Flutterby™! From 2014-08-01 to 2014-08-31

One Seattle police officer issued 80% of the city's marijuana tickets in 2014.

[ related topics: Drugs Current Events Law Enforcement Seattle ]

Seems like these CIA playing games with the Senate Intelligence Committee revelations are treasonous on a scale that'd make Nixon blush.

[ related topics: Politics Games ]

I don't know why gun fans are so scared of licensing. We require licensing for cars, but if you kill someone with one and don't have a license it's just a "nominal fine" and a 15 day jail term: http://www.streetsblog.org/201...-driver-who-killed-bronx-senior/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Guns New York ]

Neighbor had an ugly old black metal chimney hanging down, so I disguised it (they did the finishing)

[ related topics: Photography ]

QOTD: MeFi user "compartment": "It wasn't a lie, it was an enhanced public speaking technique." http://www.metafilter.com/1415...-we-didnt-Oh-Yes-you-did#5666800

[ related topics: Quotes ]

A couple from Shadow:

• GoPro: Epic Roof Jump (YouTube). On the one hand giving these crazy bastards attention just encourages them, on the other hand... dayumn...
• Tech More: Cable Internet Chattanooga Tennessee: A City In Tennessee Has The Big Cable Companies Terrified. And well they should be, the big cable companies have a niche carved out in the public utility space that lets them siphon off dollars from what is essentially a municipal utility. They've been doing the minimum necessary to connect us while pushing broadcast media, TV, on us, for years.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Movies tolkien Space & Astronomy Journalism and Media Television Chattanooga Net Culture ]

The good news is that I wasn't actually under the house that long for what I did. But there's lots left to do, and it felt like days.

[ related topics: Current Events Real Estate ]

Done nothing but crawl under the damned house today, pedometer still says I've passed 5,000 steps.

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Digitizing round dance records from 45s. Almost forgot what a center spindle adapter looked like.

So the Pyle wireless mic set I bought doesn't make my voice sound pretty (even w/headset plugged straight in). Where do you go to learn about microphones (for square dance calling/singing)? Think I'm looking at the Shure SM58 and Beta 58, Electro Voice ND767A, AKG D5 class of microphone, but...

[ related topics: Wireless ]

Washington Post: For whistleblowers, a bold move can be followed by one to department basement.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Charlie Stross: The Snowden leaks: a meta-narrative:

... Because that's what the internet of things means: the secret police have installed locks in everything and the criminals are now selling each other skeleton keys.

Related: the FBI got a warrant to discretely install a trojan on the computers of everyone who visited a site.

[ related topics: Privacy Weblogs virus Law Enforcement Net Culture ]

Since marijuana legalization, highway fatalities in Colorado are at near-historic lows

[ related topics: Drugs Libertarian Movies Current Events ]

So just to stave off all of the people passing this to me, yes, I have seen this picture:

When “FOX Nation” makes signs, hilarity and spelling mistakes ensue attributes it to Facebook user Jefree Shalev.

It's actually hard to get Google to give a result for that misspelling, but Urban Dictionary suggests that "libety" is:

Most beautiful girl in the world, amazing personality, amazing body, and overall greatness ;D

But closer to closing time I can clearly see how this might become a difficult question.

[ related topics: Photography Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Archival ]

Because assholes need more exposure: Comic Artist Randy Queen Now Claims Post About His Abuse Of Copyright To Stifle Criticism Is Defamatory.

And... uh... "Randy Queen"? That should so be a drag name.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Copyright/Trademark ]

Muni Passengers Move Car Blocking Tracks (PHOTOS):

"In a very community moment, a bunch of guys decided they should move the car out of the way," passenger Phuong Mai tells SF Weekly. "It took about half a dozen tries to lift enough … but they managed to pivot the car to clear it from the tracks."

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Automobiles Community Public Transportation ]

"We build cities for cars, not people", which means we already serve robot masters, but not hyper intelligent ones.

[ related topics: Robotics ]

RT Strong Towns ‏@StrongTowns:

#signoffailure

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Archival ]

Firm That Exposed Breach Of 'Billion Passwords' Quickly Offered $120 Service To Find Out If You're Affected.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

RT Phil Shapiro ‏@philshapiro:

Wondering -- when people do data mining, where do they put the tailings?

Social media is the tailings of data mining. And it'll take decades to clean up the environmental impact.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Governing: Do We Really Need to Keep Building Convention Centers?

But a new book demonstrates a far less appealing reality. In "Convention Center Follies," Heywood Sanders, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, tells the tale of projects that continue to be built and expanded at a record pace even though they almost always fail to deliver the promised benefits.

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Education ]

Ad Age: New York Times shrinks labeling on its sponsored posts. No news on whether they'll begin to label single-sourced propaganda from the military industrial complex, or start charging for scare pieces about stolen passwords that are rewritten press releases from "security" companies with a product to sell.

