Ten days ago, the European Parliament dealt a major blow to a radical proposal that would force online services to deploy copyright bots to examine everything posted by users and block anything that might be a copyright infringement; the proposal would also ban linking to news articles without paid permission from the news sites. (more…)

Brent Longborough did me the enormous favor of translating my latest Locus column, Zuck's Empire of Oily Rags, into Portuguese, and sent it to me to publish.(more…)

That'd be a no.

The little pink-edged ferns above are Azolla filiculoides, and they're smaller than a fingernail. Scientists just made it the first fern to get its genome sequenced because of its potential for fertilizing and even cooling the planet. Fifty million years ago, it was so abundant as ocean blooms that it helped cool the earth's atmosphere. Via Quartz:

Axel Voss is the German MEP responsible for Article 13 of the pending EU Copyright Directive, which says that it's not good enough for companies to remove infringing material posted by users once they're notified of its existence; instead, Voss wants then to spend hundreds of millions of dollars implementing automated filters that prevent anyone from posting copyrighted material in the first place (even if they have the right to do so under fair dealing, and even if that means that a lot of legitimate material gets accidentally blocked). (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYvS7r9_MwQZach Smith writes, "Lorenzo Music's Carlton the Doorman was one of TV's great unseen characters...but he finally got a face in this special, intended as a series pilot. And he...kind of looked like a hippie. The intended series would have been one of the first adult-oriented prime-time cartoons, but while it didn't make it past the pilot, it did win an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program...and Lorenzo Music would have better luck in animation a few years later when he started voicing Garfield the Cat. The special, which was never rebroadcast after its initial airing, is also available on the RHODA: SEASON FIVE DVD set from SHOUT! Factory, and the YouTube channel this is on has a treasure trove of unaired series, alternate first episodes, concept presentations and more."

Democratic Socialist heroine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (previously) is heading to Congress this fall, and though she's promised not to blow up the Democratic party when she gets there, she's not going to let the pro-finance establishment roll over her. (more…)

https://youtu.be/QkXeMoBPSDkSacha "Ali G/Borat" Baron Cohen has a new prank show called "Who Is America?" in the offing in which he punks political figures into endorsing bizarre, extreme political positions (think of it as a 21st century "Brass Eye"). (more…)

As far back as 2012, UCLA researchers were publishing studies that showed that Americans basically never used their "formal spaces" -- dining rooms, "great rooms" and parlours -- instead, they spend most of their time in the kitchen and the "informal" den. (more…)

The UK will give you a visa if you "invest" USD2.65M in the country; historically these "millionaire visas" were used by Eastern European oligarchs and other looters whose "investments" were in shell companies or high-end, empty luxury flats, or similar socially useless ways of laundering their fortunes. (more…)

Silicon Valley's War on Walls has declared its first casualties according to a new study in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Those casualties are workplace interaction and productivity. (more…)

Alex Jones accused the grieving parents of the dead children of Sandy Hook of being "crisis actors" and kicked off a campaign of brutal harassment by his idiotic followers -- 900,000 of them on Facebook alone. (more…)

Coming to Netflix soon. It's enraged the online nazis for the usual reasons, but this time it's particularly delicious because they can't even pretend it was ever for them. When they say she looks like a boy, all you have to do is take that thought seriously, just for a second, to understand how completely they're losing that particular aspect of the culture wars.

