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David McCandless, a data-journalist, information designer, and author of several terrific data visualization books, created this infographic that dispels over 50 oft-repeated myths.[via]

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the state lacks the authority to limit a woman's reasons for ending pregnancy.Judge Tanya Walton Pratt granted an injuction against an Indiana law that banned abortions sought because of fetal abnormalities, and which mandated funeral rituals for aborted fetuses.Pratt said the Indiana law would go against U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have declared states may not prohibit a woman from seeking an abortion before a fetus is able to live outside the womb. She also said the state had not cited any exceptions to that standard."This is unsurprising given that it is a woman's right to choose an abortion that is protected, which, of course, leaves no room for the state to examine the basis or bases upon which a woman makes her choice," Pratt wrote. ... The lawsuit also challenges the law's provision requiring that aborted fetuses be buried or cremated. Planned Parenthood currently disposes of remains by incineration, as with other medical tissue. Pratt's ruling blocks the burial or cremation requirement from taking effect.It's been a rough week for anti-abortion campaigners: the Supreme Court also struck down a Texas law requiring clinics to meet hospital criteria.

It's hard to tell. Or, it could be Gallagher with a watermelon.

"We don't believe this is a gun issue, this is a terrorism issue and this is an act against American citizens," says Bert Irslinger, Jr., owner of Second Amendment Sports, a gun shop in McHenry, Illinois. Irslinger said he is going to donate $2,000 in addition to the raffle sales for an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle raffle to the OneOrlando Fund. The mass murderer used an AR-15 to kill victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre.From ABC 7:Kathleen Larimer of Crystal Lake is also upset. Her son John was among the 12 people shot and killed in the 2012 Colorado movie theater massacre."If you lose somebody to drunk driving, you wouldn't raise money by raffling off cases of alcohol. It's just, it's wrong. It's in poor taste," she says.

Madagascar, one of the world's poorest nations, is led by president Hery Rajaonarimampianina, who infuriated his people by insisting that the economy was doing well and that naysayers couldn't "provide evidence that the country was getting poorer." (more…)

Twitter user LDLDN posted this image of a racist National Front poster on a lamppost in Camden, a neighborhood in north London -- a relatively affluent, diverse neighborhood dominated by a giant subculture market, two huge train stations (St Pancras and King's Cross), a university, and the British Library. (more…)