Ya know, if they're hard up for revenue, I'd pay for something that hid all NYT "Style" section articles from me, for the rest of time.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Current Events Journalism and Media New York ]

Capsaicin may inhibit gut tumors.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that dietary capsaicin – the active ingredient in chili peppers – produces chronic activation of a receptor on cells lining the intestines of mice, triggering a reaction that ultimately reduces the risk of colorectal tumors.

The findings are published in the August 1, 2014 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health Food Current Events California Culture Education ]

Two for Charlene:

• I think she may have actually shown me this or described it to me a few weeks ago, but just in case: Very Few Things Are As Unique As This Beetle Cabinet.
• STAGE TUBE: Broadway Dancers Get 'Tappy' to Pharrell Williams' Hit Single "Happy".

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Law Home Improvement ]

Tee hee hee: Gaming meets gender meets life: http://www.robot-hugs.com/gender-rolls/

[ related topics: Games Robotics ]

KittenGroomer: Data security for journalists and activists (and pretty much anyone who's started to think about security). Given that USB sticks can also be input devices and other such things, this is about using a Raspberry Pi to build a device that'll take an untrested USB stick and copy the data across to a trusted one.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Drew this riff on the Roger Tory Petersen field guides as a notebook cover for my grandfather, probably some time in my early teens. Battered, it eventually made its way back to me

[ related topics: Photography ]

A good look at why that "reactionless drive" that made headlines a few days ago likely isn't: https://medium.com/starts-with...ld-with-bad-science-7a9318dd1ae6

[ related topics: moron ]

Fuck yeah: Chris Blasko talks a telemarketer into doing a factory reset on their phone.

So apparently you reset Polycom phones by pressing 4, 6, 8, and * at the same time, Yealink's you hold the "OK" button for 10 seconds. Looks like Avaya phones need to be hung up to do this. Damn it.

RT Graham Lee ‏@secboffin

[1/n] http://pic.twitter.com/Zx1bxFtDZk

RT Graham Lee ‏@secboffin:

…[n/n] http://pic.twitter.com/P03E3IHBY8

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Software Engineering Embedded Devices Archival ]

Just watched Boyhood. It was like watching Alec and Zack and Daniel and Ros and Morgan and about half of my Facebook friends grow up again...

[ related topics: Movies ]

Heading to Black Rock City. Maybe we'll see you on the way. We intend to head to DisneyLand (Anaheim CA) mosey through San Francisco, chill a little by Lake Tahoe and we'll be out early to build camp before everyone else gets there. Hoping to stop by and visit Dan (and Charlene) for at least a cup of coffee and a hug on the way.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area California Culture Archival ]

From Shadow: Wooden depth chart, a laser cut wood relief map of water depths in Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping Woodworking ]

Would like a social re-evaluation of the "sign up for our mailing list" (ie: our petition) "activism" that's inundating us all with spam.

[ related topics: Spam Monty Python ]

Now that, friends, is a mother flipping breadboard end.

Distressed tv stand top from reclaimed doug fir. Will be stained fairly dark.

[ related topics: Photography Technology and Culture Television ]

Whoops! The breadboard end...

[ related topics: Photography ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

(Whoops, sorry, these were meant to just be uploaded, wrong boxes checked on my socialmediafier)

[ related topics: Photography ]

One thing that college degree is good for? Earning more as a sex worker: The Economist: Prostitution and the internet: More bang for your buck: How new technology is shaking up the oldest business (because apparently they couldn't avoid the "bang" attempt at a pun. Sigh.)

... A study by Scott Cunningham of Baylor University and Todd Kendall of Compass Lexecon, a consultancy, shows that among prostitutes who worked during a given week, graduates earned on average 31% more than non-graduates. More lucrative working patterns rather than higher hourly rates explained the difference ...

Via.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Todd Gemmell Invention and Design Current Events Work, productivity and environment Television Net Culture Education Economics ]

Louisa Leontiades: How Passive Communication Killed My (Open) Relationship. Nominally on problems in poly relationships, but as Mary Anne Mohanraj, whom I got this from, observed, it's also about solving the last biscuit problem.

Square Your Dance: Various resources about the art and sport of square dancing.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

The DEA has been watching Amtrak passenger lists. The article is short, and about how the DEA should have been getting this information for free rather than paying for it, but the fact that they're rifling through passenger manifests at all is profoundly disturbing:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press has learned that the Drug Enforcement Administration paid an Amtrak secretary $854,460 over nearly 20 years to obtain confidential information about train passengers.

[ related topics: Health Current Events Machinery Trains Public Transportation ]

Bummed that for all the cycling in western Marin and Sonoma I've done and will do, I'll never get a chance to ride with Robin Williams.

