Flutterby™! From 2016-10-01 to 2016-10-31

Just found myself typing "find . -name '*sane*' -print". Draw your own conclusions.

Started on a nicer cat tree today

[ related topics: Photography ]

Bronte Capital: Some comments on the New York Times story about Donald Trump's tax returns

And in case you missed it, the New York Times article on Trump's taxes:

Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years...

For reference, that's $100M more than Apple's worst year (1996).

While we're kicking a campaign while it's down this video of Chuck Todd interviewing Rudy Giuliani, as Excerpted by Tim Mak @timkmak:

Chuck Todd: But you have a history of infidelity

Rudy Giuliani: Everybody does

Ya know, I'm totally fine with ethical non-monogamy. I suspect that's not what Rudy is talking about.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Politics Sexual Culture Ethics Todd Gemmell Invention and Design Law New York Video Government ]

Working on shaping, not sure if I've got it reading right yet...

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

Rounding the corners on the cat tree shelves

[ related topics: Photography ]

Assembled cat tree, need to come up with carpet for the shelves and a few coats of finish

[ related topics: Photography ]

The trashing of NAFTA in the current Presidential race is making me appreciate the TPP, even as I shudder at some IP provisions in it.

The Danger in Demonizing Male Sexuality:

But it starts that young. Yes, girls are told that boys are predatory and somehow out of control. The corollary there is that boys are told they are predators, and out of control. Therefore, not a desirable thing, but a thing to defend against. From the get-go, we are teaching our kids to fear male sexuality, and to repress female sexuality.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Photographers upset at "Ask First" stickers at BDSM Folsom Street Fair.

Some interesting discussion of public vs private and the limits of implied consent.

[ related topics: Community ]

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Practice safe cyber. Only cyber with consenting adults.

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

And then there's nights when the square dancing floor flows like that and all is right with the world.

Wait, Chevy's built a version of the Toyota Hilux? [clicks through] Nope, the Subaru Baja...

Mike Pence Tells Wrongfully Convicted Man He Won’t Act On Pardon Request

CNN Video: Actually, Mike Pence, Trump really DID say that

Also, Pence said "(Donald Trump and) I would never punish women who made the heartbreaking choice to end a pregancy". Mike Pence is a fucking liar.

[ related topics: Politics Video ]

RT Chastity Blackwell ‏@Black_Isis:

Pro tip: "Foolish mortals" is a gender-neutral form of address.

Random for the morning:

I listened to a Trump supporter

Reporting massive human rights abuses behind a façade: Two reporters escaped with their lives, but left Cambodia with very different stories. History shows one was right.

[ related topics: Television Civil Liberties ]

Cat tree in place

[ related topics: Photography ]

We are being observed...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Shadow forwarded along this long tweet stream of @FakeUnicode showing differences in characters between platforms, with some... interesting design decisions on the part of Samsung.

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

Why is the pill so depressing?. Taking apart that recent study which claims to show a link between hormone contraceptives and depression.

Point: Donald Trump’s Pretty Lucky He’s Not Held To The Same Standard As Gary Johnson.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Point: Donald Trump’s Pretty Lucky He’s Not Held To The Same Standard As Gary Johnson.

[ related topics: Politics ]

RT @fordm:

"We need to find and arm the moderate clowns.” —@yayitsrob

[ related topics: Clowns ]

Waiting on the airporter for the red-eye to fly to Newtown CT for my 30th high school reunion.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Sunrise at JFK

[ related topics: Photography ]

Strange to be back in Newtown. Everything iis familiar-ish, but my perspective is so different

[ related topics: Photography ]

Some towns build their identity around an unrepentant huckster

[ related topics: Photography ]

Sold so many soccer fundraiser candy bars to movie-goers while practicing my juggling here...

[ related topics: Photography Movies Sports Clowns ]

Petaluma has chickens, Newtown has a rooster

[ related topics: Photography Birds ]

Stop along the Taconic Parkway to look out over Livingston Manor

[ related topics: Photography ]

Someone left the Markov chains training the closed captioning neural net...

[ related topics: Photography Artificial Intelligence ]

Sitting at JFK waiting for my delayed flight, the debate is on, and I need to be close to my gate to hear announcements. #shootmenow

[ related topics: Aviation ]

Hillary trying to let Donald answer the ACA question first: It's like the debate is a sitcom with a laugh track here at Gate 29.

