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There should be a three-strikes-and-you're-out rule for any individual or corporation that issues bogus DMCA takedown notices. From Torrent Freak:This week's episode of Family Guy included a clip from 1980s Nintendo video game Double Dribble showing a glitch to get a free 3-point goal. Fox obtained the clip from YouTube where it had been sitting since it was first uploaded in 2009. Shortly after, Fox told YouTube the game footage infringed its copyrights. YouTube took it down.

Animated gif here.[via]

My former EFF colleague Kevin Bankston writes, "For Boing Boing readers in the Washington DC area, here’s a great event: this coming Tuesday, science fiction writer (and Cory's occasional collaborator) Charlie Stross will be doing a happy hour interview at think tank New America. He’ll be talking about cross-pollination between science fiction and real tech and policy with Kevin Bankston, who runs New America’s tech policy shop the Open Technology Institute."

Augmented reality, where stuff is visually superimposed on the real world using special glasses or whatever, is often touted as a more convincing and likely future than, say, everyone ending up in some kind of VR entertainment matrix hooked up to nutrition and shitting tubes. Sadly, AR will be even worse, at least if it resemble Keiichi Matsuda's hellish Hyper-Reality. (more…)

We all rely on our smartphones for pretty much everything these days. So pick up some essential accessories that’ll have your phone turning out high-quality digital images, checking whether you’re good to drive after a night out, or just maxing out your data storage options.Acesori 5 Piece Smartphone Camera Lens KitRegular Price: $50The DEAL: $9.99 (80% off)With this 3-in-1 Acesori lens assemblage, you’ll take your typical iOS or Android phone photos or video up to DSLR class. Just attach the sturdy aluminum lens to your phone magnetically and you’ll have fish eye, wide angle and macro lens capabilities that’ll push your pics to the next level. At 80% off, it’s worth the buy just to see what this kit can do for your picture-taking game.DrinkMate BreathalyzerRegular Price: $40The DEAL: $31.99 (20% off)Avoid facing a cop’s breathalyzer...carry one of your own with the DrinkMate Breathalyzer, available for use with both Android and iOS phones. At less than two inches long, the DrinkMate fits comfortably in a pocket or a purse, powers up via your phone’s USB or Lightning port, and with one blow, can measure your Blood Alcohol Content to within +/- 0.01% accuracy. It’s a vital tool that could keep you out of jail...so pick it up now before the deal expires.iKlips DUO Flash Storage Solution 64GB (Gray)Regular Price: $109The DEAL: $87 (20% off)It’s a portable hard drive for your phone...so just back-up your data to this compact flash drive and keep downloading and shooting videos with impunity. Snap the iKlips DUO on to your keyring and your media files will always be with you. A simple Lightning connector body means it’s compatible with most iOS cases. Available in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions, data storage can’t be more convenient.

It's not entirely clear where this image originates from, but the nightmarish interior of the Leatherback Turtle's mouth is attested to by many other ones just like it. Hey, at least it doesn't pee through its mouth.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO9wzb7ijPY

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "From May 11, 1947 until January 29, 1948, Gandhi gave a speech after prayer meetings 129 times. It was a narrative of his life and of the times. All India Radio broadcast his talks to the nation, and everybody stopped to hear what the Mahatma had to say. On January 30, Gandhiji didn't make it to the microphone. " (more…)

Contrary to popular belief, product managers aren’t just the employees who somehow get things done. Product managers receive special training to garner their particular skill sets, allowing their employers to trust that they can create great products to move their business forward.And did we mention that trained product management professionals make loads more than their non-certified colleagues? Jump on board this growing industry now with this Complete Product Management training bundle, now just $44.99 in the Boing Boing Store.In all, you’ll receive access to seven courses designed to run you through product management essentials:Skillsets to Shift Your Career to Product ManagementThe Complete Product Management CourseMaster the Product Manager Interview - The Complete GuideThe Non-Technical Person's Guide to Building Products & AppsBecome a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the JobProduct Management: Product Market StrategyBuyer Personas for Your B2B BusinessFrom ideation to production, from product launch through its early performance phases, you’ll understand the entire process of managing projects and fulfilling the needs of stakeholders. Once you’re through the more than 60 hours of top-flight training, you can start increasingly your job prospects - and hopefully, your tax bracket. For a package worth $220, grabbing this bundle now at 79% off is a no-brainer.