[ related topics: Bay Area Sports Pedal Power Birds Bicycling ]

Remember when the NYT single-sourced the stories that led the U.S. into the Iraq invasion? Consider ISI[SL] info you're reading carefully.

Best thing about summer is eating basil as the primary component of a meal.

[ related topics: Food ]

Pia Glenn: I Intervened On Behalf Of A Young Man Who Was In Danger Of Being Unfairly Arrested

Popped up on my radar because of the news coming out of Ferguson Missouri, where Michael Brown was shot by a police officer:

... The officer said to "get the eff onto the sidewalk," he recounted. Johnson said the officer reached out of the car window and grabbed Brown around the neck.

Another witness, Piaget Crenshaw, said she saw police chase Brown. “He ran for his life,” she said. “They shot him and he fell. He put his arms up to let them know that he was compliant and he was unarmed, and they shot him twice more and he fell to the ground and died."

And my Twitter feed last night was filled with images of (black) people standing, with their hands up, a cell phone in one hand presumably recording video, in clouds of tear gas. As we've seen in the Occupy crackdowns and similar attacks, the police have been planting provocateurs in protests, so in my mind it's as likely that the news of looting we're hearing has been police action as opportunists, but either way it's clear that in a Southern community that's 65% black, a 53 person police force with 3 black members is probably not working with the community effectively.

The big question for me is: How did the municipal government become so unbalanced that the police force ended up that racially imbalanced? What sort of disenfranchisement left them either feeling like participation in that government was fruitless, or making it actually fruitless?

[ related topics: Wireless Free Speech moron Current Events Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Automobiles Community Video Gardening Woodworking ]

RPG Review: Code of Cthulhu. Sysadminning meets the lurking horror meets role playing games:

Shit. Um... press "c".

You can see the full details of the Java invocation. (d6 SAN) And you can see the fateful curse "tomcat" mixed in with the strange moon language. Roll another d10 SAN loss.

[ related topics: Games Software Engineering ]

25 female cartoonists on drawing their bodies.

[ related topics: Nudity ]

RT Natalie Silvanovich ‏@natashenka:

And I was like "sudo make me a sandwich" and he was like "I use SELinux", and it was like totally the end of an era.

RT the grugq ‏@thegrugq:

@natashenka yeah, but he’ll disable it in a week when he isn’t able to make his own sandwiches anymore…

ref.

Firewalling another 4k+ IP addresses that keep sending bogus POSTs to my web server. The next net technology needs better filter handling.

Of interest to some Flutterby readers, who probably can't talk about it: Chattanooga payday lender Carey Brown faces criminal charges.

Brown pledged to donate $1 billion in profits from his payday empire to charity, forming the Covenant Values Foundation to support Christian causes around the world. He gained partners in this effort such as Hugh O. Maclellan, who descends from the family that founded what is now disability insurer Unum Group.

[ related topics: Religion History Sociology Current Events Chattanooga Guns ]

Peter Acworth: A Strike For Justice:

A year ago, I was charged for possession of a gram of cocaine, which was found when police responded to reports of alleged gun use at the San Francisco Armory, home of the adult production studio, Kink.com.

I had a great lawyer and the charges were eventually dropped. But how would I have fared if I had not had the money, or a different skin color? Unfortunately, I think I know the answer because I witnessed it.

Other story: Kink.com CEO Peter Acworth Admits He Skirted Cocaine Charge Because He's Rich and White.

Via Violet Blue's sex news, which also had some notes about how the condom legislation in L.A. is driving porn production out.

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area Theater & Plays Law Current Events Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement California Culture Guns Currency Race ]

Profiling Hadoop jobs with Riemann:

In almost every job I’ve profiled, serialization dominates. In fact, it might be safe to say that less than 10% of the compute time in our Hadoop jobs is actually doing real work. The majority is spent parsing serialized data structures and emitting new ones.

A little lesson about distributed compute and frameworks there...

[ related topics: Invention and Design Bay Area Work, productivity and environment Heinlein ]

Ya know, if you have those high taxes like in California, all the rich people will leave...

TruliaTrends: Why Do People Leave California?. Fascinating graph...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics California Culture Government ]

"Your mother knows how to push your buttons, because she installed them" Robin Williams on WTF #67

[ related topics: Birds ]

Bubbles: Cloud computing, IoT, 3d printing. What opportunities lie in applications on people's own computers, without extra hardware?

[ related topics: Graphics ]

The Weekly Sift: Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party.

Who really won the Civil War? The first hint at how deep the second mystery ran came from the biography Jefferson Davis: American by William J. Cooper. In 1865, not only was Davis not agonizing over how to end the destruction, he wanted to keep it going longer. ...

[ related topics: Books Bay Area History ]

MeFi user Atom Eyes on the "sovereign citizen" movement:

Your Honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I'd like to take this time to say a few words on behalf of my own defense.

Up. Up. Down. Down. Left. Right. Left. Right. Bee. Ayy. Start.