On April 18th, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, announced that changes would be made to the country’s social security system: workers would be forced to pay more but would receive fewer benefits, despite their increased contributions. Understandably, people were pissed. They staged peaceful demonstrations. Then came the not so peaceful ones: the outrage the nation’s citizens felt over the changes to a system they had paid into the whole of their working lives, spilled over into resentment for the Nicaraguan government as a whole. Since then, 300 civilians have died. On July 14th, Nicaraguan police and pro-government paramilitary types trapped a group of student protestors inside of a church and commenced firing on those inside with military-grade arms. The whole, bloody, terrifying show was captured on video and in Twitter posts from inside of the church. One young man named Gerald, was from the city of Masaya. He was in Managua, Nicaraguas capital, attending university. Gerald was shot in the head—dead at 20 years old. His last rights delivered by a priest who was trapped in the church with him. Those trapped in the church have since been allowed to go free. Its said that there is at least one other dead and several wounded as a result of the incident. Daniel Ortega’s been in office as the President of Nicaragua for 11 years. To get there, he ran for the position from 1990 until 2007. It was with a promise to improve the lives of the poor, to end the rampant corruption that infected Nicaragua’s political elite. Ortega came from a poor family, that was well known for being unable to pay the rent on the flats where they lived. The Ortegas moved from place to place, pushed out for not paying their way until there was no where in the area that they lived in where anyone would take them in. In 1967, Ortega was sent to prison for bank robbery. Unlike the leaders of the current American administration, he grew up in poverty. He understands what it’s like to be poor. It apparently doesn’t matter. Just like someone else you may know, Ortega’s initial presidential win was called into question, due to the fact that he was ragingly unpopular with the people of his nation: he won 37% of the total vote, with the remaining votes eaten up by other political factions too much in love with the smell of their own stink to get their shit together and do something just for their country.Ortega’s government is the very model of cronyism. His wife plans on running to become Vice President of Nicaragua to Ortega’s position of head honcho in the country’s upcoming presidential elections, despite the fact that her doing so, as the sitting President’s wife, is against the nation’s constitution. It’s said that Ortega has accumulated a massive fortune through tax evasion, bribes and kickbacks since coming into office. If this doesn’t smack of something familiar yet, maybe this will bring it home.From the Pan Am Post:

Here are transcripts and videos of the press conference with US President Donald Trump & Russian President Vladimir Putin, following their meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki. (more…)

Last week, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson won a major ruling in his quest to distribute gun-printing software. The video above from February outlines the background of the case. (more…)

According to his website, Ryan Hayashi is the "world's most famous samurai entertainer." He's also a helluva magician, as evidenced by this video. In it, he performs a mind-blowing coin trick act (at times one handed!) that leaves both Penn and Teller left wondering what they just watched. The best part of the video might be when Hayashi, a fan of the magic duo since he was a boy, is given the big F.U. award at the end. I don't think he can believe that his childhood heroes have just acknowledged his skill.(reddit)

Kareem Waris Olamilekan is a Nigerian artist who paints astounding hyperreal portraits. He's 11. From his Instagram @waspa_art:

From first sketches to first bass caught, watch Nate Marling create a fishing lure that looks and moves like a cricket. (more…)

Mattress company Casper opened The Dreamery in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. For $25, you get a 45 minute session in one of the nap pods. You can even borrow a pair of pajamas for your snooze. And of course after you pay for this demo of Casper mattresses, you can buy your very own at their shop just around the corner! From The Dreamery:

From the early days of the Russian Revolution through the space race and Cold War, a small but dedicated collection of communist UFOlogists believed in and sought out signs of extraterrestrial life, believing that discovery aligned with their goals of raising up the worker. (more…)

Zurich's Main Station is currently home to an enormous public artwork: GaiaMotherTree, a huge knotted fabric tree with intimate space underneath where visitors can gather. (more…)

