Flutterby™! From 2017-08-01 to 2017-08-31

Your big machinery and drone landscape shots fix: video from the Oroville dam spillway rebuild https://www.youtube.com/watch?...u6eVFnSyEtQeOVbxvSWywPlx&index=1

[ related topics: Movies Machinery Video ]

Senator Cory Booker puts marijuana legalization at the center of his new racial justice bill

Booker talks about the bill on Facebook video

[ related topics: Drugs Libertarian Invention and Design Current Events Law Enforcement ]

WJZ 13 CBS Baltimore: Concerns Remain After More Baltimore Officers Accused Of Faking Evidence On Body-Cam Video (YouTube)

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Movies Video ]

Laser Flip Triple Set BATTLE - Christian Flores (YouTube video)

In a recent conversation about failure I said "You know how you see those skateboard videos? How awesome they look? How they land every jump? You ever watch actual skateboarders? How often do you see one land a trick?"

This is a little short documentary about, yes, landing the trick, but about the thousands of attempts on the way there.

And kudos to whoever ran the camera...

[ related topics: Religion Photography Movies Aviation Video Real Estate ]

Why Jeff Sessions is going to lose his war against cannabis.

[ related topics: History Current Events ]

We have not been doing well on Halloween, but... Make your own tentacles for under $20 using pool noodles and duct tape.

"Content Tweeted by Bots and Trolls: Activity from 600 monitored Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations": http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ A real-time propaganda dashboard.

The Great Stagnation: Americans stopped moving to find work

The paper proposes a potential answer to a question that has nagged researchers and political observers in the current anti-establishment wave: why people in the decaying rust belt do not just move. According to the authors, a primary reason is state and local zoning regulations that have increasingly slowed housing growth in the most attractive cities since the middle of the 20th century, thus driving up real estate prices.

"The paper" is National Bureau of Economic Research: Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined? ($5 paywall), which I have not read.

Perhaps an older version of the paper: Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined? (PDF).

[ related topics: Politics moron Sociology Work, productivity and environment Economics Real Estate ]

Rich SF residents get a shock: Someone bought their street. HOA loses tax bill for 3 decades, private street goes to auction, now there's discussion of charging for parking on the street...

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Community ]

This thread is a fantastic look at the issues at the state of and need for anonymized end-to- end encrypted messaging, in the context of teledildonics: RT @SarahJamieLewis:

I have ~1hr before I'm going to meet my new friend & watch Steven Universe so let's fill time answering *the* question: Why Oniondildonics?

[ related topics: Movies Invention and Design Cryptography ]

Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions: Life expectancy gains have stalled. The grim silver lining? Lower pension costs

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Trespasser falls off Santa Rosa PG&E tower, causes fire and outage:

The man, whose name and age were not released, was about 80 feet up the tower when he apparently came in contact with the live wires and fell to the ground into a patch of dry grass, which caught fire, witnesses told firefighters.

Dude apparently survived too.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Theater & Plays Pyrotechnics ]

RT Keegan Stephan @KeeganNYC:

Imagine how much time people spent in jail for the drugs in those lockers.

with a link to: Former sheriff's deputies sentenced to probation for conspiring to sell drugs they stole

[ related topics: Drugs Health Current Events ]

The Quant Fund Robot Takeover Has Been Postponed:

In order to exploit inefficiency, giant firms like Two Sigma Investments LP and Worldquant LLC “need to be dwarfed by large, dumb money,” Berger said by phone. “They’re waiting for the sucker to come to the table, but the suckers are fewer and far between.”

ie: Day trading is no longer a thing.

[ related topics: Robotics Current Events Chocolate Currency Handicaps & Disabilities Furniture ]

RT Qasim Rashid, Esq.‏Verified account @MuslimIQ:

THIS IS AMAZING!

1943: US War Dept released this video to tell Americans not to fall for fascists. #Charlottesville

The video is embedded. The video, "Don't Be A Sucker", is also available from Archive.org

[ related topics: Robotics History Embedded Devices Video ]

RT Bʀʏᴀɴ @bry_campbell:

This is how cheap it is to buy, one year certificate for malware. $600. (macOS, Office etc)

Includes screen shot of someone selling code signing certificates for all of the various platforms. Worth thinking about if you have any sort of distributed trust system. Specifically thinking about this in the context of a friend who's doing a lot of work in the V2V and I2V space...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Macintosh ]

Along with the excellent "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain", this weekend I also finished Lisa Feldman Barrett's "How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain". Barrett's hypthesis is that emotions aren't innate, but rather are social constructs, ways that we explain and interpret our own physiology.