The Defense rests.

Modern Art was a CIA weapon. The CIA was funding Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, etc:

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

[ related topics: Privacy Invention and Design History Sociology Current Events Art & Culture Civil Liberties Guns Government ]

NPR Is Laundering CIA Talking Points to Make You Scared of NSA Reporting.

[ related topics: Religion ]

Whoah: Ubuntu bug: OpenOffice won't print on Tuesday: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...e/cupsys/+bug/255161/comments/28

On Facebook, a friend (who lives in the boonies and has a net provider whose links are way oversaturated) wrote:

My ISP regularly rants to me that we're killing the world by streaming video on the internet. Claims each feature-length-film watched is roughly equivalent to a pound of coal and 10 gallons of water. WTF? Is he as crackpot as he sounds, or should I pay attention to that? How best to tell him to shut the hell up (stop bugging me) and convert HIS network equipment to solar? Dumbfounded.

I responded:

So this suggests that 200 watt hours per gigabyte for Japan to Switzerland (ie: as around the world as possible) is a pessimistic number: http://static.googleuserconten...2013/pdfs/DirectEnergyDemand.pdf

This says that we use roughly 1.09 lbs of coal per kilowatt hour: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=667&t=2

This suggests somewhere between 1 and 2 gigabytes per hour of streamed video: http://ask.metafilter.com/1773...the-average-movie-download-in-gb

So, pessimistically, a 2 hour movie streamed from the other side of the world (Torrented from Korea?) would use 4 gigabytes, or 400 watt hours, .4 kilowatt hours, or just under 7 ounces of coal. So... ya dig sixteen tons, wadda ya get? 73,394 movies and deeper in debt 800 watt hours, .8 kilwatt hours.

(These numbers are probably lower now, switching equipment has gotten more efficient in the 5 years since that .2kW/hr/gb calculation was done.)

You could presumably do a similar calculation about the cost it takes to bring you your mail, therefore DVDs by mail. And depending on who your provider is getting their data from there's a good chance that there's a Netflix cache within a hop or two of their gateway, which means the movie isn't coming all the way around the world, it's going a few tens of miles.

Edit: I forgot a multiply two paragraphs up...

[ related topics: Movies broadband Journalism and Media Net Culture Video Photovoltaics Energy Monitoring ]

Wired: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story, which touches on the likelihood of a second leaker, and talks about how it was the NSA who brought down Syria's Internet connection to the rest of the world back in 2012.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

An open letter to Rush Limbaugh. Giggle.

[ related topics: Humor ]

I have one unfiltered emailed account, and lately it's been getting a lot of spam with reputable company names in the subject line. For example: Pimsleur and Ford - with links and from addresses from the usual spam weirdness and links to "who knows what" (but we can guess).

It just occurred to me that these brands used are specific. For example 2014 Ford, but not GM, Toyota, etc.. I've got two observations that are not necessarily related, and NO facts:

• The brands used seem to be specific enough to me that they might be sourced from "big data" about my preferences and online shopping.
• The brands are being effectively "de-valued" because of the prevalence in my spam.

Item 2 is particularly interesting to me... would it be of economic value for a company like "Wendy's" to pay a spammer to use the brand "McDonalds" in their spam campaigns?

Again, no data.. just musing.

[ related topics: Spam Monty Python Automobiles Economics McDonald's ]

An American doctor (on vacation in the UK) experiences an NHS emergency room.

... I fretted about going to the hospital. It wasn’t the prospect of navigating a slightly foreign ER, but simply the prospect of the wait. While I am a staunch supporter of the British NHS in the back of my mind I envisioned a paralyzingly full emergency room and an agonizing 18 hour wait only to find he had nothing in his eye (the basic antechamber of Hell scenario). ...

[ related topics: Health ]

Man charged with street robbery that happened while he was in jail. Victim of a mugging picked this guy's picture out of a set of pictures.

A public defender who represented Threatt this week says he laid out jail records before a judge Monday showing that his client had what might have been the best possible alibi.

But prosecutors said the issue should be sorted out at trial, according to the public defenders office, and the judge declined to release Threatt (he did get $25,000 shaved off his bail).

[ related topics: Photography Law Current Events ]

Wow. The NYPD(!) has sent around an internal memo that states that taking video and pictures of police is legal. Ho. Ly. Crap. This is freakin' huge!

In other words, police must mind the law—"'taking photographs, videotapes or tape recordings' do not constitute probable cause for arrest"—that has always existed (but for real now).

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Law Current Events Law Enforcement Video ]

RT Nice Hippo ‏@Bagyants

I understand guys who go to strip clubs together. When I'm with my friends I'm like "This is ok but what if we all had erections"

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture ]

Ferguson is also a net neutrality issue. On Twitter vs Facebook, algorithmic news, and net neutrality.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Colorado subsidizes IUDs, teen pregnancies drop 40% from 2009 to 2013.