As a teenager in the early 1990s, I never really had friends, so much as close acquaintances. I’d see people at school. We’d laugh, maybe skip class from time to time. But I’d never see them on the weekends or in the evening. No one wanted anything to do with me. I was a spooky kid much as I’m now a spooky adult. It was unfortunate, then, that I had a love of tabletop gaming. Battletech was an obsession. Giant robots doing battle with one another on alien worlds? Tanks on legs! What’s not to like? I bought the wee lead miniatures for the game. I painted them up in my mercenary company’s colors. I read the tech manuals for them and the game’s rule books, constantly.Then, as I had no one to play with, I did nothing, with any of it.In 1998, I peed a little when a game called MechCommander was released. It let you kit out and command a lance of battlemechs and fight! But it was a real-time strategy—the experience I wanted was that of a table top game. Turns in table top games take time. Rules have to be double checked, movement is counted out in squares or hexes. Nerd country. 20 years later, Harebrained Schemes has finally given me the gaming experience I’ve always wanted with Battletech. It’s a turn-based combat game set in the Battletech universe. There are tanks on legs, there is tech jargon. You can ‘paint’ your ‘mechs in whatever colors you please. Best of all, I don’t need a single person to play the damn thing with.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsIMfOo_VO0[/embed]In the game, which offers enough of a storyline to give the skirmishes you fight in a sense of meaning, you play as the commander of a mercenary company operating in a backwater section of the galaxy. Signing on to assist a former patron retake her rightful place at the head of a sizable interplanetary government, you and your team of mechwarriors will grow in skill and, with luck, come to pilot heavier, more menacing battlemechs as the game progresses. Manage your company’s money, personnel and hardware right, and you’ll succeed. Misstep on any of these and you’re done. It’s a thing of beauty.Provided you find slow, methodical resource management and combat pretty. I know I do: I love how the game rewards players for understanding how to leverage the landscape and climate of a given combat zone. That the environment can change how efficiently your mechs operate during combat is a source of sadistic pleasure to me. The game’s UI is full of information—perhaps too much, at times—of what parts of your battlemechs have been damaged, where you’ve damaged the enemy, remaining ammunition, heat buildup in your war machines, whether your pilots have been injured and which weapons can be effectively fired at range. Line of site, indirect fire, blowback or instability caused by enduring a physical attacks—it’s all stuff that needs to be considered during a battle to see who comes out on top. If you do get through a mission with most of your assets intact, you’ll be paid well, be it in salvage of equipment from the field or in currency. Hopefully, it’s enough to keep your mercenary company going for another month.Overall, I really enjoyed playing BattleTech, with one caveat: my computer is, so far as gaming goes, a piece of crap. On a 2015 MacBook Pro, even while running Windows 10 on Bootcamp, load times and the spaces between turns felt like eras passing me by. That’s not the fault of the game: but I’m mentioning it as a warning to you: Just because your computer can run this game, it doesn’t mean it’ll run it well. That, despite having to turn the graphics all way down, I still stuck with it through its painfully slow gameplay, says a lot about Battletech. If you’re a fan of the Battletech universe, love turn-based combat or need a break from MMOs or shooters, I recommend it.

For 25 years, my friend Kal Spelletich of Seemen and Survival Research Labs has lived and worked in a San Francisco warehouse studio where he's built myriad robots, fire machines, and sculptures, hosted music, art, and political action events, and provided support for more than 100 other artists, activists, and fringe characters. Guess what. Kal's been evicted. This is yet another gut punch for the Bay Area's creative community that inspired so many technologists but is now being eviscerated by today's big money tech bubble. Kal has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help him push through: Save Kal's Robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUJik07piGoI love the Super Punch roundups of gorgeously painted role-playing game miniatures ganked from social media; they fill me with joy and envy, as I've always been an enthusiastic, if not very talented, miniature painter. (more…)

I get horrible motion sickness sometimes, so I'd LOVE to believe that these glasses actually do what they claim.Gizmodo:

Amidst a global heatwave, some good news from the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment: a record-setting 73% of Americans believe that climate change is real and 60% believe humans are "at least partially responsible" for this fact. It's the peak indifference moment, when the fight shifts from convincing people that there is a problem to convincing them that it's not too late to do something about it.

Dennis Wojtkeiwicz paints large-format works of thinly sliced fruit for his Rosettes series, revealing the elegant beauty and symmetry of nature. (more…)

Jobs liked people who stuck around to be responsible for their decisions.