Why would Alcott Smith, at the time nearly seventy, affable and supposedly of sound mind, a blue-eyed veterinarian with a whittled-down woodman’s frame and lupine stamina, abruptly change his plans (and clothes) for a quiet Memorial Day dinner with his companion, Lou-Anne, and drive from his home in New Hampshire to New York State, north along the western rim of a wild lake, to a cabin on a corrugated dirt lane called Porcupine Hollow? Inside the cabin fifteen men quaffed beer, while outside a twenty-five- inch rattlesnake with a mouth full of porcupine quills idled in a homemade rabbit hutch. It was the snake that had interrupted Smith’s holiday dinner.Excerpted from Ted Levin's America's Snake. Available from Amazon.Because of a cascade of consequences there aren’t many left in the Northeast: timber rattlesnakes are classified as a threatened species in New York and an endangered species everywhere in New England except Maine and Rhode Island where they’re already extinct. They could be gone from New Hampshire before the next presidential primary. Among the cognoscenti it’s speculated whether timber rattlesnakes ever lived in Quebec; they definitely did in Ontario, where rattlesnakes inhabited the sedimentary shelves of the Niagara Gorge but eventually died off like so many failed honeymoons consummated in the vicinity of the falls.That rattlesnakes still survive in the Northeast may come as a big surprise to you, but that they have such an impassioned advocate might come as an even bigger surprise. Actually, rattlesnakes have more than a few advocates, both the affiliated and the unaffiliated, and as is so often the case, this is a source of emotional and political misunderstandings, turf battles and bruised egos. As you may have guessed already, Alcott Smith is a timber rattlesnake advocate, an obsessive really, who inhabits the demilitarized zone between the warring factions. How else to explain this spur-of-the-moment, four-hour road trip?By the time Smith arrived, the party had been percolating for a while. Larry Boswell opened the door. As he spoke, a silver timber rattlesnake embossed on an upper eyetooth caught the light. Boswell owned the cabin and access to a nearby snake den, a very healthy one, where each October the unfortunate rattlesnake outside, following its own prehistoric biorhythms, had crawled down a crevice and spent more than half the year below the frost line dreaming snake dreams. Porcupines also favor sunny slopes, which likely is how the two met, one coiled and motionless and the other blundering forward.You’d think that after thousands of years of cohabitation on the sunny, rocky slopes of the Northeast, rattlesnakes and porcupines might have worked things out, but not so. No doubt, both animals instinctually took a defensive stance, and whether the snake struck and quills came out, or the startled porcupine lashed the snake with its pincushion tail both had been severely compromised. Without Smith’s help, the rattlesnake might have been doomed to starve as the quills festered. Ailing snakes die slowly, very slowly. One western diamondback is reported to have survived (and grown longer) in a wooden box for eighteen months without food and water, and a timber rattlesnake from Massachusetts lived twelve months (in and out of captivity), with its face consumed by a white gelatin-like fungus, a Quasimodo in the Blue Hills.The cabin was small, dank, poorly lit. There wasn’t a sober individual in the group. Lou-Anne thought of Deliverance, and all evening she stood by the front door. Smith examined the snake and found fifteen quills embedded inside its mouth, which curled back a corner of the upper lip and perforated the margin of the glottis, gateway to the lungs, compromising both the snake’s breathing and its eating while protecting the outside world from the business end of the fabled, hollow (and grossly misunderstood) fangs. Essentially, the snake’s mouth had been pinned open. Although this was a rattlesnake-tolerant (if not friendly) group, Smith wasn’t about to trust any of their less-than- steady hands to hold the animal. With imaginary blinkers on, Smith worked on a cleared-off coffee table in the middle of the cabin, with the overly supportive crowd keyed to every nuance. Smith gripped the head with one hand and pulled quills with the other, while the snake’s dark, thick torso sluggishly undulated across the coffee table. Slowly, methodically, he plucked each quill with a hemostat, and the men, who had tightened into a knot around the coffee table, cheered, toasted, chugged. After the last quill was pulled, the ebullient crowd roared approvingly, and the snake was returned to the hutch. Eight-years later, Lou-Anne, still jazzed by the potpourri of emotions, intensity, and images of that night, remembers feeling “relieved to have left there alive” as the couple returned home on the morning side of midnight.The timber rattlesnake had been discovered several days before the tabletop surgery. Three of the unaffiliated herpetological adventurers—a couple from Connecticut and a man from northern Florida—had concluded an annual spring survey of the bare-bone outcrops behind the cabin. There, in the remote foothills above the shores of a narrow valley, where a wild brook strings together a series of beaver ponds, is one of the most isolated series of rattlesnake dens in the Northeast, perhaps in the entire country. (The word infested might come to more discriminatory minds.) For me, seeing those small, gorgeous pods of snakes basking in the October sunshine is stunning, a natural history right of passage, sort of like a bar mitzvah without the rabbi.Beside the rattlesnakes, the trio found a fresh porcupine carcass in the rocks, unblemished, and on their way back down the