[ related topics: Current Events Pop Culture ]

Police or Army: Who wore it better?

[ related topics: Aviation Law Enforcement ]

Using private npm to deploy NodeJs projects: https://blog.lever.co/using-private-npm-to-deploy-code/

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Okay, I buried this down in that thread about race and Ferguson Missouri, but this is awesome enough that it deserves to get promoted to the front page.

This is how you fucking do it! The governor has put the Missouri State Highway Patrol in charge of Ferguson, replacing the city and county police departments. RT Jon Swaine @jonswaine:

Highway patrol captain Ron Johnson is leading protesters on a march through Ferguson. A corner turned?

(With picture). Note how he's dressed.

This should be the damned wake-up call on militaristic policing. You want results, talk to people, don't threaten them. Empower them. Include them.

Maybe it's overplaying this. Maybe there are police officers all across the country willing to actually be officers of the city (polis). But there were apparently 63 in Ferguson, and who knows how many in St Louis County, who weren't able to break free of their entrenched system and do this.

So, yeah, maybe Captain Johnson is a real life Sam Vimes.

Also, good on ya Alderman Antonio French.

And at this point, I hope they can get a Federal Attorney in to start writing some serious indictments. Because if 4 different police departments think that the right reaction to a community upset about a cop shooting a kid in the back is to come in with SWAT teams and tactics, rather than to investigate, those fuckers are closing ranks around some pretty heinous shit.

And just as a reminder of how fucked up things were before the Missouri Highway Patrol took over: Here's a list of potentially unconstitutional things that police in Ferguson were doing.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Writing Law Law Enforcement Community Archival Terry Pratchett ]

I am uncomfortable with how our culture embraces extrajudicial execution in response to criminal suspicions as an alternative to due process

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture ]

RT Dan Berkman ‏@danberkman:

DOT didn’t lock the PDF version of their Bike Smart cycling guide so I ‘fixed’ the mixing zone diagram. #bikenyc http://pic.twitter.com/A4imzYRozL

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Sports Embedded Devices Douglas Adams Pedal Power Bicycling Archival ]

Music of the afternoon:

• Gettin' Lucky with a Bassoon and Theremin.
• Speedometer - Happy
• Pipe Guy

[ related topics: Music Movies ]

So the guy in the American flag T-shirt with the bag of chips in one hand, about to lob the flaming smoke bomb back at the Ferguson police, has been identified. But Edward ‏@eyeFLOODpanties notes:

Please consider not purchasing shirts of my image. None of that money is going to me or the #MikeBrown family.

[ related topics: Photography Sociology Consumerism and advertising Law Enforcement Currency Clothing Archival ]

Why I fear 3d printers: You know how much printing and drivers and such sucks right now? Yeah, that. With another dimension.

[ related topics: Graphics ]

It has been pointed out that California's bill to require kill switches in cell phones also means that law enforcement could invoke that kill switch for nefarious purposes. Like imagine what would have happened in Ferguson...

[ related topics: Law Enforcement California Culture ]

Sharp v. Baltimore Police Department - Letter from DOJ to BPD, May 14, 2012:

Because recording police officers in the public discharge of their duties is protected by the First Amendment, policies should prohibit interference with recording of police activities except in narrowly circumscribed situations. More particularly, policies should instruct officers that, except under limited circumstances, officers must not search or seize a camera or recording device without a warrant. In addition, policies should prohibit more subtle actions that may nonetheless infringe upon individuals’ First Amendment rights. Officers should be advised not to threaten, intimidate, or otherwise discourage an individual from recording police officer enforcement activities or intentionally block or obstruct cameras or recording devices.

Policies should prohibit officers from destroying recording devices or cameras and deleting recordings or photographs under any circumstances. In addition to violating the First Amendment, police officers violate the core requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process clause when they irrevocably deprived individuals of their recordings without first providing notice and an opportunity to object.

[ related topics: Photography Privacy Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

So the dancers last night preferred my voice on the Pyle wireless mic vs an EV ND967. Shocked, but I can deal with not buying new gear...

[ related topics: Wireless Invention and Design ]

Argh. So, apparently online ordering with delivery is awesome, *except* when your street is closed to through traffic for repairs.

Dear legacy cloud media company (Real): kilobytes per minute when downloading your player leaves me skeptical about your paid services.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Consider that releasing Michael Brown's clothing to Dr Baden could have supported the official story, and Ferguson police chose not to.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Clothing ]

I've watched Zack grow up, and he's now off gallivanting around the world, and is amazing. Anyway, he's interviewed in A Thing For Wor(l)ds: Let's Talk Turkish, which is fascinating not just because I know him, but because it's worth a read on its own right.

