Ruth writes, "The link tax is back, but we have a chance to stop it. The Save the Link network are pushing back against proposals in the EU for a new hyperlinking fee (AKA 'ancillary copyright') that will affect us all. If lobbyists succeed copyright rules will be extended to hyperlinks - giving publishers the right to charge business fees for linking to content." (more…)

Pascal Deville loves "beautiful atrocities"—websites that could be described as intentionally brutalist were they not mostly just ugh. Fast Company interviewed him on his love of rough design, strangely compelling as it is in the age of bloated, broken, but very pretty websites."I wouldn't call it a protest but a shout-out for more humanity in today's web design," Deville says. He views his site as a bastion for a segment of Internet culture of people who built scrappy websites themselves as opposed to using services with pre-canned templates like Squarespace. "Terms like UX and user friendly don't have a lot of soul or guts and treat everything like a product. They also killed a lot of the web culture, which seems to find a voice on Brutalistwebsites.com."More from The Washington Post.Intriguingly, Deville has found in his Q&As with coders and designers that few set out to mimic this newly popular aesthetic; instead, they all arrived at the same point out of a drive to create something original.“[Brutalism] is interesting to me … because it doesn’t necessarily have a defined set of aesthetic signifiers,” said Jake Tobin, the designer behind trulybald.com. “What defines those signifiers is decided by the platform it’s built on.”Previously.

In Global proliferation of cephalopods a paper in Current Biology, an esteemed group of marine biologists reports that the population of octopuses (and other cephalopods) is booming thanks to its ability to adapt quickly to ocean acidification and temperature change, which is killing off other types of marine life at alarming rates. (more…)

A minecrafter, infered5, has decided to recreate all of Bungie's Destiny, inside of Minecraft. It is pretty amazing!Kotaku shares the story:Some Minecraft players like to build houses, or castles, or mazes full of monsters. Others prefer to recreate the entirety of Destiny.Player infered5's pet project is to remake all of Bungie’s space dress-up sim in the blocky world of Minecraft, and he’s done a pretty good job so far. Check out this footage for a quick tour through Minecraft’s version of the Tower and even some of the Cosmodrome:“We have the Cosmodrome built from the Steppes to the Divide, through the breach and through the Devils Lair, nothing Mothyards and beyond is made,” infered5 told me. “The Moon was made with worldpainter as a proof of concept, but has no underground areas. Very bland. The Cosmodrome was built by hand and has much more detail. The Tower and Reef are built in their entireties.”

So many of my devices want micro-USB to charge, and somehow the cables keep disappearing. This pack of 7, at $1.85 per cable, should keep me going for a while.I am not sure if the dogs are chewing them, the housekeepers are stealing them, or my daughter and her friends are weaving a complex web of micro-USB cables in the basement, but earlier this week I found, once again, that I was completely unable to charge my motorcycle helmet's headset, any of my portable batteries, or my kindle. MY KINDLE!!!!!! This pack of 7 cables comes in assorted sizes, from 1 foot to 6 feet reach, and should last me a few months, at the very least.Micro USB Cable, COCOCAT [7-Pack]Premium Micro Charging Cable High Speed USB 2.0 A Male to Micro B 2.0 A Male to Micro B Sync and Charging Cables via Amazon

Michael from Muckrock found a reference to "Untangling the Web," an internal NSA guide to the Internet, on Google Books, so he requisitioned a copy from the NSA under the Freedom of Information Act. (more…)

So this happened: a Texas man, relaxing in a trailer park with his marijuana, was bit by a dog. Shocked, and believing the bite was a gun shot wound, he called the cops. Raucous hilarity ensued.The Houston Chronicle shares the few details available.Small town police departments have it easy most of the time. There's almost never a high-speed chase, a deadly triple shooting, or a huge drug bust. Speeding tickets and the random drunk driving arrest bring the most excitement. But the beauty of small town police departments like the one in Groesbeck -- just east of Waco -- is the level of homegrown weird that they get to encounter on a daily basis. Take for instance this week a stoner whose dog got spooked by thunder and bit him in the buttocks, leading to the man thinking he had been shot by a firearm.The event shook him so much that he called the Groesbeck Police Department.

