Flutterby™! From 2015-07-01 to 2015-07-31

Brilliant setup: "Have you checked all of their phone lines?"

"Yes"

"Well, what does the fax say?"

Ugh. Woke up at 4 this morning. Came into the office early. Multiple simultaneous interruptions all day. Time to go dancing.

Business telephone calls are a "you're from the previous generation" signifier: https://medium.com/message/the...ny-of-the-telephone-8e03b78f57e6

[ related topics: Phreaking ]

Bad roads are costing us! Time to abandon them and move off the auto lifestyle. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...ensive-than-you-think/?tid=sm_tw

Signs of aging: seeing "crazy bitch" on the profile of social media spammer and wondering who thinks that's attractive as self description?

[ related topics: Sociology Journalism and Media ]

look, y'all, if you thought the @NYTimes had credibility on guacamole, you weren't paying attention on the Iraq invasion.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Justice Department faults Ferguson protest response

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

Some sort of police activity on the pier. Embarcadero blocked off and diverted.

[ related topics: Photography Law Enforcement ]

Outrage culture changed the world: “PC” critics are wrong — marriage equality happened because activists used shame and rage. Some thoughts worth keeping in mind as organizations like the Human Rights Campaign continue claiming victory from the appeasement path.

Because we were spooked by the idea that we’d “underestimated the religious vote.” Because we saw Newsom’s famous “Whether you like it or not” quoted in Republican attack ad after attack ad and we retreated in disarray, crying disaster.

Because, in a word, we were chickenshit.

[ related topics: Religion Quotes Movies Political Correctness Sociology Civil Liberties California Culture Salon magazine Marriage Woodworking ]

Very good New York Times article on the difficulties of legislating around affirmative consent.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design New York ]

George Takei to Clarence Thomas: Denying our rights denies our dignity.

[ related topics: Civil Liberties ]

I love my neighbors: dehydrating apricots from their tree...

[ related topics: Photography ]

After square dance calling I carried my gear to the car through drunk yahoos lighting off explosives and decided not to stay for fireworks.

[ related topics: Automobiles Pyrotechnics ]

Running ad blocking software, or with JavaScript disabled: modern equivalent of locking car doors when driving through bad neighborhoods

[ related topics: Software Engineering Sports Automobiles Handicaps & Disabilities ]

I want all of you square dancers to know that I must really love you, 'cause I'm sitting here on a Sunday working on choreography for ya.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

First computer I coded on was a KIM-1. MarkV is playing with a KIM-Uno, a KIM-1 emulated on an Arduino http://brainwagon.org/2015/07/04/the-kim-uno-a-kim-1-simulator/

[ related topics: Nostalgia ]

The Guardian: Higher Education Network: Academics Anonymous: ‘My professor demands to be listed as an author on many of my papers’. I suspect that in 500 years we'll look back on modern academia in the same way that we look on the institution of the church of 500 years ago now: as, yes, the custodian of much of the scientific knowledge of the era, but as an extremely inefficient social structure for disbursing and adding to that knowledge.

[ related topics: Religion broadband Education ]

Trying to mix up a large enough color match i can stain things in pieces. Needs more red.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Trying to work on the bathroom, but listening to the Coxwood History Fun Park podcast and laughing too hard to work https://coxwoodhistoryfunpark.wordpress.com/

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

A little software engineering note of the morning: Naming things is hard. Lisp Cast: Avoid naming at all costs.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

In the "try to clean up my mail spool by hand so it stops crashing the IMAP server" part of my day. #FML

Yesterday, PhDecay ‏@PhDefunct tweeted:

What is the maximum amount of money your doctor could make in payments from drug companies before you would start feeling uncomfortable?

In this era of advertising paying for everything, I thought that was an interesting question: because, like education, the customer is not the payer, there's a pretty strong externality here....

Anyway, this interesting bit on Flibanserin ("the female Viagra™"™) today reminded me of that:

PhDecay ‏@PhDefunct:

New (and free to read) in JAMA: Evaluation of Flibanserin: Science and Advocacy at the FDA http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2389384 …

PhDecay ‏@PhDefunct

Hypoactive sexual desire disorder: inventing a disease to sell low libido -- Journal of Medical Ethics http://jme.bmj.com/content/ear...8/medethics-2014-102596.abstract …

PhDecay ‏@PhDefunct

A loud handful of sexmed MD proponents of #flibanserin received at least $1.5mil in industry payments combined from 8/2013 to 12/2014.

PhDecay ‏@PhDefunct:

After looking them up in https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/ it is hard to see any of the flibanserdocs as credible on the topic of pharm interventions.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health Ethics Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising Currency Education ]

Today's run: 2.4 miles, 8:52 min/mi. Accompanied by PodCastle episode 370.

RT Code By Java ‏@JacobyDave:

Perl is still my favorite video game. WAY more options than Minecraft.

[ related topics: Games Perl Open Source Software Engineering Video hubris ]

Iowa's DOT head acknowledges that our transportation system is over-built and needs to contract: http://www.strongtowns.org/jou...ef-the-system-is-going-to-shrink

If you're listening to @etherius's most recent podcasts, you already know this is gonna be good: https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...rom-the-superhero-nurs?ref=video

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Pop Culture Video ]

Fun crowd but just one square of Plus calling for Foggy City Dancers this evening. Got a lot of lefty Advanced material left...

RT kragen ‏@kragen:

https://github.com/zrm/snow Snow is a replacement for IP using public keys as network addresses.

http://www.trustiosity.com/snow/

Packets sent to the key name go to the machine with that key. Key names are independent of the underlying network. Think automatic NAT traversal. End-to-end encryption with no configuration. IPv4-only applications on IPv6-only networks. In general it allows network problems to be solved in one place for everyone with an interface that most applications are already using.

With a DNS system. This looks amazing!

[ related topics: broadband Cryptography ]

Did a bunch of sight calling tonight to help dancers practice with arrangements they needed practice with. Jealous of their usual caller...

Don't know whether to trust the GPS telling me the run is 2.34mi, or Google Maps at 2.4mi. Between 8:20 and 8:40 min/mi for today's run.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Why CBT is falling out of favour:

Everybody loves cognitive behavioural therapy. It’s the no-nonsense, quick and relatively cheap approach to mental suffering – with none of that Freudian bollocks, and plenty of scientific backing. So it was unsettling to learn, from a paper in the journal Psychological Bulletin, that it seems to be getting less effective over time. After analysing 70 studies conducted between 1977 and 2014, researchers Tom Johnsen and Oddgeir Friborg concluded that CBT is roughly half as effective in treating depression as it used to be.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Just testing a few things... Does <blink>the blink tag</blink> work in my CMS?