[ related topics: Movies ]

RT Bitter Script Reader ‏@BittrScrptReadr:

Some cops are really testy when lumped in w/Ferguson guys.

I get it. It's a bitch when people make snap judgments because you fit a profile

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Opinionated Rundown of JavaScript Frameworks.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

How Volunteer-Run Argus Radio Broadcast Ferguson Protests Live To The World. What's most disturbing about the Ferguson situation, with police apparently attempting to deliberately rile up a population and provoke violence, is that they're also attempting to suppress press coverage of the situation. Argus Radio's Mustafa Hussein was told to turn off his live-streaming camera, and...

Police on Wednesday night also cracked down hard on the press, on several occasions trying to prevent journalists from recording their actions. Police arrested The Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly and The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery, and objected to the reporters recording them or asking for their names and badge numbers. Vice’s Alice Speri said police asked if she wanted to get shot after she photographed an officer. Police also fired tear gas at reporters from Al Jazeera America; when the journalists dispersed, the police began dismantling the TV crew's equipment.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Technology and Culture Theater & Plays Current Events Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Television Pop Culture Dictators ]

Nerve: I did it for science: A stranger remotely controlled my vibrator, or: some looks at the Babeland’s OhMiBod blueMotion, and a little thinking about the implications of this, including a few thoughts on teenagers... and, uh, maybe MMORPGs?

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Flight Test: Planes Fire & Rescue Challenge (YouTube), riffing on the recent Pixar film, including an R/C water bomber.

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Movies Aviation Graphics Pyrotechnics Toys ]

Dear eatery owners: using your web site, try to find out when your restaurant is open. Now get your web site fixed. Thank you.

[ related topics: Food ]

Perhaps especially if you don't square dance, a survey, s'il vous plait? http://squareyourdance.wordpre...y-on-interest-in-square-dancing/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Bicyclist dies after crashing into car door

The town of Durham recently finished reconfiguring traffic on Main Street, making it one-way, adding parking and -- in theory -- making it safer for pedestrians, motorists and cyclists.

As the Facebook entry I grabbed this from said: "they even used the magic green paint!". If you restripe lanes to force bicylists into the door zone, or even paint sharrows on the right side of the lane, you're increasing the risk to cyclists.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events Automobiles Clowns ]

Ho. Ly. Shit. If you want to know everything wrong about policing in the United States: Washington Post: I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

Ya know, parents who beat their kids generally have the best of intentions.

Or, RT Molly Crabapple ‏@mollycrabapple:

When cops say they have to beat people cause they're insulting or threatening, I think of all the street harassers I've left untouched

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama ]

Stuck in a maze of little Java dependencies, all weird.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Eric Paxton: Am I American Enough Today?

To check when I get home: nSPIRED Natural Foods, Inc. Voluntarily Recalls Certain Retail Lots Of Arrowhead Mills® Peanut Butters, Maranatha® Almond Butters And Peanut Butters And Specific Private Label Nut Butters Because Of Possible Health Risk. The private label brands include Trader Joe's and Whole Foods 365.

Also note that Arrowhead Mills, Maranatha, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Safeway Open Nature, and Kroeger's house brand are all the same thing. Hmmm...

[ related topics: Health Nature and environment Real Estate ]

Dear Driver of the Silver SUV who ran into me on my bicycle this Saturday…

[ related topics: Humor Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Obligation is a derail: Some thoughts on negotiation in loving relationships:

Obligation is a distraction from the real issue, which is, “Do I feel that making you happy in this way is worth what it will cost me?*” Sometimes the answer is no, and that is an acutely uncomfortable thing to say, which is why we shy away from it and use “obligation” as a screen. ...

A number of things in here, I need to read this through a few times.

Wall Street Journal: Meet AdDetector — The New Plug-In That Labels Native Advertising

[ related topics: Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising Economics ]

Before I write one: suggestions for an embedded web app server? (irrigation controller that needs state management & hardware control)

[ related topics: Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Need a place to stash some thoughts for square dance patter music:

• http://www.beatport.com/releas...o-swing-revolution-vol-3/1106035 - specifically 4, maybe 12, 22, 26, 30

[ related topics: Music ]

Eagerly embracing Web 3.0, because it means Web 3.11 For Workgroups is coming, and that'll be the version that doesn't suck. Then: Web 95.

Can you count how many shots does it take to subdue a man who stole a couple sodas?

One could expect a new trend of faked videos. Instead of UFOs or airplane crashes, we'll get faked videos of cops shooting suspects. For now, there's not much need to fake it...

[ related topics: Movies Law Enforcement ]

New York Times admits that their article claiming there were "conflicting accounts" of the shooting of Michael Brown was police stenography.

But that damage is done now...

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Enforcement New York Gambling ]

Every loyalty program interaction is an opportunity for you to explore how you're being gamed and/or A/B tested.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

From last December: Iceland grieves after police kill a man for the first time in its history

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

3:20 this morning, 6.1 near American Canyon. I felt it, but didn't think it worth getting out of bed for, Charlene slept through.