Colombia wants to produce Novartis's leukemia drug imatinib under a compulsory license, something it is allowed to do under its trade agreement with the USA, to bring the price down from $15,161/year (double the annual average income) to prices like those charged in India ($803/year). (more…)

Demonia's Women's Stomp 314 Boots are goth as fuck, knee-high, made of shiny polyurethane and ringed with ammo for that je ne sais quoi. (via The Everyday Goth)

Justin Shafer was roused from his bed this week by thunderous knocking at his North Richland Hills, Texas home, and when he opened the door, found himself staring down the barrel of a 'big green' assault weapon, wielded by one of the 12-15 armed FBI agents on his lawn. (more…)

When you get goosebumps from listening to music, it's called a frisson (pronounced free-sawn), which means "aesthetic chills." About two-thirds of the population feels frisson. Music is the most common trigger, but so is "beautiful artwork, watching a particularly moving scene in a movie, or having physical contact with another person."From Konstruktor:[T]he results of our study show that it’s the cognitive components of 'Openness to Experience' – such as making mental predictions about how the music is going to unfold or engaging in musical imagery (a way of processing music that combines listening with daydreaming) – that are associated with frisson to a greater degree than the emotional components.These findings, recently published in the journal Psychology of Music, indicate that those who intellectually immerse themselves in music (rather than just letting it flow over them) might experience frisson more often and more intensely than others.And if you’re one of the lucky people who can feel frisson, the frisson Reddit group has identified Lady Gaga's rendition of the 'Star-Spangled Banner' at the 2016 Super Bowl, and a fan-made trailer for the original Star Wars trilogy, as especially chill-inducing.The Conversation

Developer of the Heimlich Maneuver, Henry Heimlich, now 96, used his anti-choking technique for the first time to save a person's life. The Cincinnati, Ohio physician was in the dining room of his retirement home when another resident, Patty Ris, age 87, choked on a piece of hamburger. Heimlich successfully dislodged it and Ris was fine. "When I used it, and she recovered quickly, it made me appreciate how wonderful it has been to be able to save all those lives," Heimlich told the Cincinnati Enquirer.From the Heimlich Institute, here's how to do the Heimlich Maneuver for choking adults:• From behind, wrap your arms around the victim's waist.• Make a fist and place the thumb side of your fist against the victim's upper abdomen, below the ribcage and above the navel.• Grasp your fist with your other hand and press into their upper abdomen with a quick upward thrust. Do not squeeze the ribcage; confine the force of the thrust to your hands.• Repeat until object is expelled.And for choking infants:Lay the child down, face up, on a firm surface and kneel or stand at the victim's feet, or hold infant on your lap facing away from you. Place the middle and index fingers of both your hands below his rib cage and above his navel. Press into the victim's upper abdomen with a quick upward thrust; do not squeeze the rib cage. Be very gentle. Repeat until object is expelled.If the Victim has not recovered, proceed with CPR. The Victim should see a physician immediately after rescue.Don't slap the victim's back. (This could make matters worse.)And for yourself:• Make a fist and place the thumb side of your fist against your upper abdomen, below the ribcage and above the navel.• Grasp your fist with your other hand and press into your upper abdomen with a quick upward thrust.• Repeat until object is expelled.

