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With 147 day to go until election day, Trump's imagination has hardly been tested. David A. Graham at The Atlantic reports that the top Republican suggested President Obama is "involved in the Orlando shooting." Somehow!In an almost entirely unprecedented moment, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, suggested in interviews Monday morning that President Obama may have somehow been involved in Sunday’s massacre in Orlando. ...“He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands—it’s one or the other and either one is unacceptable,” Trump said on Fox News. He had already called in a statement Sunday for Obama to resign from office. Trump added on Monday:"Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind—you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words “radical Islamic terrorism.” There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on."

Look, it can’t always be about work. Sometimes, you’ve got to go outside and catch some rays. Of course, once you’re out in the great outdoors, you still need a place to sit down.The Loungr Inflatable Chair (on sale for just $69 in the Boing Boing Store) has you covered. Find a nice spot, extract and inflate the Loungr, and you’ve got a comfortable lounge chair in which to relax. The Loungr’s durable ripstop nylon protects your chair from rough surfaces, so whether you’re on sand or gravel, you’re safe from punctures.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gczT6JgPXgk&w=560&h=315]No pump or valve concerns with the Loungr: just sweep it through the air to fill it up, seal off the end, and you’re good to go. Your carrying bag even comes with a bottle opener so you can enjoy your surroundings.Grab a Loungr Inflatable Chair now, now just $69, before this offer expires. That's 22% off the MSRP for a limited time only.

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) trained a neural network to recognize materials (e.g., metal grate, plants, concrete sidewalk) being hit with a drumstick, and synthesize sounds to accompany the actions. It did well enough to fool humans into thinking the sounds were real.From the abstract:Objects make distinctive sounds when they are hit or scratched. These sounds reveal aspects of an object's material properties, as well as the actions that produced them. In this paper, we propose the task of predicting what sound an object makes when struck as a way of studying physical interactions within a visual scene. We present an algorithm that synthesizes sound from silent videos of people hitting and scratching objects with a drumstick. This algorithm uses a recurrent neural network to predict sound features from videos and then produces a waveform from these features with an example-based synthesis procedure. We show that the sounds predicted by our model are realistic enough to fool participants in a "real or fake" psychophysical experiment, and that they convey significant information about material properties and physical interactions.[via]

For many years, Tenyo's clever "self-performing" magic gimmicks have been a delight to amateur magicians and a bugaboo of professionals, who sneered at them as being obvious, hackneyed and, well, gimmicky. (more…)

Dango is a personal assistant that feeds its users' messages into a deep-learning neural net to discover new expressive possibilities for emojis, GIFs and stickers, and then suggests never-seen combinations of graphic elements to your text messages that add striking nuances to them. (more…)

For many years, China watchers have written about the 50 Cent Army, contractors who are paid RMB0.50 per post to sing the praises of the government in online discussions of corruption, oppression and wrongdoing; but a new report from the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Science paints a radically different picture of Chinese networked social control. (more…)

Nicole Macintosh posts videos of adorable rodents; YouTube's kanilox added some appropriate music

New York governor Andrew Cuomo released this photo last night of 1 World Trade Center displaying the pride colors. “From Stonewall to marriage equality to protecting transgender individuals to the first-in-the nation executive action to ban conversion therapy, New York has led the way in the fight for LGBT rights. In this state, we believe that no matter your race, creed, color, gender identity or expression you have the right live your life free from persecution and prejudice."This senseless act of terror reminds us that there are those who seek to undermine these very values and the progress we have achieved. We will not let this happen. An attack on one is an attack on all. New York joins the rest of the nation in rejecting this hate, fear and extremism and stands shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT community.“Tonight, I am directing One World Trade Center to be lit the colors of the pride flag in a tribute to LGBT Americans and the lives that were lost. On behalf of all New Yorkers, I extend my deepest thoughts and prayers to those affected by this horrendous tragedy.”This gesture will doubtless draw irritated sighs from the New York Times, which published a column by Frank Bruni making clear that the slaughter of 50 people at a gay nightclub by a homophobic terrorist isn't about gay people, who should accept that "this isn’t a moment for identity politics" which "could muddle the significance of the carnage."