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning is serving 35 years in prison, in part due to a conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the overbroad, antiquated statute made notorious by its role in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz. (more…)

In 1986, Aerosmith and Run-DMC collaborated on a remake of the former's 1970s song "Walk This Way." Masterminded by producer Rick Rubin, then 22, the resulting jam was a gamechanger for both hip hop and rock. Over at the Washington Post, Geoff Edgers put together a fascinating oral history of the instant classic:Steven Tyler: I loved rap. I used to go looking for drugs on Ninth Avenue and I would go over to midtown or downtown and there would be guys on the corner selling cassettes of their music. I’d give them a buck, two bucks, and that was the beginning of me noticing what was going on in New York at the time....DMC: Rick gives us this yellow notebook pad. He tells us, “Go down to D’s basement, put the needle on the record.” We go down to my basement and put on the record and then you hear “Backstroke lover always hidin’ ’neath the covers” and immediately me and Joe get on the phone and say: “Hell no, this ain’t going to happen. This is hillbilly gibberish, country-bumpkin bulls---.”

I knew someone who lived in a house with a driveway that was very popular with drivers who used it to turn around. He didn't mind people doing it in the day, but it also happened all night and he hated the cars' headlights beaming through his windows. He fantasized about covering his driveway with spikes like these but wisely never acted out on that fantasy. He would have loved DrivewaySpikes ($40 on Amazon), which are rubber spikes that act as a visual deterrent to would-be driveway encroachers.

This is the lede to CNN's story about a man whose vaporizer battery exploded during use: (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Horrorstörby Grady HendrixQuirk Books2014, 240 pages, 7.4 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches (softcover)$9 Buy a copy on AmazonImagine a store much like Ikea, but not quite up to Ikea’s standards. In the book Horrorstör, Orsk is a shabby copy of the Scandinavian warehouse we all know, and maybe even love, right down to the incomprehensible product names (Frȧnjk, for example) and a Bright and Shining Path that guides shoppers through the showroom floor maze. But something about Orsk is different. And very, very wrong. Amy works at the Orsk in Cleveland, Ohio. Caught in a spiral of student debt and unable to support herself, she moves into her mom’s trailer and wonders if she’ll ever dig herself out of retail. ​That's when things change. ​Resigned to working at Orsk for the rest of their lives, Amy and her co-workers arrive every morning to find broken wardrobes, shattered glassware and vandalized sofas. Convinced someone is hiding out in the store and up to no good, they agree to spend the night in the store with their manager to unravel the mystery. Little do they know that tonight is their final shift.Horrorstör is a clever twist on a traditional haunted house story that takes place in a modern consumerist setting. The symbolism and criticism of consumer culture and the nature of work are there if you look for them, but it’s light, and pretty funny, and doesn’t get in the way of the story. The catalog-style furniture ​pages in Horrorstör — complete with enthusiastic but meaningless descriptions – grow increasingly dark as the story, and Amy’s situation, become dire. Consider this catalog page for a chair:“Boasting several advantages over traditional forms of restraint, BODAVEST confines the penitent and opposes the agitated movement of blood toward the brain, forcing the subject into a state of total immobility, conducive to self-reflection and free of stressful outside stimuli.”The book also includes humorously grim versions of Orsk employee evaluations, order forms, and pages from the Orsk Leadership Handbook. They really add to the enjoyment of the story. I found myself eagerly looking forward to them, trying to decipher which twist in the story they alluded to. Surprisingly, the last pages of the book took the story from hilariously gruesome to “Oh, heck yes!” in the last few paragraphs. I won’t ruin it for you, but they left me wanting to read more stories set in the wild and outrageous world of Orsk. “Orsk. It’s not just a job. It’s the rest of your life.”

