Does the idea of inexpensive, biodegradable, everyday teabags horrify and disgust you? Ensure your tea drinking has a chain of environmental destruction all the way back to the bowels of the Earth itself with the Eva Solo Stainless Steel Tea Bag. It comes in small (10g of leaves) or large sizes, is dishwasher safe, and can be re-used indefinitely, thereby paying for itself in only 700 years. [via Uncrate]

Sponsored by Assemblymember Luis Alejo, today California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB30, a bill barring schools from naming teams or mascots "redskins." NBC News shares:The state Assembly overwhelmingly approved the California Racial Mascots Act in May, about a month before the Obama administration went on record telling the Washington Redskins that they would have to change their name before they would be allowed to move to a stadium in Washington, D.C., from their current home in suburban Maryland.In a joint statement with the nonprofit group Change the Mascot, the National Congress of American Indians praised California for "standing on the right side of history by bringing an end to the use of the demeaning and damaging R-word slur in the state's schools."

Three. The left ear, the right ear, and the final frontier.(Thanks, Cash Ashkinos!)

Facebook UK made £105M in 2014, paid £35M in bonuses, and will pay £4,327 in tax.This is a notable improvement on its tax bill for 2013, which was £0 on earnings of £223m. (more…)

Like most self-styled provocateurs, it turns out Lou Reed meant the bad things that he said. A new biography illustrates a racist, sexist wife-beater with so little personal charm he would be regularly discharged from private gatherings. (more…)

Specific color palettes are used by filmmakers to manipulate our emotions, from warm red tones for romances to blue, cold tones for horror flicks. The Dust Bowl-toned "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2000) was the first film to be digitally color graded from beginning to end.If you're curious about the psychology of color, check out classics like Johannes Itten's "The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color" and the books of Faber Birren.

They're available for pre-order from the Big Bad Toy Store, with delivery estimated for Christmas 2015. They Yahtzee ($35) features a Cthulhu figure dice cup; while the Monopoly ($45) has a selection of Cthulhu player-tokens, Cthulhu money; and Lovecraftian properties. (more…)

Mark Davis worked at a Kmart in Naperville, IL in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Each month, the corporate office mailed a cassette tape to all the stores, which contained easy-listening elevator music and in-house advertisements. Davis saved all 56 cassettes and uploaded them to Archive.org. As Gareth Branwyn says, "I MAY have just gouged my eardrums out." (more…)

Students at the University of Texas at Austin will protest a new law that will allow more guns on campus.Instead of signs, the students are protesting by "strapping gigantic swinging dildos to our backpacks," which is in violation of the campus' obscenity policy.Jessica Jin, who set up the Campus (DILDO) Carry event on Facebook, invokes the argument that allowing more guns on campus will make students safe is a fallacy. She's urging students to send campus leaders that message by strapping on the plastic phalluses."You're carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I'm carrying a HUGE DILDO," Jin says in the group's description. "Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play."

As shot.

I don't know what's going happen to you baby, but I do know that I love ya.

The McClatchy Company, a chain of more than 30 U.S. newspapers, is expected to close its foreign bureaus by the end of the year. The media giant's chief executive denies the rumors, but it kind of sounds like the closures are likely anyway. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnPkM3_jposElections Canada has made an awful mess of voter registration this cycle, mailing cards to old addresses and providing incorrect information about where your polling place is. But don't despair! Although Elections Canada would prefer that you register to vote before going to the polls, you can just show up at an advance poll, or a polling place on election day, with ID, and register to vote on the spot. (more…)

In the latest episode of the Cool Tools Show podcast, Kevin Kelly and I interviewed Andrew Leonard about some of his favorite tools. (more…)

In a Reddit AMA, the eminent physicist warns that while increasing automation could give us a world of "luxurious leisure," that "most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution." (more…)

These 4-packs of MFi-certified Lightning cables are $9. That's $2.25 per 3-foot cable – the lowest price by far I've ever seen for MFi-certified cables. (You can get non-MFi certified cables for less but they suck.) I just bought two 4-packs. UPDATE: Some of the reviewers on Amazon suspect the cables are not MFi certified, and a lot of the reviews were written in exchange for a free or discounted pack of cables. I'll let you know if the 8 cables I ordered are OK.