Remember in 1988, when South Korea's military dictator created slave-labor camps and kidnapped thousands of homeless children to work in them? (more…)

In the wake of spectacular trailers for forthcoming games at the E3 trade show this weekend (I'll have trouble resisting Skyrim: Fancy Edition) this graphic, by RamsesThePigeon, burned up the 'net. The lessons apply to all forms of consumerism. Here's something similar I did about gadgets a decade ago, though for some reason it was about the marketing and supply chain side of things. Itself based on a 1902 chocolate ad.

Producer Tony Visconi insinuated that British singer Adele, whose voice has sold more than 100m records, used digital trickery to hit the hard notes. She told him to suck her dick. Then he apologized.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9m_NlXac5I

50 people were killed at an Orlando gay nightclub by a terrorist. Usually, John Oliver offers a caustic, mocking routine that details and breaks down the stupidity for his viewers' bitter amusement. But not this time.

This morning Santa Monica Police arrested James Wesley Howell, 20, of Indiana. His car was found with long rifles, magazine clips, boxes of bullets, a rifle scope, and "chemicals capable of forming an improvised explosive device."I was invited by my friend to the Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles today and wanted to go, but couldn't, due to a Girl Scout event for my daughter. I wish I could celebrate with her, like we did when gay marriage became legal and we went down to celebrate with the people in the streets, and bonded in a way we hadn't before, as I witnessed how historic it all really was. Now, I feel the "terror" in the kind of terrorism that happened in Orlando. It is how I felt in New York on 9/11, when I was in lower Manhattan and heard the planes and watched the cloud of debris standing like a bully as I walked uptown, a testament to hate and ugliness. My terror continued in the days after, and during the confusing anthrax scares. I ended up leaving New York permanently within a month, fearful and overwhelmed. Terror took away my freedom to live where I wanted to live. Seeing that an arrest was made this morning of a heavily armed man at Santa Monica's pride parade, I know that if I went to the LA parade today, I would be afraid like I was in New York, and now I am afraid for her and others. I don't want to live like this in my country. I don't want her to live like this for a minute, ever. I don't want my daughter to ever feel this way for any reason. Terror is taking away our freedom to celebrate. It is working. That is what terrorism does. The fear of bodily harm for being what we are immediately robs us of freedom. It is felt by gay people every day, by female college students on campus, by minorities, by anyone who alters their day, their dress, or their words to avoid bodily harm for being themselves. We are not a free nation if any of us feel like this. When one of us is oppressed, it limits us all, it limits the potential of us as a nation and destroys our reputation as a symbol of freedom. How do we stand up to it? How do we stand bravely at the threat of an AR-15 automatic weapon which is legal to buy in our country? How do we support our LGBT community today and every day? I don't know. But I want to think about it long and hard today, and I want my friends to know I understand their terror and grief, and that it is not an acceptable way for anyone to live in this or any society. Already there is rhetoric that seems to blame the victims for the tragedy. You see it in the comments of news articles, and one Republican politician tweeted a bible verse suggesting that they got what they deserved, though he walked it back as coincidental. Those sickening enough to suggest that these things are deserved in some way are terrorists in our culture as much as those who holding the guns. They are the ones who fuel hatred and intolerance and make us unsafe with their rhetoric. We need to hold those who encourage hatred as accountable. It is not just an opinion to believe gays deserve to be killed, it is ignorance that incites violence--and they, too, are responsible. Anyone attending any pride event today to celebrate who they are is an exceptionally courageous and heroic person. They are facing very real, violent threats against their lives for their sexual orientation, and doing it because they refuse to be terrorized in a society that it seems to be increasingly terrifying to be yourself in. When you look at footage and photos of those parades today, remember that those people are fighting for freedom--theirs, and ultimately all of ours. WEST HOLLYWOOD: LA Times reports arrest of man armed and with explosives heading to Gay Pride Festival. https://t.co/7hyFhyt5da— Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) June 12, 2016Developing: Evidence gathered at Santa Monica location where man was arrested with weapons before LA Pride. pic.twitter.com/6ALC08Go61— Jeff Nguyen (@jeffnguyen) June 12, 2016