mountain, they found the quilled snake, coiled loosely in a small rock pile one hundred fifty feet behind the cabin, last snake of the afternoon. The rock pile was at the base of a corridor, a bedrock groove in the side of the mountain that rattlesnakes use as a seasonal pathway from the den to the wooded shore and back. The cabin’s unkempt backyard is a veritable (and historic) snake thoroughfare. One of these three, a man who calls himself Diamondback Dave, thought he could pull the quills. Well known in the small, fervid circle of snake enthusiasts, Diamondback Dave maintains the website Fieldherping .com, where, among scores of photographs posted of himself (and a few friends) holding various large and mostly venomous snakes, you can view a full-frame picture of his bloody hand, the injury compliments of a recalcitrant banded water snake. You can also read synopses of field trips and random journalistic entries like this one:I had a meeting with the director of a wildlife conservation society to discuss strategies on protecting rattlesnake populations in Eastern North America. What turned out was a weird combination of trespass warnings and a lengthy and unnecessary lecture on going back to school and finishing my degree, so that I could make 80,000 a year . . . welcome to the new age of Academic Wildlife Exploitation! . . . Business as usual.Although in the spring of 2003, Diamondback Dave had never “pinned” a snake, a term that means immobilizing a venomous reptile’s head against the ground using any of a number of implements—snake hook, snake stick, forked branch, golf putter, and so forth—heconvinced his two friends that he knew what he was doing. He did. Once the rattlesnake was pinned, Diamondback Dave directed his female companion to hold the body. Three visible quills protruded several inches from a corner of the snake’s mouth, fixed like miniature harpoons with their barbed tips. Dave’s efforts to pull them proved fruitless, however; not wanting to risk further injury to the snake, he released it.On their way back to the car, they reported the incident to Boswell, who returned the following day and transferred the rattlesnake from rock pile to rabbit hutch. In his spare time, Boswell taught police officers and game wardens how to safely catch and relocate nuisance snakes, and he had been issued a permit by New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to harbor them on a temporary basis. This snake needed more than he could offer, though, so the next afternoon, Boswell phoned Alcott Smith.After surgery, the timber rattlesnake recuperated in the hutch on Larry’s side of the bed. Three weeks later, when it was able to swallow a chipmunk, the snake was returned to the rock pile, where it immediately disappeared into a jumble of sun-heated stones. Today, the quilled snake can be found on Dave’s glitzy website among a host of other photographs. Just scroll down to the image labeled “Spike.”___________When it comes to eliciting empathy, it’s the back of line for rattlesnakes, creatures seemingly with, face it, not much personality. One could argue that our squeamishness at the sight of a snake began with the story of the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis, but it also may be coded in our genes, suggests Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson. Humans, says Wilson, could be hardwired to fear snakes. In Africa, where our closest primate kin have multiple predators to fear, chimpanzees have been observed shadowing dangerous snakes at a safe distance, staring and hollering. Charles Darwin even weighed in on the issue of ophidiophobia: “I took a stuffed snake into the monkey-house, and the hair on several of the species instantly became erect,” he wrote in 1872 in The Descent of Man. Though timber rattlesnakes rarely harm humans or domesticated animals, Americans nevertheless have a long history of organized efforts to collect and eliminate them.In 1680, a Massachusetts hunter could earn two shillings a day killing timber rattlesnakes, and beginning in 1740, Massachusetts chose one day each fall for a community-wide hunt, called a rattlesnake bee, which took place in towns across the state. In 1810, hunters in Pennsylvania strapped powder horns to rattlesnakes, lit them, and released them back into their dens; in 1849, in Madison County, Iowa, teams competed for the most snakes killed. The prize for the winning team: two bushels of corn. Bounties were paid for rattlesnakes in New York and Vermont into the early 1970s.Twenty-five years ago, I visited a Vermont town clerk to examine old bounty records. “Why,” she asked, “would anyone care?” That was a hard question to answer. I had just driven an hour and a half to learn something about the snakes and the people of western Vermont, maybe something about the hard-rock ledges. I found it difficult to articulate what I was after. She pressed me again.“It’s not every day someone comes here to talk about snakes. Idon’t even know where that book is.”She apparently found it hard to say the word rattlesnake.“I saw one this spring, crossing the road near the Blatsky River. I can’t stand to look at ’em.”A man in a three-piece suit walked into the clerk’s office. He was in a hurry.