https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j22BQe5L3bMIn lieu of upgrading his once-formidable handshake, the President has a new alpha roll: brushing dandruff from Emmanual Macron's suit. It's a perfectly Trumpian neg, a gesture of passive-aggressive buffoonery that makes him look strong to his fans and weak to his foes. Everyone else just has to smile, like Macron, and hope for the best.

Writing in Wired, Rep David N. Cicilline [D-RI], the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary’s Antitrust Subcommittee; and Terrell McSweeny, outgoing Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission write about the real problem with Facebook: it's a creepy, surveillant company that's also really, really big. (more…)

Trump never ceases to show himself as the uncouth buffoon that he is. During his Oval Office meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron's this morning, he went into chimp mode by picking and wiping off a supposed piece of dandruff from the French president's jacket. President Macron was a good sport about it, pretending it was normal for one world leader to groom another in public. Yeesh.

Since the days of Napster, record labels have recruited recording artists as allies in their fight against unauthorized music services, arguing that what was good for capital was also good for labor. (more…)

A young man from Florida hoped to impress a potential prom date with a sign reading "IF I WAS BLACK I'D BE PICKING COTTON,BUT I'M WRITE SO I'M PICKING U 4 Prom?"The Huffington Post:

It's 2018, five years after Edward Snowden's documents revealed the scope of US and allied mass surveillance; after a string of revelations about creepy private-sector cyber-arms-dealers who sell spying tools to stalkers, criminals, and autocratic governments, Google has proposed "Chat," a new Android standard for instant messaging with no encryption and hence zero protection against snooping. (more…)

The Oregon Trail Handheld Game is a Target exclusive at $25, but for $29.20 you can get resold/new ones with Prime -- it's a straight port of the Apple ][+ game with a specialized keypad, about the size of a G1 Gameboy. (via Red Ferret)

The web is an invaluable tool for connecting small businesses with their target audiences. However, when it comes to building a website and marketing online, the learning curve can be steep if you're doing it on your own. The WordPress Essentials Lifetime Bundle can help you out by getting you up to speed with the platform that powers nearly half of the world's websites as well as a host of other tools. It's currently on sale in the Boing Boing Store for $19.This four-course collection guides you through the essentials of creating a WordPress site, managing SEO, building a brand online, and enhancing your technical skills with today's most popular programming tools. You'll dive into what it takes to write sales-driven copy online, enhance your site with CSS and HTML, and foster a number of other skills centered around enhancing your company's digital footprint.You can start your foray into web development with the WordPress Essentials Lifetime Bundle, on sale for $19 today.

Machinist/sculptor Chris Bathgate (previously) is taking a break from small fidget toys and has returned to large format work with the BU 622411311751, which has a distinctly cthuloid/tentacly aspect. (more…)

For three years, International Standards Organization has been wrangling over which cryptographic algorithms will be incorporated into a standard for interoperability in "Internet of Things" gadgets; at issue has been the NSA's insistence that "Simon" and "Speck" would be the standard block cipher algorithms in these devices. (more…)

Slovenian designer and web developer Sašo Krajnc, aka Cvern, says he has always been amazed by string art. He creates large pieces in round frames that depict eyes, faces, animals, and patterns. (more…)

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I came for one weird trick; I stayed for the laughter.

Want to walk down a yellow brick road at a once-defunct, "famously failed" Wizard of Oz theme park? Of course you do. Head over to Beech Mountain in North Carolina in June for one of the six upcoming tours of the Land of Oz.Visitors for these special "Journey with Dorothy" tours will follow Dorothy around the park and help her search for the "wonderful wizard."The park writes:

Last week, just prior to the second anniversary of his death, we heard Prince's original studio cut of "Nothing Compares 2 U", along with previously-unseen rehearsal footage from 1984, all for the first time.Now, on the heels of all that, Prince's estate has announced that it will release an album of previously-unreleased material on September 28.Variety reports:

There's something very delightful about pressing a nice metal stamp into perfectly cooled wax. The YouTubers at Calligraphy Masters gathered up some of their favorites. (more…)

Welcome Ed Piskor back to Boing Boing (previously), where he'll be 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. Here's page 4; read the rest first — Eds.Director’s commentaryIf this were an Avengers comic, Captain America wouldn't worry about protocol or mission objectives in order to save the kid being menaced by nazis. This is an X-Men book so Wolverine gets to be the antsy guy ready to pounce. It’s immaterial regardless because Magneto handles his own business.This page is inspired by the classic standalone issue 268 of Uncanny X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee set in 1941 with a young Captain America meeting Wolvie for the first time. There was also a great episode of the classic ‘90s X-Men cartoon called Old Soldiers (written by Wolverine co-creator Len Wein) that featured this dynamic duo. Both, the comic and the cartoon are equally awesome and you should check them out at any cost.The splash panel with Cap’s shield busting up the nazis is a good formal use of comics which couldn’t exactly translate into other media. I don’t often include sound effects but I wanted to slow the reader down enough to communicate that each smack from the shield was its own unit of time. When you look at that image as a whole, time is traveling at the speed of that star-spangled shield.When I do use sound effects I like them to look the way Wally Wood drew them (for those keeping score at home).I haven’t talked about the unique use of white in X-Men: Grand Design. Many people are fooled into thinking the comic was printed on some kind of off-white vintage stock but in truth I just use Photoshop trickery to mimic that effect. Whenever I want to show some blinding light all that I do is omit the newsprint color from the page, thus allowing the true bleach-white color of the paper to show through. Reading the comic page after page one’s eyes begin to associate the newsprint color with white but when it actually shows up it’s very bright and noticeable.In the last couple panels I wanted to play up the scale between Captain America and Logan (for those who only know the movies, Wolverine is about 5’1” when drawn correctly). Years ago when visiting the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia I remember seeing a preserved skeleton of a giant human being and thinking “If Captain America was a real guy he would be of similar stature and proportion.” I’m a nerd. Can’t apologize for it.The first X-Men Grand Design collection is now available for purchase on Amazon! Stay tuned for another strip this time next week.You can pre-order X-Men: Grand Design, Second Genesis on Amazon today.

