For six months, 5-year-old Khloe Russell was battling what seemed to be a nasty sinus infection. Unfortunately, no antibiotics seemed to help. Last weekend, Khloe's uncle said, "Your nose, it's disgusting. Blow your nose, blow your nose.'" She did, and a blackened, disintegrating safety pin emerged. Khloe feels much better now. From UPI:

Luna Lee plays Nirvana on an ancient, traditional Korean instrument called the gayageum.

Thanks to meddlesome FBI agents, the San Francisco sheriff's department will no longer be able to operate a fight club in which inmates were allegedly forced to beat each other up gladiator-style, while guards watched and bet on the outcomes.

The Glitch News Network is the latest twitterbot from Shardcore, a prolific purveyor of mad bots (previously). (more…)

UK culture secretary John Whittingdale gave a speech at the Oxford Media Convention where he compared adblocking to piracy and vowed "to set up a round table involving major publishers, social media groups and adblocking companies in the coming weeks to do something about the problem." (more…)

This Gigeresque biscuit barrel, sculpted by Paul Harding, stands 12" tall, and it'll run you $45 at Thinkgeek. (via Geeky Merch)

Author and former CIA officer Barry Eisler spoke at the Association of Former Intelligence Officers opposite ex-CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden on Monday. In front of about a hundred former CIA, FBI, and NSA operatives, Eisler talked about bulk surveillance, whistleblowing, and why intelligence professionals need to take especially great care not to let propaganda pervert their intelligence.(more…)

The ad-subsidized Web is at a crossroads: faced with pressure from social media platform, publishers are accepting ever-more-intrusive ads, which combine with the mounting public concern over privacy and tracking to encourage ad-blocking, which, in turn, makes publishers more desperate and more biddable to the darkest surveillance and pop-up desires of advertisers. (more…)

In a linked series of tweets, @hilzoy offers an empathic, incisive explanation for the rise and rise of Drumpf. (more…)

There's nothing I love more than public signs (I've photographed over 2500 of them!); they reveal the things that people think other people don't understand. (more…)

Dan Kaminsky, one of the Internet's essential squad of "volunteer fire fighters" who oversaw the largest-ever synchronized vulnerability patching in Internet history, has written a stirring editorial for Wired explaining what the FBI puts at risk when it demands weaker encryption: it's not our privacy, it's the security of finance, health care, roads, and every other piece of tech-enabled infrastructure in the land. (more…)

You might think that your phone is the most important thing in your pocket, but you’d be wrong. Your wallet is essential on both sides of the coin. First, you’d be screwed without it, but second, it makes you look good. A handsome wallet is a total statement for any guy and lucky for you there are a few out there worth showing off.EOS Titanium WalletThe EOS Titanium Wallet takes your money holder high-tech. This is a dual-plate, ultra strong titanium, flame-treated piece that’s 28% off too and you won’t worry for a second about your cards or cash slipping through the cracks here. For being super slim, it can still hold up to 25 cards plus cash and it rocks a bottle opener for celebrating your spending or saving.DPTR ClamshellThe DPTR Clamshell can keep your dollar stack thick because it’s 28% off right now. It’s made of pure, buttery black leather straight out of an old school Chicago tannery. The elastic bands hug your cards to keep everything safe, all while keeping a slim, classic profile.Adonit Wallet CaseThe Adonit Wallet Case keeps it all together nice and neat, smartphone, ID’s and all. Not only does it have a tidy elastic pocket for your cards and cash, but it protects your phone from bumps and scratches. For 32% off right now, you’ll never to dig around in your pockets or bag again because it’s all in one place.These wallets will keep your cash, cards and and street cred cool when you pull them out to pay for a meal. Each one offers unique protection and style so check out the links for more details.

