabled, and the cloud will continue unabated. As long as the costs of communications and computation drop due to advances in technology, these trends are inevitable. They are the result of networks of communication expanding till they are global and ubiquitous, and as the networks deepen they gradually displace matter with intelligence. This grand shift will be true no matter where in the world (whether the United States, China, or Timbuktu) they take place. The underlying mathematics and physics remain. As we increase dematerialization, decentralization, simultaneity, platforms, and the cloud—as we increase all those at once, access will continue to displace ownership. For most things in daily life, accessing will trump owning.Yet only in a science fiction world would a person own nothing at all. Most people will own some things while accessing others; the mix will differ by person. Yet the extreme scenario of a person who accesses all without any ownership is worth exploring because it reveals the stark direction technology is headed. Here is how it works.I live in a complex. Like a lot of my friends, I choose to live in the complex because of the round-the-clock services I can get. The box in my apartment is refreshed four times a day. That means I can leave my refreshables (like clothes) there and have them replenished in a few hours. The complex also has its own Node where hourly packages come in via drones, robo vans, and robo bikes from the local processing center. I tell my device what I need and then it’s in my box (at home or at work) within two hours, often sooner. The Node in the lobby also has an awesome 3-D printing fab that can print just about anything in metal, composite, and tissue. There’s also a pretty good storage room full of appliances and tools. The other day I wanted a turkey fryer; there was one in my box from the Node’s library in a hour. Of course, I don’t need to clean it after I’m done; it just goes back into the box. When my friend was visiting, he decided he wanted to cut his own hair. There were hair clippers in the box in 30 minutes. I also subscribe to a camping gear outfit. Camping gear improves so fast each year, and I use it for only a few weeks or weekends, that I much prefer to get the latest, best, pristine gear in my box. Cameras and computers are the same way. They go obsolete so fast, I prefer to subscribe to the latest, greatest ones. Like a lot of my friends, I subscribe to most of my clothes too. It’s a good deal. I can wear something different each day of the year if I want, and I just toss the clothes into the box at the end of the day. They are cleaned and redistributed, and often altered a bit to keep people guessing. They even have a great selection of vintage T-shirts that most other companies don’t have. The few special smartshirts I own are chipped-tagged so they come back to me the next day cleaned and pressed.I subscribe to several food lines. I get fresh produce directly from a farmer nearby, and a line of hot ready-to-eat meals at the door. The Node knows my schedule, my location on my commute, my preferences, so it’s really accurate in timing the delivery. When I want to cook myself, I can get any ingredient or special dish I need. My complex has an arrangement so all the ongoing food and cleaning replenishables appear a day before they are needed in the refrig or cupboard. If I was flush with cash, I’d rent a premium flat, but I got a great deal on my place in the complex because they rent it out anytime I am not there. It’s fine with me since when I return it’s cleaner than I leave it.I have never owned any music, movies, games, books, art, or realie worlds. I just subscribe to Universal Stuff. The arty pictures on my wall keep changing so I don’t take them for granted. I use a special online service that prepares my walls from my collection on Pinterest. My parents subscribe to a museum service that lends them actual historical works of art in rotation, but that is out of my range. These days I am trying out 3-D sculptures that reconfigure themselves each month so you keep noticing them. Even the toys I had as a kid growing up were from Universal. My mom used to say, “You only play with them for a few months—why own them?” So every couple of months they would go into the box and new toys would show up.Universal is so smart I usually don’t have to wait more than 30 seconds for my ride, even during surges. The car just appears because it knows my schedule and can deduce my plans from my texts, calendar, and calls. I’m trying to save money, so sometimes I’ll double or triple up with others on the way to work. There is plenty of bandwidth so we can all screen. For exercise, I subscribe to several gyms and a bicycle service. I get an up-to-date bike, tuned and cleaned and ready at my departure point. For long-haul travel I like these new personal hover drones. They are hard to get when you need them right now since they are so new, but so much more convenient than commercial jets. As long as I travel to complexes in other cities that have reciprocal services, I don’t need to pack very much since I can get everything—the same things I normally use—from the local Nodes.My father sometimes asks me if I feel untethered and irresponsible not owning anything. I tell him I feel the opposite: I feel a deep connection to the primeval. I feel like an ancient hunter-gatherer who owns nothing as he wends his way through the complexities of nature, conjuring up a tool just in time for its use and then leaving it behind as he moves on. It is the farmer who needs a barn for his accumulation. The digital native is free to race ahead and explore the unknown. Accessing rather than owning keeps me agile and fresh, ready for whatever is next.

