It’s a good week when we get two new short stories from political science fiction wunderkind Laurie Penny: on Monday, it was The House of Surrender, about a prison in a world without coercion; today it’s “The Killing Jar,” about the intern to a serial killer employed by an English town council: “Since serial murder was first recognized as one of the English Fine Arts, the trick has always been to keep it original.”
Continue reading “A day in the life of a public service serial killer’s intern”
Day: 14 January 2016
How an obsessive jailhouse lawyer revealed the existence of Stingray surveillance devices
Daniel Rigmaiden was a prolific and talented fraudster who made more than a million dollars filing tax-returns for dead people, using ninja forgery skills and super-tight operational security to avoid arrest for years.
Continue reading “How an obsessive jailhouse lawyer revealed the existence of Stingray surveillance devices”
The Internet of Things in Your Butt: smart rectal thermometer
Ha-ha-yes, it’s true, there’s an IoT rectal thermometer, which is about as irrationally exuberant as you can get about a technology bubble, bu(t)t…
Continue reading “The Internet of Things in Your Butt: smart rectal thermometer”
Lineup for London’s “The Story” conference
Matt Locke from London’s “The Story” conference writes, “We’ve just announced the final lineup for The Story 2016, including poet Musa Okwonga, CEO of Canongate Jamie Byng, games designer Hannah Nicklin, founder of Iron Circus Comics Spike Trotman, Wolfgang Wild (@retronaut) and Dallas Campbell, who will be talking about the history of the spacesuit.”
Continue reading “Lineup for London’s “The Story” conference”
UK Home Secretary auditions for a Python sketch: “UK does not undertake mass surveillance”
UK Home Secretary Theresa May stood before Parliament on Wednesday, and, with a straight face, said: “The UK does not undertake mass surveillance. We have not, and we do not, undertake mass surveillance, and that is not what the Investigatory Powers Bill is about.”
Continue reading “UK Home Secretary auditions for a Python sketch: “UK does not undertake mass surveillance””
US Treasury Dept wants to know which offshore crimelords are buying all those NYC and Miami penthouses
It’s an open secret that the world’s luxury property boom is being driven by crooked rich people in the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa who have looted their homelands and want to stash the money out of reach of any new dictators who might come along and change which oligarchs are favored and which are not.
Continue reading “US Treasury Dept wants to know which offshore crimelords are buying all those NYC and Miami penthouses”
Cool, science-themed dresses
Shenova’s science-themed dresses are beautifully cut and come in prints that celebrate the Fibonacci sequence, the DNA double-helix, printed circuit boards, retinal cells, the periodic table, aerospace engineering, and space-time warps (my favorite!).
Continue reading “Cool, science-themed dresses”
Oregon’s domestic terrorists just got 55 gal of lube to go with all those dildos
In 2009, Indian women sent pink underwear to Shri Ram Sene, a right-wing, conservative Hindu organization that had promoted street-violence against women who were perceived as “immodest.”
Continue reading “Oregon’s domestic terrorists just got 55 gal of lube to go with all those dildos”
Take this quiz and learn how to spot misused meteorological terms
Chris from Sense About Science sez, “Thundersnow, willy-willys and the hottest/coldest seasons on record, there’s certainly no shortage of headlines about the weather. But many meteorological terms we hear are misused, say early career researchers.”
Continue reading “Take this quiz and learn how to spot misused meteorological terms”