Weird Universe alerts us to the curious case of Gerald Mayo, who in 1971 filed a class action lawsuit in the Western District of Pennsylvania against Satan "and his staff." According to the sui, "Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery and unwarranted threats, against the will of plaintiff, that Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has caused plaintiff's downfall" and "deprived him of his constitutional rights." The court rejected the suit for several reasons including the fact that "the plaintiff has failed to include with his complaint the required form of instructions for the United States Marshal for directions as to service of process." Basically, how in hell could the court get in touch with Satan to let him know he's being sued? And even if they could, it's not clear that he's bound by U.S. law."Even if plaintiff's complaint reveals a prima facie recital of the infringement of the civil rights of a citizen of the United States, the Court has serious doubts that the complaint reveals a cause of action upon which relief can be granted by the court," the court ruled."United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff"More here: "A Weekly Guide to Being a Model Law Student" (Google Books)

Liyla and the Shadows of War (Google Play link) is a game about a child's struggles living in the Gaza strip, and Apple says it is ineligible for consideration for inclusion in the Ios App Store because it would be "more appropriate to categorize your app in News or Reference for example." (more…)

Communion Cups with Wafers: prefilled and pretransubstantiated for your convenience. A box of 500 is only $95.Prefilled Communion cups with wafers are the easiest, healthiest way to share the Lord's Supper with your church members. Easy open Communion cups virtually eliminate all the setup time, giving you more time for fellowship without the worry of germs. You'll save money because you won't have to throw anything away. Simply save unused single-serving Communion portions for your next service.These portable Communion sets also make it possible to easily celebrate Communion at hospital and home visitations, military installations, camp meetings, retreats, large stadiums and more. Don't leave out church members with allergies. Remember to add a box of gluten free Communion wafers to your order.

Jenna Vecchio says she was working out with her husband at Movati Athletic Club in Orleans, Ontario when a supervisor told her that she would need to change her tank top because other clients at the gym felt uncomfortable.From Vecchio's Facebook post:My tank top was no different than many other women's tank top at the club; except my chest size is much larger in appearance in comparison to my frame than many of the other women. After asking every woman at the club who I could find on the way out if my attire offended them and they responded no, it became clear that the only ones offended were the two women supervisors working at the club today. I pointed out to them that my shirt was no different than any other woman's shirt. They informed me that it did not matter that due to my chest size I could not wear a tank top.THIS IS DRESS CODE DISCRIMINATION. DIFFERENT FIGURES DOES NOT MEAN DIFFERENT RULES!

Riding Light from Alphonse Swinehart on Vimeo.This video lets you hitch a ride on a photon emitted from the sun. It takes about 45 minutes to get to Jupiter.In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective.I've taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall I've kept the size and distances of all the objects as accurate as possible. I also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter as I wanted to keep the running length below an hour.

Lured by the internet's pervasive insistence that it represents a superior, more comfortable typing experience, I recently went back to an old-timey mechanical keyboard. This was a mistake. I am now a hamfisted ASCII jazz disaster. (more…)

The sale of Time Warner Cable to Charter Communications is completed today, and former TWC customers (including me) can probably look forward to a whole new era of crappy service, Netflix throttling, and horrible customer service experiences under our new broadband overlords. (more…)

Streaming video service Netflix today launched Fast.com, which shows you your internet connections in megabits per second. You can use it on your mobile or over your home broadband connection, and it doesn't require a Netflix account. (more…)

Hero of the Public Domain Rick Prelinger writes, "Many of you know of Prelinger Library, an independent, experimental research library in San Francisco's South of Market district." (more…)

My kids and I like to sketch together on the weekends. My older daughter and I also frequently go to a weekly figure drawing session here in LA. For me, using charcoal sticks is more fun than pencils or pens, because it's faster and I can work on shading.The Royal & Langnickel Small Tin Charcoal Drawing Art Set ($6 on Amazon) has a good selection of different kinds of charcoal for drawing. My daughters are starting to like charcoal, too, so I bought sets for them. If you enjoy charcoal drawing, you should also get a white stick for highlights.Here are a couple of my sketches:

Two gentleman broke into a watch store in a mall during business hours. A person standing a few feet away shot video of the whole thing. The two burglars didn't get away with the heist, which involved dragging a bag of stolen merchandise behind a scooter.Two lowlifes robbed the watch shop 'Klockmaster' in Kista Galleria, a shopping mall in the suburbs of Stockholm, Sweden. This all happened at 10 o'clock 13th of May, Friday 2016. As you can tell from the video, the gun that the one of them has in his hand malfunctions when he tries to be tough and fire it off into the air/ceiling. He then tries to unjam it during the whole robbery while the other guy smashes up the display cases etc. When they're done they try to get away on the scooter but it's having a difficult time starting -- the gunman holds the gun very close to his friends head... What a dope. They were later arrested at a check point near a McDonalds.