[ related topics: Content Management Work, productivity and environment ]

Using the window.onerror handler for logging JavaScript errors.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Spent a bit of time tonight trying to find upbeat 120-130BPM Zydeco suitable for square dancing. Still searching...

Really, asshole, you need to roar up out residential street with your truck loud enough to set off car alarms, at 5:30AM?

[ related topics: Automobiles Machinery ]

The Big Lie That Helped Justify America's War In Afghanistan:

But a BuzzFeed News investigation — the first comprehensive journalistic reckoning, based on visits to schools across the country, internal U.S. and Afghan databases and documents, and more than 150 interviews — has found those claims to be massively exaggerated, riddled with ghost schools, teachers, and students that exist only on paper. The American effort to educate Afghanistan’s children was hollowed out by corruption and by short-term political and military goals that, time and again, took precedence over building a viable school system. And the U.S. government has known for years that it has been peddling hype.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics History moron Current Events Databases ]

Riding Light - Traversing the Solar System at the speed of light (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies Astronomy Bicycling Photovoltaics ]

Ok you non Californians might think nothing of this, but this is wet pavement, from rain, in July in Santa Rosa

[ related topics: Photography ]

Ok you non Californians might think nothing of this, but this is wet pavement, from rain, in July in Santa Rosa

[ related topics: Photography ]

Cube Drone: Relentless Persistence, on programming JavaScript...

[ related topics: Software Engineering Comics ]

RT Eric Colossal ‏@EricColossal:

Remember when there was only one set of footprints near bomb site b in de_dust? That is when I was carrying the team!

Hazards of working on Square Dance music: Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson vs Was Not Was - Walk the Uptown Funk Dinosaur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLFGbg1gdk

[ related topics: Music Movies Astronomy Work, productivity and environment ]

Dangerous Minds: What happens when you run pornography through Google DeepDream? Sheer bad trip terror!

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Travel ]

The Beginning of the End: B&N Shutters the International Nook Store.

Your regular reminder that if your ebook has DRM and you can't side load it onto a device of your choosing, you're just renting it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Trains ]

Today's run a little slower, 9:02 min/mi. I blame the compelling but somewhat dark Escape Pod #498 on virtual pets and high school politics

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics ]

Psychologists Shielded U.S. Torture Program, Report Finds:

The association’s ethics office, the report found, “prioritized the protection of psychologists — even those who might have engaged in unethical behavior — above the protection of the public.”

[ related topics: Ethics Software Engineering ]

How spyware peddler Hacking Team was publicly dismantled.

It is good to know that while the NSA is busy breaking into computer systems world-wide in order to prop-up repressive policies, that we have independent organizations working for freedom on the net.

[ related topics: Privacy Work, productivity and environment Civil Liberties Government ]

Florida Cops Laundered Millions For Drug Cartels, Failed To Make A Single Arrest

Posing as money launderers, police in Bal Harbour and Glades County, Fla. laundered a staggering $71.5 million for drug cartels in an undercover sting operation, according to an in-depth investigation by The Miami Herald. With fake identities, undercover officers made deals to pick up cash from criminal organizations in cities across the country. Agents then delivered the money to Miami-Dade storefronts and even wired cash to banks overseas in China and Panama. After laundering the cash, police would skim a three percent commission fee, ultimately generating $2.4 million for themselves.

[ related topics: Health Movies Current Events Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Community Currency ]

That moment when you realize that the digits of pi pretty much must contain a raster image of a circle with two prime dimensions...

[ related topics: Graphics ]

So, Tumblr: are follows & followers public? There are people with multiple identities that I don't want to out...

FBI: Bring Us A Unicorn. Techies: They Don't Exist. Senator: Stop Complaining & Tell Us Where The Unicorn Is

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

So... Using the Tumblr app rather than reading the sites individually or with a syndicator gives badly targeted ads and suggested posts?

Yes, I know there is a ton I need to accomplish today, and that involves going outside, but I don't *want* to put on pants.

[ related topics: Clothing ]

Congressman John Lewis at Comic-Con, cosplaying himself from the march on Selma 50 years ago as recounted in the comic book trilogy March.

Via

[ related topics: Books tolkien ]

Conversation about cataract removal being equivalent to wiping Vaseline off the glasses. So Vaseline on the lenses, like a porn movie then?

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies ]

At the http://www.sdcanc.com/ meeting.

Pondering the D/s-ish issues of square dancing, and feeling kind of squicky...

RT Drift ‏@Inanity101:

returning this item as it is not what i expected and did not have the desired effect on my sex life

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Archival ]

Yanis Varoufakis full transcript: our battle to save Greece:

YV: It’s not that it didn’t go down well – it’s that there was point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments. Point blank. … You put forward an argument that you’ve really worked on – to make sure it’s logically coherent – and you’re just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem – you’d have got the same reply. And that’s startling, for somebody who’s used to academic debate. … The other side always engages. Well there was no engagement at all. It was not even annoyance, it was as if one had not spoken.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Economics ]

Lunch run: 4.64 miles at a pace I thought I could maintain for a long time, 44:42 total, 9:38/mile.

Square dance calling is kinda like DJing, I might have to set up something similar... WHEN U TROLL THE ENTIRE CROWD. (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

This is some shady ass shit, especially since contact with families is one of the things that helps reduce recidivism rates: Inside the Shadowy Business of Prison Phone Calls:

Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, wrote in a letter to the FCC dated Sept. 4, 2014, that, although his office supports making rates fair for families, “the enforcement community is understandably alarmed about how potential Inmate Calling System rate changes might affect revenues.” Warner notes that his Virginia district receives $13.5 million from prison telephones.

Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., similarly wrote on Dec. 11, 2014, that “it is not unreasonable to allow the use of [inmate calling service] monies to fund other general services needed at prisons.”

Fuckers.

Also in today's exploitive asshole politician news: Rick Perry stole my urbanist talking points. Too bad he doesn’t actually understand them.

While these cities have cheaper housing than San Francisco, much of that cost advantage disappears when you factor in the cost of transportation in car-dependent sprawl. As Derek Thompson noted in The Atlantic in 2012: “Housing in Houston isn’t so bad — it’s the 8th most affordable large city to own a home in. But … factor in transportation, and it’s the 8th least affordable large city to live. On the other hand, dense expensive cities like San Francisco, Boston and New York are considerably more affordable when you add in transportation costs because of their superior public transit.” ...