The House Judiciary committee hearing today titled, “The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans’ Security and Privacy” ended up being full of drama, and riveting moments of confrontation--along with a cavalcade of inept analogies for encryption and hardware security.(more…)

Welcome to what may well be our future, America.(more…)

Among the many revelations in John Oliver's definitive takedown of Donald Drumpf was the fact that the thin-skinned billionaire had been so wounded by being called a "short-fingered vulgarian" by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter that he's spent a quarter-century sending Carter letters decorated with tracings of his hand-geometry to prove the length of his fingers. (more…)

Author and former CIA officer Barry Eisler spoke at the Association of Former Intelligence Officers opposite ex-CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden on Monday. Below, an adaptation of his opening remarks about the importance of whistleblowers and government transparency. Eisler's new novel, "God's Eye View," inspired by the Snowden revelations, is available now on Amazon.(more…)

From the camp of two lawmakers who recently introduced Senate legislation to establish “an independent National Commission on Security and Technology Challenges,” news that Senators Mark R. Warner (D-VA) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) will join their Senate colleagues in discussing the legislation on the Senate Floor. You can watch it live, and you should. Today at 3pm ET/12pm PT.(more…)

Never before has Bernie Sanders' “Feel The Bern” campaign slogan made more sense to me than with this new fuzzy black velvet fluorescent coloring-art poster by Kii Arens.(more…)

FBI Director James Comey and Apple's senior vice president and general counsel, Bruce Sewell, are scheduled to testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing today titled 'The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy.'(more…)

In 1976, Star Trek fans converged on Denver, Colorado's Northglenn Mall for one of the first conventions! One Trekker in attendance captured the experience (Nimoy and Doohan in person!) on Super 8 film that's now been digitized and uploaded to YouTube.(Thanks, UPSO!)

For $5,000 and up, Etsy seller Ultra Violet Production House will ship you a black leather sofa, sewing supplies, white paint pens, and punk band-patches, along with instructions for affixing the latter to the former to make a sofa that looks like you skinned a herd of crustypunks and made a sofa out of their pelts. (via Crazy Abalone)

In 1982, Rochester, NY post-punk/dadaist/political musical group Party Dogs -- cyberculture pioneer RU Sirius (Mondo 2000, Reality Hackers) along with Matt Sabo, Pat Lowery, Hugh Edwards, and Kwashe -- recorded some catchy numbers that sat in the dustbin of reel-to-reel history. RU has digitized the dementia for online eternity and today releases the classic "President Mussolini Makes The Planes Run On Time," remixed for Super Tuesday by Phriendz. Enjoy!Here's the full EP: Party Dogs(photo by Eve Berni)

The media made Trump: he's the perfect, click-driving mashup of fearmongering and demagoguery, and if it bleeds, it leads. (more…)

For a week, a mysterious high-pitched tone has been interrupting the sleep of people in Forest Grove, a suburb of Portland. The sound has been coming and going for decades.Here's what it sounds like. It's loud and annoying:

Miserable Men: "Men that went shopping. It's a global epidemic. Send photos to miserablemenpics@gmail.com"

xkcd's infographic show the "size of the U.S.'s pipelines if each fluid produced or consumed in the U.S. had to be carried by a single pipe."

From Steve Jurvetson's YouTube channel: "The robot's lifelike movement catches the attention of a real dog. The uncanny uncanine valley. This is the latest quadruped robot from Google's Boston Dynamics group, and the only one outside of the military."

A group of about 30 black Valdosta State University students say that they were ejected yesterday from an on-campus Trump speech by Secret Service agents who told them that Donald Trump didn't want them in the audience. (more…)

Two key decisions in the history of Disney parks have put them in an eternal war to balance capacity and pricing: deciding not to close the parks to new entrants on crowded days, and doing away with ticket books for rides. (more…)

When Vanity Fair asked a bunch of celebrities at the Oscars to “swap faces with Leo DeCaprio” with the MSQRD app, their responses were pretty funny. Larry David's was very Larry David. “No.”(more…)

Some wonderful person uploaded scans of every Playboy Playmate centerfold to imgur. It's an amazing collection, whether your interests are prurient or lofty. Kind of amazing to see how our standards of hotness, and the art of commercial erotic photography, have changed over time. (more…)

I've been told so many stories about why we have daylight savings in America, the stupid tradition is baffling. California is considering doing away with the odd, and annoying bi-annual clock shift.The Sacramento Bee shares some of the confused history of this questionable practice:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is famous for rarely speaking in court. In fact, he hasn't asked a single question in ten years. But he broke his silence this morning on a case about domestic violence convictions and gun rights. He directed his question toward, Ilana H. Eisentein, a lawyer for the federal government:“Ms. Eisenstein, one question. This is a misdemeanor violation. It suspends a constitutional right. Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?”The New York Times says Thomas doesn't speak often because he was teased about the way he talked growing up:

