Privacy invasion? Facebook is using your phone's location data to suggest friends

Well, this sounds like potentially a pretty big deal. Facebook is using smartphone location data to recommend new friends to users, which suggests many possible privacy invasions. This is also a technique NSA uses to track surveillance targets.

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Can losing weight help breast cancer patients survive? Fitbit joins study to find out.

Scientists are recruiting thousands of women for a large clinical trial to find out if weight loss should be prescribed as a treatment for breast cancer in some patients.

The trial will put obese and overweight women who are 18 and older and recently diagnosed with breast cancer on diets, to see if losing a little weight could help prevent a cancer recurrence.

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Neoliberalism, Brexit (and Bernie)

John Quiggin (previously) delivers some of the most salient commentary on the Brexit vote and how it fits in with Syriza, Podemos, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders (etc) as well as Trump, French neo-fascists, and other hypernationalist movements.


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McDonald's 1987 fashion catalog is a horrorshow

The Smile Makers 88 was sent to McDonald's franchise managers in 1987, filled with garments they could buy for themselves, their families, and their workers. It. Is. Terrible.
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Australian educational contractor warns of wifi, vaccination danger to "gifted" kids' "extra neurological connections"

Wise Ones, an Australian "gifted" education programme offers students who test into it vaccination exemption forms, and advises them to avoid wifi, because they say that "gifted children" have "extra neurological connections" that make them vulnerable to "extra sensitivities to food or chemicals."

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Adam Savage describes four unusual and useful tools he loves

On the Cool Tools Show podcast, Kevin Kelly and I had a wonderful, wide-ranging discussion with Adam Savage, the former co-host of Mythbusters and the editor-in-chief of Tested. Adam is erudite, funny, and very smart. Check out our show notes here.



Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page

Listen to isolated vocals on "God Only Knows"

Need something to sooth your jangled soul today? Pop in the buds, sit back, close your eyes and have a listen to the isolated vocal tracks on the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows." There... that's better. Carl Wilson and the Boys at their finest.

[Via Playback FM]

The polyamorous Christian socialist utopia that made silverware for proper Americans

Lisa Hix of has written a lengthy piece for Collectors Weekly on the Oneida Community of the late 19th century, and how it morphed from a group of men and women who "believed the liquid electricity of Jesus Christ's spirit flowed through words and touch, and that a chain of sexual intercourse would create a spiritual battery so charged with God's energy that the community would transcend into immortality, creating heaven on earth," to a company that was famous for its flatware. For her article, Lisa interviewed Ellen Wayland-Smith, a descendant of members of the Oneida commune, and the author of Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-Set Table, who spoke to Hix about the community's laudable-for-its-time, but ultimately limited, view of equality between the sexes.

Here's a snip:

“Oneidans never for a minute pretended that women were equal to men,” Wayland-Smith says. “Theologically, they had a pecking order. They would cite Paul and say that a man's natural place is ahead of the woman. But on the ground, practically, women could do anything that men could do. They thought it was absurd that Victorian women wore long skirts and corsets and had this big pile of hair that prevented them from moving or being physical, which the Community believed contributed to the poor health of traditional housewives. The women of Oneida engaged in the same physical activities as men, and the Community thought that was healthy. Women played sports. They went out and chopped down trees; they cleared swamps.

“Oneida broke down the popular idea that there was a domestic sphere where women excelled and a public sphere where men excelled,” she continues. “The workload occasionally fell into stereotypical divisions. Most of the people who worked in the Children's House were women, although there were some men taking care of the kids, too. But the men had to do laundry side by side with the women, and the women could work in the trap shop if they wanted. A lot of women were bookkeepers for the Community businesses. One woman wanted to be a dentist and so she took lessons from the Community dentist and became a dental assistant. Within reason, Oneida offered a wide variety of choice in one's occupations.”

Don't let the government hack your computer. Tell Congress to stop changes to #Rule41.

“The U.S. government wants to use an obscure procedure-amending a federal rule known as Rule 41- to radically expand their authority to hack,” the EFF says. “The changes to Rule 41 would make it easier for them to break into our computers, take data, and engage in remote surveillance.