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Bay Area moron Theater & Plays Current Events California Culture Automobiles Community New York Public Transportation Real Estate ]

“Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor.

It was beautiful to watch #GiveYourMoneyToWomen unfold. Men got angry, and then women explained to them that to have their anger acknowledged, they would have to pay. This made them angrier, of course, but without a donation, who was listening? Even now, when you Google the hashtag, nearly the whole first results page consists of furious MRAs. (I didn’t click through, though. Who exactly was going to make it worth my while?)

[ related topics: Movies ]

Keys Under Doormats: Mandating insecurity by requiring government access to all data and communications

[ related topics: moron ]

Dave Alden of Petaluma on re-thinking our profligate infrastructure spending follies http://northbaydesignkit.blogs...et-critical-mass-but-closer.html

Really, phone? Auto-correcting "craigslist" to "capitalist"? I see what you're doing there...

Yes, you knew it was coming: Fernando Sosa has made it possible to 3d print your own Donald Trump butt plug at Shapeways.

Although it's actually not quite that simple, he's released a model, but the full-color material is porous so this is really just a display object.

[ related topics: Graphics ]

7:00 meet-up in SF: Drive or ferry? Problem: Last ferry leaves at 9:35. (Bus isn't an option 'cause it'd take me 2+ hours to get in)

[ related topics: Bay Area Public Transportation ]

Bwahahaha! The Insane Story Behind Trump's Deleted Nazi Tweet (it was stock photography of war re-enactment, but...):

"I have photos of American soldiers as well," Cairns said. "But for some reason, politicians seem to be downloading Nazis."

[ related topics: Politics Photography History Economics ]

The good thing about Kim Kardashian on @WaitWait is that I've discovered all sorts of better podcasts to replace it with. Woot!

Excellent trip into SF for the Perl Mongers meet up, good reminder that I need to get out of the North Bay much more.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Bay Area California Culture Travel hubris ]

Echochamber.js - All off the commenting, none of the comments.

A little JavaScript snippet that saves a comment to the user's local storage, so that the user thinks there are comments on the page, when they come back their comment will be there, but there are no comments on the page.

Via MeFi.

Stonewall Activist, Drag King Storme DeLarverie Dead at 93

Lunch run: short loop, 9:25 min/mi. Need to work on nutrition management, I'm very much feeling Monday's run.

[ related topics: Health Work, productivity and environment ]

Petition wants OutKast added to Stone Mountain next to Confederate leaders:

While clearly a joke, it actually makes a lot of sense. As former Georgia Democrat Ed Kilgore notes, Jackson shouldn’t even be on the mountain to begin with. He was only added because Lee’s real military adjutant, lifelong Georgia native James Longstreet, ended up “supporting voting rights for ex-slaves and backed (and even played a role in) military reconstruction in the South.” Kilgore adds that, “Among other interesting traits, Jackson favored a policy of executing Union prisoners of war, based on his reading of Old Testament precedents. That’s the man up there with Davis and Lee on Stone Mountain.”

[ related topics: Politics History moron Civil Liberties ]

Heirloom Computing Elastic COBOL:

Available on Windows, UNIX, Linux, Mac OS X and the cloud.

COBOL which targets the JVM. In The Cloud. Can you feel the excitement?

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source Macintosh ]

SHOTBOX Tabletop Photo Light Studio kickstarter (I built a bunch of prototypes) https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...tbox-tabletop-photo-light-studio

[ related topics: Photography ]

Abigail Hilton's Hunter's Unlucky is about to become un-free, but you should just buy the audio version because it's awesome!

[ related topics: Music ]

Two nights in a row, guy with a saxophone at Embarcadero station playing "Close To You". Limited repertoire...

No light shoe on the Bay Bridge, but the Ferry Building is lit up

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area California Culture Shoes Public Transportation ]

Annie Dookhan, chemist at Mass. crime lab, arrested for allegedly mishandling over 60,000 samples. Her actions could be a factor in 34,000 defendants and 1,140 convictions.

The only motive authorities have found so far is that Dookhan wanted to be seen as a good worker, the state attorney general said.

And she's gonna pay (and, it sounds like, fall on her sword) while the managers who set up an environment in which this was encouraged will face "harsh criticism".

[ related topics: Nature and environment Law Current Events ]

Whoah, they used to build barges in Petaluma? Here's one being launched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uQWC1cz2nc

[ related topics: Movies ]

Okay, this is pretty awesome: Narrow band filter sunglasses let color blind man see colors for the first time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCcxwieuDH0

[ related topics: Movies Handicaps & Disabilities ]

The jaw-dropping police/prosecutor scandal in Orange County, Calif.:

In March, Judge Thomas M. Goethals recused the entire office of District Attorney Tony Rackauckas from a murder case “because of repeated government cheating.” More rot followed, including a gag order (issued by a different judge) preventing defense attorneys from discussing what they were discovering (it was later lifted), and revelations that the police and prosecutors collaborated with the Mexican mafia to target a rogue informant and with MSNBC to violate a suspect’s constitutional rights.

[ related topics: Movies History moron Law Current Events Law Enforcement Civil Liberties California Culture ]

I'm gonna call it right now: Fiorina is the only viable candidate the Republicans have, so it's her vs Bernie Sanders next year.

In Taiwan, These Volunteers Give Handjobs to the Severely Disabled

[ related topics: Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Shadow forwarded our daily dose of "awesome that humans can do this, but just... no", First ever successful quad-flip on a BMX bike (Imgur animated GIF)

[ related topics: Animation Bicycling ]

Looking down Tomales Bay and the San Andreas fault

[ related topics: California Culture ]

Looking down Tomales Bay and the San Andreas fault

[ related topics: Photography California Culture ]

Spectacular clouds over downtown

[ related topics: Photography ]

Petaluma doesn't get the owl it deserves, it gets the owl it needs

[ related topics: Photography ]

Sunset alert

[ related topics: Photography ]

In the "insane mis-judgement of outside temperatures department", just under 9 min/mi for the 2.4 mile short loop.

That thing where you're waiting on your email client to delete a few hundred thousand messages. Via IMAP. #fml

Chicago Independent Police Review Authority fires supervising investigator Lorenzo Davis who found cops at fault in shootings. He was fired because he was:

... “the only supervisor at IPRA who resists making requested changes as directed by management in order to reflect the correct finding with respect to OIS,” as officer-involved shootings are known in the agency.