Giggle: Shadow forwarded along a short tale of Google spell check, transcribed here because it's in image form there:

guys, google docs really is astounding. it just put a red squiggly line under the word 'back' because the next two words were 'of dicks' and it knew i meant 'bag.'

yes, thank you google docs. I did mean BAG of dicks.

what a great program

[ related topics: Humor Software Engineering ]

RT Charles Demers ‏@charliedemers:

Who you going to believe, women who claim they were groped, or a man who says he gropes women? It's a real "he & she both said" situation.

Politifact on Similar Black Unemployment-Related Statements: Bernie's Right! Trump's Wrong!

In this election cycle, I've been aware of a bunch of places where I've been willing to give candidates a pass because I agreed with their general sentiment, and the more I see myself doing that the more I'm aware that there's some tribal affiliation shit like Scott Adams was describing going on in my head.

[ related topics: Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Rush Limbaugh demonstrates that he understands consent, he just doesn't think you should care:

"You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left."

Which makes so many things about modern American politics so clear: Why the threat of assault from trans people using bathrooms scares us, but the threat of assault from Donald Trump or your average United States Senator doesn't...

ErosBlog on the topic

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Law Enforcement Video Clowns ]

For those of us who are struggling with gender roles and other biases in square dancing... http://www.funnyordie.com/vide...4/gender-is-a-construct-do-si-do

And we are now the proud owners of a white 2014 BMW 2014 i3 REx. Making the run for parts to finish the charger installation now.

[ related topics: Automobiles Race ]

The installed ClipperCreek HCS-50 charging station (EVSE)

[ related topics: Photography ]

And a snapshot of the new-to-us car

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Automobiles ]

Pretty sure we are the first BMW owners to ever read this guide...

[ related topics: Photography Automobiles Douglas Adams ]

Okay telephone canvassers, I've voted. Ballots are in the mail. You can stop now.

[ related topics: Phreaking ]

Why does it matter that the U.S. has lost manufacturing capabilities? Your brilliant Kickstarter idea could be on sale in China before you’ve even finished funding it.

But one week after his product hit Kickstarter in December 2015, Sherman was shocked to see it for sale on AliExpress—Alibaba’s English-language wholesale site. Vendors across China were selling identical smartphone case selfie-sticks, using the same design Sherman came up with himself. Some of them were selling for as low as $10 a piece, well below Sherman’s expected retail price of £39 ($47.41). Amazingly, some of these vendors stole the name of Sherman’s product—Stikbox:

[ related topics: Law Typography Graphic Design iPhone ]

Super cool high res aerial photography of Petaluma. http://www.skyimd.com/petaluma-california-aerial-orthomosaic/

[ related topics: Photography California Culture ]

Those halcyon days when people read no further than the first paragraph in your email? Now: Just the latest sentence in the Slack channel.

Anyone else hear "Nasty Woman" and think Janet Jackson with a gender switch? "Gimme a beat!"

[ related topics: Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

Missouri loves company they'll incarcarate ya in order to keep ya: Mississippi woman jailed 96 days without seeing a judge or lawyer.

ACKERMAN, Miss. — Pulled over for traffic violations, Jessica Jauch was held for 96 days in a Mississippi jail without seeing a judge, getting a lawyer or having a chance to make bail. She was charged with a felony based on a secretly recorded video that prosecutors finally acknowledged showed her committing no crime.

Jailed 96 days on bogus charge: It is no one's fault?

It's unclear from these articles exactly what was going on here, apparently the traffic stop was incidental to some grand jury charges that seemed to stem from a DA gunning for her, because the grand jury charges were dropped once an Assistant DA saw the video that the charges were supposed to stem from, but dayumn.

Careful near Missouri.

[ related topics: Law Current Events Video Woodworking ]

Currently installing a backup camera with replacement stereo console in the truck. Car manufacturers are assholes.

[ related topics: Photography Automobiles Machinery ]

Building inspector came by and checked off the permits for both solar and the electric car charger. Yay!

[ related topics: Automobiles Photovoltaics ]

Human doing make device broken is not on warranty

[ related topics: Photography ]

Oh this is a fun little web toy: Type in C++ on the left, get x86 assembly on the right. Particularly neat is to add -O3 and watch all the pre-compute happen... https://gcc.godbolt.org/

[ related topics: Movies ]

Wow. @evgonetwork needs to work with their credit card processor. Anti-fraud calls, and I still couldn't make their charger work on my car.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Automobiles ]

Android 5.1 audio, backup camera, nav and forward DVR installed in the truck.