"When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: 'Have ya paid your dues, Jack?' 'Yessir, the check is in the mail.'"These Funko Pop action figures are great! You can even buy a glow in the dark Lo-Pan. I like the Gracie Law figure, but I'm sure some of you will want the three storms, and of course the lovable Jack Burton.May the wings of liberty never lose a feather!Funko POP Movies: Big Trouble in Little China-Jack Burton Action Figure via AmazonFunko POP Movies: Big Trouble in Little China-Gracie Law Action Figure via AmazonFunko POP Movies: Big Trouble in Little China - Lo Pan Action Figure via AmazonFunko POP Movies: Big Trouble in Little China - Glow-in-the-Dark Lo Pan Action Figure via Amazon

Wisconsin Governor and balanced-budget hawk Scott Walker's failed bid for the GOP presidential candidacy left him with $1.2 million in debt. (more…)

Every company wants to harness the power of social media, but few understand how to make that happen. Be one of those select few with this Social Media Marketing Course & Certification package, now just $29 in the Boing Boing Store.Over 12 modules of course material, you’ll learn what it takes to increase a brand’s social reach, attract more attention and increase sales. You’ll understand how to craft social campaigns on virtually any platform, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.With that knowledge, you’ll be more than ready to ace the Silicon Valley Digital Marketing Institute’s certification exam and begin a new, lucrative career posting, tweeting and uploading. This comprehensive package retails for almost $4,000, so pick it up at the low price of $29 right now, before the offer runs out.

https://vimeo.com/157414762Jongha Choi's Master's thesis for Design Academy Eindhoven involved the creation of "De-dimension" furniture, which collapses into a flat, easily stored form when it's not in use -- but when it's in its flat form, it looks like a perspective drawing of its expanded shape. (more…)

