Flutterby™! From 2015-05-01 to 2015-05-31

Dave Thompson is retiring fbcmd. Damn. http://fbcmd.dtompkins.com/

Study finds that state crime labs are paid per conviction:

In a new paper for the journal Criminal Justice Ethics, Roger Koppl and Meghan Sacks look at how the criminal justice system actually incentivizes wrongful convictions. In their section on state crime labs, they discover some astonishing new information about how many of these labs are funded.

Guess how impartial that's gonna make those processes...

[ related topics: Ethics Invention and Design Law Enforcement Model Building ]

So as you look at the property damage in Baltimore, think about what you'd accept to bring killers to justice. Because that's what it took.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

An effort to reproduce 100 psychology research findings managed to confirm the findings of only 39 studies:

The project, known as the “Reproducibility Project: Psychology”, is the largest of a wave of collaborative attempts to replicate previously published work, following reports of fraud and faulty statistical analysis as well as heated arguments about whether classic psychology studies were robust. One such effort, the ‘Many Labs’ project, successfully reproduced the findings of 10 of 13 well-known studies.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Nature and environment Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

"*** glibc detected *** mysql: double free or corruption (!prev): 0x0000000000fd5790 ***" #achievementunlocked!

[ related topics: Open Source Databases ]

So SFGate.com, once a joint regional news venture of both the SF Chronicle and SF Examiner, is now mostly (all?) Chronicle articles, and they're trying like hell to monetize it.

I clicked on a headline, Secret, anonymous sharing app, dies at 16 months, and the article read:

Secret, the anonymous social networking app that shot to prominence and was then forgotten almost as quickly, died on Wednesday. The startup was 16 months old.

There's a box to sign in or subscribe to read the rest of the article, but I can't imagine what more they'd have to say.

[ related topics: Drugs Bay Area Current Events ]

Man. The number of very profitable companies with multi-billion dollar market caps reminding me that Nepal needs help. Wow.

[ related topics: Currency Economics ]

Hmmmmm

[ related topics: Photography ]

Got an email from someone who may or may not want to out theirself. The entry was about my link a few days ago to that Watchdog.org article on Solar City and other big solar lease companies use of "fixture filings".

The correspondent had two points:

• That it was totally reasonable for the company to protect itself.
• DailyKos looking at who funds Watchdog.org.

Both are valid points, and I'm liberally copying and pasting from my email back.

I think it's totally reasonable for Solar City to have some sort of protection, it's just that...

Solar leases are the payday loans of the middle-class homeowner. They attach a liability to the house that won't come back in the sale price, they're a bad investment, and....

If you look at the Solar City advertising, they over and over again say "doesn't attach a lien", but if you use Google to drill down into their residential PPA, they attach a fixture filing. Exactly what the watchdog.org article says.

So have some protection? Sure. Call it a lien. Or at least don't, in the front of all of your advertising materials and press releases, say that there's no lien when there clearly is.

And, yeah: The economics of residential solar only make sense given the very distorted regulatory environment. If solar made sense without the huge subsidies, SolarCity would be leasing commercial roof space where it could do installs at about half the cost per kilowatt.

The various tax breaks and subsidies for solar are basically a way for the big investment banks to get more mortgage-structured debt on to consumers. SolarCity is the primary broker in that space.

I'm trying to keep an open mind on residential solar as we look for a system, but basically the current regulatory environment is a way to push the load of an inefficient generation system on to taxpayers. I might take advantage of that; nobody should let one of these big solar scammers double dip by taking advantage of both them and the tax breaks.

On the second point, the Daily Kos: Rightward-Facing Dog: Who is Watchdog.org?, good call, and it's worth me thinking twice about linking to them, as I do with links to the Wall Street Journal or New York Times. Thanks!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Nature and environment Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Consumerism and advertising New York Dogs Economics Archival Real Estate Photovoltaics Energy Monitoring ]

Washing machine grey water catch basin

Washing machine grey water catch basin

[ related topics: Photography ]

On Twitter, I snarked about some big upcoming (or maybe it's passed now?) boxing match, comparing it to American football.

The response: Football is way worse than boxing. For real.

[ related topics: Sports ]

Shadow forwarded along video of Seattle bicycle police ramming protesters from behind and, apparently, starting a fight.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Pedal Power Video Bicycling Seattle ]

Terry Burnham: A trick for higher SAT scores? Unfortunately no.

In which a story about bad fonts for better test comprehension is debunked, and yet I so wanted the smackdown on designers that the original story implied...

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

mispost

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Still needs a little clean up of the metal work on the side

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment ]

What is it with these whacked out crazy oil rich states? Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Texas...

It's true, googly eyes do make everything better

[ related topics: Photography ]

RT Tabatha Southey @TabathaSouthey

Please let it be called "Rocks Off." Toronto's last porn theatre to become rock climbing gym http://on.thestar.com/1zzOosR via @torontostar

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Theater & Plays ]

Atul Gawande in the New Yorker: Overkill: An avalanche of unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially. What can we do about it?