Soooo.... fired 'cause he wouldn't rubber stamp...

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Pretty sure this "2 factor auth" thing is just an excuse for every site on the Internet to demand our cell phone numbers. Grrr.

[ related topics: Wireless Net Culture ]

Wishing we lived in a culture that celebrated a person for the quality of their ideas more than the size of their crowds...

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture ]

Ugh. Staring at the ceiling at quarter past one in the morning. Bad time to be pondering the imponderable.

[ related topics: History Currency ]

/r/SubredditSimulator

... is a fully-automated subreddit that generates random submissions and comments using markov chains (see below for more info), with each bot account creating text based on comments from a different subreddit.

Web Design: The First 100 Years was posted in a Facebook group, and I started musing and figured I should copy it here.

I think yesterday's thread on Amy's Drive Thru[*] was instructive in this. Marc's examples of how that design failed to feed the Googlebots were spot-on, and I think speak to some of the concerns about AI (ie: we build 5 pagers for Google where 1 pagers would better suit the humans), but there's this larger notion of "CONNECT KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE, AND CATS".

This is a purely subjective concern, two decades have gone by and I've changed and society has changed and technology has changed, but I've spent some time in the last decade trying to re-capture the sense of enabling human connection that I got from technology back in the ྖs. Usenet is gone, buried under the weight of SPAM and trolls. For the most part, we've traded unsolicited advertising for advertising which supports (and intrudes on) the conversations we're having, but we're doing so at the cost of content filtering. We can only have the conversations that the advertisers want us to have, and we see this with the Nymwars and Nipplegates and what-not.

And even when we think we're following the rules, the automated systems sometimes decide that those conversations are straying into un-endorsed territory.

So I'm with him on knowledge, people, and cats, but I think what we have to fear from AI is already here, and it's important that we think about building another web that puts the people first, rather than the AIs...

[*] So the thread on Amy's Drive Thru: Amy's Kitchen, which you may have experienced in the frozen section of your grocery store, recently opened a vegan drive through restaurant. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the local web design community because they went with a British design firm, and ended up with a site that has a PDF menu(!), but also because there's nothing on the page that'd help a search engine find it if you went looking for "Sonoma County vegetarian restaurant" or similar. Marc Harris came up with some particularly good examples of how you might want to find it, but can't.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Spam Food Consumerism and advertising Monty Python Net Culture Graphic Design Machinery Community Artificial Intelligence ]

Another 2.34 mile short loop with 9 minute miles.

A bad definition of statistical significance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Effective Health Care Program

[ related topics: Health Software Engineering Gambling ]

Houstonia Magazine: Racist Readers Need Not Apply: In which reactions to an advertisement provoke a reaction from us.

Houstonia’s championing of diversity does not extend to bigots, and while we are by definition dedicated to discovering the best things about this city, we’ll never ignore the worst.

[ related topics: Law ]

Every time I'm ready to hate on Uber/Lyft/whatever... http://www.sfexaminer.com/sfpd...assing-exams-on-citys-taxi-test/

Whoah, there's some serious evidence tampering going on here: http://bennorton.com/dashcam-v...rest-of-sandra-bland-was-edited/

[ related topics: Video ]

A 'Golden Key' for Encryption Is Mythical Nonsense:

Certainly, it is a great blow to law enforcement that some encryption cannot be broken for them, just like it is a great blow to law enforcement that we don’t have the telescreens from 1984 installed in our bedrooms. There are some things law enforcement do not get to see and do not get to have, even with a warrant. That is how things have always been, and our society has yet to fall apart because of it.

[ related topics: Privacy Law Enforcement Cryptography ]

Your life is way too short to spend waiting on all those stupid ad network web trackers: https://www.ghostery.com/en/

[ related topics: broadband hubris ]

RT VM Brasseur @vmbrasseur

OH at #oscon: "They work for PayPal? What, was ISIS not hiring or something?"

RT Hayley ‏@Hayley_VF:

Same

RT Evan Goer ‏@evangoer:

So many job ads for code ninjas, wizards, and warriors... but none for clerics.

This is why your entire startup is going to get eaten.

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Archival ]

So is the water table in Santa Rosa this high, or is this evidence of water waste in our drought?

[ related topics: Photography Furniture ]

RT 10x Pro Grammar (@kerrizor):

Jira's "Agile" tools are what you'd get if you described in French an Agile workflow to someone who only spoke Italian.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Last night's Hack Sonoma included a guy who put a lighting system into a commercial monowheel. Which gave me the chance to learn to ride a monowheel... but also had some discussion about Burning Man bike hacks.

Shadow forwards along... the... uh... opposite:

https://imgur.com/TNxna : "Why must we try and play god?" \

[ related topics: Religion Burning Man Community Bicycling ]

Google+: A case study on App Download Interstitials. 9% resulted in the "Get App" visit being pressed:

While 9% sounds like a great CTR for any campaign, we were much more focused on the number of users who had abandoned our product due to the friction in their experience. ...

69% of visits abandoned the page.

[ related topics: Law ]

Okay, this looks awesome: https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck

You know all those times when a command line typo results in a "did you mean?" message? The fuck command then does that thing.

More reason we should stop throwing money down the automobile infrastructure rathole and start abandoning infrastructure: Report: 1 in 4 urban roads damaged, costing motorists up to $1,000 per year.

More than one-fourth (28%) of urban interstates, freeways and arterial routes with at least two lanes were paved in "poor" condition in 2013, according to the report from TRIP, a non-profit transportation research group funded by industry groups such as construction businesses and unions.

Yep: Arterials, "urban" interstates and freeways, these are all the things that subsidize the sprawl that's choking us economically.

[ related topics: Current Events Automobiles Currency ]

OH: "It's that weird zone between 'I get paid too much to work on Drupal' and 'I don't get paid enough to work on Drupal'."

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

https://github.com/Fuco1/clippy.el

Hokay, the GamerGate twits have proven that all of my negative opinions are justified. Signing up for the shared blocklist now.

Ugh. Ya know, if Twitter had the same capbilities as email, I'd have better filtering for the noise onslaught.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Another animated GIF from Shadow: That was a close one...

[ related topics: Animation ]

So this'll start pretty negative, but it does end up turning towards humanizing. If you're gonna insult me, please read down 'til it does before you do.

Friends of mine involved in the O'Reilly OSCON got targeted by GamerGate. Apparently there's been some kerfluffle over anti-abuse policies, those who are enforcing the anti-abuse policies, and those who are supporting those who are enforcing the anti-abuse policies.