The Lesser Bot is a twitterbot that is writing a machine-generated grimoire, complete with summoning runes, which is timely, given that we're entering the age of demon-haunted computers. (more…)

At least 50 are reported dead and dozens injured after a gunman took hostages at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Police killed him and described the massacre as an act of terrorism."Everyone get out and keep running," the club posted on its Facebook page during the attack, which began about 2 a.m. The BBC reports that desperate relatives gathered near the club after receiving texts and call from inside but nothing since.https://twitter.com/OrlandoPolice/status/741955142774325248https://twitter.com/OrlandoPolice/status/741952039400427520The shooter was named as Omar S. Mateen, a U.S. citizen from Port St. Lucie, Fla., reports WDBO, and the FBI are "leaning towards Islamic terrorism" as motive.A clubber earlier described a situation of chaos outside as the number of casualties became apparent."There were just bodies everywhere," Christopher Hansen said. "In the parking lot, they were tagging them - red, yellow - so they knew who to help first and who not help first. Pants down, shirts cut off, they had to find the bullets. Just blood everywhere."Some of the injured were reportedly brought to the Orlando Regional Medical Center in police pick-ups.John Mina, Orlando's Police Chief, said the attack began when a police officer stationed at the club exchanged gunfire with the assailant, who managed to enter the club and initiate a hostage situation. A SWAT team went in at about 5 a.m. to rescue the hostages and the suspect died in a shoot-out. He was said to be armed with an assault rifle and handguns , reports The Boston Herald.He was "organized and well prepared" for the attack, reports WFTV, citing a city official.An explosion reported at the scene was a controlled blast used to distract the gunman, police said. A bomb-disposal robot was sent in to inspect a vehicle, thought to be the killer's, parked by the nightclub.In an interview with NBC News, Mateen's father said he had no idea why he did it: "I apologize for what my son did. I don't know why he did it. He is dead, so I can't ask him. I wish I knew."Mateen had active security officer and firearm licenses, according to Florida records, and his family said he worked in security. Marriage records show he was married in Port St. Lucie in 2009, and a relative said he had a 3-year-old son. Mir Seddique, Mateen's father told NBC News, "this has nothing to do with religion." Seddique said his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.His ex-wife told the Washington Post that he was abusive and they divorced after a few months of marriage....he was violent and mentally unstable and beat her repeatedly while they were married.The ex-wife said she met Omar Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida and marry him.At first, the marriage was normal, she said, but then he became abusive.“He was not a stable person,” said the ex-wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”Mateen's religious beliefs have not yet been confirmed. Muslim groups denounced the attack Sunday morning."We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured," Rasha Mubarak, regional coordinator of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement. "The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."Note: this post covers breaking news. The facts aren't clear and even the most reliable sources and media outlets sometimes turn out to be mistaken. I'll update with further developments; please email or comment with corrections.

Former US Secret Service agent Lee Robert Moore was indicted in a Florida federal court Thursday on child porn and teen sex charges. He is being held in federal custody in Delaware on separate charges that while he was on White House duty, Moore sexted a Delaware Child Predator Task Force undercover officer, whom he believed to be a teenage girl. (more…)

I frequently cut myself shaving when I travel. I'm not sure why, because I don't cut myself very often at home when using the same type of razor. It's a hassle to get a cut, especially when I'm about to attend a meeeting, because the bleeding takes a really long time to stop. I used to carry a styptic pencil with me when I travel, but I must have left in a hotel bathroom because I can't find it. It worked pretty well, but it was messy to use and left a white spot on my skin, so when I looked for a replacement, I bought these KutKit styptic swabs instead.On my last trip, I finally got a chance to use one. It looks like a Q-Tip. I snapped the tip with a ring around it, which broke a glass tube filled with aluminum chloride-6-hydrate. The liquid flowed into the white tip and I applied it to the cut on my neck. It smarted a nit more than a styptic pencil, but it stopped the bleeding instantly, and left no residue. Good stuff.