“Hey, Bob,” the clerk said, “This guy wants to know about rattlesnakes.” Finally, she had said the word, hanging on to the a’s and t’s as though she were shaking a castanet. (Until that moment, I hadn’t thought of the word rattle or rattlesnake onomatopoetically.) Bob apparently didn’t like rattlesnakes, either. He said he had killed one in East Steeple, not far from Crystal Lake, a couple years previously. Whacked off its head with a hoe.No one wanted to touch the bounty book, so I collected it myself. What I found was that between 1899 and 1904, two hundred forty-one timber rattlesnakes were bountied, a dollar a piece. The earliest bounty was paid on May 9, and the latest on October 19. Of the two hundred forty-one snakes listed, sixty-two were killed between May 9 and May 31, and one hundred fifty-four after August 21, when the snakes, including the neonates, had returned to their dens. This seasonal pattern confirmed that timber rattlesnakes go to bed early and wake up late.One snake hunter, Andy Howard, collected the one-dollar bounty on one hundred ninety-six rattlesnakes during that five-year period. According to the town clerk, Andy liked liquor, and the bounty payments warmed the long, cold winters, so he made it his business to find snake dens. On September 13, 1902, he killed thirty-seven rattlesnakes.Only twenty-five snakes were bountied from early June to mid-August. This is not too surprising. Timber rattlesnakes need the ice to melt and the soil to warm before they are ready to expend energy on growth, to leave the vicinity of their dens for the wooded ridge, where they lie in wait for mice and chipmunks. To find one in summer is a matter of chance. Great chance.There were no records from 1905 through 1947. After 1947, sixty-four snakes were killed in a twenty-year period, ending in 1967. With so few snakes to record, the bounty book began noting the length of each snake and the number of rattles segments: the longest was four-and- a- half feet.In some regions of the country snake killing is still sanctioned. As recently as 1989, Clairemont, Texas (now a ghost town), held its forty-first and final Peace Officers Rattlesnake Shoot, in which law-enforcement officials and other contestants competed for points by shooting live rattlesnakes. A shooter was awarded ten points for a head shot, five for a body shot; prizes were given for five categories: masters, first place, second place, third place, and guest._________Several years ago, Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire, exhibited the watercolors of George Catlin, a native Pennsylvanian who traveled throughout the nineteenth-century American West painting the lives of Plains Indians. Catlin’s subjects engaged the landscape—hunting bison, praying and dancing, preparing food, pitching tepees in the shadows of great mountains and along the shores of winding rivers.Not all the watercolors in the exhibit celebrated the West, however. In one painting, Catlin depicted his own home ground, the green woods and rocky ledges above the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania. The time is early May. Dozens of timber rattlesnakes lounge on the rocks, basking in the sunshine, while two men attack them with clubs and guns. A boy, perhaps the artist himself, stands in the background, screened by foliage, watching, waiting his turn.Catlin’s chance eventually came. On another occasion, the artist, known for his sensitivity to vanishing cultures, allegedly destroyed a Pennsylvania den by strapping a powder horn to the tail of a rattlesnake. He lit the fuse and released the snake into the talus, towing the bomb behind it.More than one hundred fifty years have passed since Catlin painted the snake hunt, yet these timid serpents still evoke the same fear and loathing that motivated the destruction of America’s other predators. We’ve since made our peace with most of these—bald and golden eagles, wolves, and catamounts, the alligators and crocodiles, the silver-tipped grizzlies. Why not with the rattlesnake Decades ago, we stopped slaughtering hawks and owls. We welcomed gray wolves back to Yellowstone, red wolves to South Carolina, and black-footed ferrets to the Northern Plains. Today, we celebrate jaguars in Arizona, ocelots in South Texas, and great white sharks off Cape Cod, and we commiserate with the plight of polar bears swimming to exhaustion in the Beaufort Sea. But when the subject turns to timber rattlesnakes, we are collectively and decidedly pigheaded about their future; trying to sell an ophidiophobe the merits of rattlesnakes is as difficult as trying to convince a member of Red Sox Nation on the merits of the Yankees. Timber rattlesnakes are perceived as bad to the bone. Even those who care can’t agree on the best way to ensure survival of the snakes; worse, it is difficult for the different factions even to hear each other’s concerns.Forty years after Kauffeld’s death, timber rattlesnakes, which are not inherently aggressive—just unforgiving of being mishandling—are still pursued by both collectors and persecutors, and face a litany of other problems ranging from isolated colonies, depleted gene pools, and inbreeding—a prescription for local extinction—to fatal fungal infections, climate change, automobile traffic, and political paralysis. Timber rattlesnakes, which are as American as apple pie, still live a short drive from Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Richmond, Saint Louis, and Minneapolis, which says something about their passive nature, their secretive ways, and the breadth of their evolutionary adaptations, which allows them to count among their immediate neighbors, animals as geographically disparate as peccaries, alligators, and moose.The story of the timber rattlesnake (America’s snake) is as much a story of human attitudes—good and bad, but rarely indifferent—and of places—pockets of wildness between the Atlantic and the west bank of the Mississippi—as it is the story of a snake.A former Bronx Zoo zoologist, Ted Levin is the author of Blood Brook: A Naturalist’s Home Ground, Backtracking: The Way of the Naturalist, and Liquid Land: A Journey through the Everglades, which won the Burroughs Medal in 2004. He has written for Sports Illustrated, Audubon, National Wildlife, National Geographic Traveler, and other publications.