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]There’s an epidemic of “pot-eating pooches,” the “world’s toughest duck” has died, a dog named Archer was shot in Oklahoma by an arrow, and your cat can live in a “pur-r-r-r-rfect” replica of the Kremlin.There’s plenty for the animal-lover to chew on in this week’s tabloids, which also include ads for an “adorable” posable realistic monkey doll, a limited edition figurine of 12 Yorkies crowded on a sofa, and two porcelain Siamese cats decorated in a willow pattern. There’s even a lovable photo of the 200 pound chimp who chewed the face and hands off his owner, and a mosquito bringing the Zita virus, because sometimes cute-and-cuddly nature will get Medieval on your ass.So will the fact-challenged tabloids, which this week claim that Julia Roberts and George Clooney have been caught cheating, Angelina Jolie is living in “bone disease hell,” the Obamas plan to “ransack the White House,” and John Travolta is a secret “drag queen.”How were George and Julia "caught cheating”? The National Enquirer found them both on the set of their new movie, Money Monster. Sounds like grounds for divorce for me. The Enquirer offers no evidence of an affair, but an unnamed source claims the two actors “cozy up,” and Clooney’s wife Amal feels “it’s cheating - emotional cheating.” Right. Just like I feel cheated of any facts in this story.Is Jolie suffering some dreaded “bone disease” as the Enquirer claims? Not if you read the story below the sensational headline. Claiming that Jolie now weighs 79 pounds, the Enquirer says she is “at risk of developing arthritis and the debilitating brittle bone disease osteoporosis.” In other words, she’s thin, and everything else is sheer speculation.Are Michelle and Barack Obama about to strip the White House of its treasures when they leave next year? The Enquirer warns that “millions of dollars in precious American art . . . could be looted.” Why would they think that? “It’s certainly conceivable,” says the Enquirer. Its’s also conceivable that aliens intent on global domination will blow up the White House. I’ve seen it happen on the big screen. It’s only a matter of time.Photos of John Travolta in a blonde wig and pink dress could be “the final straw” for his wife Kelly Preston, claims the Globe. But these photos, taken at a party in 1997, six years after marrying Preston, first appeared in sister tabloid the Enquirer in 2012. So these photos couldn’t possibly be “the final straw.” They’re just an ancient costume party dressed up as a new slur, hoping that readers have forgotten it’s an old story. Newsflash: We haven’t.The Trump-loving tabloids continue their attacks on Hillary Clinton, who is “hooked on pills,” is “prone to strokes, is battling depression and alcohol abuse and is in the early stages of multiple sclerosis,” according to the Globe. And she has gained 45 pounds, they add - the ultimate tabloid sin. Hillary used “unsecure phones to woo lesbian lovers,” claims the Enquirer, though I’m pretty sure there is no constitutional requirement to woo lesbian lovers on a secure line. Hillary battling MS? Dubious. The unauthorized Hillary memoir Unlikeable by Ed Klein published last year quoted a purported Clinton friend claiming that Hillary “might” be suffering from MS based on the health issues she has battled. Hardly an official medical diagnosis, but it certainly meets the exacting standards set by the Enquirer’s fact-checkers.Thankfully we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Demi Lovato wore it best, Emayatzy Corinealdi (Who she, Ed?) carries lipstick, vitamins and sunglasses in her leather Patricia Nash backpack, that Simon Cowell loves licorice, and the stars are just like us: they shop for flowers, walk their dogs and take selfies. Revelatory.After People magazine last week brought us its 'bodies of the year,' Us mag follows this week with its ‘best bodies’ issue, featuring singer Carrie Underwood on the cover proclaiming “My best body.” I’m pretty sure it’s the same body she’s always had, just in better shape. I’d far rather see Dr Frankenstein, or Burke & Hare, reveal “my best body,” but that’s unlikely to happen. It’s just another excuse for Us mag to flaunt dozens of women in bikinis and shirtless men brandishing their waxed pecs, because nothing says “sexual equality” better than turning all men and women into sex objects.People mag puts TV personality Steve Harvey on its cover telling his rags-to-riches story, having once lived in his car for three years, and now worth $100 million, doubtless offering real hope to every homeless person currently living in a car. The secret to his transformation? Landing a high-profile gig performing on ‘Showtime at the Apollo.’ Come on, homeless people - you can do it!Us mag gets the headline of the week award for ‘Taylor’s Terrifying Night,’ revealing “Swift gets a scare." What dire misfortune befell songstress Taylor Swift? Her boyfriend, top DJ Calvin Harris, was in a car crash and cut his nose. You might think it was a scarier night for Calvin Harris, but evidently ‘Calvin’s Terrifying Night’ didn’t appeal to the sub-editors at Us mag, presumably because anything that happens to Harris is only of interest as far as it affects Swift. That must be slightly disheartening for Harris, but at least he didn’t have his face chewed off by a chimpanzee.As for the “world’s toughest duck,” Perky survived three shootings and two days left in a fridge nine years ago, before being rescued by a Tallahassee sanctuary, until her death this month, according to the Enquirer. “Pot-eating pooches” have become an epidemic in Colorado since the state legalized marijuana, and pets are increasingly munching their owners’ no-longer-hidden stashes, claims the Globe. The dog shot with an arrow was named ‘Archer’ by the vet who saved him, reveals the National Examiner, which isn’t quite as ironic as it first sounded. The Examiner also features luxury cat playhouses designed to look like the Kremlin, a Chinese pagoda, and the White House - doubtless emptied of everything by the Obamas’ cats.Onwards and downwards . . .

An Object at Rest from Seth Boyden on Vimeo.An "Object at Rest" is a 6-minute animated cartoon by Seth Boyden. He says, the cartoon "follows the life of a stone as it travels over the course of millennia, facing nature's greatest obstacle: human civilization." It was his final thesis film at CalArts. Well done, Seth!

The Federal Election Commission has deadlocked on a complaint about an employer who coerced his salaried employees into donating to a PAC he had started; the three Democratic commissioners voted to take action, the three GOP commissioners voted against, and that means that nothing will happen. (more…)

The City of West Hollywood is using automated parking to fit more vehicles into a garage. It's neat, but I wish Los Angeles would use its resources for better public transportation.The garage requires a much smaller physical footprint than would a conventional parking structure with a similar capacity. The space savings nets more than 7,000 square feet for a Community Plaza and entry service area that will be used for community events. The Automated Garage will help to answer the City’s need for parking for City Hall and for surrounding businesses. Parking your vehicle is as simple as driving in to the bay, pulling a ticket and walking away. The maximum vehicle retrieval time for an individual car is approximately two minutes. The automated garage has multiple lifts and shuttles that can move many vehicles at once.