Newly released court documents show that Brock Turner, the former Stanford student convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside of a frat house, behaved in an “aggressive” and predatory way towards other women just one week before the attack. The 471 pages of documents released Friday by the Santa Clara County Superior Court show that Turner lied to investigators about having no experience with using drugs and alcohol before college. (more…)

Ah, the magic fortune telling fish! If it curls one way, you are certainly one sort of person! If it curls the other, you are another! Magic, right? We've spent the morning making our own fortune telling shapes! All you need is some cellophane.https://youtu.be/5ygTQfFRH5kHow does it work? I always thought it was body heat, but this simple morning distraction taught both my daughter and I that cellophane is hygroscopic! The sodium polyacrylate that cellophane is made of seeks out water, and as it absorbs even trace amounts -- like from the palms of our hands -- the molecules start changing shapes! The fish starts writhing around! Cutting out your own is a lot of fun, but lacks the cool packaging of the traditional!Hygloss Cello Sheets, 8.5 by 11-Inch, 48-Pack via AmazonThe Magic Fortune Telling Fish (pack of 10) via Amazon

Guitarist Eva Vergilova, from Sofia, Bulgaria, posts videos of herself playing classic rocks songs on the electric guitar. Here's her rendition of Aerosmith's "Dream On." Last year she covered Prince's "Purple Rain."

It's one thing to dream up a business idea, and quite another to successfully get it off the ground. But how to ensure your idea gets the attention it deserves?One way: this comprehensive Marketing Copywriter course bundle - available for any price you want to pay.Here are the included courses ($285 total value):Facebook Marketing for Small BusinessesTwitter Marketing for Small BusinessesEffective Copywriting PrinciplesIntro to Marketing AnalyticsImprove Your Business WritingHere’s how it works: pay any price, and you’ll get access to two courses. But pay anything over the average price paid, and you'll receive three additional courses of premium marketing instruction.With this full course package, you’ll understand how to lure customers, why they're coming, and how to keep them. A $285 value, this full Marketing Copywriter Bundle is available for whatever price you want while this offer lasts.

A thief stole a bicycle from a bike rack at a Walmart parking lot in Eagle Point, Oregon. 9-1-1 was called and the woman who owned the bike along with a few others chased after him on foot, but couldn't catch him. Luckily, a rancher named Robert Borba happened to be there. He went to his trailer, jumped on his horse, and captured the guy with his lasso.“When we arrived, there was a large crowd standing around a younger gentleman who was on the ground, the rope around his ankle, hanging on to a tree,” Adams said. Victorino Arellano-Sanchez was arrested and charged with theft, the police said. Read the full story here.

Motherboard used public records requests to extract 3,000+ pages of court docs from a massive 2010 RCMP mafia/drug bust in Montreal, codenamed "Project Clemenza," which revealed the full extent of the Mounties' secret use of Stingrays -- AKA "IMSI Catchers," the fake cellular towers that let cops covertly track whole populations by tricking their phones into revealing information about them. (more…)

This must be even harder on the poor rapist than not being able to eat his favorite beef dishes because of party culture. (more…)