Northumbrian needle felt artist Simon Brown turns old worn out brushes and other household items into bases for his charming creatures. (more…)

Maison Margiela, the fashion house who made those let's-make-this-awkward camel-toe pumps, debuted ankle iPhone holsters recently on the Couture Fashion Week runway. Maybe they were going for the modern version of these?https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk-e3E0nxRz/?taken-by=maisonmargielahttps://www.instagram.com/p/Bk0Eg4-nZPG/?utm_source=ig_embed(Geekologie)

Turkish media artist Refik Anadol has created Archive Dreaming, a new installation that makes viewers feel submerged within a massive electronic archive. (more…)

Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Ben Carson has asked for Congress's approval to hike rents on people living in federally subsidized housing, with a planned increase of more than 300%; he claims the rent hikes will incentivize public housing tenants to seek work. (more…)

Kevin De León has done the impossible: he flipped nearly every undecided vote on the California Democratic Party executive board to win the party's endorsement in the upcoming Senate race with 65% of the vote, defeating the incumbent, far-right Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who has a long track record of backing the finance industry, war, and mass surveillance -- who scored a mere 7% of the vote. (more…)

Summer's here, which brings not only warmer weather but also the unsettling realization that the year is more than halfway over. So, for those who weren't as productive as they would have liked during the first half of 2018, we've rounded up 5 skill course bundles you can start learning today to help you finish the year strong and with some employable knowledge under your belt. Read on for details:1. Back-end DevelopmentMSRP: $2,786Sale Price: $49 (98% off)While front-end developers focus on building the portion of the website viewers experience, back-end developers work behind the scenes, ensuring vital information makes it from the guts of the website to the front without issue—a critical role that commands high-level pay. This 14-course collection will get you familiar with SQL, Bootstrap, and the other tools these experts use to keep websites running.Get this deal >2. The Complete 2018 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle: Lifetime AccessMSRP: $4,329Sale Price: $59 (98% off)Virtually every sector needs IT professionals to keep their operations online, and they're willing to pay a hefty sum for their services. However, demand alone isn't quite enough to get your foot in the door to this field. This 12-course training will prepare you to ace a number of certification exams from CompTIA, so you can stand a head above the competition. Jump in, and you'll start developing skills in a host of different IT disciplines from cloud computing to cybersecurity.Get this deal >3. The Complete Adobe CC Training BundleMSRP: $673Sale Price: $29 (95% off)Whether you're an aspiring photographer, illustrator, or animator, you'll likely be using the Adobe Creative Cloud suite in your line of work. This 65-hour training covers the essentials of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and a host of other key Adobe tools, so you can start producing your own content as a creative professional.Get this deal >4. The Complete Project Management BundleMSRP: $2,189Sale Price: $29 (98% off)Project management is undeniably one of the most versatile fields to break into, as virtually every company can use professionals skilled in cutting costs and boosting efficiency. Make your way through all 11 parts of this training, and you can join their ranks with knowledge in JIRA, Scrum, and other project management essentialsGet this deal >5. Videography BootcampMSRP: $1,728Sale Price: $39 (97% off)From the cinematography essentials to editing with Final Cut Pro, this 8-course collection can help you elevate your videography skills and work toward making your own creative projects. Plus, it even includes a course on drone videography, so you can learn how to integrate some stunning aerial shots into your own work.Get this deal >

Elon Musk, an avowed utopian anarchist, is one of the top fifty donors to the Republican Protect the House PAC, having funneled $38,900 to support the group's mission of protecting Republican Congressional seats. (more…)

A now-fixed bug in Ios caused Chinese-localized Iphones to reboot any time the user tried to enter the character combination for a Taiwanese flag or the word "Taiwan"; the bug was caused by Apple's China-only censorship and surveillance software. (more…)

The "next billion" are the holy grail of tech and mobile companies -- the next billion users to come online, from the poor world, whose preferences and norms regarding technology have yet to be formed. (more…)

Wage stagnation in the USA has many causes: both the destruction of trade unions and the erosion of labor protections in the law (these two things are connected) are obvious culprits, and do much to explain how real wages could be falling even as unemployment has gone down. (more…)