These friends social media feeds got blasted full of insults, threats, both implied and direct, and tons of badly constructed straw man arguments which are attempting to appear "reasonable". Often the threats are posted, and then deleted, so there's the appearance of an innocent "what? You're interpreting these insults as threats? What a wuss." reaction.

So yesterday, Ben Werdmüller ‏@benwerd tweeted:

Every time a gamergate thread has turned up in my feed lately it's been comments about hair dye. It's about conventional hairstyles now?

So, yeah: Tracking down the hatred of dyed hair quickly leads to thing http://imgur.com/alYOQKn and http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/841344-gamergate and that quickly leads to all sorts of slut shaming and shit like 5 Reasons Why You Should Never Date A Girl With Dyed Hair.

And, yes, that last guy has some opinions on GamerGate, and when I search around to find background on GamerGate, that sort of misogynist anti-sex bullshit is pretty prevalent. Certainly it dominates the top of DuckDuckGo and Google results (note, the asshole-ish links here are deliberately rel="nofollow"ed...).

So I observed (based on writing like that and personal experience seeing attacks on others) that:

@benwerd gamergate has long been about shaming women for anything other than lights-out missionary-position post-marriage sexuality.

And the shit hit the fan. My Twitter notifications tab starts showing triple digit numbers. At this point Twitter won't show enough backlog to find all the really abusive stuff, but I'm being trolled. There are occasional mentions of physical violence. Lots of "I'm a left-wing communist, and I support GamerGate" and then you click through and find Republican Libertarian profiles. I install auto-blockers, start blocking wholesale...

And then a few bright lights started to appear:

CloudedByAgony ‏@StoppingLies

@danlyke You haven't gotten one nice tweet? Not one? Sorry about that. Have a nice day. Here's your one nice ProGG tweet.

Hey, an ambassador! This is actually kinda cool! And now we start to get some ideas

RT A.R Machado ‏@TheDemonEyeX

@benwerd @danlyke Regressive? Because we don't want forced political correctness when it wouldn't make sense. i.e Witcher 3 Complaints

RT A.R Machado ‏@TheDemonEyeX

@benwerd @danlyke Conservative? Bc anything not Left-Authoritarian is auto-Conservative. You'll find GG is predominantly Left-Libertarian.

RT A.R Machado ‏@TheDemonEyeX

@benwerd @danlyke Anti-Change? So wanting corrupt journalism to end is anti-change? pic.twitter.com/8lMuTuEYmU

So I engage: RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke

@TheDemonEyeX if, in targeting "corrupt journalism", GamerGate targeted the New York Times, maybe we'd have common ground. But games mags?

I mean, idealism is cool, but if you want to attack corruption in journalism it sure seems to me like starting with a foreign policy that's killing hundreds of thousands and reducing nations to rubble is more important than the cultural directions of computer games.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke @TheDemonEyeX What's your spiel? That mags covering a $100,000,000,000 industry aren't important? Don't go there.

Well, yeah: RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke 15h15 hours ago

@Phrenologicus the purpose of a magazine is to deliver the product, i.e.: your attention, to the advertiser, by any means that works.

And I'm sorry, Twitter makes it really hard for me to extract out the full sense of conversations. I've been trying to copy and paste here to get the full thread, but I really appreciate @Phrenologicus and @RedStarWarrior and @IAmASockPuppet and CloudedByAgony ‏@StoppingLies for their actually engaging as human beings. So here's a sampling of my exchange with @Phrenologicus.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke A cynical and reductionist view we do not share. Even if true, it would justify attacking GJ, because they failed doing that job.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke They are attacking the industry and their readers alike, with unprecedented disdain and smear jobs. That's not gonna fly any longer

RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke 15h15 hours ago

@Phrenologicus so approach those advertisers and start your own magazine. Or, it could be that advertisers like that new demographic better.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke We're doing all that. Tearing down toxic crap, talking to advertisers, building up/supporting better venues. It's what we fight for

RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke

@Phrenologicus all most of us see is the abuse and the straw man arguments, exemplified by my notifications feed today.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke if you lay the bar for "abuse" THAT low, it will blur the actual issue. for strawmen args: no clue what thy're sppsed to be.

I dunno, abuse is deliberately making my Twitter feed unusable, and yet... RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke

@Phrenologicus of the hundreds of notifications I got today, most assumed I was saying things that I wasn't. Those are straw man attacks.

RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke

@Phrenologicus & tweets I saw last night re my friends included "I figured out where they're staying" and other pretty frightening things.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke if THAT is actually true, you have a reason to be crossd. We usually patrol for that kind of garbage very effectively.

RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke

@Phrenologicus it's real. And with all of the other abusive language, it only takes one or two of those to turn the whole thing scary.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke Well, it's what we have to live with. Grassroots, and no leaders. But truth is: We wouldn't want to have it any other way.

RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke

@Phrenologicus yeah, but it does lead me to wonder why anyone's still adopting the tag, rather than creating a new one.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke first and foremost bc our collective success and penetrating the subculture is due to us not doing what our opponents tell us

RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke

@Phrenologicus my home address & phone # are on my web site, would be unsurprised to arrive home this evening to discover I've been SWATted

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke Nah, those times are over. Those were 3rd party trolls, targeting both GG and aGG alike. They've been dealt with.

RT Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke

@Phrenologicus well, my wife's out of town, so it'd be a good time to say "hi" to my local PD, but I appreciate the reassurance...

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke feel free to contact the police if you feel unsafe. the more actual harrassers are taken down, the better for all of us.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke and if you're looking for a real thrill anytime soon, go to a GG real life meetup. real bomb threats and evacs included ^^

RT https://twitter.com Dan Lyke ‏@danlyke 14h14 hours ago

@Phrenologicus I'll pass, thanks.

RT Phrenologicus ‏@Phrenologicus

@danlyke Hah. BTW: If you wanna know who you're actually dealing with: http://i.imgur.com/hoeli7n.jpg (Trigger Warning: Happyness)

And suddenly GamerGate has a face. And I realize that GamerGate is a lot like Christianity right now: Many of us only see Westboro Baptist, Pat Robertson, Billy and now Franklin Graham, and the other hate-mongers as the face of it, but there are also friends and neighbors who believe, who find their sense of community there.