There is a lot to like about this theory. It helps explain why reactions under stress and threat are so different. It helps explain why there isn't cross-cultural agreement on what expressions mean (despite numerous (flawed) studies which purport to show this). It helps explain why some of us view drama and acting with a detachment of "that's not emoting, that's echoing a cultural cue that we've been taught to interpret as emoting".

(Which is, to a large extent, why I only see a few movies a year.)

Unfortunately, I think Barrett doesn't explain some of her postulates as well as I'd like, and gets drawn off into various examples and implications in ways that don't necessarily follow.

A lot of good stuff in here, some great takedowns of some of the theories put forward by people like Paul Ekman, but... I really hope to read the book of someone who helps better organize the argument.

https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/books/how-emotions-are-made/

[ related topics: Books Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Movies Sociology Archival ]

Choosing alternative cancer treatment doubles your risk of death:

The team then compared the health outcomes of these [281] people with 560 others who were similar to them in terms of age, race and disease, but instead underwent conventional treatment.

They found that people who took alternative medicine were two and half times more likely to die within five years of diagnosis. This is a low estimate, says Johnson, skewed by the fact that prostate cancer, for example, takes longer than that to develop into a life- threatening disease.

The study is Use of Alternative Medicine for Cancer and Its Impact on Survival Skyler B. Johnson Henry S. Park Cary P. Gross James B. Yu. https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djx145

[ related topics: Content Management Health ]

Oklahoma man charged in anti-government bomb plot. The parallels to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols are strong, he tried to detonate a fake bomb in what he thought was a stolen cargo van outside a Federal building.

In one conversation he said he believed in the "Three Percenter" ideology - a form of anti-government activism that pledges resistance against the United States government on the belief it has infringed on the Constitution, according to court papers. Those who subscribe to the ideology incorrectly believe that only 3 percent of the colonial population participated in the American Revolution, and they see themselves as their heirs.

JJ MacNab has mirrored a copy of the FBI complaint and notes that he dialed the number that he thought would detonate the bomb again after it failed to detonate the first time.

[ related topics: moron Law Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

How To Make A Blockbuster Movie Trailer (YouTube video)

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Apropos of nothing at all:

• Ukrainian protesters topple Lenin statue in Kharkiv - no comment (YouTube)
• The 'Biggest' Fall of Lenin: Biggest Lenin statue in Ukraine pulled down in... (YouTube)
• Saddam Hussein Statue Pulled Down To The Ground (YouTube)
• Tajik city topples huge Vladimir Lenin statue (YouTube)
• Lenin's falling (YouTube)
• Gaddafi's statue attacked and defaced (YouTube)
• The Spectator: A Short History of Statue Toppling
• International Business Times: Good Bye, Lenin! Statues of Dictators Toppled Around the World [PHOTOS]

Okay, just kidding, it was about something. Arrests Begin Following Durham Confederate Statue Toppling.

[ related topics: Politics Photography Sexual Culture Movies Dictators ]

I see that Levi's is covering multiple axes on the sexuality spectrum

Addendum: RT Brian Jarvis @bajarvis:

I wear the "slim straight cut" ironically, because I'm not any of those.

[ related topics: Photography Fashion ]

HANDJET EBS-260 - improved hand held, portable, mobile ink jet printer - ver. EN (YouTube video)

Via JWZ

[ related topics: Movies Invention and Design Video ]

How come "swimsuits half off" never means what I want it to mean?

[ related topics: Photography ]

I have been struggling with a lot of philosophical issues around various companies terminating their services of the Daily Stormer web site. As someone with friends who've had sexually explicit content on the internet, and all of the challenges they've gone through, I'm super sensitive to cries of "censorship". It is not, for instance, lost on me that until pretty much *today* it has been far far more difficult to get web hosting or credit card payment services for anything remotely related to sexual content than for hate publications.

I've been weighing the moral imperative to punch a Nazi vs "love thy neighbor", and pondering when speech becomes violence.

This is helping me: Cloudflare: Why we terminated Daily Stormer

Our team has been thorough and have had thoughtful discussions for years about what the right policy was on censoring. Like a lot of people, we've felt angry at these hateful people for a long time but we have followed the law and remained content neutral as a network. We could not remain neutral after these claims of secret support by Cloudflare.