If you’ve got a coding career on your mind, few programming disciplines will take you farther than a commanding knowledge of the Python language, which is not to be mistaken for parseltongue. Its versatility and ease of use make it a go-to for any coding project...so master Python now with this all-inclusive all-level python programming course bundle, now only $19 in the Boing Boing Store.Whether you're a complete newbie or simply need a refresher, these 32 hours of instruction will not only explain Python coding basics, but also advanced tips and tricks.The Beginning Python Programming course starts by explaining the basics that make this one of the easiest coding languages to pick up. You'll dive into functions, variables, loops, dictionaries, and other useful Python tools.Afterwards, you’ll move on to the Advanced Python Programming course, unlocking advanced graphics and multimedia creation techniques that allow Python to interface seamlessly with other languages and platforms.These courses would usually set you back nearly $2,200, so move fast and get this All-Level Python Programming bundle now at over 90% off before it's gone.Note: learning Python will not allow you to open the chamber of secrets.

Ganked from Kilomonster on imgur: [Enjoy my massive, steamy doodle-gif dump!]. There are 253 doodle GIFs in the original imgur gallery. (more…)

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) today said it is opening a preliminary investigation into 25,000 Tesla Model S cars, following the death of a driver who was killed using the vehicle's Autopilot mode. (more…)

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Today, The Intercept published leaked documents that contain the FBI’s secret rules for targeting journalists and sources with National Security Letters (NSLs)—the controversial and unconstitutional warrantless tool the FBI uses to conduct surveillance without any court supervision whatsoever. (more…)

Dangerous Minds posted Jordan Peele's amazing word-for-word, gesture-for-gesture re-enactment of James Brown's infamous drug-and-or-boozed enhanced CNN interview from 1987.Here's the original:https://youtu.be/9tfNhL_R_rI

It's bad enough that the reptilian power elite routinely release mind-numbing chemicals into the atmosphere in order to pacify Earth's domesticated primates. Now they're adding insult to injury by installing pro-chemtrail propaganda disguised as art on Mariott hotel room walls. It's an outrage, and activists who have thus far managed to evade the deleterious effects of the gas are doing something about it, in the form of a Change.org petition. I'm cheering them on from my lair in a secret deep underground military base.From the petition:Marriott’s newly decorated “chemtrail rooms” promote chemtrails and geoengineering by making guests grow accustomed to the sight of chemtrails (as if this is a natural occurrence!) This is outrageous and they should not be promoting this government secret agenda. Please sign to boycott Marriott and raise awareness of the global issue of chemtrails. Whether intentional or unintentional, promotion by Marriott and corporate America will not be tolerated, or the public will hit where it hurts…in their wallets.https://youtu.be/iK9nVR9H34g[via]

The Pentagon today ended its ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military. The historic announcement formally removes some of the risks faced by an estimated thousands of U.S. troops, who could have been expelled from the armed forces because of their gender identity. Trans people who serve in the armed forces still have harassment, sexual violence, physical assault, and prejudice to face, but the hatred and sickness no longer has a Pentagon directive to hid behind. (more…)

Bulgaria's 18,000-person Kalaidzhi Roma clan holds an annual "bride market, where young virgins are paraded in front of suitors who bid on them."From Tai-wiki-widbeeEvery year young Roma women attend "bride markets" with the intention of getting married to the highest bidder. "If you have gold jewelry and shoes that match your dress... the better family we come from, the higher price we get." The average bride price is about USD$300-350. "But it's more like massive speed-dating than the forced marriage market that the media reports."

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Irving Harper: Works in Paperby Irving Harper (artist) and Michael Maharam (editor) Skira Rizzoli2013, 176 pages, 8.3 x 10.3 x 1.1 inches $33 Buy a copy on AmazonAnyone familiar with the American version of the hit comedy The Office might remember a scene in which Michael Scott attends an art show where Pam exhibits her paintings. Struck by a painting she made of the office building, Michael buys it and muses, “It is a message. It is an inspiration. It is a source of beauty. And without paper, it could not have happened.” The quote could just as easily be said of famed designer Irving Harper, an alchemist who transforms paper into works of wonder. One look at Irving Harper: Works In Paper will be sufficient to astonish those who are not yet acquainted with the genius of design, and to further amaze those who are already fans of his. Irving Harper was famous primarily as a furniture designer who championed the modernist style, becoming famous for the “Marshmallow Sofa” which comprises 18 plush discs arranged on a wire frame, and the “Ball Clock,” which resembles an asterix with multi-colored balls punctuating the tip of each line. Harper was not a sculptor by profession, but he created paper sculptures at home as a pastime to relieve himself of the stress of his regular job. This book features the astonishing results of someone who was ultimately more artist than hobbyist. Within these pages, a series of masks with graceful, Kabuki-like features can be found alongside vivid and striking depictions of wildlife including a wizened owl with expressive eyes, a snarling wolf hovering over its prey and a stoic elephant made with spare grace. A lavish cathedral skillfully depicts a stained glass window with a seraph in an arched doorway, while a sparse rendition of a scowling soldier on horseback offers a remarkable contrast. A series of abstract sculptures reminiscent of some of Robert Rauschenberg’s bold experiments also capture the reader’s attention.The book offers a brief introduction to Irving Harper and discusses his design career in some detail, but the majority of the pagers are devoted to stunning full-color and black-and-white images of his paper sculptures. One photograph stands out: Harper, surrounded by his magnificent creations in his living room, idly scans a newspaper from his easy chair. The image remains in the mind even after closing the book as a quiet and powerful document of a humble genius who gave shape to his imagination with the simplest of resources. It is, as Michael Scott suggested, a source of beauty. And it couldn’t have happened without paper.– Lee Hollman

It looks like this go kart driver speeding away from police on a freeway is wearing a face disguise. UPI says, "It was unclear whether the man was eventually stopped by police or if he got away."