I couldn't see it for a long time, but once I did, it was impossible to unsee. Spoiler at The Irish Examiner.

I never had an ear for foreign language, and after three years studying Spanish in junior high school, all I could say was “Esta lloviendo, aqui!” which means it’s raining or something like that. Pretty embarrassing.The first time you travel to a foreign country where your native language is not spoken widely, it’s a surreal experience. Everyone sounds like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon.The day of enlightenment may be upon us.For $129 The Pilot by Waverly Labs, which hits the stores in September, will provide real-time translation of French, Spanish, Italian, and English when you insert the devices into your ears.They look a little bulky now, but of course further miniaturization is just around the corner.c'est magnifique!https://youtu.be/Cpgof3n6zf8Via Bored Panda

Today we travel to a future where everybody knows exactly when they’re going to die. Flash Forward: RSS | iTunes | Twitter | Facebook | Web | Patreon | RedditIf you could know your death date, would you chose to find out? Why? How would knowing your death date change your outlook on life, your behavior, your relationships. How many dictators will try to change the calendars to skip over their date? ▹▹ Full show notes

Foundations of the Curtain Theater, where Shakespeare performed early in his stage career, were uncovered by developers in Shoreditch, London. And they come with a surprise: they're rectangular, not the expected oval shape.“There is going to have to be a certain amount of revision of the chapter on The Curtain in my book,” Bowsher said. “It now seems clear that the playhouse was a conversion of an earlier tenement – essentially a block of flats – and was later converted back into a tenement again.“There’s been a lot of scholarly argument about the shape of Tudor theatres, but the evidence from actors is that it made no difference to the performance of the plays, you could ask them to stand on a chair and they’d just get on and do it.”The Curtain was first found in 2012, and plans for a Shakespeare museum unveiled shortly thereafter, with the ruins encased under a huge transparent glass stage. Other finds on the site include a green eggcup, a broken comb, and a report of a cutpurse's arrest.

Backed by huge donations from vitamin companies, the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians is pushing to get naturopathic medicine recognized and regulated in all 50 US states, paving the way to receiving public funds in the form of Medicare reimbursements. (more…)

Martin Gardner's 'Science Magic: Tricks and Puzzles' teaches fun and easy experiments to demonstrate physics. I'm thrilled with the new tricks I'm learning!Gardner shares exciting, and generally simple, science experiments with engaging, sometimes astounding results. Play with the adhesion and cohesion of water, magnetism, volume and mass, friction, stiction, pressure, and tons of other fascinating scientific properties, to both learn and amaze. Some simple effects, like 'three jets' are pretty simple, where you drill holes in a milk carton at different levels to show changes in water pressure, however some are not for younger kids to try on their own. 'The electric pickle' is one that requires adult supervision. A glowing pickle is certainly cool, but spiking a cucumber, and plugging it into a wall socket via a cut extension cord, is something I'd prefer an adult be present for. My kid and I are having fun playing with 1-2 of these experiments each week. A few of the presentations may become magic tricks I use with friends.Martin Gardner's Science Magic: Tricks and Puzzles via Amazon

Rightscorp, the copyright trolls whose business-model was convincing ISPs to freeze their customers' Internet access in response to unsubstantiated copyright accusations, and then ransom those connections back for $20 each, will be out of money by the end of this quarter. (more…)

Nature Magazine reports that researchers from Imperial College London gave psilocybin to 12 people with depression. All the patients showed "a marked improvement in their symptoms." From Nature:Researchers from Imperial College London gave 12 people psilocybin, the active component in magic mushrooms. All had been clinically depressed for a significant amount of time — on average 17.8 years. None of the patients had responded to standard medications, such as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), or had electroconvulsive therapy.One week after receiving an oral dose of psilocybin, all patients experienced a marked improvement in their symptoms. Three months on, five patients were in complete remission. “That is pretty remarkable in the context of currently available treatments,” says Robin Carhart-Harris, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London and first author of the latest study, which is published in The Lancet Psychiatry.The equivalent remission rate for SSRIs is around 20%.