After reporting 700 pilgrims dead in a stampede near the holy city of Mecca two weeks ago, Saudi authorities have come clean with the true number killed after pressure from investigators: 1,453 were killed and hundreds remain missing.Indeed, Shiite Iran in particular has challenged its Sunni arch-rival’s status as the custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites, warning that if diplomacy doesn’t yield an independent investigation, “the Islamic Republic is also prepared to use the language of force.” Nearly one-third of the deaths in the incident were pilgrims from neighboring Iran.Given all of this, it’s not terribly surprising that a more accurate accounting of the tragedy had to come from an outside source. As Ruth Graham noted last month in The Atlantic, Saudi officials weren’t eager to take responsibility: “In Saudi Arabia, the country’s health minister chalked up the latest incident to a failure to follow instructions, and the head of the Central Hajj Committee blamed ‘some pilgrims from African nationalities.’”In the meantime, hundreds of worshipers still remain missing and so the true extent of last month’s disaster is not fully known.

In China, teens and twentysomethings are wearing little plastic accessories on their heads in the shape of tiny little sprouts, fruit, or flowers. Nobody's exactly sure where or how the trend started, but it's... growing. (more…)

A federal judge says a New York transportation agency was wrong to label some funny subway posters for a documentary on Muslim-American comedians as "political," so they could ban the posters from the NYC subway. One of the six ads for "The Muslims Are Coming!" included the statement: “The Ugly Truth About Muslims: Muslims have great frittata recipes.”[caption id="attachment_427036" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: themuslimsarecoming.com[/caption]Another one of the unfairly banned posters read, “Muslims hate terrorism! They also hate: People who tell you they went to an Ivy League school within 10 seconds of meeting them ... When the deli guy doesn’t put enough schmear on your bagel ... Hipsters who wear winter hats in the summer ... the pickling of everything ...”The judge said it was “utterly unreasonable” for an MTA official to decide an advertisement including the word “Muslims” was political for that reason alone.[caption id="attachment_427037" align="alignnone" width="1370"] Photo: themuslimsarecoming.com[/caption]In the movie, comedians Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah lead an all-star Muslim comedy troupe performing in “big cities, small towns, liberal enclaves, conservative hotbeds, rural and everything in between to explore the issue of Islamophobia.”The film also includes comedy bigshots Jon Stewart, David Cross and Lewis Black.From The Guardian's coverage of the MTA ad brouhaha:The ads for the film The Muslims Are Coming! were rejected this year by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the subway system and the rest of the nation’s largest mass transit network. The MTA, which had first approved the ads, later concluded they violated its new ban on political ads.Judge Colleen McMahon said the advertisements, created by two Muslim comedians, were not primarily political.“That the advertisements at issue gently mock prejudice and employ Islamophobia as a comedic device does not make their message ‘prominently or predominantly’ political,” she wrote.[caption id="attachment_427035" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo: themuslimsarecoming.com[/caption]The MTA said it was reviewing the judge’s decision.You can download or stream the film on Amazon. More options here, including some theaters around the world.

Beijing, China. If this fascinates you, so long as you are not sitting in it, I highly recommend Tom Vanderbilt's fantastic book "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)."Below, Tom's presentation at our Boing Boing: Ingenuity 2013 conference.https://youtu.be/RA4WaNLR2gU

Everybody's talking aboutRevolution, evolution, masturbationFlagellation, regulation, integrationsMeditations, United NationsCongratulationsImagine Peace

"All I ask is that there's a way to take off the pounds without exercising, or changing what I eat, or how much of it I eat," says Stephen Colbert. "Other than that I am willing to do anything. Well, anything has finally arrived, and it's called Aspire Assist." (more…)

Andrew Mayne (one of our star presenters at Weekend of Wonder 2015) spotted this bizarre sign in Burbank. It implicates the Burbank Police Department in burying a sick man while he was still alive. Whoever made this sign is a fine artist and letterer, and spins a good, semi-coherent story.