Because of the obvious ties to slut shamers, to doxxers, to those who threaten physical violence, I'm still wary of having those philosophies expressed at conventions I go to because it makes many of the people I want to be conversing with uncomfortable in those spaces, I'm still concerned about the impacts on the larger society, I'm loving that we're getting some diversity and new stories and new ideas in Science Fiction and Fantasy, hell, some of the ideas that GamerGate appears to be railing against might drag me back into gaming, and I see the attitudes behind Sad Puppies, which I think has a large overlap with Gamer Gate, as trying to suppress that which is making me excited about fiction again.

But somewhere in this, Riven Homewood retweeted Brad Gooch

@danlyke This came through right after your comment on GG's thrilling messages :)

Brad Gooch @RumiSecrets

"Love alone cuts arguments short, rescuing us from words and debates.”—Rumi, Masnavi

It was a good reminder that when I denigrate GamerGate, I'm not just talking about the hundreds and hundreds of trolls, I'm also talking about real people who've found a sense of community in that identity. And I can either dismiss them as a class, or I can seek to understand them as individuals.

Despite the, based on my notifications feed, relative scarcity, I think it's worth understanding those willing to try to understand me. So, yeah, I'm following a couple of GamerGaters today.

At this point I think my notifications feed is running about 97% asshole, 1% violent threats, but that remaining 2%.... ya know, 1 in 50 is probably a better cool people quotient than the general population...

And let us be very very aware that proposals like SJW Riot: Troops vs Women - in Video Game (Indiegogo) are very real things.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Libertarian Sexual Culture moron Sociology Writing Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Community ]

A post-mortem on my Twitter feed and run-in with GamerGate over the past day http://www.flutterby.com/archives/comments/21983.html

[ related topics: History Archival ]

https://twitter.com/LuckyStrikeMFT/status/624661396324618240

[ related topics: Photography ]

Self-Censoring Font Redacts Words the Feds Are Watching For.

[ related topics: Typography Graphic Design ]

Shakesville: Sandra Bland Case: Updates:

The possibilities are these: Bland died from an untreated head injury after State Trooper Brian Encinia bashed her head against the pavement and police staged her suicide; Bland died from an epileptic seizure (recall that Encinia's response to Bland telling him she had epilepsy was "Good") and police staged her suicide; Bland was killed or died in some other way in police custody and her sucide was staged; or Bland indeed took her own life, after she informed police of previous suicide attempts and they utterly failed to prevent another while she was in their care.

[ related topics: Law Law Enforcement ]

Newsweek: How The New York Times Bungled the Hillary Clinton Emails Story.

Worth reading and keeping a reference to if the people in your social media feeds who had formerly been whining about Benghazi have switched to email.

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

Hey, @Twitter, the fact that I can't block people who drive-by @ mention me and then block me means I'm still subjected to their bullshit.

Today's concept: Sea Lioning http://wondermark.com/1k62/

Anyone know of an ontology for IP (and other) blacklisting? A why and what entity made the decision format? I need to share firewall rules.

Back to bathroom work, need to fit the trim and skirt before I carve...

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment ]

Is there anything cooler than a sharp plane?

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

A fascinating look at the emergence of verse-chorus structure in songs (Square dance uses ABBABBA) http://www.gfpm-samples.de/Samples13/appenfrei.pdf

When you complete an online purchase with the card on file, but the last 4 digits don't match anything in your wallet... ¯\(°_o)/¯

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

The war on cars is real: Paris police open fire on car at Tour de France barricades http://www.sfgate.com/news/wor...ar-at-Tour-de-France-6406068.php

[ related topics: History Current Events Law Enforcement Automobiles Pyrotechnics ]

Gluing up the frame for the bathtub skirt panel

[ related topics: Photography ]

New game: Find the highest number of Ghostery trackers on one page.

[ related topics: Games Invention and Design ]

Our Three-Year Struggle To Get Chicago To Admit That We Were Beaten By Police

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Looks like the number of trackers blocked by Ghostery is inversely proportional to the legitimacy of the news site: CNN 16, NY Times 18...

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Police Department Admits They Only Hired Applicants Who Promised They Wouldn’t Arrest Other Cops.

The report is Commonwealth of Massachusetts Civil Service Commission: Michael Phillips, Appellant v. City of Methuen, Respondent (PDF), and, indeed, it says that the police department asked whether applicants would arrest family members or fellow police officers, and scored those who said that they would lower.

[ related topics: Sociology Law Enforcement ]

Security is hard: OS X 10.10 DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability.

[ related topics: Weblogs Macintosh ]

Gluing up the bathtub skirt drawer front frame

[ related topics: Photography ]

I was worried about the match on that slanted piece

[ related topics: Photography ]

Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough Is Wrong. #1 is "The authors don’t use TeX."

This is kinda like a job listing asking for your resume in Microsoft Word formats, or someone sending HTML email.

Via Edward Tufte.

[ related topics: Humor Weblogs Microsoft moron Heinlein Mathematics ]

Fascinating interview with Michael Moorcock on the occasion of his turning 75, rambling through "real" genre, sexual culture, gender politics, Tolkien...

“Back then, I was unaware of gender politics,” he confesses. “We simply didn’t have the vocabulary to deal with those inequalities. When I think about it now, I was able to live and write because of someone who later turned out to be a prolific writer, who wrote a couple of bestsellers. But she didn’t write anything apart from the odd short story until after I left. You have to address that and you think, ‘Christ, I was a bastard.’”

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Theater & Plays Sociology Writing California Culture Cryptography ]

More reason to not trust your phone: Researchers find vulnerability that affects 95% of Android devices:

Using a person’s telephone number, hackers can send a media file via MMS that gives them entry into a device. What’s more, the owner of the device may never know. Hackers could conceivably send the trojan file while the device’s owner is sleeping, get access to their phone, and then delete any evidence the phone was hacked. Once the exploit is completed, a hacker can remotely operate a phone’s microphone, steal files, read emails, and get personal credentials.

Zuk Avraham of Zimperium has a blog post/press release.

Just realized that my new Android tablet doesn't have sticky notes over the cameras... I should probably rectify that.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs virus Invention and Design Journalism and Media Phreaking ]

"But what about autonomous automobiles making ethical decisions?" Driver kills motorcyclist to save black bear. http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...list-while-trying-to-6407132.php

[ related topics: Ethics Current Events Law Enforcement Automobiles ]

Boston mayor Martin Walsh protects the financial interests of the city:

“I cannot commit to putting the taxpayers at risk,’’ Walsh said. “If committing to sign a guarantee today is what’s required to move forward, then Boston is no longer pursing the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

Go Mr. Walsh!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Sports ]

Confirmed MitM attack against the St Louis Federal Reserve. The source: http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...eral-reserve-suffers-dns-breach/

The inevitable stenography posing as journalism:

• http://www.rt.com/usa/260229-s...uis-federal-reserve-cyberattack/
• http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05...onfirms-hacking-attack.html?_r=0
• http://www.reuters.com/article...cybercrime-idUSKBN0O42SP20150519

The heat got me. 4.4mi at a progressively slower rate, by the time I started walking I was down to 10min/mi. Need water.