It's good to be proactive, but when it comes to preparing for an emergency situation, one of the most important items you can pack is a flashlight. After all, whatever else you include in your kit won't be of much use if you can't see what you're doing. The Viper 1000-Lumen Tactical Flashlights not only keep your surroundings illuminated when disaster strikes, but they're also designed to help bail you out of a dangerous situation. Two-packs are available in the Boing Boing Store for $29.99.Engineered with a titanium alloy shell and tactical breaker tip, the Viper 1000-Lumen Tactical Flashlights excel at smashing glass or even fending off violent threats. They're small enough to stash inside your car's glove box or under your seat, making them handy for shattering a window if you find yourself in an accident and need to escape from your vehicle. They're also designed to be shockproof, weatherproof, and rated to shine for up to 100,000 hours before you need to replace the bulb.Two packs of the Viper 1000-Lumen Tactical Flashlights are available in the Boing Boing Store for $29.99.

Chances are you took a handful of language classes in high school, and aside from a smattering of conjugations and vocabulary words, the only things you likely remember are the dry, rehearsed sentences that did little to make you speak like a true native. If you're still hoping to learn a new language but want to take an approach that will make you sound more authentic, Mondly's AI-powered curriculum might just do the trick. Lifetime subscriptions are available for $69.99.Using state-of-the-art speech recognition technology, Mondly knows how to listen to your words and phrases and only gives positive feedback if you speak clearly and correctly, giving you just the right amount of difficulty to make sure you communicate like an actual native speaker. Mondly also includes a dictionary and verb conjugator to aid you in your education and lets you learn your new language in your native tongue—even if it's not English.Lifetime subscriptions to Mondly are available in the Boing Boing Store for $69.99.

It’s raining military secrets! Earlier this week, it was revealed that a group of hackers got their meathooks on an operator manual for the United States military’s MQ-9 Reaper UAV. The manual was fair game: a U.S. Air Force captain had it stashed away on his under-protected home network—you know, as one does with sensitive documents that could fuck with national security. My guess is that the captain wasn’t aware of the case against military contractor Jared Sparks. The company Sparks was employed by was developing an underwater drone for the U.S. Navy. While he was drawing a paycheck from them Sparks decided it’d be cool to upload scads of documents that detailed trade secrets to his personal Dropbox account.The Navy, Sparks’ former employers and the U.S. Department of Justice? They weren’t really comfortable with that. Today, the Department of Justice announced that a federal jury has found Sparks guilty of multiple counts of the theft and of uploading of trade secrets, with each count carrying a penalty that could land Sparks in the clink for a decade.From Gizmodo:

Did you know a baby peacock is called a peachick? I didn't until I started writing this post up. I'm not even sure I had ever even seen a baby peacock, er peachick, before in my life. This peachick's name is Drew and he was rescued by the folks at Hairy Farmpit Girls in White Oak, Georgia. Last week, they captured him strutting around with his new big-bird feathers for the first time and it's really, really cute.News4Jax reports:

These putty-colored pumps by Maison Margiela ($825) are described as "cloven toe." I might be 12, but wouldn't a better description be "camel toe"?A similarly racy shoe is available in red for $1080.Thanks, Caroline B.!

Step aside couture platform Crocs, you've got some competition for world's most ridiculous spongy-soled shoes. Crocs now come in high heels. I wish I were kidding. Check it and see.

The “warning lights are blinking red again,” said the American government's top intelligence official on Friday.Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned of newly resurgent threats by Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China on critical U.S. infrastructure while speaking at the Hudson Institute think tank.Coats happened to be speaking at the event just after the Department of Justice revealed an indictment against 12 Russian military agents for hacking the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. (more…)

Microsoft on Friday joined a growing number of tech industry voices who want the government to limit the use of facial recognition technology. (more…)

July 27, 2016. Trump: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”Indictment: That evening, Russian operatives targeted Hillary Clinton campaign emails “for the first time.”(more…)

Messages sent by Roger Stone suggest he is the unnamed individual in the new Russia probe indictment made public Friday.(more…)