It didn’t occur to Bruce until later to question what the doctors meant by “successful.” The blockages weren’t causing his father’s fainting episodes or any other impairments to his life. The operation would not make him feel better. Instead, “success” to the doctors meant reducing his future risk of a stroke. How long would it take for the future benefit to outweigh the immediate risk of surgery? The doctors didn’t say, but carotid surgery in a patient like Bruce’s father reduces stroke risk by about one percentage point per year. Therefore, it would take fifteen years before the benefit of the operation would exceed the fifteen-per-cent risk of the operation. And he had a life expectancy far shorter than that—very likely just two or three years. The potential benefits of the procedures were dwarfed by their risks.

Related, especially about balancing patient expectations and the placebo effect with measurable positive impacts: Wired: An Alternative-Medicine Believer's Journey Back To Science.

[ related topics: Health Invention and Design ]

I am not a subscriber, but the lede for this WSJ article about Comcast says:

Comcast now has more broadband subscribers than video subscribers. And that isn’t a bad thing.

I also noticed that NPR podcasts have recently been carrying ads for NPR's radio programs, so podcasts are taking over...

Aaaand, I recently got in the car, heard the tail end of something on the radio and reached for my phone so I could scroll back a few minutes in the podcast to catch the whole thing.

There's still something of a shared sociological feeling of everybody getting together to watch Game of Thrones, and I'm not sure how the advertising is going to sort itself out, but it seems like we've transitioned from broadcast media to, at least with localized caching and some queuing mechanisms, a network one.

I need to up my income game so TC and I can finally settle that bandwidth bet. Sigh. Or we need to go back and figure out when this tipped and what the timeframe on it was [evil cackle].

Now have the big telcos finally given up on metering to the home to try to extort customers into consuming their own media?

[ related topics: Games Movies broadband Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Automobiles Video ]

Anti-news: Sex Workers Say A&E Show Lied To Them About Providing Resources And Protecting Their Privacy.

“This show, these people, it’s a disaster in my life,” said Kamylla, who spent weeks waiting for the promised assistance, quickly running out of money to support herself, her husband, and her children. They gave her a $200 fee and then did not follow through on promises of medical, dental, housing, and employment assistance, she told BuzzFeed News. “I kept on calling them, and nothing happened.”

Yep: "Anti-trafficking" organization exploited women and then abandoned them. This is a pattern. And now that they've outed her, she can't do sex work any more because she'll be immediately busted. And was.

via MeFi.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Privacy Sexual Culture Current Events Work, productivity and environment Sports Currency Marriage Real Estate ]

Karen Thompson at The Innocence Project: Creating Context Through Representation: When the Lawyer Looks Like the Client.

Just go read it. Some amazing short thoughts on race and racism.

[ related topics: Law Current Events Race ]

Starting at 15:36 on this episode of BBC Click: Since cloud computing lets you do computing anywhere, why not move those computers into people's houses and use them for heating? The company is Nerdalize:

By placing high performance servers in homes Nerdalize creates highly distributed compute cloud without the overhead cost of conventional cloud and co-location solutions. This creates a triple-win where sustainable computing power becomes an affordable commodity, homes are heated for free and emissions are drastically reduced!

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Monty Python Real Estate ]

RT oliver day ‏@zeroday:

Dear all "homosexual" friends. You're being sued by a lady in Nebraska. No I'm not kidding. http://dockets.justia.com/dock...braska/nedce/8:2015cv00158/69317 http://ia801502.us.archive.org...7/gov.uscourts.ned.69317.1.0.pdf

Interesting: USAA (my insurance company) is asking me to enroll in a program where they've contracted with private firefighting services.

The company is http://wildfire-defense.com/

I find this particularly interesting given that we've got an excess of public firefighters: http://marginalrevolution.com/...refighters-dont-fight-fires.html

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Any resources for trying to figure out radiation exposure for someone stationed in Japan post WW2? We can figure out where and when he was.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/rolling-spider

An implementation of the networking protocols (Bluetooth LE) used by the Parrot MiniDrone - Rolling Spider. This offers an off-the-shelf $99 USD drone that can be controlled by JS -- yay!

[ related topics: Wireless Birds ]

So, wait, Microsoft released a non-consensual breaking change to the common consent framework?

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron ]

The rabbits in the field by JDSU are huge!

[ related topics: Photography ]

Well worth reading carefully: Why Cops Like Me Stay Quiet About Police Brutality

I later realized that that girl’s tax dollars paid for me to endure her story, not share it. That’s what a cop’s job is: to swallow the sorrows of humanity — from the banal to the truly tragic — and to return to work the next day and do it all over again. You have to dehumanize people. Your brain does it automatically, to protect yourself. ...

[ related topics: Politics Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Heinlein ]

TEDx video: Dr. Sarah Hallberg: Reversing Type 2 Diabetes starts with ignoring dietary guidelines. A little bit more anecdote-ish than good medicine should be, but perhaps a good starting point for further investigation.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

People For Bikes on Twitter has a great look at “If roads were like bike lanes.”.

In that same vein, Shadow sent along: My town put in awesome new bike racks.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Bicycling ]

To whoever just made 111 HEAD requests using https://github.com/typhoeus/typhoeus at within the one second of 16:15:33: Cute, and I've dialed back how many attempts Apache will attempt to serve (and, oddly, I thought I was doing smart things with HEAD requests, but it's been 10 years since I've looked at that code), but bullshit like that is why my ufw block list is growing substantially, and if we're going to continue to have an open Internet, ya can't be pulling that crap.