Hey, if you have interacted with me on Twitter and your notifications now look like an Andrew Dice Clay DDOS: http://ggautoblocker.com/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Hologram Performance by Chief Keef Is Shut Down by Police.

The surprise appearance of Chief Keef at Craze Fest, a hip-hop festival in Hammond, about 25 miles outside of Chicago, was scheduled after a series of canceled hologram performances by the rapper, born Keith Cozart. Last weekend, a Chicago theater called off a similar show after representatives for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office deemed Chief Keef “an unacceptable role model,” whose music “promotes violence” and whose presence via hologram “posed a significant public safety risk.”

Hmmmm...

Via http://www.researchbuzz.com/

[ related topics: Music Theater & Plays Consumerism and advertising Law Enforcement ]

Listening to Planet Money #640: remember that when you take shorter showers, there's a vineyard that'll gladly use that water instead.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Pop Culture Currency ]

Yes! It is time to abolish the Interstate highway system! http://theweek.com/articles/44...bolish-interstate-highway-system

Pornhub Insight - More of what women want, some breakdowns of searches.

[ related topics: Marketing ]

RT Eλf Sternberg ‏@elfsternberg:

HIPAA introduced a uniform electronic medical records requirement. Why isn't there something similar for police records, jail admittances?

That's a great place to work on records standardization next! I also suspect that Nixle will help do a hell of a lot towards better accessibility to police records...

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

RT John Carmack ‏@ID_AA_Carmack:

AI won't be HAL, but "I programmed this drone to loiter around my house and scare squirrels with an actuated laser pointer; cool, eh?"

Martin Wicke retweeted William Dye ‏@willdye

@ID_AA_Carmack: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I ca-- SQUIRREL!!

RT Gregory Selck ‏@Blu_Potato:

@willdye @ID_AA_Carmack isn't that basically a cat?

mwcz ‏@mwcz

@Blu_Potato @willdye @ID_AA_Carmack If your cat has four propellers and a laser, I'm jealous!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Food Graphics Artificial Intelligence Real Estate ]

Filmmakers fighting “Happy Birthday” copyright find their “smoking gun”

[ related topics: Apple Computer Drugs Guns Copyright/Trademark ]

The Android and Jeep security holes show why we *need* the Internet to run on open source software that can be independently fixed.

[ related topics: Free Software Software Engineering Net Culture ]

Perl abomination of the moment:

$var ^= 0x2 if ($var+0 & 2);

We need a time machine so we can go back and smack the author of that.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Perl Open Source hubris ]

The video of police killing of Sam Dubose is apparently so bad, Cincinnati is preparing for riots.

Chief Blackwell on UC officer's body cam: I've seen the video, 'it is not good', and is meeting with faith leaders to call for peace.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Current Events Law Enforcement Education Video ]

Whoah: Note the Berkeley police wearing camo fatigues for an urban/suburban operation. Because looking like a tree will make them inconspicuous in front of Breads of India?

[ related topics: Bay Area Law Enforcement ]

Bwahahaha! Bay Area to Standard American English Translator.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

People who say that interpreted languages are just as safe as compiled language with proper test coverage need to check their premises...

[ related topics: Bay Area Journalism and Media ]

High School Student Proves Professor Wrong When He Denied “No Irish Need Apply” Signs Existed

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Heat got to me again, I ran the short loop, 8:40 min/mi.

Eccentric Flower: Code blue, part two, a little rant about Perl and CPAN and...

I think Moose is the thing that's kicked me over the edge on Perl. Not that the basic idea is a bad thing, adding some mechanisms for OO typing to Perl, but that the way that it's implemented in practice has two real side-effects:

1. At some point you'll get a stack trace that makes no fucking sense. Serious "where the hell did that come from?" department. And as you start to track it back, it's because in the constraints and handlers, something has happened deep in the bowels of Moose that has triggered some other thing and how you're 5 stack traces sideways from the actual cause and no notion of what the hell went wrong.
2. Suddenly you're dealing with versionitis where some module is constantly dumping crap about how calling this method is deprecated, and it's 5 levels deep, and there's no good way to upgrade the 4th level because some other module needs exactly that version and this is a running production machine and...

...and all of the "don't you worry your pretty little haid" hand-holding becomes leaky abstraction where you have to know exactly how all the inter-reacting little environment variables work.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Nature and environment Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Sports hubris ]

From the "are you fucking kidding me?" files: former Google diversity chief Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe promised “the first women’s museum in the UK”, built Jack The Ripper museum instead.

“It is absolutely not celebrating the crime of Jack the Ripper but looking at why and how the women got in that situation in the first place.”

Tell us, Mr. Palmer-Edgecumbe, what were they wearing?

• http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u...-female-museum-dedicated-6158142
• http://www.standard.co.uk/goin...to-jack-the-ripper-10423690.html
• http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/jack-...ed-museum-womens-history-1513194

[ related topics: Current Events Art & Culture ]

Troy Hunt: How I got XSSd by my ad network:

When you allow third parties to run script on your site, you’re entirely beholden to them; they can run anything they like in the context of your site.

I think I should start running an ad blocker on top of Ghostery...

[ related topics: broadband Sports ]

Etsy: Frankenstein style light switch plate. It's a switch plate that turns your light switch into something that looks kind of like a dual pole dual throw knife switch.

Which is kinda cute in the black 3d printed plastic, but this really needs to be done in brass and walnut.

Alt link: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:649284

[ related topics: Graphics Model Building ]

RFID hacking and attack tools. Apparently the cards we're using for building access aren't using a public key challenge/response system, so if you can read 'em once you can use that data for access.

And you can read the cards from 3 feed away.

Freakin' gulp. Need a mylar sleeve for my work card.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment RFID ]

This conspiracy theory says ad tech companies deliberately keep web pages loading slow because they make more money that way.

We either need symmetric gigabit fiber everywhere, or a better web protocol that does store and forward and load balancing, so that we can get off the commercial web.