Our dear friends Richard Metzger and Tara McGinley of the essential Dangerous Minds blog are profiled in the new issue of Cincinnati Magazine. Richard and Tara recently moved to Cincinnati, where Tara and I both grew up! From Cincinnati Magazine:When Dangerous Minds does dig for a bone, moreover, it digs deeper than the others. For instance, one day Metzger was spelunking through the ’net for La Dolce Gilda, a black-and-white short film he remembered seeing on Saturday Night Live in the late 1970s. “I couldn’t believe no one had put it on YouTube,” he says. “I discovered that the director had also done a feature film that was never released to home video. It starred Bill Murray. So I found it on an underground torrent tracker. Dubbed in German.”Mere days after that 2014 Dangerous Minds scoop, complete with a link to the full lost Bill Murray movie Nothing Lasts Forever, articles on the film popped up in the Chicago Tribune, Yahoo!, and Slate. It was front-page news for Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper. For Dangerous Minds, it was just one of 13 articles posted that day, among them “Make Your Own Marcel Duchamp Chess Set with a 3-D Printer”; “Scenes from Marc Bolan’s Funeral”; and “Freaky Armadillo Purse.”“Richard is an anthropologist of high weirdness,” says David Pescovitz, a partner and editor at the popular blog Boing Boing, which is like an older, cyber-oriented brother to Dangerous Minds. “He doesn’t judge. He doesn’t exploit. His fascination and obsession is infectious.”"Weird, Inc." by Laurie Pike (Cincinnati Magazine)

LAist offers a fantastic look back at 100 years of the Santa Monica Hippodrome.Such a beautiful, storied building. I loved reading the stories and memories of this iconic, waterfront landmark. Via LAist:In the 60s, the building had a very famous visitor, though many who encountered her were probably oblivious."Towards the end of her life, Marilyn Monroe was living in Brentwood and hung out at the Santa Monica Beach a lot," Harris says, noting that many of the iconic photos George Barris took of the actress were shot here.Harris continues: She would come to the Hippodrome to find solace. She'd sit on a bench and watch the horses go round and round. Being sensitive to who she was, she would come in disguise wearing a scarf and overcoat and sunglasses. One day, the gentleman who was operating the carousel walked up to her and said something along the lines of, 'Why do you come here every day? You're young and you should get a job.' She then revealed [her identity] and said, 'I do have a job, I'm Marilyn Monroe.'On the second floor of the building, you'll currently find office spaces, including the office where Harris works. However, in the 60s and 70s, the second floor contained apartments. Author William Saroyan and musician Jimmy Henderson used one of the units to work, while actor Paul Sand and his then-girlfriend Joan Roan lived in another. Perhaps the most interesting person to live there was an outspoken activist named Colleen Creedon."[Creedon] was a prominent women's activist," Harris says. "She would protest the Vietnam War, she held fundraisers for Cesar Chavez and Daniel Ellsberg."She was also close friends with musician Joan Baez, who often crashed at Creedon's place. In 1974, two young men lit the trash cans outside of Creedon's apartment ablaze. The flames licked up the side of the building to Creedon's unit. Creedon managed to escape the fire, but long believed that the arson was more calculated than two wayward youths causing trouble. She told Harris herself that she believed she was targeted because of her beliefs."Until the day she died, she insisted that the fire was set deliberately to shut her up," Harris said. "And, she might not be far off with that reasoning."Creedon, who passed away a few years ago, long claimed that two other women activists in the area were also victims of arson. Whatever the cause, the fire permanently disrupted residential life above the carousel. The building was condemned and everyone was evicted. The upper floor would remain vacant until 1983, at which point it became office space.

The DEA is suing states for warrantless access to millions of individuals' medical records, so they can inflict more misery on people in chronic pain or other legitimate needs for controlled substances.Daily Beast:In his 2014 ruling against the DEA, District Court Judge Ancer L. Haggerty called warrantless searches of such data an egregious invasion of privacy.“It is difficult to conceive of information that is... more deserving of Fourth Amendment protection,” Haggerty said. “By obtaining the prescription records for individuals like John Does 2 and 4, a person would know that they have used testosterone in particular quantities and by extension, that they have gender identity disorder and are treating it through hormone therapy.“Although there is not an absolute right to privacy in prescription information... it is more than reasonable for patients to believe that law enforcement agencies will not have unfettered access to their records,” he added.The Obama administration disagrees, and argues that since the records have already been submitted to a third party (Oregon’s PDMP) that patients no longer enjoy an expectation of privacy.