See more sample pages from this book at Wink.GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human by Thomas ThwaitesPrinceton Architectural Press2016, 208 pages, 5.9 x 8.6 x 0.9 inches $16 Buy a copy on AmazonThomas Thwaites has a curious idea of what it means to take a vacation, at least if the just released GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human is any indication. What started off as a casual observation about how Queen Elizabeth’s dog, Noggin, probably worries a good deal less than his royal master evolved into a quixotic book full of ruminations on ruminants. Animals, Thwaites imagined, live in the moment, free from worry, at one with the land. How wonderful to be so unburdened, he thought. So, after briefly considering becoming an elephant, he decided to try his hand at being a goat.Along the way, Thwaites learned a good deal about goats. Humans, Thwaites tells us, have been interacting with them since 9000 BCE – from the domestication of bezoar goats somewhere in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains to the mythical, sexual subjugation of goats by the goat-horned, Greek god Pan, as depicted in a rather graphic sculpture discovered under layers of ash deposited on the city of Herculaneum by Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. Much to our relief, Thwaites just wants to be a goat, not to “do” one.Which is not to say the book is not occasionally disgusting. The section describing the R&D behind his goat suit includes the dissection of a goat named Venus, who died of natural causes and whose skinned limbs, palm-sized brain, and oozing guts are explored in gory detail. I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that in the end, Thwaites gets his opportunity to clomp about on all fours on the steep hillsides of Switzerland, where he hangs out with a herd of Swiss goats and does what goats do – he grazes. For the record, the green-green grass, he reports, is sweeter than the blue-green stuff, which is bitter. Later, Thwaites makes a meal of the grass he’d been chewing and spitting into an artificial goat stomach, using decidedly non-goat cooking techniques to make it digestible for his human digestive system. The resulting “burnt grass stew,” he confesses, was the “most unappetising meal of my life.” Perhaps, though, if Thwaites had simply spent a few days hiking on two legs instead of four in this beautiful place, he would have had fewer goat concerns on his human mind.

The Mount Washington Observatory published this insane video from weather observers Mike Dorfman and Tom Padham demonstrating the effects of strong winds on top of a New Hampshire mountain. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYPvEaMudocA 4.5-foot copperhead snake, hidden in a tree, bit an employee at the Lowe's in in Denver, North Carolina. WPXI reports that "this could happen at any store that sells trees." (more…)

Lock expert Bosnian Bill shows the difference between shielded and unshielded padlock, by bypassing the tumblers with a simple tool.

Buzzfeed collected a bunch of drug toy ads from the early 70s. Here are a few:

Let's dispel with this fiction that Marco Rubio knows what he's doing. He doesn't know exactly what he's doing. The BBC reports on the former Republican presidential candidate's "Twitter tirade" last night, described by one wit as "losing the 2020 New Hampshire primary four years ahead of schedule." (more…)

It looks like Wargames but with Skittles: colored balls representing immigrants arcing through low orbit to land somewhere within the United States of America—Oklahoma, by the looks of it. Creator Max Galka writes that it covers 1820 to 2013 and that each dot represents 10,000 people. (more…)

Donald Trump was all set to be interviewed by TV Azteca's Marcos Stupenengo -- a white, green-eyed Argentine expat -- until they overheard him talking on the phone in Spanish, whereupon the interview was summarily cancelled and Stupenengo was escorted out of the building by Trump's Secret Service detail (who apologized to him). (more…)

Low-cost carrier Easyjet has prototyped "Sneakairs," a pair of shoes that have small vibrating motors and Bluetooth links; they work in concert with your mobile phone's mapping app, buzzing left or right when it's time to turn, and twice if you've gone the wrong way. (more…)