[ related topics: Furniture ]

Charlene, gesturing: "Did you screw up that thing?" I undoubtedly did, but more specifics would help me answer correctly...

Charlene working on the roof

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment ]

Square dancing OH: "There are only six possible arrangements of boys and girls." / "That's not what the Cosmo article said."

What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings:

The biggest thing I've taken away from this project is something I'll never be able to prove, but I'm convinced to my core: The lack of such a database is intentional. No government—not the federal government, and not the thousands of municipalities that give their police forces license to use deadly force—wants you to know how many people it kills and why.

That's certainly consistent with the Bureau of Justice Statistics slicing data every which way but killings by police officers...

[ related topics: moron Law Enforcement Mathematics Databases ]

Shadow forwarded along this instructables on building a really cool guy holding a shield wood knife holder/block. I've seen the stabbed guy one in plastic, but I like the shield motif of this.

Wooden Boat forum: Pirate ship finally out of the garage and ready for rigging. Be sure to check the rigged pictures on page 2.

It's been a while since our boat build and we haven't had the boat out this summer. Got a ton of work we're doing on the house, but if we ever build another one, that's the target.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment Boats Machinery Community Real Estate ]

When I took my CERT training, I had recently attended WhereCamp and talked with people who were playing with kites and balloons and various other technologies for aerial photography (including our very own Eric). One of the discussions at CERT was about doing quick wide area damage assessments, and one of the take-aways from the people who'd done real crisis response at WhereCamp was that in an actual emergency, HAM radio is obsolete, what you really want is point-to-point WiFi so you can move serious amounts of imagery and real data.

And in subsequent disaster preparedness meetings, I heard the HAM guys bitch about how in drills all of their information was tolerated and then simply dropped on the floor.

So even at the time, I was thinking how it'd be cool to have interested citizens with the capabilities able to move actual imagery around to help on wider-scale triage efforts. It ain't really there yet, but...

Some n-copter drone video of the Napa/American Canyon earthquake damage.

[ related topics: Photography Movies Earthquake Video ]

Square dance tab dump:

• Tsukuba Square Dance Club - Teaching order for the 2014 beginner class, with links to animation and video for each of the new moves.
• Square Your Dance has links to the Saddlebrook Squares video square dance lessons for Mainstream (YouTube play list) and links to the Saddlebrook Squares video square dance lessons for Plus (YouTube play list)

[ related topics: Animation Movies Invention and Design Video ]

RT Carl Malamud ‏@carlmalamud:

@jessamyn @SteveBellovin They use an awful lot of upper-case. I smell a mainframe.

[ related topics: Law ]

I haven't been riding much recently, except for the Joe Rodota trail from downtown Santa Rosa to work, where I know to wait for the assholes who run the light (and often wave cheerfully to us as they assert the right of way by dint of tonnage).

But I keep seeing accident reports. And keep thinking that I really should have two cameras running on the bike at all times, and start posting video of the most egregious violators of the rules of the road, so that we can make cycling safer overall.

http://fly6.com/ is a bicycling tail light + camera combo.

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Sports Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

Find the real threat: SFGate front page has a huge "massive quake damage" header, "Pedestrian hit and killed by Muni bus" in the side bar.

[ related topics: Games Earthquake Public Transportation ]

Yesterday marked the 93^rd anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, in which over ten thousand coal miners squared off against thousands of police officers and mercenaries, the largest domestic armed conflict outside of the Civil War in American history. From two years ago, Archeology Magazine writes about the issues around gaining access to the site to understand that history...

As the miners neared Chafin’s three-mile defensive line along Spruce Fork Ridge, open war broke out. Archaeologists estimate that a million rounds were fired over the battle’s five days. It is not known how many people were killed, but according to historians, estimates range from 20 to 100, which seems oddly low, considering the number of men involved and the intensity of the fighting. One early newspaper account stated that the miners were loading their dead into boxcars, but said little more about casualties. ...

Charleston Gazette: Fight to preserve Blair Mountain, labor history, continues.

[ related topics: History Current Events Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Archival ]

Your Java mockery of the day: Enterprise Quality Coding: Fizz Buzz Enterprise Edition.

