Consumer Reports covers cellphone identity theft, which includes taking out cellphone accounts in your name and using them to establish credit that can be leveraged to get credit-cards and loans in your name; and to steal your cellphone numbers and hijack your other accounts by intercepting two-factor authentication texts from your bank and other services. (more…)

Researchers at the US National Cancer Institute have reported in on an experimental breast cancer therapy that achieved remarkable results, rehabilitating Judy Perkins from the brink of death (she had been given two months to live, had tumors in her liver and throughout her body) to robust health two years later. (more…)

Apple might produce some of the most advanced computers on the market, but like all devices, they too accumulate clutter and can slow down over time. Whether your Mac is weighed down by duplicate photos or poorly saved files, CleanMyMac 3 is capable of tidying up your computer's storage space and revitalizing its performance. This app is available in the Boing Boing Store for $27.99.From iTunes to Photos and Mail, CleanMyMac 3 scans every inch of your system, removing gigabytes of junk in just two clicks, while continuously monitoring the health of your Mac. It only removes junk that is 100% safe to delete and can even shave gigabytes off your photo and music libraries without deleting a single song or image. Plus, its capable of locating all of your Trash bins and emptying them all for a more thorough cleaning.CleanMyMac 3 is available in the Boing Boing Store for $27.99.

Ed Piskor's offering an annotated page-by-page look at the first part of X-Men: Grand Design, his epic retelling of how Marvel comics' pantheon of heroes came to be. Catch up here. — Eds.Director’s commentary…

Rob Ford was Toronto's laughable, deplorable crack-addict mayor; his brother is a far-right Trump figure, running for Premier of Ontario (having stolen the party leadership through dirty tricks), who created literal fake news when he hired a pretend reporter to follow him on the campaign trail and ask him softball questions. (more…)

Kevin from Mozilla writes, "In a world where biased algorithms, skewed data sets, and broken recommendation engines can radicalize YouTube users, promote racism, and spread fake news, it’s more important than ever to support artwork and advocacy work that educates and engages internet users." (more…)

In Lattice, artist Maria Constanza Ferreira filmed microscopic crystals growing in a lab, then animated them into a mesmerizing work of art. (more…)

Alex from Copy-Me writes, "Copy-Me's got a fresh video out on the myths behind the way we process and arrive at 'fully formed' ideas. Minds do not operate differently for different people. Minds do not leap. And they don’t work unconsciously. (more…)

The small but bright fissure at the left edge of Kilauea's lava field can already be seen from space via infrared imaging, but it's dwarfed by the magnitude of previously existing flows. (more…)

In 1997, South Korean artist Lee Bul's "Majestic Splendor," an installation of bedazzled rotting fish, was removed from New York's MoMA because the stink was too much for visitors. To prevent the odor problem from interfering with Bul's new retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery, he put the fish in potassium permanganate. Of course, potassium permanganate is frequently used as a firestarter and can easily lead to a blaze when combined with tiny amounts of other common chemicals. From Frieze:

Aaron Tilley's Thin Skinned is an evocative and slightly unsettling short depicting foods with delicate skins undergoing various torments. It's kind of sensual and kind of disturbing at once. (more…)

On Tested's Offworld, Boing Boing pals Ariel Waldman and Adam Savage talk with astronaut Jim Newman about the 1983 film The Right Stuff, early NASA missions, and how "astronaut culture" has changed over the years.

Jonathan Zittrain (previously) writes, "There’s reason to worry about security for the ever-growing Internet of Things, and it’ll be tempting to encourage vendors to solely control their devices that much more, limiting interoperability or user tinkering. There are alternatives - models for maintaining firmware patches for orphaned devices, and a 'Faraday mode' so that iffy devices can still at least partially function even if they’re not able to remain safely online. Procrastination around security has played a key role in its success. But 'later' shouldn’t mean 'never' for the IoT." (more…)

Bavaria's far-right, Islamophobic government enacted its Kreuzpflicht ("cross obligation") law, which mandates that every government building must display a Christian cross, and finessed this violation of Germany's legally enforced separation of church and state by claiming the crosses were "cultural," not "religious" and by saying that each building "should hang up the cross as they think best." (more…)

Since everyone's doing posts about their favorite cover of Toto's "Africa," here's my frontrunner, because it's very Norwegian: metal and ironic and funny all at once. (more…)

No big deal, just a short video of just some dude sliding down the side of a mountain, hydroplaning over glacial waters and then backflipping onto a chunk of ice.Please, continue with your day.