Several years ago, a new apartment building went up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE in Washington DC. That's a few miles from the better known 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, aka the White House. A car lot was previously on the apartment building property, then registered as 1550 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, but the developers thought it would be a hoot to petition for the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE address. They got it. From WTPO:Residents say they often get funny looks or disbelief when they have to give their address or hand over their driver’s licenses. Carlos Gutierrez, 39, and other residents said they get asked: “You live at the White House?”The address has produced headaches for some residents. One early resident of the building, Daniel Perry, 36, said Amazon.com initially wouldn’t take orders to the address, though that’s since been sorted out. Another resident said even now, she sometimes has difficulty ordering online. A recent order for a pair of summer sandals required calling the company, she said.Residents have to make sure that anyone sending them mail puts the all-important “SE” after the address. The correct zip code — 20003 — is also key. The White House’s ZIP code is 20500.A goof means the mail might eventually get to the correct recipient, but because the president’s mail gets extra security screening, any resident’s mail with an incomplete address could be significantly delayed.Mail mix-ups happen the other way, too. Errant letters for the first family arrive at the building every so often and sit unopened by the residents’ mailboxes until the U.S. Postal Service redirects them. "DC’s other 1600 Pennsylvania is source of humor, headaches" (WTPO via FARK)

The monkeys of Shimla, India are not to be trifled with by other primates.(via r/funny)

The Cold War was a boon to animators, who were able to express the subversive views that the mainstream wouldn't dare whisper -- see, e.g., Jay Ward's "Boris and Natasha" -- but the toons from the other side of the Iron Curtain are all but unknown in the "Free World." (more…)

Canadian/British science fiction and fantasy author Geoff Ryman, author of the incredible novel WAS, has begun a series in which he profiles 100 working science fiction and fantasy writers in Africa, place by place, starting with Nairobi. (more…)

Teghan Lucas, a comparative anatomy researcher at the University of Adelaide, was fascinated with the idea of doppelgängers, that every person has a look-alike out there in the world. So Teghan analyzed thousands of photos of people, for example measuring the distance between features, to determine the probability that two people would have matching faces. According to Teghan, there's only a one in a trillion chance that you share even eight measurements with someone else. Of course, people can still look very similar even if their eyes and ears aren't separated by precisely the same distance. From the BBC:"It depends whether we mean ‘lookalike to a human’ or ‘lookalike to facial recognition software’,” says David Aldous, a statistician at U.C. Berkeley...When you bump into a friend on the street, the brain immediately sets to work recognising their features – such as hairline and skin tone – individually, like recognising Italy by its shape alone. But what if they’ve just had a haircut? Or they’re wearing makeup?To ensure they can be recognised in any context, the brain employs an area known as the fusiform gyrus to tie all the pieces together. If you compare it to finding a country on a map, this is like checking it has a border with France and a coast. This holistic ‘sum of the parts’ perception is thought to make recognising friends a lot more accurate than it would be if their features were assessed in isolation. Crucially, it also fudges the importance of some of the subtler details. “Most people concentrate on superficial characteristics such as hair-line, hair style, eyebrows,” says Nick Fieller, a statistician involved in The Computer-Aided Facial Recognition Project. Other research has shown we look to the eyes, mouth and nose, in that order.Then it’s just a matter of working out the probability that someone else will have all the same versions as you. “There are only so many genes in the world which specify the shape of the face and millions of people, so it’s bound to happen,” says Winrich Freiwald, who studies face perception at Rockefeller University. “For somebody with an ‘average’ face it’s comparatively easy to find good matches,” says Fieller.You are surprisingly likely to have a living doppelgängerPhoto from Francois Brunelle's fascinating series "I'm Not A Look-Alike!"