With historic familial ties to the hate based organization, it is no wonder the Klan loves Trump. Klansmen across the nation see Trump's successes within the GOP electorate as a sign their message is getting across.Via TPM:KKK leader Brent Waller, imperial wizard of the United Dixie White Knights in Mississippi, said stopping immigration — not blocking minority rights — is the Klan's No. 1 issue today.And other Klan leaders say Donald Trump's ascendancy in the GOP is a sign things are going their way."You know, we began 40 years ago saying we need to build a wall," Arkansas-based Klan leader Thomas Robb said.Despite trying to rebrand itself, the Klan has not stepped away from burning crosses. As the sun set on a warm Saturday in April,Klan members gathered in a huge circle in a northwest Georgia field to set a cross and Nazi swastika afire."White power!" they chanted in unison."Death to the ungodly! Death to our enemies!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i2BTBFN5Q4&feature=youtu.beThinkgeek's $150 Bluetooth Communicators are based on 3D scans of a prop communicator; pair it with your phone and clip it to your belt: when you get a ring, the psychedelic hypno-disc in the middle will spin prettily, flick it open and start talking. (more…)

Kelly O'Dwyer is a politician from the Australian Liberal Party who sent Twitter DMCA notices that shut down an account that compared her to Sophie Mirabella, another Liberal politician who lost her seat in a landslide in the last election. (more…)

Matt Parker is a "standup mathematician." In this entertaining video, he demonstrates a 1960s plastic toy that plays the game of Nim against a human opponent. Interestingly, Dr. Nim is an ingenious mechanism that uses plastic levers to control the number of marbles it chooses to drop. If you go first, Dr. Nim will always win. In the video, Matt shows you how to play and win Nim every time, including a cheat that lets you win even if you go first.

A new use-of-force policy from the Baltimore Police Department requires its officers to de-escalate violent situations, to report colleagues who use inappropriate force, and to respect the "sanctity of life." (more…)

View post on imgur.comLook at this woman stuff junk mail into mailbox slots. I hope she is getting paid by the piece, not by the hour.

"The Dark Overlord" is a hacker who's made headline by advertising the availability of millions of health records on darknet sites, sending samples to news-outlets to validate their authenticity; in an interview with Motherboard's Joseph Cox, Dark Overlord reveals that the disclosures are timed to put the pressure on other victims to pay ransoms to guarantee that their stolen data won't leak. (more…)

And they said the Segway would change the way we moved through cities! Video of pallet skating in Bratislava, Slovakia by Tomáš Moravec.

Countering Violent Extremism: Scientific Methods & Strategies, a 2011 publication by the Air Force Research Laboratory, was just re-released with a new introduction that touts, "the wisdom contained in this paper collection is more relevant than ever." (more…)

Harrison Young devised a miraculously cool "fiber-reinforced actuator" -- a gripping robot-hand that can get traction on irregularly shaped, heavy objects, without any 3D printed parts and without any power-supply! (more…)

The guys at Been there Done That drove around Portland, Maine with some hotdogs wired to the jugs of an Ural motorcycle. Unsurprisingly, the amazing airhead engine is too efficient at dissipating heat, and the hot dogs don't get very cooked. The story behind IMZ-Ural Motorcycles is also pretty cool, both the Soviet-ization of a BMW R71, and the handwork to keep the factory open and making bikes. If you want a bike with a sidecar, they make some cool ones.(Thanks Kent K. Barnes!)

"Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time," according to Alvin Toffler, who died on June 27 at the age of 87. Toffler wrote a massively best selling book of the same called Future Shock, which made him a celebrity.I saw Alvin Toffler at a Chin Chin Chinese restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood 20 years ago. I stared at him, slack jawed, until he finally said, "Yes, it's me!" He seemed friendly, so I approached him and we talked for about 20 minutes. I was impressed with his energy level. I told him I was an editor at Wired magazine, and mentioned that we had just backed out of an IPO. "Sometimes, retreat is the smart thing to do," he said.Some Toffler quotes:"You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.""It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution.""One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.""Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.""Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.""Science fiction is held in low regard as a branch of literature, and perhaps it deserves this critical contempt. But if we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as literature, science fiction has immense value as a mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation. Our children should be studying Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Robert Sheckley, not because these writers can tell them about rocket ships and time machines but, more important, because they can lead young minds through an imaginative exploration of the jungle of political, social, psychological, and ethical issues that will confront these children as adults."He is survived by his wife, Heidi Toffler, who co-authored his post Future Shock books.