Dan Benjamin is a podcaster, writer, software developer, and ex-corporate stooge. He is the founder of 5by5, a podcast network where he hosts a handful of shows. He is the author of baconmethod.com and hivelogic.com, and has written for A List Apart and O’Reilly. Dan lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and their children. Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page Show notes: Staedtler Mars Mechanical Pencil ($6) and Sharpener "This could be called an architect's pencil or a draftsman's pencil or a lead holder is the name that I've always used for it. ... What's nice about it is it's lightweight ... but it's got that nice metal grippiness to it. ... Instead of being like a regular mechanical pencil where you click the end of it and it advances the lead millimeter by millimeter out, this thing you can control. When you press down the button end of it, as much lead as you would like to slide out can slide out. ... A supplemental item is the Mars Rotary Action Lead Pointer and Tub, which allows you to put the lead holder in there. It presets how much of a point you want based on these two little holes that you adjust it to, and then you spin it. ... I encourage people to write and draw with a pencil. It's the most fun thing in the world." Telefunken M82 Dynamic Microphone ($399) "This is my microphone of choice these days. I have used so many different microphones over the years. I started podcasting back in 2006. ... I care a lot about the microphone. ... This was maybe the fifth or sixth microphone that I'd tried. When I try one, I tend to try to use it for several months. This one I've been using now for about a year, and I just love it. It really meets with my voice I think really well. What's nice about it is it was originally designed as a kick drum mic. If you were mic'ing up a drum set, you would put this microphone in front of or even inside of the kick drum. As weird as that may sound, some of the most widely used microphones for voice in broadcasting actually were originally designed or designed in part to also be kick drum kind of a mic or a mic for a drum." Vitamix 5300 Blender ($430) "First of all, I have to tell you how I came to have a blender that is this absurdly expensive in my possession ... I started getting into the idea of making smoothies in the morning for breakfast ... and I said to my wife, 'I think I want to try making them at home.' She says, 'Well, you know we have a blender that could do that.' I said, 'You mean like the one we got when we got married, like a million years ago?' She's like, 'No. We have a really nice blender. It's a professional level Vitamix blender.' I'm like, 'Where is it?' She's like, 'It's in the box in the garage.' I'm like, 'Why is it out there?' She's like, 'It was so expensive that I was going to return it. I just bought it not long ago and I felt like there's no sane reason I should have spent this much money on a blender.' ... I said, 'All right, let me try it.' I tried it and the smoothie that I made — the world stopped and everything went dark and a spotlight went down on the smoothie. It was the best thing in the world. I was full. I was full all day. I had energy. I lifted a car off of a fire hydrant in the garage. It was amazing what I was able to do. I said, 'Don't you dare return. I'm keeping this thing.' She's like, 'All right. We can keep it.' A week later I've been making smoothies all week long. It's been the most amazing thing. ... Anything blends in this." Steelcase Series 7 Height-Adjustable Desk ($1,449) and Mat "I got this desk is because years ago I started dealing with chronic lower back issues ... As a result of that, my doctor said, "One thing you should really consider doing is instead of spending most of the day sitting, you could spend a significant part of the day standing," but you still want to sit. .... I went with Steelcase because at the time that I got it that was the desk that you get. Now there are lots of other alternatives for sit-stand desks, but I still really like the Steelcase one, because it's just made so rock-solid. The motors in it are super, super solid and strong. You can have your big, fancy monitors up on top of it. In my case I even have a rack with a whole bunch of audio gear on top of it and a screen. It lifts us up and down, no problem."

Samuraigutarist recorded his cover of The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" at a very slow tempo that lengthened the song to around 30 minutes. Then he sped up the video and audio 20x. The result sounds like a lovely violin version of the song.