Also, if you really want an instantaneous dump of my archives, let's figure out how to do that better, possibly with some push protocol.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Open Source Net Culture ]

American Psychological Association will repay members $9 million in settlement over whether lobbying fees are required:

Zavareei's interpretation was that "the APA has been taking this position that [the fee] is in fact mandatory, meaning that it's morally mandatory. But you can still not pay it [and] you won't get kicked out of the APA."

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Current Events ]

Let us now mercilessly mock anyone who espouses "free markets" and supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership

[ related topics: California Culture Economics ]

Crossing the streams: Charlene finds document saying "revisit the Hiroshima A bomb with a database", I think "I've run Microsoft Access"...

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron Databases ]

Santa Rosa: it's Thursday: pupusas and conversation at noon, W. College and Marlow.

[ related topics: Education ]

Jobst Brandt leaves behind memories to last a lifetime:

Jobst wrote a lot (check out rec.bike or Sheldon Brown’s website), but nothing was more important to him than his book on the bicycle wheel. He spent more than a decade writing the book with the intention of producing a tome that would stand the test of time.

[ related topics: Books Writing Pedal Power Bicycling Archival ]

Observed with a slightly raised eyebrow: Mamihlapinatapai is "a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to suggest or offer themselves."

FKIN - Fucking Inappropriate. Some veterans lay down some words. On war, and life.

I’m not sure I buy the traditional PTSD/homeless vet line anymore. In some scenarios, sure. But in many it’s just fucking hard for a real warrior to return to the inconsequence of regular American life. It’s not that he couldn’t get over Korea – it’s that he couldn’t get over a country full of people who couldn’t rouse themselves from bed to save their own lives.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: History Furniture ]

‘We live in a good ol’ boy system': OK cops say officials tried to block businessman’s DUI arrest

“I was shocked when I received the phone call from the police commissioner,” said Travis Hogan, assistant police chief. “I thought he knew better than that.”

Hogan said the police commissioner asked to come pick up Haggard and take him home instead of citing or arresting him, and officers declined the request.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Law Enforcement ]

Plume-based analysis of vehicle fleet air pollutant emissions and the contribution from high emitters J. M. Wang, C.-H. Jeong, N. Zimmerman, R. M. Healy, D. K. Wang, F. Ke, and G. J. Evans:

The use of the plume-by-plume analysis enabled isolation of vehicle emissions, and the elucidation of co-emitted pollutants from similar vehicle types, variability of emissions across the fleet, and the relative contribution from heavy emitters. It was found that a small proportion of the fleet (< 25%) contributed significantly to total fleet emissions; 95, 93, 76, and 75% for black carbon, carbon monoxide, BTEX, and particle number, respectively. Emission factors of a single pollutant may help classify a vehicle as a high emitter. However, regulatory strategies to more efficiently target multi-pollutants mixtures may be better developed by considering the co-emitted pollutants as well.

Via Traffic emissions may pollute 1 in 3 Canadian homes and 25 Percent of Cars Cause 90 Percent of Air Pollution, Study Finds, by way of /.: 25 Percent of Cars Cause 90 Percent of Air Pollution.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Cryptography ]

Fake privacy gadgets, from Anonabox to Sever: Fighting a strange and profitable epidemic.

Right now, pretty much anyone can buy a generic router box on Alibaba, write a promo page saying it guarantees security, privacy and anonymity (as well as protecting users from hackers and malware) and stick it up on Kickstarter to walk away with piles of cash. And they are.

Consumers want privacy, snake oil salesweasels are selling them something else. There's a market here, but it's going to be ravaged and destroyed.

[ related topics: Privacy Consumerism and advertising Economics ]

Wood porn! Cherry Waltz II by ImrikDragon, a spectacular curved carved spiralling table.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Art & Culture Furniture Woodworking ]

Not The Onion: CNN: Jeb: George W. Bush is a top foreign policy adviser:

The Washington Post reported that Jeb cited his brother as an adviser on Israel, however, four sources confirmed to CNN that the comments were focused on foreign policy more broadly. Three of them said Jeb noted his brother was an adviser on the Middle East.

Dude's ether got a really sick sense of humor, or...

[ related topics: Politics Humor Food ]

Wonkblog: These cops are tired of white people getting freaked out by their black neighbors:

"People, please stop making my job so difficult."

That's the opening of a discussion in "ProtectAndServe," reddit's community of law enforcement officers.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Heinlein Community Race ]

RT J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling:

.@sjosiah0 The Internet doesn’t just offer opportunities for misogynistic abuse, you know. Penis enlargers can also be bought discreetly.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Net Culture ]

Pondering an increase in guillotine futures allocations in my portfolio...

[ related topics: Economics ]

So broken implementations mean that now that Google & Verisign have dropped OpenID, all of those identities where I used it are lost to me.

The non-profit NFL honoring U.S. armed forces members? Paid product placement, with your tax dollars.

Via.

[ related topics: Politics Games Sports ]

Uhhh... ingredients: extra virgin olive oil

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture ]

Modded the dovetail jig to handle the 2" thick cherry the vanity front will be carved from:

[ related topics: Photography ]

Theme in the hall is white oak and mahogany, the theme in the bathroom is balau and cherry...

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Race ]

Uh oh: SOSRoads endorsed Sonoma County Measure A, now I'm questioning my "Yes" vote on it...