More at Gizmodo: Cloudflare CEO on terminating service to the neo-Nazi site.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Ethics broadband Free Speech Net Culture Philosophy ]

Back in 2009, when facial recognition was just starting to become a thing, HP had an issue where their webcams weren't detecting non-caucasian faces. That era was one where it was amazing that the technology worked at all, and was a good reminder to make diversity a part of the product ship checklist. So, yeah, almost 8 years ago. Apparently the soap dispenser people didn't get the memo.

RT Chukwuemeka Afigbo @nke_ise:

If you have ever had a problem grasping the importance of diversity in tech and its impact on society, watch this video

[ related topics: Movies Machinery Race Video ]

Why Did A State Trooper Try To Stop Medics From Performing CPR On Heather Heyer?

I assume it is not correct state trooper protocol to interfere with or attempt to halt CPR on an unresponsive patient who just lost her pulse and respirations. And, to their credit, it appears all the other state troopers were assisting street medics in treating the other casualties on the scene. Why this one tried to force us to abandon Heather Heyer, with no intention of providing CPR himself, I will never understand.

The thing about having hung out with extreme sports folks is that... well... yeah, cops often get in the way of lifesaving and rescue operations. I wish we could change that.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

In the wake of renaming Calhoun College following the killings of 9 people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Yale University outlined principles for renaming campus buildings.

Letter of the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming

[ related topics: Religion Current Events Education Architecture Race ]

Radley Balko in The Washington Post: We should treat Confederate monuments the way Moscow and Budapest have treated communist statues.

Each monument includes a plaque explaining when it was erected, how it was funded and that it has been preserved and installed in the park not to celebrate Stalin or Lenin or their ideas but because of its historical significance.

One statute of Stalin stands – minus its nose – in front of a harrowing sculpture depicting dozens of human heads stacked behind barbed wire. It's a monument to the victims of totalitarianism. It isn't difficult to imagine a similar park where a statute of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis or Nathan Bedford Forrest might stand in front of a monument to victims of lynching.

[ related topics: Movies Current Events ]

Charlene in Bubblegum Alley, San Luis Obispo

[ related topics: Photography ]

1960 was way more optimistic about 2017 (Robert Silverberg "The Lost Race Of Mars")

[ related topics: Photography Astronomy ]

Here's to all the mailing list managers deleting LinkedIn requests so that subscribers don't look like idiots.

It's darker here, but too cloudy to see anything.

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

Examining a vintage RAM chip, I find a counterfeit with an entirely different die inside.

This is fascinating, and, since it's a chip for generating DTMF tones in a touch tone phone, it got me thinking about supply chains and cell phones and how much we trust the devices on which we use encrypted messaging services...

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

Even with the overcast, we still saw the effects of the eclipse on Monday...

[ related topics: Photography Astronomy Java Woodworking ]

Psychology Today: Are Friends With Benefits as Satisfied as Married People?:

I'm sure you're wondering if this differed for men and for women. I did, too. Gender differences were not specifically addressed much in the published article, but Dr. Birnie-Porter was kind enough to run additional analyses for this post and found virtually identical results for the two sexes: Women were just as satisfied with their relationship situation as men, and that included those in FWBs and casual dating situations. In fact, the only relationship type for which the difference in genders landed anywhere close to statistical significance was the opposite of what you might expect: Women were slightly more satisfied with casual dating than were men.

The paper is behind a paywall, but is Does relationship status matter for sexual satisfaction? The roles of intimacy and attachment avoidance in sexual satisfaction across five types of ongoing sexual relationships DOI: 10.3138/cjhs.242-A5

Via Yep, Friends With Benefits Are Happier Than Married Couples

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Weblogs Sociology Beer Skating Marriage Model Building ]

Just clearing out tabs: Erin Giglio: The truth has got its boots on: what the evidence says about Mr. Damore's Google memo.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Shoes ]

TEDxCopenhagen - Mikael Colville-Andersen - Why We Shouldn't Bike with a Helmet (YouTube)

[ related topics: Andersen/Accenture Movies Bicycling ]