Over at MAKE, Shane Walton explains a neat technique for turning coins into beautiful rings. Instead of hammering the edge with a hammer, he suggests tapping it with a spoon... for hours.

Ewan McGee writes, "Creators of the YouTube channel H3H3 productions are being sued by the creator of the YouTube channel MattHossZone for showing/talking about one of his 'pick up' videos. YouTuber Philip DeFranco talks about the story in his YouTube show, sets up a GoFundMe page for the creators of H3H3 to help them with their legal fees, and donations come pouring in, including support from well-known names like Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach, Markus "Notch" Persson and others. In just 12 hours over 3,000 people have already donated more than $95,000 in total." (more…)

I don't know enough about grammar to be able to tell if this Sentence Tree is accurate or not.

Here's a gentleman taking a nap while his Tesla drives for him.From Electrek:Tesla’s Autopilot requires the driver to always monitor the vehicle and be ready to take control. If the system lacks data to continue to actively steer the vehicle safely, it will show an alert on the dashboard.If the driver ignores the alert for too long, it will emit a sound and decelerate while activating the hazard lights and moving the vehicle to the side of the road. The vehicle basically assumes that the driver is unconscious if he can’t take control after visual and audible alerts.In this case, it seems like the Autopilot is still very much in control and therefore is not bothering the sleeping driver – now a simple passenger.

When Brandon Li, a 34-year-old American, went to Hong Kong, he was so taken by the city that he made this stunningly beautiful short video about it, which shows the people, both rich and poor, eating, playing, working, competing, and celebrating. Li told the South China Morning Post, “Hong Kong is a city which feels like it cannot exist. It is this mix of British and Chinese culture – it is filled with an uncontainable energy of beautiful corners that are sometimes hidden.”

Zurich-based Illustrator and graphic novelist Martin Panchaud created a massive infographic adaptation of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. If printed, the document would be more than 400 feet long. You might think of it as a visual Star Wars Torah scroll. SWANH.NET

Tristan Harris was Google's "Design Ethicist" where he studied how design choices directly affect people's behavior in conscious and unconscious ways. He's also a practicing magician! As he says, "Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it." Over at Medium, Harris wrote a fascinating post about persuasive technology and how design can "exploit our minds’ weaknesses." From Medium:Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom. Millions of us fiercely defend our right to make “free” choices, while we ignore how those choices are manipulated upstream by menus we didn’t question in the first place.This is exactly what magicians do. They give people the illusion of free choice while architecting the menu so that they win, no matter what you choose. I can’t emphasize enough how deep this insight is.When people are given a menu of choices, they rarely ask:• “what’s not on the menu?”• “why am I being given these options and not others?”• “do I know the menu provider’s goals?”• “is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction?” (e.g. an overwhelmingly array of toothpastes)"How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist" (Medium)Harris's piece supports the essay that my Institute for the Future colleagues Marina Gorbis and Devin Fidler recently posted about the incredibly high stakes of on-demand platform design: "Design It Like Our Livelihoods Depend on It" (WTF?)

A Chinese government official told the South China Morning Post that a Foxconn factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labour costs. More companies are likely to follow suit." As many as 600 major companies in Kunshan have similar plans, according to a government survey.The job cuts do not augur well for Kunshan, which had a population of more than 2.5 million at the end of 2014, two-thirds of whom were migrant workers.

Bubble machines tend to be flakey, touchy things that break a lot. Dan Das Mann, creator of the Funn Machine, the Funn Beast, and now the Funn Pack swears by the Bubbletron. Designed to be an entire festival-in-a-backpack, the Funn Pack comes complete with lasers, smoke machines, disco balls, and a huge sound system! Nothing impressed me more, however, than the sheer volume of bubbles the thing throws out. Perched a-top Dan's amazing contraption, the American DJ Bubbletron put out hours of uninterrupted bubbles, filling a several thousand square foot roof-top deck with joy! If you're throwing a party, or a festival, and want to add instant energy, Dan can bring you the Funn. If you just need a bubble machine to fill the air with glistening, soapy fun, go with the Bubbletron!American DJ Supply Bubble Tron Compact High Output Plastic Bubble Machine via AmazonThe Funn Machine: bring a Funn Pack, the Funn Beast or Funn Machine for your party!