Today a future without schools. Instead of gathering students into a room and teaching them, everybody learns on their own time, on tablets and guided by artificial intelligence. Flash Forward: RSS | iTunes | Twitter | Facebook | Web | Patreon | RedditIn this episode we talk to a computer scientist who developed an artificially intelligent TA, folks who build learning apps, and critics who wonder if all the promises being made are too good to be true. What do we gain when we let students choose their own paths? What do we lose when we get rid of schools? Illustration by Matt Lubchansky. ▹▹ Full show notes

The ACLU is suing to repeal parts of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a 1980s-vintage hacking law that makes it a felony to "exceed authorization" on a remote computer, and which companies and the US government have used to prosecute researchers who violated websites' terms of service. (more…)

Facebook recently told Fusion reporter Kashmir Hill that Facebook uses location data to recommend friends.People freaked out. Facebook retracted the statement. Then, the social media giant said what, that's crazy, LOL, no. No, we didn't do that at all. Now, Facebook’s communications team tells Hill the confusion arose “because there was a brief time when the social network used location for friend suggestions,” which involved a small percentage of Facebook users and stopped last year. (more…)

Despite all the scare talk from the FBI and the US intelligence services about terrorists "going dark" and using encrypted communications to talk with one another, the reality is that criminals are using crypto less than ever, according to the DoJ's own numbers. (more…)

Near Glacier National Park, a surprised grizzly bear attacked three mountain bikers. Two were able to escape, but the third, Brad Treat, was killed.Via Alaska Dispatch News:Treat died Wednesday afternoon after being attacked by a grizzly bear just south of Glacier National Park. Though he had maintained his athleticism — he was riding his mountain bike, after all — Treat, who was just 38 years old and a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service, couldn't escape his fate.But his companion did. Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry told the Associated Press that Treat and another man had been biking near Halfmoon Lakes when they came across the bear, surprising it. The other man escaped unscathed and sought help while the bear knocked Treat off his bike.Help arrived too late, and Treat was declared dead on the scene. The bear has not been found, though authorities are searching for it, and campers were briefed on the incident.

This excellent letter to Trump was written by the young son of a family friend. Not only is he right about everything, but right in a way that really gets under the Trumpkins' skin. A real gift, that!

Got a lot of time on your hands? Build this amazingly detailed LEGO model of the Ghostbusters Firehouse!With over 4000 pieces, you also get Venkman, Stantz, Spengler and Zeddemore minifigs, along with a pole for them to slide down!LEGO Ghostbusters 75827 Firehouse Headquarters Building Kit (4634 Piece) via Amazon

Timur and the Dime Museum one up glam-rock into an incredible theatrical experience. Check out the just released video for Cobalt Blues, a track off their new album COLLAPSE. I first experienced a performance of Timur's last year, and I was pretty much instantly swept away. He is an incredible tenor, who combines amazing classic operatic skill with glam rock theatrics and style. It is a huge win. The video was directed, shot and edited by Sandra Powers, muusic and words by Daniel Corral, and was produced by Nick Urata and Nick Tipp.More info:Glam-rock theatrical act Timur and the Dime Museum (TDM) release their third album Collapse on June 30th, 2016, produced by Nick Urata of DeVotchKa. Written and composed by TDM member Daniel Corral, Collapse is a glam-rock requiem with sardonic songs about the environmental catastrophes caused by humans with trenchant commentary and arch theatrical flair – by turns grungy, poppy, and apocalyptic. Collapse is available for download on iTunes, Amazon and other outlets.The album Collapse is based on Collapse: A Post-Ecological Requiem, a staged production that premiered in 2015 at REDCAT, Los Angeles, with performances at Miami Light Project, Operadagen Rotterdam Festival, and BAM 2015 Next Wave Festival. The show garnered wide critical praise, including LA Times (“nastily seductive, dangerous...Timur embodies centuries' worth of musical styles”), Miami Herald (“full of intensity and dark humour”), Artinfo Magazine (“upbeat hooks, slamming power chords, a Mercurian falsetto”) and LA Weekly (“a haunting and hyperbolic song cycle”).Collapse is conceptualized as a theatrical Requiem, where different stories are refracted through the hauntingly eclectic sound of the four-member band – keys, bass, guitar and drums and the vibrant voice of the Kazakh-American tenor Timur, playing the role of Moloch, a God of human sacrifice, lamenting the environmental degradation of the past, present and future. Congrats to the whole band, and crew, 'Cobalt Blues' is beautiful!

Long before Siri and Alexa, there was good ol' Elwood Edwards. If you ever logged on to America Online in the 1990s, you enjoyed the dopamine rush of Edwards cheerfully informing you that "You've got mail!"