Linking to Rolf is a Nazi: A SongFight Tribute to The Sound of Music because I want to try to track down a copy of Frankie Big Face's version of "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" for square dancing, and see if there are other songs on there worth listening to.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Pop Culture ]

Why does sctransit.com have by JavaScript at all? Why does it suck so badly from tablets or phones?

Whoah: The Leeroy Jenkins video was uploaded 10 years ago today. "at least I have chicken"...

[ related topics: Food Birds Video ]

Dry fitting the dovetails in the vanity top, before bandsaw rough shaping

[ related topics: Photography ]

And after rough shaping

[ related topics: Photography ]

Laying out the vanity top. Cutting this is gonna be a... thing

[ related topics: Photography ]

OMG! The cuuuuuute! Robolamp 3 is a real-life implementation of Pixar's Luxo Jr desk lamp (YouTube). Camera which tracks bright objects in a desk lamp...

Via Hack A Day via Jim Williams on Facebook.

[ related topics: Pixar Photography Animation Movies Graphics ]

"When you buy this new car, you get 6 months of Sirius XM, and a lifetime of unsolicited telephone calls!"

[ related topics: Invention and Design Automobiles Phreaking Archival ]

New York Times: Big drop in share of Americans calling themselves "Christian", a slight drop in Evangelical Christianity, larger drops in Catholic and mainstream Protestant sects, but the just starts to look at:

... The declining number of self-identified Christians could be the result of a political backlash against the association of Christianity with conservative political values.

The source is the Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Invention and Design moron New York ]

Bunch of reminders today that programming is a social activity. Or, at least, it bloody well should be. #technicaldebt

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Admittedly I don't "get" the NFL, but the obsession this nation has with the balls a bunch of burly guys are playing with is pretty amazing

[ related topics: Sports ]

NPR just informed me that May is Stroke Awareness month. It's also National Masturbation Month. NPR may be hipper than I thought.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

NPR just informed me that May is Stroke Awareness month. It's also National Masturbation Month. NPR may be hipper than I thought.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

So there was an Amtrak train derailment last night in Philadelphia. Of course this has raised the usual hue and cry over infrastructure, and I'll address that in a moment, but...

This surveillance video shows the train passing just before the crash, in a bit over 4 seconds for the 7 car train. Guessing at 85' long cars (the length of the Superliner cars used elsewhere, I'm not easily seeing specs on the Northeast Corridor cars), that says 130+FPS or ~90MPH into that curve. Infrastructure was likely not the problem. Or if it was, it's about a lack of automation.

So let's talk about relative risk and PTC (positive train control) and the like. March 30: 8 dead in a church van crash. May 1: Six killed in head-on crash (those via Taupe Avenger's Twitter feed). We don't see screams for PTC in automobiles, we see people complaining about the computer's ability to make snap moral decisions. And we have mindless scaremongering: RT Katie Couric @katiecouric: "230 people killed in train accidents in the last year alone. Very scary."

I can't reply more intelligently than Eric Budd @ericmbudd: "33,000 Americans died in car crashes last year, but keep thinking trains are scary."

Not to mitigate the impacts of the six killed and the hundred plus injured, but the big difference between this crash and your average motoring weekend in any given region is the greater infrastructure impact: It's going to take longer to repair those rails and get trains flowing through there than it would on a highway.

I don't really have time to dig into the stats right now, but I'm betting that if you put up the prices we're paying to add another commute lane to your favorite stretch of highway, even if you designate it a carpool lane and think maybe we'll get 4k additional people an hour through it for a two hour rush-hour time period, vs what we pay for rail, especially on the northeast corridor, personal automobiles or even buses don't come out the winner.

More reading...

• National Journal: Why Can't America Have Great Trains?
• Think Progress: Why You Can’t Talk About The Amtrak Derailment Without Talking About Our Infrastructure Crisis
• Some November 1900(!) musings on improving the safety of "the great curve" at Frankford.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Books Photography Movies Ethics Current Events Television Automobiles Machinery Trains Video Economics Public Transportation ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=156&v=S074ke-EJ6U

Interesting blade and technique for making drawers and other things. Woodworking porn.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Woodworking ]

• Lawsuit hopes to decriminalize prostitution in California. Yay. This is a step towards making people safer.
• Fresno County Superior Court Judge Donald Black rules that abstinence-only curriculum is not sex education, at least for the Clovis Unified School District.

The parents dismissed their suit in February 2014 after the district changed its policies. But Black, in a ruling issued April 28, ordered the district to pay attorneys’ fees to the parents’ lawyers, saying the suit had been the catalyst that led Clovis to bring its ninth-grade courses into compliance with the law.

“Access to medically and socially appropriate sexual education is an important public right,” Black said.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Law Current Events California Culture Education ]

OH: [Internet of Things" is "...like the whole concept evolved to be obnoxious in all the ways that "cloud" didn't have covered yet."

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

I actually like paying for parking. I like the convenience of finding a spot. I hate when they make it hard to pay. #SFPark

So does the Samsung ARTIK chipset surreptitiously listen to your conversations and insert ads, like their TVs? https://www.artik.io/

Shadow sent this along with "Thanks but I think I'll walk", I'm in the "that looks like what happened when I thought I had the whole clipless pedals thing worked out, but really didn't" camp.