Because I RT'd Reginald Braithwaite @raganwald:

Important: It’s not enough to avoid writing code in the Java language. You must also avoid writing Java in another coding language.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Writing ]

Just an update. We've been at BurningMan since Friday (early) For us, it's been awesome. A lot has changed, much much more organized (in good and bad ways). Incredible scale and quality of art. Lots of logistical issues caused by some rain, bus service and will-call horror stories abound. And I'm sitting in the RV with just enough 'net to check my crisis email address and post this. Might be too much 'net :)

[ related topics: Burning Man Art & Culture Heinlein Public Transportation ]

"Internet ate my email" is the new version of Reagan's "I don't remember", but it gets worse. Not only are the St Louis County and Ferguson police seeding lies and misdirection into press coverage, they're making up paperwork after the fact to try to cover up corruption: St. Louis County and Ferguson Police Violating Public Records Laws Regarding Michael Brown Shooting Death:

What is also clear from the record as well as my conversations with Lt. Burk – this record of this Incident Report was created in response to my request, rather than at the time of the incident as is normally required, and that it intentionally has been created to withhold the key narrative elements, normally provided and required under law, that make the report useful and that is what the public is seeking according to our rights under the law.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Net Culture Government ]

Google Project Zero: The poisoned NUL byte, 2014 edition. Fascinating account of figuring out how to exploit an off-by-one error in glibc's memory allocation code into privilege escalation. Good things to think about for any coder, especially anyone working in C or C++, but also in how we think about building larger systems.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

Sage: Open Source Mathematics Software: You don't really think that Sage has failed, do you?

I am trying to figure out my next steps. I love Open Source software and the development environments that it provides. However, I'm also seeing that the models for revenue, and the markets for selling individual applications, which run on people's own hardware, with that ecosystem is limited.

This explores some of the ideas.

[ related topics: Free Software Software Engineering Mathematics Economics ]

JAMA Network: Medical Cannabis Laws and Opioid Analgesic Overdose Mortality in the United States, 1999-2010:

States with medical cannabis laws had a 24.8% lower mean annual opioid overdose mortality rate (95% CI, −37.5% to −9.5%; P = .003) compared with states without medical cannabis laws. Examination of the association between medical cannabis laws and opioid analgesic overdose mortality in each year after implementation of the law showed that such laws were associated with a lower rate of overdose mortality that generally strengthened over time ...

Via.

[ related topics: broadband Government ]

RT Bucky Isotope ‏@BuckyIsotope:

If you're having girl problems I feel bad for you son, you're getting paid 30% less than your male counterparts and people call you a bitch.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

RT @drewtoothpaste:

We Pulled Over Kids With Weed And Stole And Sold Their Parents' Cars To Get This Murder Van

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Health Archival ]

Interview with a man tortured by the British, including about how that torture made him sympathize more with the IRA.

If I'd have known your name at the time, I can assure you you'd be an IRA mountie.

Randal Olson: The best and worst times to have your case reviewed by a judge. Which means that there are currently people in prison because the judge was hungry.

[ related topics: Law ]

Cornered last night by a "wifi and electrical circuits are irradiating us all" crazy. Need to get better at disengaging from those loons.

Bash One-Liners.

Proper error messages, when telling you that "X" is not a valid option, will enumerate valid options. Grrr.

Cracked.com: 7 important details that can help us understand Ferguson. A good run-down of all of the bullshit we've been told about Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown. And fart jokes.

And also points out that the damage that came out of the Ferguson protests was actually less than what seems to happen when a professional sportsball team wins a championship.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Getting better with the free-hand router

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Getting better with the free-hand router (with picture)

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

I think that turned out nicely...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Nature: News: Social sciences suffer from severe publication bias: Survey finds that ‘null results’ rarely see the light of the day.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Current Events ]

I haven't bothered to learn sed and awk, largely because extra neurons for something Perl already does passably seemed like a waste. I'd assumed that I was, at the very least, paying a startup penalty, but generally for one-liners who cares?

RC3: Surprisingly, Perl outperforms sed and Awk shows that the tool getting the optimization attention blows the ones that aren't out of the water. So, yeah: just use Perl.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Television hubris ]

RT @tonitonirocca: Genders are like cars, everyone keeps telling me I abso need one and I keep going "I LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO"

https://twitter.com/tonitonirocca/status/337697644468129792

[ related topics: Bay Area Theater & Plays California Culture ]

The Grogono Generator: an Apologia, on good and bad random number generators, including some beautiful visualizations of "random" number generators:

When it is used with good RNGs, the results of the Pickover Test are rather boring: it just draws spheres. The test is much more effective when it is used with a bad RNG, because it produces pretty pictures. In particular, the Grogono Generator is so bad that it generates quite delightful patterns. Here are some examples, starting with three from my generator.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Realizing that Facebook's showing threads to friends of friends removes context and lowers the quality of discourse.

The wonders of the Internet: Learning that the part I'm about to buy for $80 quantity 1 goes for $23.75 each quantity 12.

[ related topics: Net Culture Education ]

Some wood, some epoxy, a rock: door stop

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

Huh. I guess re-crimping a cable while it's still plugged in to the Power Over Ethernet injector is a bad idea.

When I ran network & phone, we said we'd only do it once, so I carefully routed & stapled wires. Betcha saw that coming before I did. Sigh.

[ related topics: broadband Woodworking ]