Lions Gate Entertainment is auctioning off a slew of screen-used props from Mad Men, including Don Draper's 1964 Imperial Crown Convertible. Less than 1,000 of this car were made and fewer than 200 are still around. Also in the Mad Men lot are the likes of Pete Campbell's Globe Bar Cart, Don's Ray Bans and copy of Dante's Inferno, clothing and, um, a bunch of fake grocery items from Betty's kitchen. The online auction commences June 1.(via Uncrate)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrested a Nogales, Arizona woman for allegedly smuggling $3000 worth of methamphetamine from Mexico inside two faux burritos. From UPI:A narcotics-detecting canine alerted officers to the presence of drugs and a search determined the woman was carrying more than a pound of methamphetamine in two packages that had been wrapped in tortilla shells to make them look like burritos.

When a computer stops behaving, the solution often involves looking up an obscure command and pasting it into the terminal -- even experienced administrators and programmers aren't immune to this, because remembering the exact syntax for commands you use once every couple years is a choresome task. (more…)

A new Pew Research report finds that the number of single adults still living with their parents is at historically high levels -- in the US, the number of singles still at home outnumber the cohort of those living out of the house, something last seen in the 1880s. (more…)

Faception uses 15 secret classifiers of facial features to accuse subjects of terrorism and pedophilia, as well as predicting their poker abilities. (more…)

Why would billionaire Peter Thiel want to bankrupt Gawker? That's the question circulating today, after Forbes reported that Thiel secretly backed Hulk Hogan's high-profile lawsuit against Nick Denton's publishing empire. (more…)

Phil Mocek filed a public records request to find out how Seattle's new smart meters -- supplied by Landis and Gyr -- will work. As Mocek writes, these meters are based on "unspecified and unverifiable sensors that monitor activity inside of private property and can communicate collected information in real-time to unspecified machines in remote locations, the workings of which are obscured from ratepayers, with interfaces used by [the city] that require specialized equipment and are thus completely unavailable to ratepayers for personal use or monitoring and verification of information communicated, is already shrouded in secrecy and seemingly proceeding despite repeated voicing of public concern and complete lack of public justification of expense." (more…)

Forget "disrupting" some industry -- work at EFF and you can write code to make a better future for everyone! (more…)

When you desire meaning, when you want things to line up, when looking for something specific, you tend to notice patterns everywhere, which leads you to ask the question, “What are the odds?” Usually, the odds are actually pretty good. (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Injectionby Warren Ellis (author), Jordie Bellaire (illustrator) and Declan Shalvey (illustrator)Image Comics2015, 120 pages, 6.4 x 10 x 0.4 inches $7 Buy a copy on AmazonScience meets folklore. It’s a theme that is pervasive throughout literature, from Frankenstein to Dracula to The Dragon Riders of Pern. And like its predecessors, the first volume of Injection also poses the question, what if these two things aren’t as different as we’d like to believe?Injection reads like a fairytale brought into the modern century, combining the folklore used by its predecessors with new computers and communication systems. The story jumps backwards and forwards in time, telling the chronicle of five brilliant people with different backgrounds who came together and built an artificial consciousness to “make the 21st century more interesting.” As anyone who has seen The Matrix or Terminator films could tell you, this creation doesn’t do what the team was hoping it would. But instead of being straight science fiction, the novel joins science with the fantastic. The creation begins mimicking folklore, and the solution to defeating it seems to lie just as much in magic as it does in science.The artwork is classically rendered graphic novel illustration, reminding me of the Hellboy series, or Sandman. What strikes me as the most interesting part of the pictures is the range of color used in them; the palette moves from dark greys and greens to brilliant oranges and reds, and some of the scenes are done in such a surreal manner you feel as though you’ve been transported to another plane altogether (which, truth be told, might just be the case). Each character is distinct in design and memorable in execution, and the different storylines interweave with each other during the telling of the tale. My favorite character remains the somewhat crazy scientist, Maria Kilbride, whose story is simultaneously dark and hopeful. Injection proved an interesting and beautiful read, although in complete honesty I was often confused by the story. The arc is clearly designed to be resolved over several books, so I imagine this confusion was intentional, but I could have done with more background either visually or in the actual wording to get a better sense of the story they were telling. However, I still eagerly await the next installment. – Julia Pillard