In the early 1990s, BB pal Joi Ito (now director of the MIT Media Lab) hosted bOING bOING patron saint Timothy Leary on a trip to Japan. At the time, Tim was energized by the intersection of youth culture and digital technology to empower the individual. Above, video that Joi and friends shot of Tim in fine form. Man, I miss him, and those cyberdelic days. Bonus shout-out at 8:25 to Anarchic Adjustment, Nick Philip's surreal and inspiring clothing line that evolved into today's Imaginary Foundation!

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Did you think the classical Greek myths were a dry read? Think again. Written from the perspective of a high school kid, and in the same style as the novels of the same name, the book is a rollicking good read. Narrator Percy Jackson, the irreverent son of the god Poseidon and a mortal woman, brings the stories of Greek Heroes to the level of teenagers by using the language of a teen. It pokes fun at the ancient Greek heroes with pull quotes such as “Shooting Hermes in the butt was always good for a laugh,” and chapter titles like Phaeton Fails Driver’s Ed.The Greek myths are, in a word, violent. But the lopping off of heads, the infidelities and petty jealousies of the gods are sanitized for family reading by the language used. As Percy describes it, “Greek Myths have a lot of gross stuff in them.” For example, the conception of the Minotaur – “Persiphae was walking past the royal bull pens as quickly as possible to avoid the smell when she happened to glance at the king’s prize white bull. She stopped in her tracks. It was true love. Okay folks. At this point, feel free to put down the book and run around in circles screaming 'EEEEWWWWW!'"I will admit – I learned things I had not known from other readings of the Greek myths, and I giggled crazily over many points in the telling of the myths and the new perspectives given to these heroes – Theseus has ADHD – who knew?The physical book itself is beautiful. The hardcover mimics the color and shape of more expensive hand-bound and sewn journals. The large coffee-table book size and colorful slip cover is attractive. There are full-page painted pictures as well as columnar graphics that illustrate highlights of the story. The second of its kind, with Percy Jackson's Greek Gods being the first, this book is just pure fun to read. – Carolyn KohPercy Jackson's Greek Heroes

Atelier a Pates, a small artisanal pasta shop in Thiefosse, France, has a booming business in radiatori, fusilli, spaghetti and penne made from seven percent pulverized crickets and grasshoppers. From CTV News:

The Last Chance K9 Service in New Albany, Indiana is just one of several companies that sells the services of drug detection dogs to parents who think their kids are hiding drugs in their room. A visit costs $99. Since opening in September of last year, owner Michel Davis says his K9 teams have searched more than 50 homes and have a 90 percent hit rate. For example, one teen had stashed his weed in a cereal box and another hid her pot pipe in an Altoids can. The dogs weren't fooled. I'm sure these cases end with big, teary, loving family hugs and the kids say nope to dope from then on. From the Courier-Journal:

Sugar Film from Paul Tuffery. The Video Guys on Vimeo.That Sugar Film is a 2014 documentary about sugar in food, and the effects of a high sugar diet. You can watch the entire movie on Vimeo.

Filmmaker Candice Drouet "collected images from all the movies I have seen in my life and split them in different themes" for a project titled "My Life In 1.000.000 Frames." The first edited collection, seen here, is titled "(A Story Told With) The Last Words From 129 Films."

https://youtu.be/1jJP0CcuJyEMr. Gear shows how to break a padlock by levering a pair of nut wrenches between the shackle, which breaks off a chunk of the padlock body. I don't recognize the brand of these padlocks, so they might be made from weak metal. It's probably better to shim a padlock with a piece of an aluminum can, as shown below:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRjNnnLOpmE

The Raspberry Pi got a major upgrade. The third revision of this tiny, $35 Linux computer is 50% faster than the Raspberry Pi 2 and has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE. Alasdair Allan of MAKE has a good first look at the board.MAKE: Meet the New Raspberry Pi 3 — A 64-bit Pi with Built-in Wireless and Bluetooth LEHere's Eben Upton, founder of Raspberry Pi, talking to MAKE about the Pi 3:https://youtu.be/37_7arZZlUI

This bee is clearly smarter than me. [via]

https://vine.co/v/igWT9HBUnXpThis remarkable vine shows various famous Hollywoodites apparently refusing to applaud Jenny Beavans, the costume designer from Mad Max: Fury Road, who won an Oscar for her work last night. One suggestion is that it's because she wore a leather jacket, in keeping with the movie's fashion vibe—but how would they know until she was already walking past them?"I've seen subtler reactions from a cartoon wolf," writes Nate Jones.