Hitherto believed to be a fairly recent innovation derived from the imperative quality of official telegraphy, etc., it turns out that there is a much longer history of using all-caps text to signify SHOUTING AT THE READER. Glenn Fleishman:I’m here to BLOW THIS OUT OF THE WATER, with a series of citations that date back to 1856. People have been uppercase shouting intentionally for a century more than recollected. And, as with so many things, longtime Internet users want to claim credit, when they really just passed on and more broadly popularized an existing practice... The first clear citation I can find is in the Evening Star, a Washington, D.C., newspaper. It appears on February 28, 1856 and was syndicated to other papers around the same time. In a “hilarious” dialect story about a Dutchman who seems to be disease-ridden, this wonderful sentence appears:[“]I dells you I’ve got der small pox. Ton’t you vetsteh? der SMALL POX!” This time he shouted it out in capital letters.And that's just an explicit reference to allcaps-as-shouting. Implicitly, it goes back to the Stuart era.Sue Walker, the director of collections and archives in typography at the University of Reading, England, found an apposite description in a 1674 book, The Compleat English Schoolmaster, by Elisha Coles. The author wrote that a whole word in capitals “is alwa[y]es more than ordinarily remarkable; as some signal name, Title, Inscription, or the like...”

This is why we can't have nice things.Some really stupid visitors to Yellowstone National Park decided that a baby bison they'd seen was "too cold," so they put it in their rental car trunk to warm it up, and drove it around for a while. After the herd rejected the calf, the National Park Service decided to kill (or if you prefer, “euthanize”) the calf, and warned tourists not to interact with animals. For, like, the billionth time.National Park Service officials want everyone who visits Yellowstone to know that adult animals, like this calf's mom and dad, can become aggressive when they're trying to protect their young. Mothers sometimes reject offspring that have interacted with humans.[caption id="attachment_116242" align="alignnone" width="970"] Bison grazing in Yellowstone park, 2011. Photo: Xeni Jardin.[/caption]As Mark wrote here, the father and son tourists visiting the park in Wyoming received a ticket from Park Rangers for putting the bison calf in their rental car.As dumb as these tourists were, they're not alone. There have been several similar incidents this year in the park, shared on social media in which visitors ignore the rules, get too close to animals, and pose for selfies. In 2015, Bison seriously injured five park visitors, which makes them more dangerous by the statistics than any other animal, including predators like bear, wolves, or big cats.From the Denver Post:The newborn bison calf that visitors to Yellowstone National Park last week inadvisedly tried to rescue from the cold has been euthanized after efforts to reunite it with the herd were rejected, according to the National Park Service.The foreign tourists drew widespread public scorn for placing the calf in their vehicle and driving it to a park ranger station, citing their fear that the animal was in danger from the cold. They were ticketed for violating park rules that prohibit approaching closer than 25 yards.The incident prompted the NPS to issue an advisory reminding visitors of the potential consequences of such interactions and remind tourists of safety measures.Although park rangers tried repeatedly to reintroduce the calf to the herd, the other bison abandoned it. After the calf continually approached people and vehicles, creating what officials deemed a dangerous situation, the animal was killed.Still not clear on the rules around interacting with wildlife at Yellowstone? The National Park Service explains here. Snip:Do not approach wildlife, no matter how tame or calm they appear. Always obey instructions from park staff on scene. You must stay at least 100 yards (91 m) away from bears and wolves and at least 25 yards (23 m) away from all other large animals - bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, moose, and coyotes. Do not feed any animals. It harms them and it is illegal.Bison can sprint three times faster than humans can run. • They are unpredictable and dangerous. • Your best view may be from inside a hard-sided vehicle. • Every year visitors are gored and some have been killed.[via Heather Beschizza]

Moran Cerf, a pen-testing bank-robber turned horribly misunderstood neuroscientist (previously, previously) gets to do consensual, cutting-edge science on the exposed brains of people with epilepsy while they're having brain surgery. (more…)

The Intercept has begun publishing a large tranche of NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden. All 166 articles from SID Today, an NSA internal newsletter, are coming in the first portion of Snowden docs that The Intercept will release, with more to come. (more…)

What a long, strange trip it's been, and continues to be. Just say know. (Retro Report)

We Will Sell No Wine Before Its Time! Previously: Orson Welles hates the advertising copy he's been asked to read.If you enjoyed this video, Publio Delgado's weirdly harmonized guitar backing is an essential accompaniment.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY97alZkUMw