But: Gaaaa!

http://imgur.com/TmYGl92 / https://www.facebook.com/ivelocz/videos/10151847218530351/

Things to substitute when you hear "cloud" in the context of computing: "butt", "other people's computers", "turbo encabulator".

Warning message reads "please do not do this unless you know what you are doing", should just remove a random limb from the user as tribute

RT Eλf Sternberg ‏@elfsternberg

Shorter Obama on TPP: "If we don't let Western corporations treat us as gristle between their teeth, Chinese corporations will."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

The discovery of Apache Zookeeper's poison packet.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

fremdschämen - to be embarassed because someone else has embarassed theirself without noticing, eg: seeing local company's ads on Facebook.

Just saw an ad for another "cloud connected" device. Wonder how long it's going to be before advertisers realize that's a negative trait?

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Woodworking ]

Well, just saw a person try to drive off with the gas nozzle still inserted. Those break-away releases work rather nicely.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Woodworking ]

British Journal of Sports Medicine: Editorial: It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet.

... According to The Lancet global burden of disease reports, poor diet now generates more disease than physical inactivity, alcohol and smoking combined. Up to 40% of those with a normal body mass index will harbour metabolic abnormalities typically associated with obesity ...

Uh. So poor diet is the cause of everything, but there's still a hell of a lot of debate over dietary guidelines so we don't really know what makes up a good diet, and obesity is bad except that the reasons its bad aren't necessarily correlated with obesity.

Huh.

[ related topics: Drugs ]

The entire class of first year MFA students at USC’s Roski School of Art have walked out of the program. Their statement is at http://mfanomfa.tumblr.com/

• http://hyperallergic.com/20723...iversity-of-southern-california/
• http://www.artandeducation.net...-1st-year-class-is-dropping-out/

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Software Engineering Art & Culture Civil Liberties California Culture Education ]

I really like old T-Birds, but this totally has cuuuute nailed.

[ related topics: Photography Birds ]

Ways to make a T-bird of a certain age look even better? Put it next to a Citroen

[ related topics: Photography ]

And we never did get around to visiting on the boats

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery ]

Suddenly, it's nineteen seventy!

[ related topics: Photography ]

The only thing that would make that color scheme more '80s is of the horizon line were airbrushed

[ related topics: Photography ]

They keep fixing that rear end... hope they do that scene another time, missed the last one...

[ related topics: Photography ]

The thing about old car shows is realizing just how few manufacturers of really pretty cars survived.

[ related topics: Television Automobiles ]

I would totally support a tax on pedestrians and cyclists if we could use it for enforcement of traffic laws.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Government ]

Is mural of girl feeding a beaver at an adult bookstore taboo?. Uh, maybe if you're an uptight prig, but the mural is pretty damned awesome.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

I need a theme for a square dance I'm planning on calling. Was thinking "Gender Swapped", but not sure anyone dancing "A" cares. Help? A&+

Comment from 21yo as we were hanging out at Cruisin' the Boulevard: "Did the past really smell like this?" Fuel injection is a great thing.

[ related topics: History ]

RT Will Duffy @willmanduffy :

opening a 24/7 dive bar called <div>

it'll have no class and never close

If the in-flight entertainment net is electrically connected to flight control, way bigger issue than software hacks http://www.aljazeera.com/news/...blic-safety-150517084024404.html

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Aviation Software Engineering Current Events Law Enforcement Woodworking ]

Cutting the top

[ related topics: Photography ]

Glad Charlene talked me into an inset sink, or I'd be cleaning that inside edge for the next month

[ related topics: Photography ]

Time to polish that front edge

[ related topics: Photography ]

Laying out the carving. Much of that light sap wood will be removed.

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

I have seen old man shorts, but I've never seen the distinction called out so clearly

I have seen old man shorts, but I've never seen the distinction called out so clearly

[ related topics: Photography ]

Wait, you can buy women's muffs at Big 5?

[ related topics: Photography ]

Dan invited me to Burning Man in 2002.. which reverted me to a former self buried deep inside. Been several times since, each time is very different. Since 2002, I've been trying to tweak the local status quo even more. We just had a great event, on East Main Street, just down from the old "Virtual Building", an Art Car Fire Ball, with Art Cars from all over, and a metal file scultpture made by Conrad, Andrew and some help from me. If you look closely, that's me at the controls, making fire dance to the music (techno/trance/electro-swing and funk) creating and soaking up an awesome vibe with kewl people. At some point, I teared up a little, remembering the black hole that part of my life had been and was thankful of friends like Dan, Clem, Dave and many others that tweaked my status quo, lighting my fire again.

Thanks Dan. I'm trying to pass it on....

(note: photo by Alan Miller, one of the Art Car crowd and interesting guy)

[ related topics: Burning Man Interactive Drama Music Photography Art & Culture California Culture Automobiles Pyrotechnics Archival ]

Chattanooga folk: if you don't have a mefi account, tell me & I'll pass it on http://ask.metafilter.com/2802...hat-to-do-and-eat-in-Chattanooga

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Chattanooga ]

Tweet favorited by @realBearforce1 ! Achievement unlocked! And a reminder that I should check their catalog for square danceable tunes.