SB18-264 -- AKA the Prohibit Public School Teacher Strikes Bill -- was introduced by Colorado Senator Bob Gardner [R-12/303-866-4880/@senbobgardner] and Representative Paul Lundeen [R-19/303-866-2924/@paul_lundeen]; it allows school districts to seek court injunctions banning public school teachers from striking, so that they can be held in contempt should they withdraw their labor, and be imprisoned for contempt. (more…)

IoT Inspector is a new tool from Princeton's computer science department; it snoops on the traffic from home IoT devices and performs analysis to determine who they phone home to, whether they use encryption, and what kinds of data they may be leaking. (more…)

For a Britain's Got Talent audition, stand-up comedian Lost Voice Guy (aka Lee Ridley) performed a brilliant set without speaking a word. The voiceless 37-year-old British comic used a synthetic voice machine to deliver his jokes which had the audience and judges in stitches.He writes:

Brush pens are fun for drawing and lettering because you can vary the line thickness. And unlike a brush, which requires frequent dipping into an inkwell, a brush pen is always loaded with ink (until the barrel runs out, that it.) This Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen includes one hard tip and one soft tip for $7. Or go nuts and by a 4-pack for $10.

Great Big Story had a chat with Rebecca Sharrock, who has a condition called highly superior autobiographical memory (H.S.A.M.). Only about 60 other people on earth share her condition, which allows them to remember, in great detail, almost everything they experience.

UC Berkeley researcher and artist Eric Paulos and his students continue their explorations of "cosmetic computing" with a new prototype and paper about "Human Hair as Interactive Material." If you'd like to coif your own computational locks, they've posted a how-to guide on Instructables. From their research page:

Pro toy photographer Mitchel Wu creates these stunning scenes using "practical effects," physical effects created without computer-generated imagery.

"A new craze for spring -- the Evel Knievel Sky-Sicle and Motor-Sicle combo enables any child to make their favorite ice pops using almost any fruit juice or soda. Just fill 'em up and pop 'em in the freezer."I'll bet he made a fortune selling 'em.Via

Advice from the editors of GQ: Don't read the "totally silly" The Catcher in the Rye. Instead, read Olivia, "the story of a British teenage girl who is sent to a boarding school in France." Don't read Catch-22, because it "fails to capture the absurdities and impossible conflicts of war." Instead, read The American Granddaughter, a "thoughtful, nuanced, and often uproariously funny meditation on war in the 21st century." The editors also warn would be readers to steer clear of the Lord of the Rings series:

High priestess of punk poetry Patti Smith assaults us with her epic 1975 jam "Land" in this trailer for her new concert documentary "Horses: Patti Smith and her Band," celebrating 40 years of her seminal album. The documentary screens tonight as part of the Tribeca Film Festival and the band performs following the movie. Wow.

I hope this forklift driver didn't hurt his shoulder when he saved a keg of beer from falling to the ground.

Katie, a high schooler in Minnesota invited Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to her prom. He wasn't able to make it, but he did have a special surprise for her.

When Freedom of Information Act enthusiast Douglas Palmer used public records requests to explore the games that the CIA uses to train its analysts, he laid the groundwork for republishing these games for general use. (more…)

Researchers from graphics company NVIDIA developed a deep learning system that automatically reconstructs corrupted images or fills in missing parts:

Why are restaurants, bars, and clubs so loud? I often return from a dinner party with a sore throat from having to shout all night just to converse with other people. It wasn't always this way. Julia Belluz, writing for Vox, blames loud restaurants on five things:

Universal FanCon was supposed to fill the Baltimore Convention Center with a celebration of diversity and marginalized folks in fandom, complete with big-name guests and an array of panels. Then it was mysteriously "postponed" without warning, days before it was to commence—a postponement that looks an awful lot like no-refund cancellation.

Look at all these stoners... San Francisco, California, ladies and gentleman!According to SFGate, an estimated 15,000 revelers attended the annual 4/20 gathering at Hippie Hill in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. This free, unofficial and unsanctioned event has been a tradition in the city since the 1970's but this is the first time it's occurred after recreational use of cannabis became legal in California on January 1.