This is a scary video. It's a first-person video of a French guy hiking with other backpackers in New Zealand. When they go across a suspension bridge a cable snaps, and one or more of hikers fall off. Fortunately, there's water 25 feet below and there were no serious injuries.[via]

Squatty Potty is a $28 footstool that slides away under your toilet; you use it to bring your knees up to a squatting position while you poop, which makes pooping much, much easier. (more…)

The impossible architecture puzzle game Monument Valley is pretty soothing—it's inspired hours of ASMR videos, if that's your jam—but the newest iOS release from Monument Valley developer Ustwo takes things a step further with a straight up relaxation app.PAUSE, a collaboration between ustwo and Pausable, has a simple concept: You simply press your finger on the screen, and move it slowly to make a colorful, amorphous blob grows larger and larger. Stop moving (or move too fast) and the game will gently try to correct your pace; the idea is to stay present, calm, deliberate.Once the undulating blob fills the screen, the app will tell you to close your eyes, while still rotating one finger around the screen to the thrum of its ambient sounds. Eventually, a bell will ring after the appointed amount of time has elapsed, ideally indicating that at least some of your anxiety has dissipated."Everything started with my own severe stress and depression," says Pausable cofounder Peng Cheng, who eventually became so incapacitated by stress that he couldn't work. After a six-month sabbatical, which included meditation and tai chi, he realized that what helped him most were activities that helped him focus on the here and now. "Most stress exists only in our head and absorb all our attention... to break this pattern I needed to focus on what is physical and tangible, and actively put my attention in the moment."While I can't speak to the scientific benefits of the app, Cheng is correct that there's something soothing and relieving about focusing on one thing at once, especially if your attention is typically fragmented into many tiny splinters by multiple tasks, demands, and pings from your smartphone. Just make sure you turn off notifications before you lose yourself in the supple embrace of the blob. https://youtu.be/D-CrRpQ80aw

The Star Wars merchandise machine is in full death-march, and we're already sick of the Force-sploitation. But this offbeat little gimmick has us smiling--and jonesing for some sweets. (more…)

CBGB, the iconic punk rock venue in New York's East Village that launched the careers of The Ramones, Blondie, Richard Hell, and Patti Smith, shut its doors in 2006. This year, hyperrealist sculptor Randy Hage is exhibiting his 1/12 scale model of the club, along with several other famous New York facades. Check them out at on October 10th, 2015 at Flower Pepper Gallery in Pasadena, California.Previously: Amazing dioramas of NYC storefronts[via](Thanks, Andreas!)

“The only 3D printing company anyone’s heard of,” MakerBot, is laying off 20 percent of its staff for the second time in the last six months. (more…)

https://youtu.be/EvPvQjDU7_cThis is an incredibly cool edit of the trippiest episodes of Spongebob Squarepants cut to accompany "Warpigs" by Black Sabbath.(Thanks, Matthew!)

Prisoners families often must pay $12.95 for 15-minutes of phone time to stay in touch with an incarcerated spouse, child, or parent. Global Tel-Link Corp. and Securus Technologies are the two main prison phone service providers, and they make a fortune charging poor people over 100 times the typical rate for a phone call. They reason they can get away with it is that they give generous kick-backs to state and local governments for giving them contracts to be the exclusive phone service providers for prisons under their control. (more…)

The New York prisoners team is composed of people convicted of violent felonies who have gone on to take continuing education classes in prison through Bard College. They debated the proposition that public schools should be allowed to refuse education to undocumented students, arguing for the proposition. (more…)