So I'm guessing that Mad Men ended by going to a commercial break? #spoiler

Blue jay burying a peanuts in our back yard. Can't be saving it for later, are they farming slugs & bugs?

Nature: Drugs: Regulate 'home-brew' opiates:

You's hypothetical scenario is becoming a reality. One week after the iGEM competition, two developers of opiate-producing yeast strains approached us, specialists in biotechnology policy. They had results in advance of publication, and requested advice on how they might maximize the benefits of their research while mitigating the risks. Now, published papers by these researchers — John Dueber at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues¹, and Vincent Martin of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and his colleagues² — describe all but one step of an engineered yeast pathway that converts glucose to morphine (see 'Brewing bad'). Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Calgary have put in place the final piece³.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Nature and environment Bay Area Current Events California Culture Education Databases ]

If you follow the chain of reasoning, it sure looks like Lindsey Graham is saying that U.S. troops should have been subject to Sharia law.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

RT Eλf Sternberg ‏@elfsternberg:

None of the above. Fail:

All of the answers to #1 there are clearly wrong. I log into at least one machine with over 40k Un*x users on it that has 30 directories in /home (/^[a-z]$/ and 4 special purpose ones, web server, ftp server, etc).

You could kind of make arguments for A, B and D of #2, but only if you were that student attempting to weasel out of a red mark on a test with "well, technically", because the actual answer is ntpstat (or ntpq with some additional magic).

The kicker? This is from Eleventh Hour Linux+: Exam XK0-003 Study Guide, apparently a study guide for the "Linux+ certification" exam.

Which means that you should not let anyone who lists that cert on their resume anywhere near your computers!

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Photography Open Source Douglas Adams Clowns Archival ]

Wait, if sex and gender are fluid, that suggests they're not compressible. I prefer to think of them as a gas.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Woodworking porn: Handcutting a timber frame.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Race Woodworking ]

The last half hour at work today were basically trying to figure out why the date parser was choking on converting 2105-05-08 to Unix time.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

This morning's commute podcast: Amy H. Sturgis on Frankenstein, including similarities to Paradise Lost. Hadn't thought of it that way.

Hey, if you're using https://github.com/typhoeus/typhoeus to hammer Flutterby from one of 33 AWS instances with gobs of HEAD requests, could you tell me a little more about what you're trying to accomplish?

I'd really rather not have to hack the code to issue a bunch of 420 Enhance Your Calm responses (or just ufw deny ... all those requests), but.... dude!

Or: freakin' Ruby programmers.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Officials Send Strong Message to Motorists: 'Don't be Drunk When You Drive Like a Drunk':

San Francisco makes certain their reckless drivers are sober. Evidence supported that Muzaffar was completely sober when he was checking his phone and making a fast right turn in his SUV, failing to yield to 3 people, killing 1 and seriously injuring the others. Investigators found there was no cause for charging Muzaffar with gross negligence as a felony, because he wasn't intoxicated. So the lesson is clear, don't be drunk when you behave drunk or you'll pay dearly.

[ related topics: Humor Bay Area California Culture ]

Organizational Debt is like Technical debt – but worse. He talks about on-boarding and retension, but I'd also toss in ERP/inventory and asset management and other similar internal processes into the mix.

Off for a week to the IAGSDC square dancing convention in St. Louis MO. Not taking a computer. See y'all either there, or after.

If you had $10k to $20k of "mad money" to invest in a project, side-business or primary business, what would it be? Looking for alternative creative fun ideas.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Currency ]

Metrolink train interchange at the St Louis airport: "we built this infrastructure for cars first"

[ related topics: Aviation Machinery Trains ]

This sign is prominent and two sided. The actual bus stop sign is more obscure.

[ related topics: Photography Public Transportation ]

First view of the arch

[ related topics: Photography ]

Missouri drivers are so nice, they tap their horns to let you know they won't so much as swerve to avoid you in a crosswalk.

People wonder at California's real estate prices, Californians are shocked at other people's produce prices.

[ related topics: California Culture Real Estate ]

I understand how this came to be this way, but...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Citygarden. Love this blobby guy with his robot and mallet

[ related topics: Photography Robotics Gambling ]

Honoring city leaders?

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

In front of the old courthouses

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

St Louis from the Arch

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

Lots of flood debris

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

A big difference between here and California: the spectacle here is man made

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Gambling ]

Looking up in the old courthouse

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

The doors in the old courthouse are all faux finish

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

Stopped by kids learning to circus

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Education Gambling ]

In the Union Station model railroad exhibit

[ related topics: Photography Machinery Trains Toys Gambling ]

Ceiling in the foyer of the St Louis Union Station Hotel

[ related topics: Photography Travel Gambling ]

Very tasty apple carmellita and banana creme torte for dessert at http://1111-m.com/

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

Geez, I leave town for a day and a half, and y'all have an earthquake. Really, you need me to hold it together back there?

[ related topics: Earthquake ]

"privacy isn’t fundamentally about secrecy. It’s about things like autonomy—we’ve heard dignity, liberty, power, control, and maybe we’ll talk about that later."

A good article from: http://thepointmag.com/2015/politics/in-defense-of-doing-wrong

Another pull:

"Now, imagine if the anti-sodomy laws, which were on the books in many, many states until recently, and the drug laws that are still on the books of many states, imagine if they had been perfectly enforced by surveillance—which was not possible [at the time]. We would never have reached the point where majorities of citizens believe that these behaviors are not actually wrong at all.