Rodrigo Duterte is the new president of the Philippines: he ran on a promise to be a "dictator" and endorsed execution by vigilante death-squad as a way of combating crime; now he's announced that he will give a hero's burial to the embalmed corpse of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who committed mass-scale human rights abuses and embezzled $10B from the national treasury. (more…)

Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Conrad Hafen -- who is fighting a contested election this year -- put deputy public defender Zohra Bakhtary in handcuffs and made her sit with the criminals in the dock while he sentenced her client, who was unrepresented for the duration of the event. (more…)

Could you recover a murder victim's last sight of their killer by extracting it from the retina? Little more than a century ago, forensic scientists thought it might be possible. After all, in 1877 physiologist Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne was able to develop a simple image from an albino rabbit's dissected eyeball. (Above, the two images on the right come from rabbits who stared at two different windows. The left shows just nerves and blood vessels.) From Smithsonian:The College of Optometrists in the U.K. reports that police photographed the eye of a murdered man in April 1877, "only partly aware of what optography involved," and that investigators on the trail of Jack the Ripper may have considered a proposal to use the technique.Faith in optography was misplaced, however, as Kühne's experiments showed that only simple, high-contrast surroundings were able to produce interpretable optograms, Douglas J. Lanska writes in Progress in Brain Research. Furthermore, the retina needs to be removed very quickly from the recently deceased."How Forensic Scientists Once Tried to "See" a Dead Person's Last Sight"

In this video a butterfly is trying to eat something but a turfy any won't let it.

Yes, I know that isn't really Ryan Gosling.(Joey Thompson/YouTube)

It starts with a simple ear of corn. Then, it is drenched in pools of viscous liquids, topped with layers of crumbled something, and sprinkled with spices. Over and over again.

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the establishment candidate's establishment candidate: she co-sponsored SOPA, blocked reform of loan-sharking payday lenders, voted against marijuana law reform, called for the prosecution of SOPA, and chaired Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. She's served six terms in office and never had to face a primary challenger, until now. (more…)

Researchers at Stanford have developed face-capture technology that can alter pre-recorded videos in real-time on low cost computers. In other words, you can make George W Bush or Donald Trump appear intelligent.We present a novel approach for real-time facial reenactment of a monocular target video sequence (e.g., Youtube video). The source sequence is also a monocular video stream, captured live with a commodity webcam. Our goal is to animate the facial expressions of the target video by a source actor and re-render the manipulated output video in a photo-realistic fashion. To this end, we first address the under-constrained problem of facial identity recovery from monocular video by non-rigid model-based bundling. At run time, we track facial expressions of both source and target video using a dense photometric consistency measure. Reenactment is then achieved by fast and efficient deformation transfer between source and target. The mouth interior that best matches the re-targeted expression is retrieved from the target sequence and warped to produce an accurate fit. Finally, we convincingly re-render the synthesized target face on top of the corresponding video stream such that it seamlessly blends with the real-world illumination. We demonstrate our method in a live setup, where Youtube videos are reenacted in real time.

Pleased to present for your consideration, this quote from the creator of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling: "The most unfettered imagination belongs to young people, and they don’t walk through life; they fly.” (Blank on Blank)