Ali Kashani, a data-scientist, has run the numbers on Canada's electoral constituencies (called "ridings") and concluded that if the candidates from the NDP and Liberal parties in sixteen of those ridings agreed to one or the other withdrawing, the Conservative Party could not form the next government. (more…)

If you're on the East Coast, keep your eyes on the skies this evening--you might see something rare up there. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR6sB5r1xHUA cell phone store owner, whose business had been repeatedly burgled, decided to set up a trap room to capture the next person who tried to steal things from his store. Here's a surveillance video showing that it worked perfectly. (more…)

DataScience@smu (Southern Methodist University) has compiled a list of recommended podcasts that are based on popular science books. Some of them I've heard of before (like Freakonomics Radio), but most are new to me and sound interesting (like Learning Machines 101)If you liked…Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and TechniquesListen to…Learning Machines 101Why?If you’re interested in machine learning, Learning Machines 101 is the place to go. Dr. Richard M. Golden’s podcast series examines how smart machines and artificial intelligence work, where they come from, and how scientists are working to make them even smarter and more humanlike. The series starts out at a basic level and gets advanced, fast, so find the level where you’re comfortable and settle down for a listen.

Shake, stir, and muddle your way to delicious homemade cocktails with this must-have bar set. Expect only the finest quality tools from MakersKit — enabling you to unleash your inner mixologist.Top 12 Favorite Things of 2014, Sunset MagazineQuart-size vintage-style Mason jar shakerRetro double jigger for accurate measurementsStrainer & spouts for a mixologist-style smooth pourHardwood muddler to grind mint, berries & more24 delectable recipes, from classic to contemporary[embed]https://youtu.be/Q4PwexJxiDM[/embed]Get 34% Off The Classic Cocktails Bar Set From MakersKit

Applicants need to be US permanent residents or citizens who's attending college in 2016/7. To apply, you'll need to record a short video explaining "a scientific topic you're passionate about." (more…)

Unlike a multimeter, this battery tester isn't battery powered. Instead, it measures the voltage across the terminals of 9V, AA, AAA, C, D and 1.5V button type batteries. It's also easier to use than multimeter probes. It's only $6.61 on Amazon and has a 4.5 star rating with over 1500 reviews.

I've heard -- and repeated -- the theory that addiction rates among indigenous people in the Americas was caused by genetics -- specifically, that "new world" populations hadn't gone through the European plague years' genetic bottleneck that killed everyone who couldn't survive on alcoholic beverages (these having been boiled during their production and thus less likely to carry infectious diseases). (more…)

Chuck E. Cheese is hoping to market itself to "millennial moms" by expanding its beer and wine offerings, selling lattes, and amping up the salad bar. They should put in a boxing ring to ensure better viewing of the infamous Chuck E. Cheese parental brawls that break out at kids birthday parties!“Her kids know it’s a fun place to go, but millennial moms want to provide that great experience without sacrificing for themselves,” Greg Casale, head chef of Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company CEC Entertainment, told Bloomberg. “Before she was a mom, she was going to places like Panera and those concepts. She wants something that fits into her millennial lifestyle.”