Laurie Penny reviews Andi Zeisler's ‘We Were Feminists Once’ and considers the progressive dilemma of popularity: how do you turn new popularity into change, when the idea of change is so easily turned into an ersatz commercial product?As a founding editor of Bitch Magazine, which was first published as a zine in 1996, Zeisler understands the fraught relationship between feminism and pop culture. It’s a relationship of toxic codependency. Activists need the media to help spread the word, even as it pumps out sexist stereotypes; the media, meanwhile, cannot risk losing touch with the zeitgeist. In her introduction, Zeisler describes her book as “an exploration of how the new embrace of marketplace feminism — mediated, decoupled from politics, staunchly focused on individual experience and actualization — dovetails with entrenched beliefs about power, about activism, about who feminists are and what they do.”However, Penny writes that things have become more nuanced, less monolithic, and that feminists are one again engaging the in the "time-honored tradition" of being too hard on their own movement -- and especially on grassroots creativity that's succeeded despite media indifference.Granted, as she points out, this newfound feminist populism hasn’t stopped the relentless conservative assault on abortion rights in the United States. Given the tireless work of abortion rights activists, however, perhaps it’s time we stopped blaming feminists for that and started blaming Republicans. The women’s movement has always been good at rebuking itself for every imperfection. The “confidence” promised by Dove body lotion may not be the revolution we have waited for — but feminism could use a little more faith in itself.Sometimes we don’t know when we’re winning. When Miley Cyrus described herself as pansexual, I thought it was awesome but that it presented a similar "semiotic" dilemma where everyone's constantly thinking about what it all means rather than what was said. Celebrity self-presentation as queer is easily understood as performance and often assumed to be a cynical commercial act. But it's also worthy in its own right, even if untrue, as an act of affirmation: an empowered willingness to broaden and define our identities irrespective of traditional standards and values, to whatever ends suit the willing. I still can't decide if I think it's bullshit or not, but the point is maybe that no-one should care what I think in the first place.As of press time, Google will reply "Liam Hemsworth" if you ask it who Miley Cyrus's girlfriend is.

Lumberjanes began life as an 8-issue series written by Marvel/Disney alumnus Noelle Stevenson and a rotating crew of talented woman comics creators -- the entire series is woman-led and -produced -- that tells the story of the five girls of Roanoke cabin at Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Hardcore Lady Types, where strange things are afoot.The initial 8-book run was so popular that the series continued, and was licensed as a live-action movie from Fox. It's easy to see why: there's rarely been a more likable cast of characters in kids' comic history, each one with her own distinctive personality, quirks and challenges. They're variously gonzo, timid, adventurous, fearless, cunning, and hilarious, and their friendships leap off the page to skewer the reader's heart.The first two books tell a single long story that introduces the many Lumberjanes mysteries -- and the many badges that a Lumberjane can earn during her summers at camp. The third book is an anthology that features guest contributions from some of my favorite comics creators, like the incredible Faith Erin Hicks, whose affection for this story shines out like a lighthouse beam (specifically, like the beam of the enchanted lighthouse in the first two books).The comic has moved from strength to strength during its run, sensitively and intelligently tackling one character's trans identity and a romance between two others, in a way that's both sweet and age-appropriate for the youngest readers of the series (Boom Box, the publisher, rates it for eight and up).What's more, the creators are building out a huge, satisfying world with many well-drawn peripheral characters (I want to go to a camp with counselors like the ones we only meet for a panel or two in book three!). It's no wonder that the comic has spawned such a huge fandom, producing their own Lumberjanes merit badges (which you can wear on this official $48 Lumberjanes denim jacket).Always fast-paced, always funny, Lumberjanes nevertheless is a story about characters, about intense friendship, and about overcoming personal challenges with help from your friends. Lumberjanes Vol. 1: Beware The Kitten Holy [Noelle Stevenson, Brooke A Allen, Shannon Watters/Boom Box]Lumberjanes Vol. 2: Friendship To The Max [Noelle Stevenson, Brooke A Allen, Shannon Watters/Boom Box]Lumberjanes Vol. 3: A Terrible Plan [Noelle Stevenson, Brooke A Allen, Shannon Watters/Boom Box]

"HR Pieger" Recipe by Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin (aka @ThePieous) (more…)