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NRA released video praising AR-15s just 3 days after Orlando mass shooting

On June 15, exactly 3 days after Omar Mateen shot 49 people dead and wounded 53 more in Orlando, the National Rifle Association released this video on YouTube urging Americans to buy more AR-15 assault rifles.

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Report from CES in 1997: Among the Sex Machines

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Speed-running E3

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Create your own games with the Game Design Course Bundle - and pay what you want for it

A game design career may be your dream job, but it doesn't mean you get to sit around blasting zombies all day. It means you're tasked with not just dreaming up, but also bringing to life all those game characters and worlds. And that's easier said than done.

Luckily, you'll learn the essentials for doing so with the Game Design Course bundle - which you can pick up right now for any price you want to pay in the Boing Boing Store.

Pay any amount, and you'll receive access to two courses to get started:

• Engage Your Customers w/ Gamification Course

• Learn To Craft "Hand-Painted" Textures Course

But nobody should move down a new career path and stop halfway...so if you pay anything over the average price paid, you'll get two additional courses to round out your game design education:

• Make Real Games: Become a Unity 3D Power User Course

• Professional Video Game Art School Course

A nearly $800 value, you can grab this course bundle for any price you want and finally embark on that long-sought game creation career.

---

 

Home blood typing kits - family fun!

My 13-year-old daughter, a fan of all things Japanese, wanted to know her blood type. (Some people in Japan think that blood type correlates with personality types. Jane knows it's bunkum, but it's fun anyway.) I didn't know her blood type, and I forgot mine. Carla didn't know her blood type either. We didn't have Red Cross blood donation cards, because we aren't eligible to donate blood: Carla doesn't weigh enough, Jane is too young, and I "lived a cumulative time of 3 months or more in the United Kingdom" back in the 1980s (I have mad cow prions ready to erupt in my brain any day now, I guess).

I looked on Amazon and, wouldn't you know it, they sell blood typing kits! I ordered enough kits for the family. They cost about $5 each.

The kits come with everything you need: spring loaded lancet, micropipette, stirring wands, cleansing swab, and a chemically treated card to put your blood on. The card has four circles, each of which contains a different kind of serum designed to cause clotting (or not) in your blood sample.

The lancet is a little scary to use. It looks kind of like a tiny tube of Chapstick with a hole in one end. You have to press it against your finger until a spring loaded latch inside the tube releases, slamming a sharp needle into your finger. I went first. The sound it made was worse than the jab. Interestingly, the needle shoots back into the tube after it pokes your finger. What an ingenious device! Here's a video of the same lancet that comes with the kit:

https://youtu.be/v7ps2N0DHG4?t=45s

After that, we just followed the instructions for putting our blood on the cards. I have O negative blood (universal donor, but since I'm a mad cow risk, I can't donate). Carla and Jane were both B positive. And now we know. The process was actually a lot of fun. I wish our blood type was something that changed every couple of years, so we had an excuse to do this again. Maybe we will anyway.

Omar Mateen posted to Facebook during Orlando mass shooting

I spoke to KCRW Press Play host Madeleine Brand today about some of the macabre social media details coming out of the Orlando Pulse mass shooting in Florida, and the terrorist attack two days later on a police officer and his family in Paris.

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Dumb Donald beer hit Chicago streets this week

Now's your chance to get drunk with Dumb Donald! Chicago-based Spiteful Brewing just introduced Dumb Donald this week. No, not the Republican nominee, but a double IPA beer with a nice and sour Key lime flavor. So why call it Dumb Donald?

According to the beer's label, "Dumb Donald is, well, dumb. So dumb in fact, we named a beer after him. It's like he got caught in a pause halfway through evolution. His brain still functions, at a minimal level with a vocabulary of a second grade student. You might even start to feel sorry for this man-child. Resist that urge, pop open this Key lime DIPPA and pretend you're on a far away island where people like Dumb Donald simply don't exist."

Spiteful Brewing isn't the first brewery to mock the Donald. Last March, Philadelphia's Dock Street Brewery introduced the beer Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Drumpf. (Drumpf was Trump's grandfather's original name.)