Ugears makes gorgeous wooden puzzle toys made from laser-cut plywood that snap-fits to create beautiful, retro machines and sculptures with meshing, working geared mechanisms. (more…)

Researchers have developed a generative neural network to make fake videos of talking heads. It's getting a lot harder to tell the difference between real and deep fakes.

This summer, San Francisco's Exploratorium is hosting an exhibit called Inflatable, featuring air-filled works by several artists. (more…)

Hey gang, let's talk Ebola: Everyone's favorite viral boogeyman.Over the weekend, the AFP News Agency reported that health professionals in the Democratic Republic of Congo have uncovered five new confirmed cases of Ebola: three cases in the Bikoro area and two in Wangata. This most recent outbreak of the disease in the country’s northwest has resulted in more than 50 confirmed cases and 25 deaths. These numbers, of course, only reflect the incidents of the disease that health agencies such as the World Health Organization and Medecins Sans Frontieres and DR Congo’s healthcare system are aware of.As such, the push to track everyone who has come into contact with the disease and take appropriate precautions continues, albeit slowly. One of the biggest hurtles in tracking and containing Ebola is that, logistically, the rural regions of DR Congo are a pain in the ass. The roads are often so pocketed with potholes that the only way to reliable traverse them is with a motorcycle—and that’s if there are any roads at all. Many of the smaller villages surrounding Bikoro are packed away by dense jungle. Additionally, cellular coverage in the country’s northwestern region comes with massive holes. This makes doing important work, such as sending field operatives into areas of infection, shipping vaccines or sending collected data back for processing extremely difficult.According to the New York Times, because of these difficulties, researchers are having a hard time piecing together how the current strain of the virus was transmitted. This, in turn, makes vaccinating the right people in the hopes of stopping the spread of the disease an uphill battle. Currently, the priority is on identifying and isolating anyone in and around the city of Mbandaka who may have come into contact with Ebola. The why of it is that Mbandaka is only 500 miles down river from DR Congo’s capital city, Kinshasa. Were Ebola to spread to the capital region, the disease would become much more difficult to contain.From the New York Times:

Jordan is broke, thanks to falling tax revenues due to tax avoidance and low taxes on the super-rich, and the country is seeking to bridge the gap in its finances by borrowing from the International Monetary Fund, which backed a bill that imposed crushing cuts on public services to ensure that money could be found to pay back Jordan's creditors. (more…)

An FBI agent was showing off his dance moves at a Denver bar on Saturday, but when he did a backflip, his gun flew out of his holster. When he grabbed it off the ground, it fired into the crowd that was watching him and hit a patron in the leg.According to CNN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDk4HrEtGrM&feature=youtu.be"Saccades" are the phenomenon where your eyes flick momentarily from one place to another; during saccades, you don't consciously register visual input, creating tiny moments of blindness (AKA "saccadic suppression"). (more…)

https://youtu.be/i1pdQjdAndcMIT 9.11, "The Human Brain," is taught by Nancy Kanwisher, the Walther A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MIT; Kanwisher is an engaging and lively science communicator and has posted videos of the complete course lecture series for your perusal; her own speciality is neuroimaging, and the introductory lecture is a fascinating (and, at times, terrifying) tale of her colleague's neurological condition and what she learned from it. (via Four Short Links)

This Canary Resuscitator was manufactured in the 1920s by Siebe Gorman and Co.; it was carried by miners to revive the canaries that were used from the late 19th century until 1987(!) as early-warning signals for potentially lethal gas leaks. (more…)

In 2014, the Economist described a "Cambrian explosion" of tech startups trying every conceivable idea in every conceivable variation, competing to find better ways to deliver better services at lower costs; today it laments the "kill-zone" of business ideas that are unfundable, either because Big Tech is already doing them, or because Big Tech might someday do them. (more…)

Government Attic used the Freedom of Information Act to force the NSA to cough up its "old security posters from the 1950s and 1960s"; after two years' delay, the NSA finally delivered 139 pages' worth of gorgeous, weird, revealingly paranoid internal materials, produced by an incredibly prolific internal security office who constantly refreshed their poster designs (presumably to keep them from disappearing into the background), all funded with US public money and thus in the public domain for your remixing pleasure (a few dozen of my favorites below!). (more…)

Just in time for Father's Day, here's a sweet animated film Tend, about a father who becomes too focused on tending a fire, at the expense of his young daughter. (more…)