[ related topics: Music Photography Machinery ]

I realize that everyone has pointed to the Buzzfeed piece on Julian Assange, but it really is worth reading: https://www.buzzfeed.com/james...e?utm_term=.wcpkR32Vp#.xc9A6z2Y4

Kitty Stryker: Porn didn't ruin your sex life. Sorry.

It’s frustrating because we’re so quick to demonize porn for ruining sex, but don’t think nearly as much about how media ruins our ideas about romance.

Toxic masculinity is present in almost every romantic comedy, but it’s seen as cute, not problematic. I swear men learn how to kiss from movies, and it takes a lot of unlearning that kind of stage performance, but no one is shaking a finger at Hollywood for destroying make out sessions. Why is authenticity so demanded from porn while it’s completely ignored at the box office?

And a plethora from Lola Phoenix, the first one is good, the other two are included because I had the browser tabs open and might want to go back to them for reference because of who and where I got them from:

• Why I don’t identify as “poly”, some notes on polyamory as a community and what the author sees wrong with that movement.
• A relationship is not a skill
• Thirteen things I wish I'd learned before choosing non-monogamy

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Theater & Plays Journalism and Media Community ]

NIJ Research Report: Case Studies in Use of DNA Evidence, June 1996:

Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained (primarily by State and local law enforcement), the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive (usually insufficient high molecular weight DNA to do testing), about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have "matched" or included the primary suspect.1 The fact that these percentages have remained constant for 7 years, and that the National Institute of Justice's informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26-percent exclusion rate, strongly suggests that postarrest and postconviction DNA exonerations are tied to some strong, underlying systemic problems that generate erroneous accusations and convictions.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Law Law Enforcement ]

Football Alters the Brains of Kids as Young as 8. If you have kids playing (American) football, it's time to stop. It's really time to stop football altogether.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Health Sports ]

The thing about Mercedes saying that it will design self-driving cars to sacrifice pedestrians in order to save the driver is that they're just modeling current driver behavior and social norms around driving.

[ related topics: Automobiles Graphic Design ]

Bob Hoover, legendary pilot, dead at 94. Back when I was a wee lad I saw him do his engine out in a Rockwell twin turboprop routine. Complete with the 8 point roles. Amazing precision.

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Nostalgia Machinery Woodworking ]

OH: "people trying to deny sexism exists resulted in advancing statistical modeling techniques by an order of magnitude."

Wood, mold and Japanese architecture. Some really cool notes on why Japanese buildings and carpentry have evolved as they have.

[ related topics: Architecture Woodworking ]

Nerd observation: Have come to the conclusion that Ansible is a tool to make you use bigger EC2 instances than you really need.

A fluffy but worth the memories look back at the BBS scene. When social media went "screeehiss" http://spectrum.ieee.org/compu...cestor-the-bulletin-board-system

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

AT&T is spying on Americans for profit.

Hemisphere isn’t a “partnership” but rather a product AT&T developed, marketed, and sold at a cost of millions of dollars per year to taxpayers. No warrant is required to make use of the company’s massive trove of data, according to AT&T documents, only a promise from law enforcement to not disclose Hemisphere if an investigation using it becomes public.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy Law Enforcement ]

Another from Shadow: Adjust'table' (animated GIF). Really cool multi-height table design.

[ related topics: Animation Graphic Design Furniture ]

At the Seed Bank for a bat talk

[ related topics: Photography ]

RT Jenny V ‏@JennyVSimile:

Can we not say "LGBT leaders" are considering "compromising" on public accommodations. LGB leaders.

No one who won't fight for me leads me

Happy Birthday, Tom @negrino!

Carsie Blanton: Emotional Affairs Are Not a Real Problem (Here Are Five Real Problems):

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

One thing we can take from this presidential race: "the press" values sales and advertiser impressions over truth. By a large margin.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

When you can't find a 1/8" chisel at the hardware store, but can find a cheap screwdriver...

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

What I needed that 1/8" chisel for. EL panel behind the cutout, translucent stone in front.

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

Holy s***! Working turn signals on a police cruiser! When did that become a thing? [asterisks from voice transcription]

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

I'm guessing Comey was concerned that the Russians might just point the finger back at him... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/31...ting-election-timing-source.html

Haven't been running much these days, but Geoff and I cranked out 4.6 miles this morning at a leisurely 9:10min/mi.

[ related topics: Sports ]