Unfortunately right now Dumb Donald is only available in Chicago, but if you happen to be in the city, Spiteful Brewing's website, which opens with "Don't fight it, spite it!" on their homepage, has a hefty list of the city's stores that carry it.

A First: from space, NASA spots a single methane leak from Earth's atmosphere

“For the first time, an instrument onboard an orbiting spacecraft has measured the methane emissions from a single, specific leaking facility on Earth's surface,” NASA announced Tuesday.

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Scorching Caribbean soul covers of Neil Young, Isaac Hayes, and Jimi Hendrix (1975)

In 1975, Surinam's Dutch Rhythm Steel & Show Band released "Soul, Steel & Show," a killer funk-psych-soul LP that included scorching covers of Neil Young's "Down by the River," Isaac Hayes's "Theme from Shaft," Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe," Kool & The Gang's "Funky Stuff," and other great jams. Can you dig it? I knew that you could.

US once investigated Orlando shooter over ties to bombing in Syria, but did not arrest him

The shooter who killed 50 people in an Orlando, Florida gay bar had been on the FBI's radar for three years.

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Police arrest man with guns who threatened to harm L.A. pride

This morning Santa Monica Police arrested James Wesley Howell, 20, of Indiana. He told police he wanted to cause harm at today's LA Pride event. His car was found with long rifles, magazine clips, boxes of bullets, a rifle scope, and "chemicals capable of forming an improvised explosive device."

I was invited by my friend to the Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles today and wanted to go, but couldn't, due to a Girl Scout event for my daughter. I wish I could celebrate with her, like we did when gay marriage became legal and we went down to celebrate with the people in the streets, and bonded in a way we hadn't before, as I witnessed how historic it all really was.

Now, I feel the "terror" in the kind of terrorism that happened in Orlando. It is how I felt in New York on 9/11, when I was in lower Manhattan and heard the planes and watched the cloud of debris standing like a bully as I walked uptown, a testament to hate and ugliness. My terror continued in the days after, and during the confusing anthrax scares. I ended up leaving New York permanently within a month, fearful and overwhelmed. Terror took away my freedom to live where I wanted to live.

Seeing that an arrest was made this morning of a heavily armed man at Santa Monica's pride parade, I know that if I went to the LA parade today, I would be afraid like I was in New York, and now I am afraid for her and others. I don't want to live like this in my country. I don't want her to live like this for a minute, ever. I don't want my daughter to ever feel this way for any reason. Terror is taking away our freedom to celebrate. It is working.

That is what terrorism does. The fear of bodily harm for being what we are immediately robs us of freedom. It is felt by gay people every day, by female college students on campus, by minorities, by anyone who alters their day, their dress, or their words to avoid bodily harm for being themselves. We are not a free nation if any of us feel like this. When one of us is oppressed, it limits us all, it limits the potential of us as a nation and destroys our reputation as a symbol of freedom.

How do we stand up to it? How do we stand bravely at the threat of an AR-15 automatic weapon which is legal to buy in our country? How do we support our LGBT community today and every day? I don't know. But I want to think about it long and hard today, and I want my friends to know I understand their terror and grief, and that it is not an acceptable way for anyone to live in this or any society. Those sickening enough to suggest that these things are deserved in some way, as did xxxxx, are terrorists in our culture as much as those who holding the guns. They are the ones who fuel hatred and intolerance and make us unsafe with their rhetoric. We need to hold them accountable. It is not just an opinion to believe gays deserve to be killed, it is ignorance that incites violence--and they, too, are responsible.

Anyone attending any pride event today to celebrate who they are is an exceptionally courageous and heroic person. They are facing very real, violent threats against their lives for their sexual orientation, and doing it because they refuse to be terrorized in a society that it seems to be increasingly terrifying to be yourself in. When you look at footage and photos of those parades today, remember that those people are fighting for freedom--theirs, and ultimately all of ours.