Delta airlines gave a passenger a free apple as an on-flight snack. She took it off the plane, failed to declare the agricultural contraband, and was fined $500 by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol when they found it in her bag.

My wife -- whose father is a TV director who'd worked for the BBC -- learned as a little girl that the British spy agency MI5 secretly vetted people who applied for work at the BBC and denoted possible subversives by putting a doodle of a Christmas tree on their personnel files; people who were thus blacklisted were discriminated against within the Beeb. (more…)

Most of us understand that when we visit a website, we're subjecting ourselves to surveillance by trackers. And, while these tools are usually used for innocuous purposes, like determining which ads to show you, they can be leveraged for much more nefarious goals, and they have the potential to tank your browsing speed as well as your device's battery life.Disconnect has emerged as an online solution that blocks trackers and malware across your entire device, allowing you to surf the web up to 44% faster, use up to 39% less bandwidth, and significantly improve your device's battery life.https://www.youtube.com/embed/eiu0seWdLk4In addition to blocking tracker requests, Disconnect boasts VPN technology that encrypts your browsing movements so that you can surf on public and private networks without your ISP or the government peeking in. What's more, Disconnect also allows you to sidestep geo-restrictions that prevent you from accessing streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu when you're traveling overseas.One-year and three-year Disconnect Premium subscriptions are currently available in the Boing Boing Store for $19 and $29 respectively. For a limited time, use coupon code GETSAFE to save an additional 20% off!

Fox News' Sean Hannity used to make a lot of noise about how President Barack Obama was responsible for a housing crisis that destroyed American families. All that while, through various shell companies, Hannity was cheaply buying foreclosed homes by the hundreds to profit handsomely from that selfsame crisis.

Amazon has long had a problem with shill reviews and quiet removal of negative reviews, but the flood of questionable anti-Comey book reviews by non-purchasers finally prompted them to require a verified purchase in order to rate the book. (more…)

Wired's Nitasha Tiku reports that Facebook's "Download your Data" tool excludes much of the data Facebook keeps on you.

It's long been known that birds possess magnetoreception, or ability to sense earth's magnetic fields. Now researchers are narrowing down a specific eye protein called Cry4 that appears to allow birds to sense magnetic waves in the presence of blue light. (more…)

With majority support in 44 states, and more in favor than opposed in 4 others, same-sex marriage is a done deal for most Americans. Besides, it's legal nationwide after a Supreme Court ruling in 2015. But Americans in two states are holding out when it comes to moral approval: Missisippi, where more are opposed to same-sex marriage than in favor of it, and in Alabama, the last state where an outright majority oppose it.

Originally commissioned as a wrist tattoo, the simple and powerful chart showing how recent black freedom is in America is now also a t-shirt.

Following the smash success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Zealand's actors' union pushed for similar compensation and benefits as American actors. This detailed autopsy of how their demands were met with fierce studio lobbying that ended with politicians changing New Zealand's law in favor of the studios. (more…)

Artist Kathleen Darby takes viewers through her step-by-step process of drawing a colorful bird on black paper. Start at the beginning for more details. It's interesting as well as relaxing, as there are some important differences when starting from negative space. (more…)

Learning how to code is a great way to improve your hiring potential and open the door to more lucrative careers, but getting the ball rolling can be a bit daunting considering the number of languages out there and steep price associated with training. However, the Pay What You Want: Learn to Code 2018 Bundle is making it more accessible by offering 140+ hours of training in today's coding tools, all for a price you get to pick.Here's how the deal works: Simply pay what you want, and you'll instantly unlock one of the collection's ten courses. Beat the average price paid, and you'll get the remaining nine at no extra charge. Plus, if you beat the leader price, you'll be entered into a significant giveaway and earn a spot on the leaderboard.Regardless of your experience level, this collection will guide you through the essentials of working with core coding tools, like Python, Swift, and JavaScript. You'll dive into full-stack development with HTML, CSS, React, and Node, and even get your hands dirty building your own iPhone apps using iOS 11 and Swift.Choose your price, and you can catalyze your coding education with the Pay What You Want: Learn to Code 2018 Bundle.

Tonight at 7PM, I'll be appearing on a panel at the Last Bookstore in downtown LA, with the title "Truth to Power: Genre Fiction in Post-Fact America," alongside of Gretchen McNeil, Jennifer Brody, Christina Cigala, Bobby Goldstein, CB Lee, Michael Paul Gonzalez, Kate Maruyama and Samuel Sattin. (more…)

Unicode pioneer Michael Suignard has submitted a "Revised draft for the encoding of an extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire" in Unicode, trying to replicate the expressivity of the 7,000 hieroglyphs used in Greco/Roman times. (more…)

Mark Zuckerberg says it doesn't matter how creepy and terrible his company is, because you agreed to let him comprehensively fuck you over from asshole to appetite by clicking "I agree" to a tens of thousands of words' worth of "agreements" spread out across multiple webpages; when questioned about this in Congress, Zuck grudgingly admitted that "I don’t think the average person likely reads that whole document." But as far as Zuck is concerned, it doesn't matter whether you've read it, whether you understand it, whether it can be understood -- you still "agreed." (more…)