So we need to worry. The perfect enforcement of the law, which surveillance technology has now made possible, will chill this very important kind of democratic change. And even if we’re not personally involved in socially valuable transgressive conduct, we need to worry about surveillance practices that will deter other people from engaging in them."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Books Privacy Health Government ]

Cannot see this as a toast topping... uh, wait, that sounds like a bondage scene too...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Presumably offering something to run away and join...

Grand buildings in this neighborhood

[ related topics: Photography Architecture ]

Lots of cool sculpture around town

[ related topics: Photography ]

Stumbled across the Moto Museum, through the back of the Triumph Bar.

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture ]

The faux turbine intake makes this

[ related topics: Photography ]

Paging Larry Burton...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Czech 1927 design

[ related topics: Photography Graphic Design ]

Detail in some of the least expected places, on western Pershing Ave

[ related topics: Photography ]

Ate lunch sitting on the wall by this stop sign. The only people who even slowed came from the non-stop direction

[ related topics: Photography ]

Central West End has big 5 story brick apartment buildings, and these lush gated big house areas

[ related topics: Photography Architecture Real Estate ]

Stately old manses on Pershing Place. We could sell our cottage and buy one, but the upkeep...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Seriously St Louis drivers? I will break no more s*** about "California stops". (Asterisks inserted by Google voice recognition)

[ related topics: California Culture ]

Reason to end Prop 13? $649k With $3310 property taxes. Back in CA we pay $4600+ on a circa $460k assessment.

[ related topics: Politics Government ]

Hanging our amongst the art at The Vino Gallery

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture ]

Yes, the humans just crossed the road to get a better view...

Yes, the humans just crossed the road to get a better view... (take 2)

[ related topics: Photography ]

Re-trying the "providing something to run away and join" from earlier

[ related topics: Photography ]

I think I figured it out, but sometimes "no" means...

[ related topics: Photography ]

http://thepointmag.com/2015/politics/in-defense-of-doing-wrong

[ related topics: Politics ]

Union Station

[ related topics: Photography ]

Naked men on fish

[ related topics: Photography Nudity ]

Naked women with fish. And Charlene.

[ related topics: Photography Nudity ]

Cough.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Being silly in the Plus room

[ related topics: Photography Clothing ]

Dressed for dinner

[ related topics: Photography ]

Planning for 4th of July weekend two years hence...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Planning for 4th of July weekend two years hence... (take two)

[ related topics: Photography ]

Weird: both Charlene and I lost all the pictures from the "Camera" folder on our phones yesterday. Possible Android bug?

[ related topics: Photography ]

If you do nothing else this Memorial Day relevant to it, take a moment to re-read and ponder In Flanders Fields http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poem...hn-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

In order to thrive, a culture needs to be more like a garden than a shrine.

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Gardening ]

Waiting for the shuttle for the train to the airport. Apologies to @lisarokusek that we didn't meet up, but it was a full, fun convention.

[ related topics: Aviation Space & Astronomy Machinery Trains ]

Please avoid exuberant athleticism.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Dude, the popped collar? Meh. On a suit jacket? Uhhhh...

Without the "tornado shelter" text, this icon by the bathroom would mean something completely different

[ related topics: Photography ]

Dorothy Bishop: An analysis of the evidence for adverse consequences of the internet cited on Susan Greenfield's website. Apparently Susan Greenfield has been claiming some sort of link between Internet use and autism. Dorothy Bishop goes through the "500 peer-reviewed papers" that are alleged to support this, and finds:

The list can be downloaded from here: it’s not exactly a systematic review. I counted 395 distinct items, but only a small proportion are peer-reviewed papers that find evidence of adverse effects from digital technology. There are articles from the Daily Mail and reports by pressure groups. There are some weird things that seem to have found their way onto the list by accident, such as a report on the global tobacco epidemic, and another from Department of Work and Pensions on differences in life expectancy for 20-, 50- and 80-year-olds. I must confess I did not read these cover to cover, but a link with 'mind change' was hard to see. Of the 234 peer-reviewed papers, some are reports on internet trends that contain nothing about adverse consequences, some are straightforward studies of neuroplasticity that don’t feature the internet, and others are of uncertain relevance. ...

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Net Culture ]

Richie died, then Diesel, then Dog: An eyewitness to the Waco biker brawl. It sounds like this was basically the resolution of a trademark dispute, but in particular:

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives study, first reported by the Intercept, concludes that biker gangs have recruited scores of employees of federal, state and local governments, police and firefighters, National Guardsmen and reservists, some of them with government security clearances, to help them “maim and murder” in support of their “insatiable appetite for dominance.”

[ related topics: Intellectual Property moron Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Copyright/Trademark Dogs ]

Unicode: The gift that keeps on giving! iOS bug lets anyone crash your iPhone with a text message:

When the text message is displayed by a banner alert or notification on the lockscreen, the system attempts to abbreviate the text with an ellipsis. If the ellipsis is placed in the middle of a set of non-Latin script characters, including Arabic, Marathi and Chinese, it causes the system to crash and the phone to reboot.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama iPhone ]

RT Norman Wilson ‏@oclsc:

If I had a hammer

I'd hammer on the Samsung

I'd hammer on the Crucial

All over this RAM

I'd hammer out Kingston

I'd hammer out Hynix ...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama User Interface ]

So, wait, we're arresting FIFA officials because the US didn't get the 2022 bid? We should be celebrating that we dodged that bullet!