Česko Slovensko Má Talent is the Czech-Slovak version of the popular talent show franchise, and they had a family of mirror-clad dancers compete. Note: their dancing is really more like gingerly swaying about, for understandable reasons. (more…)

The blog Homophones, Weakly helps young learners and iffy spellers master English homophones with fun and simple graphic mnemonics. Now, it's coming out as a book. (more…)

Nerikomi is a classical form of pottery where different colored clays are rolled into cylinders, then cross-sectioned to reveal a pattern. So soothing to watch the string cut through!Faith Rahill has a great step-by-step demonstration here:

Over the weekend, Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey spotted a near-earth asteroid just a few hours before its impact trajectory took it right into our atmosphere. Luckily, it burned up before impact. (more…)

Anthony Rubio dressed up his chihuahuas Bogie and Kimba in costumes inspired by this year's Met Gala theme: Heavenly Bodies. The result is, well, heavenly. Now he's compiling a book and needs your help. (more…)

Anyone who was a hippie or who grew up knowing a hippie or two probably saw these intricate carved candles here and there. They eventually went mainstream in the 1970s, like macramé. (more…)

Ever wonder how to make those trippy cinemagraphs and animated gifs? One fairly easy was it with Plotagraph, as demonstrated in this tutorial. (more…)

Donald Trump can't be indicted for anything, including murder, says his attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The former federal prosecutor told Huffington Post that, "In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted. I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is," adding, "If he shot James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."But would Congress really impeach Trump for murdering someone? McConnell and Ryan would simply say, "The last thing we need to do is get bogged down with impeachment proceedings. Let's not let this unfortunate incident get in the way of making America great again."From Huffington Post:

https://youtu.be/ppbiP-IBVxgSydney's annual Vivid festival fills the harbour with barges equipped with powerful projectors that use the buildings ringing the harbour (especially the iconic Sydney Opera House) as geometrically complex screens for projection-mapped lightshows, synchronised to music. (more…)

The UK consumer review magazine Which? (equivalent to America's Consumer Reports) has published a special investigation into the ways that Internet of Things smart devices are spying on Britons at farcical levels, with the recommendation that people avoid smart devices where possible, to feed false data to smart devices you do own, and to turn off data-collection settings in devices' confusing, deeply hidden control panels. (more…)

Private equity's favorite shell game is to take over profitable businesses, sell off their assets, con banks into loaning them hundreds of millions of dollars, cash out in the form of bonuses and dividends, then let the businesses fail and default on their debts. (more…)

Disneyland employees' average hourly wages have decreased in real terms every year for more than 15 years, while the company has taken in record municipal subsidies from the city of Anaheim and soared in profitability, returning high dividends to its shareholders. (more…)

Facebook's corporate structure allows Zuckerberg to overrule his board of directors and shareholder by giving extra votes to a special class of shares that Zuck gets to hold -- similar to the structure of Google or Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp. (more…)

Illinois lawmakers have want to end inmates' co-payments of $5 for each prison doctor visit -- the equivalent of a month's wages in the prison's $0.05/hour and under workshops; in Oregon, they're contemplating creating a $3-5/visit co-pay. (more…)

Nigerian rapper Falz created This Is Nigeria, a parody of This Is America that switched out lyrics and imagery for social ills in his country: machete-wielding gangs, codeine use, internet scammers, and much more. (more…)

Tapplock sells a fingerprint-enabled padlock for $100. Zack was able to defeat it quickly and quietly by twisting off the back plate and removing a couple of screws. Ouch. (more…)

Ah, the good old days, when logging on to social media meant sticking a big honkin' floppy in your TRS-80, then tying up a land line by cradling the handset on your modem. (more…)

It's the bicentennial of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a tale that casts a long shadow in many domains, including the linguistic. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKKwgq9LRgAYoutube allows people -- some of them not very nice -- to earn incredible livings by performing stunts, playing videogames, creating sketches, anything that attracts an audience. (more…)

Officials in Trump's Department of Energy prepared a plan to use unprecedented "emergency powers" to force the US grid to rely on expensive, unprofitable coal and nuclear power, rather than paying market rates for cheaper sources of energy: renewables and natural gas. (more…)

I was practically raised on the Whole Earth Catalog and its successors like the Co-Evolution Quarterly, the Whole Earth Review and the WELL -- pioneering publications whose motto, "access to tools and ideas," turned into the maker movement and helped create the movement for free, fair and open internet infrastructure. (more…)