Performing Self-Surgery to Become a Handmade Cyborg

Today in great reads: The Verge’s Ben Popper has a killer story up about the world of underground body hackers–those souls brave and crazy enough to perform surgery on themselves to give themselves new powers and strengths. It goes beyond regular cyborg ideas, partly because the guys are doing it themselves, with no safety net. Example: some embed a rare earth magnet under one’s skin, which allows the hacked person to detect electromagnetic fields. There’s a video of the surgery/hack, and it’s a bit graphic but pretty awesome. Check out the story here.