Gawker Media was crushed by the $140 million legal judgment in Hulk Hogan's invasion-of-privacy lawsuit, which we now know was financed by a bitter and resentful Peter Thiel. Nick Denton's gossip news site Gawker.com published a sex tape featuring former wrestler Hulk Hogan, and the former wrestler (real name: Terry Bollea) sued with Thiel's help. The publishing company is now putting itself up for sale, reports the New York Times, citing an anonymous source. Gawker Media Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday “after a judge overseeing the suit against the company entered the full judgment and denied Gawker’s request for a stay under terms the company could meet.” (more…)

Peter Kafka reports that Gawker's filed for bankruptcy protection to avoid paying Hulk Hogan the $140m judgment he won against it. Though legal experts believe the judgment will be much-reduced or overturned at appeal, the filing readies Gawker for the block. Ziff Davis, the tech publisher, is reportedly offering $90-$100m.Gawker and its banker Mark Patricof assume that the company will eventually see higher bids while it is in bankruptcy protection. Last year, in advance of the Hogan trial, Denton figured his company was worth something in the $250 million to $300 million range.But in any case the company won’t trade hands until Gawker either beats back Thiel and Hogan or it finishes a court-approved restructuring. Because no one wants to buy an ongoing lawsuit from Peter Thiel.Ziff Davis itself is a company that has gone through the Chapter 11 process. The company was once a dominant force in the trade and hobbyist magazine business, but its fortunes declined along with the print industry, and it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008.It emerged in recent weeks that billionaire Peter Thiel funded Hogan's lawsuit, exacting long-awaited revenge for Gawker having outed him as gay in 2007.

The secretary bird looks and moves like I'd imagine a dinosaur looked and moved. Here is one giving a rubber snake the business. From Reuters: "Scientists are studying the snake-hunting ability of the secretary bird from sub-Saharan Africa, which can kick a snake to death with a force five times its own body weight."

Senator David Perdue from Georgia led attendees of the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in a good-natured prayer for Obama's early death. He said, “We should pray for him like Psalms 109:8 says: May his days be short and let another have his office.” The crowd, no doubt aware of the passage, chuckled at the thought. Here's more from the passage (New Living Translation):Let his years be few;let someone else take his position.May his children become fatherless,and his wife a widow.May his children wander as beggarsand be driven from their ruined homes.May creditors seize his entire estate,and strangers take all he has earned.Let no one be kind to him;let no one pity his fatherless children.May all his offspring die.May his family name be blotted out in a single generation.May the LORD never forget the sins of his fathers;may his mother’s sins never be erased from the record.May the LORD always remember these sins,and may his name disappear from human memory.Naturally, many people outside the conference took issue with Senator Perdue's remarks, and it was reported in the media. Perdue spokeswoman Caroline Vanvick issued a statement blaming it all on the awful, awful press:“Senator Perdue said we are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and for our president. He in no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that. However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of.”

Toting around a giant toolbox is how your grandparents fixed stuff. Bring your repair jobs into the modern day with the 10-bit Cycop Bitool, now a discounted $39.99 in the Boing Boing Store. This handy tool replaces the mountain of tools that's been driving you nuts, and can handle virtually any repair job you throw at it. It's a screwdriver and ratchet wrench all in one package, allowing you to fix stuff quickly and easily at a moment's notice.The Cycop Bitool’s 10 ultra-hard S2 steel bits fit nicely inside its slim aluminum casing, which you can carry around for everyday use. Just drop a bit securely on to the Bitool’s magnetic ratchet head and you’re ready to reach screws and bolts that a regular screwdriver or wrench couldn’t touch.Once you start appreciating the simplicity of the Bitool’s flexibility and Swiss Army knife-style versatility, it’ll become a mainstay of your repair jobs.The Cycop Bitool usually costs $45, but it’s available right now for just $39.99 while this offer lasts.