See sample pages at Wink.The term "cabinet of curiosities" means different things to different people. For the author of this wonderful book for kids, it was a cigar box full of treasures that he started accumulating at the age of six, beginning with the found skull of a skunk. For my brother, it was the annual gift I sent him from The Evolution Store in Manhattan: a shark, bat, crab, scorpion, and a black widow. (Yes, I forced a curiosity cabinet onto him.) For me, it’s a combination of anything small, old, and interesting, human-made or nature-made, and preferably a bit on the bizarre side. This book, however, focuses on the natural wonders only, and, specifically, those waiting out there to be found by the young scientists, collectors, and curators of tomorrow.Nature writer Gordon Grice starts with a bit of history about cabinets of curiosities and the Age of Exploration, during the 1400s-1600s, when seekers of fortune brought home fascinating items from their travels. Many of these items that made up small private collections ended up being the biggest cabinets of curiosities of all: museums. He tells us what we can use to make our own mini cabinets and shows how we can even build one from scratch. From there he introduces us to the classifications of life, with a brief description of the taxonomy – still in use today – created by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish biologist in the 1700s.The rest of the book is divided into three main sections: Animalia, Plantae, and Mineralium. Grice spends the majority of pages on the animal kingdom. Though plants and rocks have their place in a good cabinet, animals are the clear winners of this book. In examining just a few species, a mere tip of the iceberg, one learns many wonderful facts, such as that ravens will investigate gunshots to see if they result in anything good to eat. Or that a cuckoo bird will shove an egg out of another species’ nest and replace it with her own, so that the other bird will raise her young imposter instead. Or that a shark’s teeth are the hardest element in its whole body. Or that brown crabs can live for 100 years. We also learn about preservation and display of specimens. The book carries a few (but not enough) scattered warnings about not collecting live or endangered animals, as well as safety issues and respecting property rights. I wish there were more emphasis on observing or collecting without causing harm or violating laws. For instance, here in Arizona, it is illegal to collect a saguaro boot – the hard “scar tissue” resembling a boot that the cactus builds up around a bird’s nest within its body – from the wild. The previously mentioned store sells only legal specimens and is licensed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but I suspect there are a lot of specimens out there that are collected in dubious fashion; all the more reason to find one’s own treasures in nature. This is a beautifully illustrated book that will undoubtedly spark the curiosity in any kid who reads it. Compiling a cabinet of curiosities is a way for a youngster to feel connected to her or his environment, history, the Earth, other creatures, and science. Certainly, every child has a moment in which they begin their own personal age of exploration. – Aaron DowneyCabinet of Curiosities: Collecting and Understanding the Wonders of the Natural Worldby Gordon GriceWorkman Publishing2015, 160 pages, 8.5 x 11 x 0.8 inches $14 Buy one on Amazon

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The Lytro Illum dares to be different, boasting even more robust features than its first generation predecessor and a sleek design reminiscent of professional DSLRs. What's so cool about it? Most cameras capture the position of light rays, producing a statoc 2D image. But the Illum’s cutting-edge technology records the direction of these rays, generating images you can later refocus, change perspective within, or view in 3D. You can essentially revisit the scene of the photo, meaning you’ll never miss snapping the perfect shot again.Take “living pictures” you can adjust afterwardsRefocus your shots, change their perspective & view them in 3D, even in post-productionUse familiar digital camera features: auto focus, exposure mode, etc.Capture the angle of every light ray in a sceneEasily carry it anywhere: design is compact, durable & lightweightShoot photos at an optimal resolution for sharing onlineAccess an array of tools including photo filters & uploading softwareCheck out the Lytro Illum Camera in the Boing Boing Store today![embed]https://youtu.be/qViP_ozq358[/embed]

This week, our partnership with Critical Distance brings us a takedown on 'empathy games' from one of the field's most well-known independent designers, as well as a unique collection of games inspired by the classic Breakout. (more…)