In The Trump Memos, a new 27-page document published by the American Civil Liberties Union, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization lays out its constitutional analysis of Trump's signature campaign promises, from mass deportations to a religious test for passing America's borders to torture to mass surveillance to abortion to "opening up libel laws." (more…)

Peter Chadwick -- he runs the @brutalhouse stream of loving photos of imposing brutalist monuments -- has teamed up with Phaedon to publish a coffee-table book of the biggest, most uncompromising hulking monsters of the bygone age of concrete futurism: This Brutal World. (more…)

Since the Reagan years, infrastructure spending has been so politically unpopular in America that the nation's roads, ports, power grid and other hallmarks of an advanced society are crumbling, sometimes beyond repair. (more…)

Darkness and drowsiness are a dangerous mix. And for the longest time, navigating your way around in the middle of the night was an inevitable pain.In the words of Donald Trump, "Let there be really great light in the bathroom!" With the IllumiBowl Toilet Night Light you can add any color of LED light to your toilet bowl and let it glow. That means no more stumbling around when you have to go at night.Simply snap it onto the rim and let it shine: it will automatically turn on when someone walks into the bathroom. There are eight color possibilities and patterned illuminations, making quite the show for 15% off its original price.So just like Kevin O'Leary on ABC's Shark Tank, you've got to pee to believe![embed]https://youtu.be/zd-fOdKS6ok[/embed]

Point and Clickbait posted an amusing take on the adolescent fantasy that if you give a crudely-objectified female character a sword and sexuality she becomes proof that feminists just hate sex. Critics of the game have suggested that Sexblade is “astoundingly sexist” and “terrible in every way”, but Farmer argues it’s wrong to suggest that Sexblade is sexist.“Isn’t it shaming female sexuality to attack Sexblade like this?” he asked. “Sexblade is a fully-fleshed out and real character with strong, believable motivations which drive her to do things like moan orgasmically when she takes damage.”“It’s the people who want to put a stop to that — they are the real sexists.”

NYPD officer Michael Birch recorded a meeting with a superior officer who complained to him he wasn't stopping enough black men. Gawker posted the tapes and transcripts, given to them by Birch after a judge dismissed the officer's complaint against the force.In January, Birch filed a federal lawsuit against the city and several individual NYPD officials, alleging that he was retaliated against for speaking out about what he calls an illegal quota system. A judge dismissed his complaint, and he filed an appeal with a higher court last month.

In "The Oxford Olympics Study 2016: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Games," three researchers from the University of Oxford's Said Business School examine the cost estimates and actual costs of every Olympic games since 1960, and finds that they are the most likely of all megaprojects to exceed their estimates, and also exceed those estimates by the largest amount of any megaproject. (more…)

Francis Gurry, the fair-use hating, web-hating, North Korea embargo-breaking, witch-hunting, blackmailing head of the UN's World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has a new pick to run copyright at the UN agency: Sylvie Forbin, a lobbyist for for French entertainment giant Vivendi. (more…)

Nintendo's miniature re-release of the NES is, it seems, another one of those several-games-in-one nostalgia toys. But it's a good one, with 30 classic titles, the same great design in miniature, and compatibility with modern wireless controllers. It'll be out November 11 for $60. (more…)