I sure miss Soul Train.

Last year, the Richmond, California city council passed a ban on space-based weapons that are secretly causing physical and psychological damage against people via "remote transmission." This legislation was driven by a community of people who have banded together to fight the "operatives" they believe are targeting them and ruining their lives with mind-control weapons. Today's New York Times reports on the phenomenon, called "gang stalking" and the people who claim to be "targeted individuals (T.I.s)." Dr. Lorraine Sheridan, who is co-author of perhaps the only study of gang-stalking, said the community poses a danger that sets it apart from other groups promoting troubling ideas, such as anorexia or suicide. On those topics, the internet abounds with medical information and treatment options.An internet search for “gang-stalking,” however, turns up page after page of results that regard it as fact. “What’s scary for me is that there are no counter sites that try and convince targeted individuals that they are delusional,” Dr. Sheridan said.“They end up in a closed ideology echo chamber,” she said.In instructional tracts online, veteran T.I.s explain the ropes to rookies:• Do not engage with the voices in your head.• If your relatives tell you you’re imagining things, they could be in on it.• “Do not visit a psychiatrist...."Perhaps unsurprisingly, the (T.I.) community is divided over the contours of the conspiracy. Some believe the financial elite is behind it. Others blame aliens, their neighbors, Freemasons or some combination.The movement’s most prominent voices, however, tend to believe the surveillance is part of a mind-control field test done in preparation for global domination. The military establishment, the theory goes, never gave up on the ambitions of MK Ultra, the C.I.A.’s infamous program to control the mind in the 1950s and ’60s."United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers" (NYT)

Someone stumbled upon a preference of Google's not to offer "crimes" as a suggested search term following a person's name. Unsurprisingly, the same sort of folks who think Obama has a secret birth certificate are sharing a conspiracy video.Vox explains why this is silly:Choose any famous American who has been accused of a serious crime and Google their name followed by the letters "cri," and in no case does Google suggest the word "crimes." That’s true even of people like Kaczynski and Madoff, who are famous only because they faced prosecution for serious crimes.Apparently, Google has a policy of not suggesting that customers do searches on people's crimes. I have no inside knowledge of why it runs its search engine this way. Maybe Google is just uncomfortable with having an algorithm suggesting that people search for other people's crimes.In any event, there’s no evidence that this is specific to Hillary Clinton, and therefore no reason to think this is a conspiracy by Google to help Clinton win the election.

Dane Rusk was driving his car in Regina, Saskatchewan when he saw a panhandler at the intersection holding a cardboard sign. Rusk took off his seatbelt to give $3 to the panhandler. Moments later he was pulled over and issued a $175 traffic ticket for unbuckling his seatbelt. The officer who pulled him over explained that the panhandler was an undercover cop who reported Rusk to the patrol car officer. Rusk said he was “pretty shocked” by the incident. “The ticket’s $175 and the three dollars I gave to him – I’m out $178 all because I was trying to help out a homeless guy.”But Regina police say this is nothing new. It’s part of a project that has police watching for traffic violations at intersections.“Intersections are probably one of the most critical areas when it comes to accidents obviously, and our high-volume intersections are ones that we tend to target,” said Insp. Evan Bray. “So we will run random intersection projects throughout the city.”

Think twice before you honk! Here's a video of a motorcyclist who honks at an unmarked SUV that turns out to be a cop car. The cop is stopped at a yield sign, talking on his cell phone. The biker stuck behind him gives a quick honk, but when the SUV doesn't budge, he honks a bit longer. Nothing too rude, but the cop in the car doesn't take kindly to it.