80 Days is a game based on the Jules Verne novel Around the World in 80 Days, but with a significant steampunk—and anti-colonial—twist. You play Phileas Fogg’s valet, Jean Passepartout, who must not only plan the sometimes-complex logistics of the journey, but ensure his master's well-being along the way. The graphics and aesthetic of the game are beautiful; they light sepia-tinted fires to the imagination as one plays, and act as gentle companions to the core act of reading, managing income and inventory, and making choices about how to travel and what to do along the way. But it’s the writing by Meg Jayanth, with a few stories added by director Jon Ingold, that makes 80Days game so memorable and more-ish.While Jayanth loved the original Verne tale, she says she found his portrayal of Aouda, an Indian princess, to be “infuriating.” Treated like a “conquered territory” and a “prize for Fogg,” the character of Aouda evoked everything wrong with white European portrayals of non-white women in colonized countries. If Jayanth was going to try her hand at rewriting this classic tale, there would have to be an answer to Aouda.In the process she wound up writing a hundred. 80 Days became a steampunk world where technology was both magical and political, where maps were dramatically redrawn, and where non-white people and women alike had scores of characters expressing a variety of views about this volatile world. Whereas the original Verne tale never left the British Empire, here the boundaries of Victoria’s kingdom are reduced, Asian and African empires have more robustly resisted European colonialism (while perpetrating abuses of their own), and Fogg and Passepartout must go well beyond their comfort zone and the protection of Her Majesty to complete their journey.When the game first released on iOS, it became an instant classic—interactive fiction games often resist penetrating broader game audiences, but the tablet-friendly beauty and readability of 80Days earned it acclaim in many circles, and multiple media awards. Now the game comes to digital download platform Steam, and with that release comes a brand-new expansion to the game: Canada, the US, and South America have more cities to visit and many more people to talk to—especially Natives, who Jayanth felt got short shrift in the original script. “To be honest,” she tells us, “the lack of proper representation of native peoples in North America really bothered me when we first released—there are some in the U.S., but not nearly enough. It was always a goal to cover more of Canada and the US, and include more native peoples, but in the end I really didn't want to go in without proper research and time to get to grips with the history.” The result of that research—writ large in all of Jayanth’s stories throughout 80 Days—is an impressive alternate history of Native North America and a bevy of new and interesting characters.Assimilationist compromise and vibrant resistance are portrayed in equal measure and with sympathy. A mixed-race gyrocopter pilot who believes the past should be left behind; the Blackfoot Confederacy’s ownership of the Canadian Pacific Railway through creative treaty negotiations; a floating city where pan-Native resistance to settler colonialism rules the day, a proud Native woman Mountie; all have their say and make their mark in Jayanth’s lush prose. The nature of narrative fiction is such that it allows for such capacious characterization, where finely honed descriptions and dialogue can fill in vast spaces that advanced graphics cannot even begin to render. Jayanth extends the quiet triumph of her writing here: she portrays people of color as diverse unto themselves, with different politics and ways of engaging the world. It’s not just a breath of fresh air, but a whole climate thereof in a medium where we’re used to seeing maybe one character of color burdened with representing their people. Instead Jayanth gives us credible snapshots of civilizations.The new content pops up all over the globe, but is concentrated primarily in the Americas, where several new routes across its vast terrain have been added, along with a bevy of new characters for Fogg and Passepartout to bump into. It really is more of everything I loved in the original; more dashing, muscular women piloting airships, more clockwork dreams come to life, more transcontinental train journeys, more humanizing speculative fiction.The Native American and First Nations characters are carefully and elegantly written, many identified by tribe and with various languages represented faithfully; they’re active, diverse, credible participants in this volatile world of brass and steam. This is a throughline of the game: exploring what travel technology means to a crowd of characters from around the globe.It was a tone that had already been set by the game’s last update, which added the North Pole and a lot of lore about Arctic native peoples. Qausuittuq, a secret city at the Pole, “was founded for one purpose—for the Circumpolar peoples to learn and develop the technologies of steam and oil and automata. To make them our own, before they destroy our homes, our culture, our way of life,” in the powerful words of Ráijá Juho, a Sami engineer. The