Last week, a motorcyclist tragically died on a highway near Stanton, Kentucky. A fellow nearby, Saul Vazquez, snapped a photo of the scene from his truck and was surprised to see what appears to be an apparition floating above the deceased. Vazquez posted the image on Facebook but when reached by Lex18 news reporters would only say that "the photo has not been altered."

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Esteemed vernacular photography collector Robert Jackson shares his favorite 19th and 20th century photos of people who've lost their heads thanks to pre-Photoshop trickery. It's a delightful photography tradition that in 1973 inspired my late brother Mark Pescovitz to create his own "Head Photographer (self portrait)," seen at the bottom of this page!"Head Photographer (self portrait)" by Mark Pescovitz, c. 1973:

Gabriel Sherman, National Affairs Editor at New York Magazine, reports that Fox News boss Roger Ailes is being "removed" by the Murdochs. He's been nailed by the company's internal probe into him, triggered by claims of sexual harassment leveled by Gretchen Carlson.

Alexander McQueen's first collection after graduating from Central Saint Martins was Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims which included locks of his hair; for her own grad project, called "Pure Human," Central Saint Martins student Tina Gorjanc created a line of clothes and accessories that asks the audience to imagine that it was made from pelts cloned from DNA retrieved from McQueen's hair strands. (more…)

Nootrobox is a Silicon Valley company that sells nootropics (aka "smart drugs'). The employees there stop eating Monday night and don't eat again until Wednesday morning. From San Jose Mercury News:

This famous photo of a crashed train engine leaning against a building is often seen on posters warning people to plan carefully. The photo was taken on 22 October 1895 at the Gare Montparnasse in Paris. It is commonly referred to as the Montparnasse derailment.At 4:00pm that day the Granville–Paris Express ran through the bumper at the end of the track. (Here are photos of track bumpers, also known as buffer stops.) The train was running late, so the driver was going faster than usual. Unfortunately, the Westinghouse air brake failed. After breaking through the bumper, the train skidded across the concourse and broke through the two-foot thick station wall. The engine fell 30 feet to the street, ending up as you see in the photo. None of the 131 passengers died, but six people were injured and one woman in the street died when she was hit by falling debris. The woman was working at a newsstand at the time. The railway company supported the woman's two children.The passenger cars were completely undamaged. Ten men used a winch to lower the locomotive, which was taken to a repair station. An inspection revealed only minor damage.The crash was beautifully recreated in Martin Scorsese's Hugo. Here's the clip, along with some behind the scenes footage of the making of the models and special effects:https://youtu.be/uCVXl5q5NT8A similar train accident occurred around the same era in Hartford, CT.

Stick computers plug straight into a display's HDMI plug, like a giant USB thumbdrive, and Intel's made the most powerful one yet. At $390, the Intel Compute Stick Core m3 is by far the most expensive in its class, too. (more…)

This photo of congressional interns taken by House Speaker Paul Ryan struck me as lacking in diversity, but I eventually found a ginger. Edit: Dupe!

Senator Paul Ryan is so, so excited about all the white interns in his selfie.[via]

Towns in Mississippi and other Tea Party-ruled states with large (often private) prison industries are totally reliant on state/fed funding transfers to local prisons for cash and jobs, forced prison labor to provide local services for free, and War on Drugs arrests and minimum sentencing to fill those jails. The first tiny steps toward criminal justice reform have eroded the underpinnings of the whole system, leaving the towns facing collapse. (more…)

When I first heard that Radiolab (previously), the wonderful podcast that combines deep dives into technical subjects with masterful storytelling, was going to start a new podcast about the Supreme Court, it sounded like a weird fit. (more…)

An attempted coup is underway in Turkey. Earlier today, barricades were erected on bridges in Istanbul and jets were spotted flying low in Ankara; by 11:30 p.m., the Prime Minister said that the government remained in charge; shortly before midnight, the military—or at least part of it—said it was. (more…)

Editor's note: The following is a first-person account of a personal experience, and should not be taken as medical advice or a recommendation of any kind. If you choose to pursue biohacking as a result of reading this article and something goes wrong, you are not allowed to blame us or the author.A few months ago, on a last-minute whim of curiosity, I attended a biohacking gathering. When I departed L.A. for a random small town address in the Mojave desert, I did not know I would return 36 hours later with my hand wrapped in a bandage, having willingly undergone an unnecessary medical procedure in a wacky garage-turned-mad-science-lab with some guy I'd never met. I did not know I’d be grinning all the way home because I’d become one step closer to being a cyborg. (more…)

It's no secret that San Francisco's cops hate cyclists -- they won't investigate hit-and-runs, they blame cyclists for accidents and harass them, they run them down in bike lanes -- so it's no surprise that they stand by idly while San Francisco's busy biking lanes are turned into pick-up and drop-off zones by Uber and Lyft drivers, forcing cyclists to swerve into traffic. (more…)

The Centers for Disease Control and Infection reported the first confirmed case of Zika transmitted from a woman to a man during sex. Previously, they thought that the disease was only likely to be sexually-transmitted from a male to female or male to male. The CDC will soon update their advisory "for sexually active people in which the couple is not pregnant or concerned about pregnancy and for people who want to reduce personal risk of Zika infection through sex." From CNN:

WWNO New Orleans Public Radio's Ryan Kailath, above, a reporter assigned to cover protests in Baton Rouge, was arrested there (with several other journalists) and charged with obstructing a highway. One of the officers looked at Kailath (who is of south Indian ancestry but booked as black) and said: "I’m tired of y’all saying you’re journalists."https://twitter.com/ryankailath/status/752541299694186497