WEST HOLLYWOOD: LA Times reports arrest of man armed and with explosives heading to Gay Pride Festival. https://t.co/7hyFhyt5da

- Chuck Pfarrer (@ChuckPfarrer) June 12, 2016

Developing: Evidence gathered at Santa Monica location where man was arrested with weapons before LA Pride. pic.twitter.com/6ALC08Go61

- Jeff Nguyen (@jeffnguyen) June 12, 2016

How to be less wrong about the First Amendment

Former federal prosecutor and frequent plain-language law explainer Ken "Popehat" White has done the (American) Internet the immense service of producing a master(ful) post about the First Amendment, explaining why the American constitutional basis for free speech includes abridgments on speech by some private actors and why it can be invoked in civil cases.
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Ohio woman feels like "prisoner" because a deer keeps attacking her near her home

A woman in Mentor-on-the-Lake, Ohio says she feels like a "prisoner" because a deer has been attacking her repeatedly near her suburban home.

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$13 lapel clip-on microphone plugs into smartphones

This lapel clip-on microphone is regularly $20, but for a limited time you can buy it on Amazon for $13 if you use the code 5PLJVX5D. I just bought one. I'll let you know how it works.

The reason I got it is that I sometimes make videos using my phone (using this great smartphone tripod mount) and the phone's built-in mic doesn't do a great job when I'm more than a few feet from the phone. I have a bunch of old iPhones, and I will use one of them with this mic plugged in it to record the audio.

Inside China's 'Silicon Valley of Hardware,' Shenzhen, with hardware hacker Bunnie Huang

In the first of a series of documentary videos about 'Future Cities,' WIRED UK has released a wonderful short doc on Huaqiangbei, the vast market district in Shenzhen, China.

They picked the best host and guide imaginable for this project, hardware hacker and researcher Andrew "Bunnie" Huang.

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How to tell a victim of demonic possession apart from someone with a mental disorder

It used to be said that photos never lie, back in those simpler, innocent days before Photoshop and Facetune made liars of us all. But as this week's tabloids show, photos can lie even when they are the unvarnished genuine article.

Richard Simmons, the fitness 'guru' whose celebrity seems to continue only in the minds of tabloid editors, is pictured on the National Enquirer's cover clad in fur-trimmed lingerie and black leggings, while wearing a long black wig, above a headline screaming: “He's now a woman!”

“Yes, this photo shoot is real!” adds an accompanying caption - a notation that is necessary because veteran Enquirer readers will know how many of its photos are doctored fakes.

Quoting an unnamed “pal,” the Enquirer claims that Simmons has been out of the public eye for the past two years while he transitioned into a woman, having a “secret boob job” and researching “castration surgery.”

Leaving aside for a moment the appalling intrusion into the private life of anyone going through the emotional rollercoaster of gender realignment, just as the Enquirer had previously brutally forced the outing of a transitioning Caitlyn Jenner, Simmons' photo was clearly taken in jest, just as the flamboyant self-publicist Simmons has dressed in women's attire many, many times before for the camera and on TV.

The fact that Simmons was photographed a week ago wearing a beard should be the first clue that there may be less to this story than appears. Add the fact that in March the New York Daily News reported that Simmons had been kidnapped by his maid, prompting Simmons to emerge from seclusion to assure the world he was fine, and you realize that the 'Sweatin' to the Oldies' star is the subject of frequently wild speculation.

If he wants to transition to a woman, that's great - but this unsubstantiated story and misleading photo don't suggest that's the case.
There's also less than appears in the Globe's “world exclusive' cover story “Patrick Swayze died a battered husband,” accompanied by a photo of the 'Dirty Dancing' star with shocking black eye and bruised lip, allegedly beaten in his final months by his wife, Lisa. The supposed “tragic truth,” exposed by an unnamed “friend,” is brought to harrowing life by the image of a gaunt and beaten Swayze - if only it were real. Harder to find than Waldo, hidden away at the foot of the page in the smallest of print are the tell-tale words: “Photo dramatization.”

There's no such caption on the Enquirer's photo of Hillary Clinton, however, showing the Democrat's presidential hopeful wearing an orange prison tunic and pants, her wrists shackled by a chain around her waist. “She should be jailed for compromising top U.S. secrets,” says the fair and balanced Enquirer, which notes the result of its readers' general election poll, showing that 60 per cent support Donald Trump. You'd expect the other 40 per cent to support aliens or tabloid favorite Bat Boy, but no - they opt for Hillary Clinton.