[ related topics: Currency Conspiracy Government ]

RT Manda Likewine ‏@Manda_like_wine:

My anaconda don't want none because he was a rescue and is grateful to have a safe and loving home. In a way, he was the one who rescued me.

RT Paige ‏@PeachCoffin

"You have a beef with me?" -Russian guy inviting you to his bbq

[ related topics: Bay Area Wines and Spirits ]

Still damned hot. 4.9 miles at 9:53 min/mi.

BBC: Less lighting has no impact on crime or collisions, says report.

The study, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in partnership with University College London and published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, looked at councils which had implemented a range of schemes.

The effect of reduced street lighting on road casualties and crime in England and Wales: controlled interrupted time series analysis:

Results There was no evidence that any street lighting adaptation strategy was associated with a change in collisions at night. There was significant statistical heterogeneity in the effects on crime estimated at police force level. Overall, there was no evidence for an association between the aggregate count of crime and switch off (RR 0.11; 95% CI 0.01 to 2.75) or part-night lighting (RR 0.96; 95% CI 0.86 to 1.06). There was weak evidence for a reduction in the aggregate count of crime and dimming (RR 0.84; 95% CI 0.70 to 1.02) and white light (RR 0.89; 95% CI 0.77 to 1.03).

Now can we get rid of more of these stupid street lights?

Other sources for the story:

• http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news...15-switching-off-street-lighting
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150728194934.htm
• http://www.psmag.com/politics-...tlights-might-not-make-you-safer

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health Current Events Monty Python Community Education hubris ]

A report from this year's Ephemerisle.

[ related topics: Boats Machinery ]

Yes, it's BuzzFeed, but go look at the pictures. It's hilarious. If Bachelor Parties Looked Like Bachelorette Parties.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

http://www.schmipsum.com/ - Lorem Ipsum Markov chains from assorted sources.

Politico: The Agenda: Knock ’em down:

Even Ike was disappointed by what highways did to cities. Here's a conservative case for fewer overpasses.

Regular readers of my rants on infrastructure have probably read this sentiment way too many times, I'm just collecting this here so I can refer back to it.

[ related topics: Law ]

Prosecute them all: The Sam Dubose Police Report Is Full of Falsehoods from Ray Tensing's Fellow Officers.

"If it were not for that video camera, Sam would be no different than all of the other [unindicted police shootings of black men], because the second officer was ready to corroborate every lie that the first officer said in the report," Allen said.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Via Shadow: ┬─┬ ノ(゜-゜ノ) _ (╯°□°)╯︵ ┬||. A Reddit thread on folding bench-to-table combos. And awesomest title evarrr!

[ related topics: Furniture ]

"I am a cyclist, and I am here to fuck you up": http://thoughtcatalog.com/kell...st-and-i-am-here-to-fuck-you-up/

Yes, I share y'all's distaste for big game hunting, but let's stay focused, okay? Or: THIS: https://twitter.com/therealhennessy/status/626506539415814144

[ related topics: Games ]

Like USAA, but for Uber

OwnStar Device Can Remotely Locate, Unlock, and Start GM OnStar Cars.

“After a user opens the RemoteLink mobile app on their phone near my OwnStar device, OwnStar intercepts the communications and sends specially crafted packets to the mobile device to acquire additional credentials then notifies me, the attacker, about the vehicle that I indefinitely have access to, including its location, make, and model,” Kamkar said in a video demonstrating the device.

OnStar hack remotely starts cars, GM working on a fix.

... GM has already issued one patch this morning aimed at securing the RemoteLink app, but it was unsuccessful, according to Kamkar.

It's a simple WiFi MitM + replay attack.

So how the hell do I get the gig telling people how to implement systems that weren't written like the high school kid who's just discovered computers?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Work, productivity and environment Video ]

It's weird how people correct me when they think I'm a woman.

I’ll spare you any more but it went on and on and on. I even saw one person (who I blocked because I don’t need to see this sort of nuttiness) on a friend’s Facebook share refer to my work as “typical white women liberal logic”, whatever the heck that means. Time after time what I was assumed to be a woman, and those that did so were usually the ones that immediately tried to mansplain away every seed of logic and well-sourced information that I had planted.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Race Woodworking ]

So a few days/weeks ago, I followed something from, probably the Polyamory Weekly podcast, and that led to an exchange with Cooper, and Cooper said "have a copy of my book". So I've read a few chapters, and even though I've learned that I'm probably really pretty monogamous, I've gotten a few nuggets out of it.

And I'm enjoying some of the swingset.fm podcasts.

So I'm gonna help him pimp his book: RT Cooper S. Beckett @CooperSBeckett

A push to hit an awesome milestone, get my ebook for $1 today & tomorrow http://ebook.mylotss.com promo: hitthenumber PLS retweet! #MyLotss

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture ]

Climbing a tree can improve cognitive skills: We need a group for a ropes course day: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150729102407.htm

We should think about what we want the user to experience. Most UX designers seem to be going for sadness or frustrated anger.

RT Darryl ‏@darryl1974:

Daily Mail, 1938 and 2015.

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

RT John Fitzpatrick ‏@j_c_fitz

Network cable with built-in firewall

[ related topics: Photography broadband Archival ]

Bicyclists, FFS, don't stop at the red lights! Bicyclist at red light in Buffalo, Minn. hit by truck's trailer. The kicker to this story, though:

Starting Aug. 1, a new Minnesota law is cracking down on drivers who hit a bicyclist. The legislation increases the penalty for killing or injuring a bicyclist or pedestrian. The person responsible could now face a gross misdemeanor with up to one year in jail and a $3,000 fine.

@mikesonn points out that the reason the victim was in harm's way was separated infrastructure: Crossing from MUP to MUP in the crosswalk area rather than out in traffic.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Machinery Guns ]

Warren Buffett’s Family Secretly Funded a Birth Control Revolution:

“For Warren, it’s economic. He thinks that unless women can control their fertility—and that it’s basically their right to control their fertility—that you are sort of wasting more than half of the brainpower in the United States,” ...

Via MeFi, in which cstross re-states the obvious fairly well:

I find it easiest to understand the anti-abortion movement as not being "pro-life" or anything like that, but rather about patriarchal enforcement of traditional patterns of female behaviour (marriage, subservience, kinder, kuche, kirche, etc) and especially about punishing female expressions of self-determined sexuality. ...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health History Sociology Current Events Work, productivity and environment Marriage ]

The story of AllTrials, a project to make sure that all clinical trials get registered, so that the selection bias of just publishing the ones that have "interesting" results

[ related topics: Current Events ]