To all of my author friends getting caught up in the hubbub over "Handbook For Mortals" buying its way onto the NYT Bestseller list: It's been common knowledge for years that the list is gamed. Back in 2012, Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, and when that was exposed it came out that a whole bunch of other "Christian" and "inspirational" books used similar tactics. Last year, FEC filings showed that the Trump campaign bought 3500 copies of Crippled America , likely for this purpose. Ted Cruz tried to buy his way onto the list, but got spotted. Sarah Palin's PAC spent $64k to put her on the bestseller list. Ben Carson's PAC spent $150k. It's how "bestsellers" get made, and if you've got $200-250k lying around, is probably a good (and common) investment in marketing.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Books Erotic Sexual Culture virus Invention and Design Sociology Consumerism and advertising Marketing Handicaps & Disabilities Economics Marriage ]

When the YouTube video of television static is 16:9 1080p... #kidsthesedays #getoffmylawn #243i #broadcastquality #NTSC4evah

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television Video ]

Dancing can reverse the signs of aging in the brain:

As we grow older we suffer a decline in mental and physical fitness, which can be made worse by conditions like Alzheimer's disease. A new study, published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, shows that older people who routinely partake in physical exercise can reverse the signs of aging in the brain, and dancing has the most profound effect.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Television ]

A black man went undercover online as a white supremacist. This is what he learned.:

... The Internet is sort of what a car is to road rage. The glass and steel create this bubble of perceived safety, which amplifies people's rage, but keeps them from having to deal with the consequences of that rage. There is an honesty that is exposed in the process.

A black man undercover in the alt-right | Theo E.J. Wilson | TEDxMileHigh (YouTube)

[ related topics: Cool Science Movies Current Events Net Culture Automobiles Race ]

RT Conspirador Norteño @conspirator0:

A pattern you may have noticed: many bot and troll accounts have usernames that end in 8 random digits.

In which a bot network is investigated...

[ related topics: broadband ]

New Yorker: Carl Icahn's failed raid on Washington. In which Carl Icahn uses his position as adviser to Trump to manipulate Renewable Fuel Standard RIN credit futures.

Via @RepDonBeyer on Twitter

[ related topics: Invention and Design Economics ]

Absolute joy calling to the Circle 'n Squares at the Museums of Sonoma County this afternoon. Nominally demo squares, we had two tips with beginners, the rest was Plus to a floor that moved nicely and laughed a lot. Really fun time.

99% of Women Lose Money in MLM's — So Why Are They Still Signing Up?:

That 99 percent number isn't coming to you courtesy of some jilted former LuLaRoe consultant — it's from a report done for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by Jon M. Taylor, MBA, Ph.D., of the Consumer Awareness Institute. The infuriating part of this statistic is the bill of good sold to potential consultants in order to convince them to set their (very well-founded) fears of losing money aside and dive into the Lula (or whatever) pool.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Currency ]

Tawana Brawley for this millennium: Man Who Claimed He Was Stabbed After Being Mistaken For A Neo-Nazi Was Lying

just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year

[ related topics: Photography ]

Axolotl: A Keylogger for iPhone and Android. Using machine learning to figure out what the user is typing in:

Mostly to spite our hype-hating professor, we committed to integrating the greatest buzzword of all into our project — machine learning.

[ related topics: Education iPhone ]

RT Noah Smith @Noahpinion:

15 years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet.

As I ruthlessly culled my Twitter feed yesterday, I was thinking about this. How back in the '80s, I went online to escape the mundanity of "the real world", and how now "the real world" has flooded online, and now I search for connection in meat space.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Net Culture ]

The tail end of the rising sun lifting the low fog off the marsh grasses

[ related topics: Java ]

The tail end of the rising sun lifting the low fog off the marsh grasses...

[ related topics: Photography Java ]

AT&T modem update security vulnerabilities:

It was found that the latest firmware update (9.2.2h0d83) for the NVG589 and NVG599 modems enabled SSH and contained hardcoded credentials which can be used to gain access to the modem's "cshell" client over SSH. The cshell is a limited menu driven shell which is capable of viewing/changing the WiFi SSID/password, modifying the network setup, re-flashing the firmware from a file served by any tftp server on the Internet, and even controlling what appears to be a kernel module whose sole purpose seems to be to inject advertisements into the user's unencrypted web traffic. Although no clear evidence was found suggesting that this module is actually being used currently, it is present, and vulnerable. Aside from the most dangerous items listed above, the cshell application is also capable of many other privileged actions. The username for this access is remotessh and the password is 5SaP9I26.

[ related topics: Weblogs broadband Net Culture Cryptography ]