Fortunately Us magazine's crack investigative team bring us the week's real news: Gabrielle Union wore it best (though I'd give her marks off for those sneakers), Nick Jonas likes sriracha-flavored popcorn and Cuban sandwiches, Jennifer Beals carries a Swiss Army knife, emery board and eye drops in her boho blue satchel, and the stars are just like us: they bike to work, hold hands in public, and eat ice cream (which I never knew, assuming that all celebrities were contractually barred from consuming ice cream.)

Muhammad Ali rightly takes the cover and ten pages inside People magazine, which might make Us mag wonder if its single paragraph - 34 words - might have underestimated his popularity and cultural significance. With his death on June 3 close to the mag's deadline, perhaps they debated throwing out their feature on the “Hottest Bachelorette Ever” or their “wedding season survival guide” to squeeze in a few words on Ali, but decided against it? Or maybe Us editors simply decided that Ali wasn't one of Us?

But finally, some news you can use from this week's tabloids: the National Examiner explains how you can tell a victim of demonic possession apart from someone with a mental disorder. The mental patient is holding a copy of the Examiner. No - I made that up. The “truth” is far better. According to a Vatican exorcist, you can tell the difference by noting the patient's reaction to prayer. “The way a victim reacts to prayer, says the Vatican expert, can hold clues to whether a demon is trying to take control of a person,” the Examiner reports. Clues to watch out for: “Frightening facial expressions, threatening words or gestures, and other things, but especially blasphemies against God and our lady,” the exorcist reportedly says. Holy mother of Christ! Who knew? By that reckoning, half of America must already be possessed by demons, but who am I to argue with an expert? I'm sure he has photographic proof.

Onwards and downwards . . .

How griefing got its game

There's a wonderful special section in the New York Times on “Internet Culture” this week. The sociology of online life fascinates me, and I love digging into good, meaty reporting on who we are and why we do what we do online.

How do tools and apps shape our behavior? How do virtual bonds originate, grow, and sometimes degrade differently than they do with face-to-face communication? This is stuff I think about a lot.

There's a great feature in the section by Quentin Hardy about how "trolling" as we now know it sort of originated as "griefing," in games.

In the gaming community, griefing historically meant doing stuff like “repeatedly killing the same player so that the person can't move forward, reversing the play of newer gamers so they don't learn the rules, or messing with other people's play by blocking their shots or covering oneself with distressing images,” Hardy writes:

“Griefing was a way to have power over other people without any repercussions, since you can create multiple characters in the same game,” said Jack Emmert, former chief executive of Cryptic Studios, a maker of online games. “When there are no repercussions, some people will start to do crazy things.”

That was basically acceptable when online communities and games were made up of small groups that understood one another's behavior, said Ian Bogost, a game designer and professor at Georgia Tech.

“Folks who are griefing or trolling feel like they are in a secondary universe that isn't the same as the real world,” he said. “It was a 'safe space' for them, in which they did horrible things.”

The problem is that the internet is part of the entire world, where those practices have a different force and meaning.

How Gaming Helped Launch the Attack of the Internet Trolls

Weaponized shirt for demoralizing designers

Zoe Quinn's awesome $21 "I'm the best graphic designer" tee has it all: linebreaks, Comic Sans, all caps, weird kerning... Just the thing to break the hearts of your designer pals!

Motorcyclists need ear plugs

Motorcyclists should wear ear plugs. For as little as $5 you can get comfortable noise reduction that could have you a lot of trouble in the long run.

It is a fact that riding a motorcycle at normal highway speeds, even in a full face helmet, without ear protection, does irreversible damage to your hearing over time. Noise fatigue is also a very real effect of riding, and can leave rider far more tired than expected.

Another long time rider told me he's getting a hearing aid today, and he never wore ear plugs. I've heard a number of reasons from some friends about why they won't or don't wear them. Those reasons are weak. Here are a few:

1. Traffic, horns, sirens and other noises will be hard to hear: Good hearing protection will lower high frequency noise, like wind buffeting your helmet. While ear plugs will lower the volume of all sound, they won't eliminate those interruptive sounds from making it to you at all, rather you'll be more likely to hear them as the effects of constant high frequency noise will not be as bad.