It took an FOIA request and much probing, but, yeah, the Boston 2014 Olympics bid relied on taxpayer dollars.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Sports ]

Worth reading for the breakdown of how the study worked: I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.

[ related topics: Chocolate ]

Naturalistic cycling study: identifying risk factors for on-road commuter cyclists, Johnson, Charlton, Oxley & Newstead:

The study aim was to identify risk factors for collisions/near-collisions involving on-road commuter cyclists and drivers. A naturalistic cycling study was conducted in Melbourne, Australia, with cyclists wearing helmet-mounted video cameras. Video recordings captured cyclists' perspective of the road and traffic behaviours including head checks, reactions and manoeuvres. The 100-car naturalistic driving study analysis technique was adapted for data analysis and events were classified by severity: collision, near-collision and incident. Participants were adult cyclists and each filmed 12 hours of commuter cycling trips over a 4-week period. In total, 127 hours and 38 minutes were analysed for 13 participants, 54 events were identified: 2 collisions, 6 near-collisions and 46 incidents. Prior to events, 88.9% of cyclists travelled in a safe/legal manner. Sideswipe was the most frequent event type (40.7%). Most events occurred at an intersection/intersection-related location (70.3%). The vehicle driver was judged at fault in the majority of events (87.0%) and no post-event driver reaction was observed (83.3%). ...

Via.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Bay Area Law Sports Automobiles Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

RT Loop d' Sharrows ‏@mikesonn:

In 1903 they blamed the "machine" in the headlines.Not much has changed.

http://www.twincities.com/loca...ul-history-first-fatality-caused

RT Loop d' Sharrows ‏@mikesonn:

"An extraordinary high rate of speed, say thirty miles an hour, would be called criminal."

MN residential streets are now 30mph...

He further notes, with an image of text:

Ah, $$ talks and therefore walks

quoting:

Irvine, the son of a wealthy local lumberman, would go on to become president of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Co. The house he and his wife built on Summit Avenue is now the Minnesota Governor's Mansion.

[ related topics: Marriage Real Estate ]

Chicago police apparently deleted 86 minutes of security camera footage from the Burger King where Laquan McDonald was shot:

"We had no idea they were going to sit there and delete files," Darshane said. "I mean we were just trying to help the police officers."

[ related topics: Photography Law Enforcement ]

Some pictures and notes on this year's IAGSDC convention. http://www.flutterby.net/2015-05-28_IAGSDC_Convention_Recap

[ related topics: Photography ]

Dear cut-rate online news web sites: The stock photo of the police car with emergency lights on doesn't do anything for that story. Ever.

[ related topics: Photography Current Events Law Enforcement Automobiles Economics ]

A while back, I think Jacob Bayless spurred me into looking into the energy costs of playing streaming video vs shipping a DVD around. I think at the time, after reading various studies and looking at various transmission costs, we'd decided that the balance had tipped and streaming was winning. Netflix is claiming that streaming is solidly winning. But Netflix is also using 1/3 of all Internet traffic, reportedly, so they would say that. http://www.wired.com/2015/05/n...aming-greener-reading-breathing/

[ related topics: Net Culture Video ]

Pornoscanner lobbyist takes a Congressional job overseeing spending on TSA security. The man clearly has taxpayer interests at heart, no?

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

Ops suggested a T-shirt: Front: "I deploy on Friday afternoons. I'm just that good." Back: "I also have plans for the weekend." Need.

[ related topics: Heinlein Clothing ]

RT Nicholas Weaver ‏@ncweaver:

It is shit like this:

https://github.com/blockchain/...oid/util/RandomOrgGenerator.java

That make experts laugh at the "open source secure because you can see it" notion.

[ related topics: Free Software Software Engineering ]

Back from Cabaret Caliente burlesque. Was volunteered for the "work a boa and a chair" audience participation segment. Won a boa.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Burlesque Furniture ]

Ugh. DRM sucks. Amazon instant video used to work on my laptop, but they changed something. This sucks.

[ related topics: Books Work, productivity and environment Video ]

The irony that I was trying to watch Citizenfour on a device that I control is not lost on me...

[ related topics: Movies ]

LA Times has a big run-down of all of the ways U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing Elon Musk.

It's kinda bad enough to know that Solar City is basically payday loans for homeowners, but...

[ related topics: Photovoltaics ]

RT M. Colville-Andersen @copenhagenize:

American police have killed 2.2 people a day this year. At this rate, police more dangerous than cycling in US http://www.washingtonpost.com/...-c984eb077d4e_story.html?hpid=z1

[ related topics: Andersen/Accenture Law Enforcement Sports Pedal Power Bicycling ]

As I shoveled the second truck load of dirt out of the back yard, I realized: no undocumented day laborer's gonna take my job #falseeconomy

[ related topics: Heinlein Machinery ]

Screw the smart home: I will pay $100 for a 110v switch timer that will last for 10 years. Not $35 for one that lasts 18 months tops. Grrr.

[ related topics: Archival ]