new content extends that beautiful conceit down into Canada and the U.S. In addition to making this world’s wondrous technology their own, Native people here militate with stereotypes—alcohol comes up a lot, but primarily as an indictment of settlers. In one fascinating scene, Passepartout and Fogg are mistaken for whiskey traders by a First Nations woman and dealt with appropriately. Meanwhile, the Blackfoot Confederacy leverages its majority stake in the Canadian Pacific to banish alcohol and tobacco from their trains. Others pilot airships or gyrocopters, others convert to Christianity or act as translators for the settlers.In short: they’re human.But it’s the way Jayanth weaves this humanity into the fantastical fiction of 80 Days’ steampunk world that really sells the whole thing. My favorite addition to the game has to be Kahwoka Othunwe, the Floating Village: imagine a free Native city held aloft and steered by a rainbow of balloons and dirigibles, where the Sioux, Cree, and Iroquois nations came together to create both policy and foment anti-colonial resistance in secret, their existence confirmed only by rumor and tall-tales. It’s another wonder that humbles Passepartout and Fogg on their travels. “We are a spark of defiance,” Winona Fire Thunder, an Oglala Lakota tribeswoman, says of Kahwoka Othunwe to her white visitors, “A story to be told in the dark, when all hope seems lost.”In that moment, my tablet became a candle in the night.In reviewing the expansion, I tried to take paths that I knew would lead through the new content, but I hit a snag in the form of the game’s best feature.You see, it can be surprisingly challenging to commit to a specific path in the game. With most cities acting as forks in your long road, the call of adventure, to skip out on your own itinerary, is difficult to resist. I resolve to take the Trans-Siberian Railway and yet find myself on a ferry to Helsinki, and thence to the North Pole. Why? Perhaps breaking one’s own rules is what freedom looks like; often in my real-life travels I’ve wanted to hop off to some other far-flung locale in lieu of returning home. 80 Days lets your spontaneity run wild on primitive cars, majestic ships, dinghies, dirigibles, hovercraft, trains of every vintage, and all modes of transport in between.Last week, in reviewing Wheels of Aurelia, Leigh Alexander wrote about the particular way women experience the freedom of driving; in a curious way, 80 Days does the same thing for us with almost every other form of transport. Though the game centers on the journey of two men, and does so staggeringly well, the lavish stories that vivify the many women they meet on their travels makes it easy for me to identify with them—especially those that accompany Fogg and Passepartout for a few days or more.There are a number of examples I could cite from the game’s spiderweb storylines, of mighty travelling women for whom a ship or a balloon or a motorcar is a means of escape and survival. But one story, written by Jon Ingold and new to this update, stands out brightly.If luck is with you and you find yourself a tad adventurous, you might find yourself in the company of The Black Rose, a nonpareil jewel thief who sets her sights on the mightiest prize this world has to offer. You can catch a fleeting glimpse of her on a train, shove her away from your company for the pleasure of Monsieur Fogg, or make a boon companion of her to travel the world with. The latter option will not disappoint.For women, especially queer people and women of color, travel is the essence of precarity; it is purposeful, with each mile potentially being our last. Mission weaves a curious helix with spontaneity and adventure; travel washes away our pasts and gives us the illusion of actually being the machines that convey us to far flung destinations. The Black Rose, an elegant and cunning figure embodies this perfectly; she is the only other person in the game who travels as far and wide as Passepartout and Fogg, and who keeps up with the brisk pace of their journey.You may find, as I did, that her purpose and her longing for the freedom of the open skies makes for much better companion than the dour Englishman who initiated this journey.I related to her in an odd way; escaping from a hardscrabble upbringing through travel and practised elegance. What else could I do but spread my wings and take flight with her?

For most of a decade, government negotiators from around the Pacific Rim have met in utmost secrecy to negotiate a "trade deal" that was kept secret from legislatures, though executives from the world's biggest corporations were allowed in the room and even got to draft parts of the treaty. (more…)

In a new episode of the BBC's Panorama, Edward Snowden describes the secret mobile phone malware developed by GCHQ and the NSA, which has the power to listen in through your phone's mic and follow you around, even when your phone is switched off. (more…)

An excerpt from Monical Helsey's new book I Can't Believe it's Not Better: A Woman's Guide to Coping With Life called "Getting a Job, a Short Story by Your Parents" shows off both Helsey's razor wit and the generational unfairness captured so well by Old Economy Steve. (more…)