Celebrated film composer John Williams, 84, who scored Star Wars, the Indiana Jones films, E.T., and so many more, says that he will be writing the music for Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One," based on the marvelous 2011 novel by Ernest Klein. After that, it'll be time to return to a galaxy far, far away to score the next Star Wars film.“If I can do it, I certainly will. I told (producer) Kathy Kennedy I’m happy to do it, but the real reason is, I didn’t want anybody else writing music for Daisy Ridley,” he told Variety.Last night, Williams received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award, the first given to a film composer in the award's 44 years.Here's classic video of John Williams conducting the Boston Pops performing the Star Wars Main Theme:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rQSJDLM8ZE

My strobes for underwater photography eat batteries up. These cheap, high capacity, rechargeable AA batteries have been great!I'll generally get 30+ exposures out of a set of disposable batteries, before they start to show visible drop off on the same flash settings as when fresh. With a set of these rechargeable batteries I get nearly twice as many shots, and I'm not throwing them out.The biggest advantage is I'm changing batteries less frequently on a device that may leak underwater if I'm not careful. What'd usually happen is I take the camera on the first dive, and didn't bother changing batteries. This really screws up my UW photography as I'm typically only figuring out what I want to shoot/do based off the conditions of the first dive. I decided to try some better batteries and they make a huge difference.I'll assume they work just as well above water. EBL 16 Pack AA 2800mAh Ni-MH Rechargeable Batteries via Amazon

Economist John Kay, who writes for the Financial Times, delivered a powerful, eminently readable critique of the finance industry last month at the Bank of International Settlements conference. (more…)

Matt Taibbi takes to Rolling Stone to tell us about the lessons that the US military learned from the powerful bruising it received from Muhummad Ali's refusal to fight in Vietnam: namely, that America should fight its wars with all-volunteer armies whose ranks were disproportionately drawn from the poor and desperate, which dissipated the political pressure that arose from drafting the rich, the powerful and the famous to fight. (more…)

Spain's anti-austerity, left-wing Podemos ("We Can") Party (previously), which grew out of Spain's Occupy-like Indignados movement, has just published its election manifesto for the June 26 election -- in the form of an Ikea Catalog. (more…)

Jesse Orion writes, "This is Jean 'Moebius' Giraud's '40 Days in the Desert B' recreated page by page with characters from Charles Schulz' 'Peanuts'!" (more…)

In 1994, Neal Stephenson and his uncle George Jewsbury published a novel called Interface, about a high-tech, poll-centric election. (more…)

"Gloves." The voice is powerful and paternal, yet somehow inviting. "They protect us."

In the first of a series of documentary videos about 'Future Cities,' WIRED UK has released a wonderful short doc on Huaqiangbei, the vast market district in Shenzhen, China. They picked the best host and guide imaginable for this project, hardware hacker and researcher Andrew "Bunnie" Huang. (more…)

Here's Source Assured's pitch: landlords, if you write a requirement for tenants (and prospective tenants) to let us access their social media accounts into your lease/application process, we'll scrape all that data, use an unaccountable system to analyze it, and produce libelous, life-destroying dossiers on them that you can use to discriminate against people who seek shelter, the most fundamental human need after sustenance. (more…)

The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety has purchased several 'Electronic Recovery and Access to Data' devices to install in police cruisers for seizing funds from prepaid debit cards during roadside arrests. (more…)

Today Uber rolled out their new Scheduled Rides option, allowing you to schedule a ride 30 minutes to 30 days in advance. This could be especially handy for people needing an early morning lift to the airport. One hitch is that for now, it's only in Seattle, although it'll be "followed by other top business travel cities." Here's how it works, according to Uber:Select uberX and tap “Schedule a Ride.”Set your pickup date, time, location, and destination.Confirm the details of your upcoming trip and tap “Schedule uberX.” You can cancel at anytime before your ride is on the way.We’ll send you reminders both 24 hours and 30 minutes in advance of your pickup. You’ll be notified after your ride is on the way, as well as whether surge pricing applies.Just make sure you're on time for your scheduled ride – otherwise you'll be fined. And if you're not in Seattle, you can still sign up to be the first in your city to try it. For more details on Uber's Scheduled Rides click here.