This neat map presents Europe not as a collection of countries but as a diagram of its largest cities; the accompanying post argues that large cities effectively transcend their host nations and will become the 21st century's geopolitical order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEbmYp5VVcw&feature=youtu.beSuzuki Kango carved over 400 wooden parts for his senior thesis exhibition project: it uses "four magnetic stylus pens on a magnetic drawing board to mechanically write the full time every minute in 24-hour format."

You know how when you’re playing around on your favorite app and you’re tapping and swiping and it all feels so easy and looks so good? That’s UX and UI and someone built and designed it so that your experience would be easy, fun and awesome. Now for 96% off, you can be that guy and create amazing tech products that users are obsessed with. Swipe, tap and create apps and sites that capture hearts across the boards. Start racking up those likes for your own work.There are eight courses here with a total of over thirty nine hours of content. This includes lessons on becoming a senior design strategist, rapid prototyping, and building for mobile on both Apple and Android. You’ll learn tactics from major companies on how they utilize design to keep customers coming back for repeat engagement. After running mobile tests you’ll learn why some platforms work and others don't and apply the same design principles used for some of the most popular apps in the world.Your portfolio will now include samples of your UX and UI work. Not only will you know the design strategies behind the interface here, but you’ll know the business elements that drive user retention. For 96% off right now, all this content can be yours to peruse at your own pace and take your skills to the next level, to bump up your title at your current job or take your talents on the road to a whole new gig. Check out the link below for more details.Save 96% on this UI/UX Designer Bundle in the Boing Boing Store.BONUS FREEBIEBootstrap 3.0 Themes Mega Bundle Put those new UI/UX skills to use and create a stylish, responsive website with this freebie theme bundle.

https://youtu.be/e9geYl9J_McIn an interview on CNN this morning, Donald Trump said he would not disavow the support of white nationalist and ex-Ku Klux Klansman David Duke, or white supremacist groups in general, because he doesn't know about them:

PC Mark McKay, a police officer in Camberwell, London, tweeted this warning to locals to beware of bike racks that thieves have sawn through and camouflaged with gaffer tape; once the bikes are locked up, the thieves return, remove the tape, and make off with the bikes. (more…)

You’ve seen the movies. James Bond’s 007 and Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt always have one of those super smart, OK, scary smart, tech guys who can seemingly run the world from their phone or laptop, and even blow things up at a moment’s notice without leaving a single trace. Well, now you’re that guy. For 89% off right now you can get a premium subscription to proXPN VPN.So now you can surf the internet superhighway without a care in the world. First of all, your connection will be bananas fast so you won’t be waiting for sites to load or for data to come through. It’s all there at your fingertips the instant you need it. Next, your IP address is masked, even on public networks, so you’re completely anonymous. Your browsing is encrypted using PPTP or OpenVPN with a 512-bit tunnel and 2048-bit encryption key. It also unlocks geo-blocked content so you can check out whatever you want online, no matter where your travels take you around the world.It’s incredibly easy to both setup and use and you’ll never worry again about connecting safely and staying secure. It’s 89% off and even includes VPNguard which automatically shuts down any program you choose if your proXPN connection drops. All of this comes with unlimited technical bandwidth, to boot. The technical support is world-class, should you have any concerns or questions at all. Check out the link below for more details.Take 89% Off a Premium Subscription to proXPN VPN in the Boing Boing Store.

https://youtu.be/qsd7ogqfSHYDo you need a phone that's difficult to track and trace? Brian Brushwood and Jason Murphy (host and producer of NatGeo's Hacking the System) show you how to get an $8 dumb phone and load it with minutes using cash.