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Steve Mould demonstrates an unusual mucilaginous substance that pours itself out of a beaker, once you get it started. This stuff reminds me of some bad head colds I've had.

The Intellectual Property Promotion Association, which represents 80% of Japan’s adult film industry, says it's very sorry for "coercing" (aka raping) women to have sex in pornographic videos.From the LA Times:Police announced Monday that they had arrested the president of Marks Japan and two others on suspicion that they forced a woman into appearing in adult films by threatening to punish her financially. They also threatened to force her parents to pay for “contract violations” if necessary, police said.The woman, described as being in her 20s, reportedly signed with the company in 2009 as a fashion model and was forced to have sex on camera in more than 100 videos before being able to cancel her contract in 2014, according to police.The three men arrested, including company President Takashi Kozasu, were charged with breaking laws that regulate temporary employment agencies – specifically, rules that prevent the agencies from sending workers into assignments that violate public morals. The assignment that led to the charges was a film shoot in September 2013.

Dear readers with shoop skills: if you stretch Kim Jong-Un, does he look like a marshmallow bunny? [via]

"She appears to be in an almost catatonic state," says the narrator. I wonder what she's dreaming about.

Holy cow! This is one of the most complex, and amazing, 3D printed objects I've seen: Lion Force Voltron! Swedish designer Juri designed and printed this fabulous model of the first Voltron. The lions all merge to form Voltron, just like you remember!More photos, and the files so you can build it yourself (ha! ha! ha!) are available free at My Mini Factory!Are you ready to form Voltron?

Where's Warhol? by Catherine Ingram and Andrew RaeLaurence King Publishing2016, 32 pages, 9.8 x 13 x 0.5 inches $10 Buy a copy on AmazonAndy Warhol was known for both “making the scene,” literally turning “scenes” into improvised art, and for being impressively awkward and shy within those scenes. So, there really is something fundamentally right about the concept of hiding Andy inside of iconic scenes from history, both art history and beyond.In Where’s Warhol? art historian Catherine Ingram teams up with artist Andrew Rae to create a visual needle-in-a-haystack picture book inspired by the Where’s Waldo? series. In a series of two-page spreads, Andy, in his iconic striped shirt and shock of silver hair, is hidden within massive crowd scenes. The scenes range from actual places where Andy did hang out (e.g. Studio 54) to historical places and events such as the French Revolution and Germany’s Bauhaus art school. The fun is not only in finding Andy, but in trying to identity all of the other historical figures drawn into these scenes. In the back of the book, many of these characters are pointed out with little anecdotes. And other known people are there, but not identified (like Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith). It’s fun to see just how many characters from history you can identity. There is also enough going on here to reward repeat scans of the pages. This would be a fun gift book to get for anyone who’s a Warhol fan, a fan of art history, or who just enjoys these kinds of visual puzzle books. Everyone who’s seen this on my coffee table has gotten a big kick out of it.

California, the most populous state in the USA and the sixth-largest economy in the world -- will give its residents the chance to vote on an expansive legal recreational week proposal on the ballot paper this coming November. (more…)

Maciej Cegłowski (previously) keynoted the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics conference with a characteristically brilliant speech about the "moral economy of tech" -- that is, the way that treating social problems like software problems allows techies to absolve themselves of the moral consequences of their actions and the harms that result. (more…)

This past Sunday, two opposition political activists in Venezuela were arrested and detained as political prisoners. They're politically active nerds who write about what they believe, who were helping to register voters when they were 'disappeared' by the military. They're people just like us who deserve to be free. (more…)

Folks used to rely on alarms to protect their home - and before that, the family dog. Now, anyone looking to guard their homes can choose from some high-tech options, including the Amaryllo iCamPRO FHD Home Security Camera (now just $219 in the Boing Boing Store).In fact, this 2015 CES “Best of Innovation” award-winner boasts so many features, it’s like a real sentry protecting your home 24/7/365. Its three motion sensors and 360-degree rotating eye covers your entire home with automatic light adjustment for day and night surveillance. When the iCamPRO encounters someone, the unit’s face detection system can identify familiar people, offer greetings to friends or warnings to intruders, and record video of any incident to a microSD card for later review.You can remotely check in on the 256-bit encrypted camera and even sync it with your Google account so it’ll offer you appointment reminders and email alerts. [embed]https://youtu.be/J4S5-6OeMNg[/embed]The Amaryllo iCamPRO offers the ultimate peace of mind for you and your home, and it's 26% off - so grab this faithful protector while the deal lasts.