Allan George Matthews is a surgeon. He's not a proper one, per se. You might call him a gentleman amateur. And a surgery the 56-year-old Australian performed to remove another man's painful testicle has landed him in court, the BBC reports.Police became aware of the case in June when the man attended hospital after the wound he suffered during the operation became infected.Officers raided Matthews' home and seized medical equipment, firearms and four bottles of what they suspected to be amyl nitrate.Prosecutors alleged that Matthews was not authorised to perform such a procedure as he was not a qualified or registered medical practitioner.The victim had been kicked in the bollocks by a horse and could not afford professional care, adds the Syndey Morning Herald.The charges stem from an incident in a motel room in Port Macquarie on May 16.Police allege Matthews met a 52-year-old man and surgically removed his left testicle.It is the crown's case that Matthews is not qualified or authorised to perform such a procedure, and is not a qualified or registered medical practitioner.The 52-year-old alleged victim attended the motel room after posting an advertisement online requesting assistance with a medical issue, police claim.

The BBC rounds up some of Boris Johnson's on-the-record "gaffes" (which is to say, unforgivable racist garbage), from calling African people "piccaninnies" to praising Bashar Al-Assad. (more…)

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Allison Kropff, a television reporter at Florida's WTSP 10 TV News, walks right in front of colleague Bobby Deskins while hunting Pokemon. (more…)

Jenna Wortham wrote a fascinating article about the pros and cons of straight people identifying as queer. In the wild, this is often nothing more than an ugly appropriation. Ah, but the possibilities..."Someday, maybe we’ll recognize that queer is actually the norm, and the notion of static sexual identities will be seen as austere and reductive. ... To the queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz, queerness was not a label people could claim but a complete reimagining of how people could be. “We may never touch queerness,” he wrote, in his 2009 book, “Cruising Utopia.” “But we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality.” The widespread acceptance and even appropriation of the word “queer” seem to move us both closer to and further from such a future. But the horizon is out there, and you can see it if you squint."

Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), part of a DRM system that's being standardized at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), marks the first instance in which a W3C standard will fall under laws like the DMCA, which let companies threaten security researchers with criminal and civil liability just for disclosing the defects in these products. (more…)

Boris Johnson led the Brexit campaign with a lot of dog-whistles about dirty foreign muck stealing our jobs and clogging up our NHS, before being stabbed in the back by Michael Gove and bowing out of politics, until, today, he was made Foreign Secretary by Theresa May, the UK's new Pry Minister. (more…)

It's been less than a week since the deadly shooting of Philando Castile by police was broadcast on Facebook Live. Already, another U.S. shooting has been live-streamed with Facebook's popular tool. A triple shooting in Norfolk, Virginia, last night injured three men, one of whom Facebook Live-streamed the entire incident. According to reports, T.J. Williams (above) was one of the three victims, and is the person from whose phone the Facebook Live broadcast originated. (more…)

The original Planet of the Apes movie is a family favorite. It just might be my favorite movie. I can't wait to watch this 1968 masterpiece with my wife and daughters on the big screen! Check here for theaters and showtimes.Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies, and Twentieth Century Fox invite you to return to the out-of-this-world mad house when the sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes (1968) crash lands in select cinemas nationwide for a special two-day event on Sunday, July 24 and Wednesday, July 27.Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall star in this legendary science fiction masterpiece. Astronaut Taylor (Heston) crash lands on a distant planet ruled by apes who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport. Soon Taylor finds himself among the hunted, his life in the hands of a benevolent chimpanzee scientist (McDowall).

These images prove what we've long known here at Boing Boing: Dedication and true fandom trump how much you have in your bank account to spend on cosplaying your favorite comics, sci fi, or anime characters. Follow LowCostCosplay on Facebook or Instagram. (more…)

Alicia Thomas places an ad on Craigslist as a Pokémon Go trainer. She charges $20/hour. (Whoops - the ad has been removed. Maybe she has too many clients?)[via]

“I made a guide with some general tips for PoGo,” says redditor Lastminuteguy. “This guide doesn't state the basics, but rather gives information on elements of the game that aren't immediately obvious.” (more…)