The Net Neutrality fight in Europe epitomises everything wrong with the EU: a decision that will adversely effect the lives of hundreds of millions of people being taken by unelected bureaucrats, working in obscurity, attended by the well-paid lobbyists of the telcoms industry, which will only make continental headlines when it is a fair accompli. (more…)

Who will be the first to say, "I saw it immediately. I don't understand why anyone would have trouble finding it?"[via]

John from Everylibrary writes, "Please join EveryLibrary in sending congratulations to Dr. Carla Hayden, our new Librarian of Congress, by signing below with your personal comment or reflection of congratulations along with your name. We will take all the signatures and comments made by midnight on Tuesday, July 20th and create a commemorative book for Dr. Hayden. We'll send the book, along with a nice bouquet from all of us, to her this week." (more…)

On Tuesday, Labour Party power-brokers waited until Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters had left a National Election Committee meeting to introduce a not-on-the-agenda motion that disenfranchised more than 200,000 new party members from voting in the upcoming leadership ballot. (more…)

House Bill 972, signed into law by NC governor Pat McCrory [R] on Tuesday, makes police dashcam and bodycam footage off-limits to public records requests, off-limits to anyone who isn't personally pictured in the footage, and then only by request, which can be turned down, forcing subjects to appeal to the state Supreme Court. (more…)

The Republican National Convention kicks off this Sunday in Cleveland, Ohio. Most of the highest-profile activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are not planning to attend, but that didn't stop FBI agents from contacting them by phone, and showing up at their homes to interrogate them and their grandmothers.(more…)

“For your mild amusement, I renamed all my Pokemon whatever my 2 year old called them,” says IMGUR user June1920. Sort of jealous they caught a Claws Parrot.(more…)

Just you like remembered. The former leader of the free world feels something no one else does.

Milan barber Franco Bompieri, proprietor of Antica Barbieria Colla, cuts hair with fire."Burning the ends... the hair evolves," he says. "It becomes bigger, the hair gets stronger and doesn't fall out anymore."

Colonies of ants base decisions like where to establish a nest based on their population density. Scientists theorize that ants can estimate how many of their kind are around by randomly exploring the area and bumping into other ants. New research from MIT computer scientists not only supports this theory but could also be used to analyze social networks, improve robot swarms, and yield improve algorithms for networked communications in distributed computing applications. From MIT News:

The Evangelical School Berlin Centre is a private "free" school -- that is, it costs money to go there, but the tuition is on a means-tested sliding scale, and the students enjoy enormous educational freedom -- that has drawn attention thanks to the exceptional performance of its graduating students. (more…)

Having successfully slipped into orbit around Jupiter, Juno sent its first image back to Earth.

The day that the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that China had been stealing islands in the South China Sea, the Chinese Communist Party Youth League shared this viral video of young Chinese patriots saying "South Sea arbitration, who cares?" (more…)

Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson's sexual harassment suit against her former boss, Roger Ailes, may be dead before its begun, because Fox News makes all its employees sign "binding arbitration" agreements that force them to use a system of private courts that let corporate America make up its own laws. (more…)

I am unsurprised to find long time friend of Boing Boing, Howard Rheingold is in part responsible for changing this street sign. I pass it all the time.Via the Marin IJ:

Described as a "mix between Game of Thrones and House of Cards," a novella written by late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has finally been translated to English. Written in the last days of his rule, the plot reportedly "revolves around a Zionist-Christian conspiracy against Arabs," a presumably unsurprising topic to fans. (more…)

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UPDATE: "Mark Dwayne Gordon was arrested Sunday and subsequently booked into jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, battery and vandalism in connection with the attack Saturday on Rangeland Road, just west of Ramona, sheriff’s Sgt. Rob Samuels said." - Fox local newsA gentleman in a large vehicle took issue with a photography crew standing in his "driveway," and charged at them several times with his vehicle then jumped out to intimidate them.Here's the photographer's side of the story:

The Republican party platform is veering to the right as GOP delegates descend on Cleveland to produce the party’s principles document. Several positions about same-sex marriage and scientifically debunked “gay conversion therapy” passed preliminary votes today. (more…)

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It's lucky the kid didn't snap his neck in this weird human rodeo gif!

PostGhost kept a record of everything that Twitter's Verified users said, even deleted tweets that may have been embarrassing or otherwise reputation impacting. Twitter sent PostGhost a cease and desist letter, effectively eliminating this public record of stuff that people have said but no longer want read.(more…)

A couple in Italy will not be getting their child back, after their 14 month old son was hospitalized for severe malnutrition.Via SF Gate:

The anglosphere has a bewildering proliferation of regional names for corner stores: "variety stores," "bodegas," "delis," "corner shops," "party stores," "package stores" (often shortened to the unfortunate "packies"), "offies/off-licenses," "milk bars," etc. (more…)

When Amazon decided to allow Chinese sellers to direct-list their products on the service (rather than going through domestic importers), it was seen as a defensive move against Alibaba, their deep-pocketed Chinese rival and vendor of everything from legit gadgets to crime supplies. (more…)

Amazon has a sale on Dash Buttons. They are stick on buttons with a wireless connection that lets you order household supplies without using your computer and logging on to Amazon. They are regularly $5, but today they're just 99 cents each, and you get a $5 credit on your first press.This website has lots of projects for hacking Dash buttons.

"A crack appeared on the ceiling of my sister's apartment," writes atmanz11. "Three days later, this happened."

The Rhyzodiastes (Temoana) xii is a newly classified species of beetle, indigenous to China's Hainan Island, whose name is a tribute to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. (more…)

You can make the train appear to move toward you or away from you by imagining it.