2. I wear a full face helmet: So what? Comfortable helmets flow a lot of air, and are pretty damn noisy! Helmet noise reduction studies show very minimal improvement due to a full face helmet.






3. I do not have loud pipes: While the silly loud pipes of many a Harley rider could make anyone deaf, you are really looking to block out the wind noise rushing past your head. Loud pipes just add another droning source of white noise like sound that will deafen you over time, but they are not the primary one motorcyclists need fear!

Lately I've been using these Hearo's, for less than $6 shipped shouldn't you try?

Previously on Boing Boing:

Etymotic Research ER20 ETY-Plugs Hearing Protection Earplugs

A Cold Day in Hell, book two in Mark Cain's Circles of Hell

Mark Cain's second installment in his Circles of Hell series, A Cold Day in Hell, was just as funny as the first!

Steve, Hell's superintendent, and his assistant, THE Orson Welles, are it again! Seems the air conditioning in Hell is on the fritz, and that proverbial cold day is here. With the help of Satan's pet BOOH, the Bat Out Of Hell, and the love of Steve's after-life, Flo, can they set things right?

Cain's Circles of Hell series are fast, fun, endearing reads the remind me of Robert Kroese's DIS series.

A Cold Day In Hell (Circles In Hell Book 2) by Mark Cain via Amazon

Samantha Bee interviews Frank Schaeffer, who helped create the religious right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhLY0JqXP-s

Frank Schaeffer is the son of radical evangelical cleric Francis Schaeffer, who was instrumental in creating the modern anti-abortion movement and forging the alliance between the Republican party and evangelical Christians.
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Quick way to clean stove burner grates with ammonia and plastic bags

If you have gunked-up stove burner grates, this might do the trick. I wonder if it works for barbecue grills, too?

Happy 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' day

Evidently June 5th was the day Ferris took off.

SAVE FERRIS

Trump: "Look at my African-American over here, look at him"

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told rally attendees in Redding, California that he will get "tremendous" support from African-American voters. As proof, he pointed to someone at said, "look at my African-American over here, look at him."

Controlled chaos in Ethiopia intersection

Meskel Square in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia doesn't appear to have traffic signs, yet drivers and pedestrians do a good job of making it from one side to the other without dying or killing someone.

Rock and roll fun: CCR sings "The Midnight Special" live

This is a lot of fun to watch, and a pleasure to hear.

The Armchair Detective Company makes immersive puzzles and tactile 3D objects

If you're fascinated by paper art and pop-up books, then the name of 51-year old Robert Sabuda will resonate like that of a Zen master. He's a legend in the world of children's books, paper design, and engineering, with many famous books to his credit (my favorites are The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland).

[caption id="attachment_464808" align="alignnone" width="889"] Photo of Robert Sabuda by Zymeet[/caption]

Kind of like a pop-up book equivalent of The Avengers, Sabuda has embarked on a new adventure in collaboration with Shelby Arnold and Simon Arizpe called The Armchair Detective Company. You can also follow them on Facebook.

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Paul Ryan endorses Trump

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, cringing from the decision for days after it became clear who would win the party's nomination, has finally endorsed Donald Trump's bid to become U.S. President.

The Wisconsin Republican has voice reservations over Trump's tone throughout the campaign and disagrees with him on many policy areas. Last month, he met with the likely GOP nominee and still withheld his endorsement. As recent as last week, he was still holding out.

But on Thursday he finally acquiesced. In a column in the Janesville Gazette, the Speaker wrote that the two "have more common ground than disagreement." And despite never using the word "endorse" in the article, Ryan's spokesman confirmed it was an official endorsement.

For Republicans, obedience or oblivion.

What Amazon's Jeff Bezos thinks about Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker

In this video from the Recode conference, an interesting reveal of what Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos thinks of the legal battle between Peter Thiel and Gawker, with Hulk Hogan as a most unfortunate proxy. Bezos is full of surprising insights here, and offers Thiel some tough love.

The only effective defense public figures like Thiel have against their critics, says Bezos: “Develop a thick skin.”

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