| Title | Description |
| What's happening in São Paulo? |
Between Syria, Turkey and the G8, it's hard to keep track of popular resistance to oligarchy and corruption, but please don't forget São Paulo, where the police are treating public anti-corruption demonstrations with all the bedwetting cowardice of a tinpot dictatorship.
  |
| Brutal crackdown on Turkish protests |
Barricades at Nisantasi, at 4:50AM Sunday Poiu is in Turkey; he writes: " Since yesterday evening, everything has worsened. Unfortunately it is not really covered by local media, the consequence of that being that it gets a lot less international attention than it should.
  |
| From Gezi Park |
I've been attending the Gezi Park protests since arriving in Turkey on June 6. Thousands of people have camped at the park in Taksim Square, traditionally a gathering place for all kinds of meetings and protests, to prevent Prime Minister Erdoğan from razing the park to remove the place of assembly and erase some of the last green space in Istanbul to turn it into an Ottoman barracks shopping mall. 
  |
| Scary NYC neighborhood, 1888 |
Here's a photo from Jacob Riis's 1890 classic "How the Other Half Lives," "an early publication... documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s." It shows "Bandit’s Roost, at 59½ Mulberry Street (Mulberry Bend), was the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of all New York City." Those guys are clearly total bad-asses.
  |
| Turkish EU minister: protesters will be treated as terrorists |
Turkish police used extreme force to eject the protesters from Taksim Square yesterday. Egemen Bağış, Turkey's representative in the EU, gave a televised address in which he said, "[The police] will intervene against anybody who tries to enter Taksim Square, [treating them] as a terrorist." Everyone who enters Taksim Square will be treated as a terrorist: Turkish EU Minister (via Reddit) (Image: "People crossing Bosphprous Bridge (normally closed to pedesterians) headed for Taksim square" Ve halk kopruyu gecti/ @marjinal_hatun)
  |
| Happy F-day! |
It's Father's Day and time for my annual re-posting of Groucho Marx singing the greatest song dedicated to that occasion of all time.
  |
| Giant women on trailer in Shinjuku |
While I'm waiting here at Narita airport for my flight home, I thought I'd share this photo I took last night in Shinjuku.
  |
| Cross stitch recreation of a page from the Walking Dead comic book |
Walking Dead artist Tony Moore says: "Knowing how long it took me to draw this damn thing in pen and ink, I'm particularly honored and impressed by this painstaking Walking Dead cross-stitch!" ion: A page from The Walking Dead incredibly recreated in cross-stitch
  |
| Metal from 12 year olds |
Unlocking the Truth is an an awesome heavy metal band made up of 12-year-old schoolkids who've been playing together since they were five.
  |
| Atoms for Peace play a surprise intimate show in Los Angeles |
"This is the rehearsal, right?" Thom Yorke teased the audience last night inside Club Fais Do Do, renamed for the evening "Club Amok" for a surprise/secret Atoms For Peace performance. "You were the lucky ones who got tickets." I was one of the lucky ones who got in. And man, if this was only a rehearsal, those of you who catch them on their forthcoming world tour which kicks off in Paris on July 6 are fortunate souls indeed.
  |
| Xbox One will divide EU into different markets |
Microsoft's new XBox One will ship with region-locks that divide the world; yours will only work if it connects to the DRM server from one of 21 selected countries.
  |
| Facebook releases new post-NSA-Prism-leak privacy settings |
Parody, obviously. 'shoop: XJ
  |
| Internet companies begin releasing some data on government spying |
Facebook and Microsoft have reached a agreements with the U.S. government "to release limited information about the number of surveillance requests they receive," which Reuters' Joe Menn and Gerry Shih report is a partial victory for the companies struggling with "fallout from recent disclosures about the NSA's secret program.
  |
| Wired News publishes encrypted message to Edward Snowden |
In the one unencrypted line of this publication, Kevin Poulsen of Wired News writes, "Don’t read this if you aren’t him.
  |
| NYT profiles NSA leaker Edward Snowden |
A lengthy profile in the New York Times of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who recently leaked information about the agency's secret domestic spying program, paints the young man as an self-driven but drifting autodidact.
  |
| Senators skip classified briefing on NSA spying so they can fly home for Father's Day weekend |
A briefing offered to US senators by senior intelligence officials on the NSA surveillance programs "failed to attract even half of the Senate, showing the lack of enthusiasm in Congress for learning about classified security programs." [TheHill.com]
  |
| Microsoft awarded patent on wearable computing device that transmits data through the human body |
The US Patent and Trademark office has awarded Microsoft a patent on a wearable “electrical device” that uses your arm or finger as “transmission channel” to "transfer data through direct physical contact with another device like a computer, smartphone, or even a game console and controller," writes Gloria Sin at Digital Trends blog.
  |
| Iowa gentleman tells cops he was using lawn mower on neighbors' lawns to chase gopher |
As @pourmecoffee tweeted, it's unfair that there's no video to accompany this all-too-brief story of a gentleman in Iowa "who says he was using his lawn mower to chase a gopher." The man has been told to stay home and "sober up," because allegedly, some booze may have possibly been involved maybe.
  |
| The secret behind NSA's Prism program? "Even bigger data seizure." |
Amy Fiscus of the AP tweets, "Worried by Prism? It's actually part of a bigger effort. Not worried by Prism?
  |
| Brian Eno Caturday |
Did you know that ambient electronic music pioneer Brian Eno starred in an ad for Purina brand cat food, in an alternate universe?
  |
| How Google plans to use balloons to deliver broadband to the great unwired |
Wired has a neat story out today from Steven Levy, reporting from New Zealand, on how google plan to use hundreds of high-pressure balloons circling the earth to "provide Internet to a significant chunk of the world’s 5 billion unconnected souls, enriching their lives with vital news, precious educational materials, lifesaving health information, and images of grumpy cats."
  |
| Spying On The Home Front: A 2007 PBS FRONTLINE worth revisiting |
Given the recent news about the NSA's domestic surveillance programs, this PBS FRONTLINE documentary hour from 2007 is worth revisiting: "Spying On The Home Front.
  |
| Why you should care about surveillance |
I got tired of people savvying me about the revelations of NSA surveillance and asking why anyone would care about secret, intrusive spying, so I wrote a new Guardian column about it, "The NSA's Prism: why we should care." We're bad at privacy because the consequences of privacy disclosures are separated by a lot of time and space from the disclosures themselves. 
  |
| Handgun drone unsuccessfully shoots mobile phone |
Spocko sez, "In this commercial for a cell phone screen protector product, a quadcopter flies up to some fruit, sodas and a cell phones and shoots them with a remote controlled handgun.
  |
| Joe Biden 2006 explains surveillance to Barack Obama 2013 |
Back in 2006, Joe Biden explained why the Bush program of warrantless wiretapping was a bad idea, destroying GWB's arguments in favor of unconstitutional, sweeping blanket surveillance.
  |
