Flutterby™! From 2017-10-02 to 2017-10-31

Enzymatic Synthesis of Psilocybin Fricke J, Blei F, Hoffmeister D. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2017 Sep 25;56(40):12352-12355. doi: 10.1002/anie.201705489. Epub 2017 Aug 25.

Or building enzymatic pathways that might be usable in other organisms to create hallucinogens...

Chemical & Engineering News: ‘Magic mushroom’ enzyme mystery solved – Researchers unravel the biosynthesis of the psychoactive drug psilocybin, making large- scale production a possibility

Science Daily: Magic enzymes in 'magic' mushrooms analyzed – Enzymatic synthesis of psilocybin, the ingredient of magic mushrooms

[ related topics: Health Theater & Plays Current Events Work, productivity and environment Guns Clowns ]

Twitter thread of the deadliest mass shootings in history (no, the Las Vegas incident yesterday doesn't make the list).

Edit: It's not just brown people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

[ related topics: Gambling ]

BLOG: INTERNET OF THINGS: Screwdriving. Locating and exploiting smart adult toys

The other big issue is the lack of RF range, meaning that it isn’t easy to find devices in the absence of a http://wigle.net equivalent for Bluetooth. So we went hunting… and found some devices in an exploitable state… in people.

[ related topics: Wireless Weblogs Net Culture ]

Every Noise At Once musical genre map, examples of songs in all sorts of genres, if you're looking for examples of the difference between deep tropical house and disco polo, or detroit techno and melbourne bounce.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Maps and Mapping Real Estate ]

Interesting: NPR: For people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, more exercise isn't better. Specifically, it looks like anaerobic exercise exacerbates symptoms, and the CDC has removed its recommendations for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) plus exercise from its website.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health ]

Lady Gaga - Bad Bubble Bath Rubber Duckie Song (YouTube):

The lyrics of Ernie's "Rubber Duckie" song from Sesame Street sung to the tune of "Bad Romance." Original idea came from a weird dream I had. ...

[ related topics: Movies ]

This Future Looks Familiar: Watching Blade Runner in 2017:

There is a whole class of slaves. It is illegal for them to escape slavery. The cops are supposed to murder the slaves if they escape, because there is a risk that they will start to think they’re people. But the cops know that the slaves are not people, so it’s okay to murder them. The greatest danger, the thing the cops are supposed to prevent, is that the slaves will try to assimilate into the society that relies on their labor.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Enforcement ]

Saving here because I know I'm gonna want to use it: a JavaScript snippet to give the user a preview of the image they're about to upload.

Moon set over the pond at Schollenberger Park

[ related topics: Photography ]

"I came into this game for the action, the excitement, go anywhere, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRfoIyx8KfU&t=4m06s

[ related topics: Games Movies ]

Things I did not know: In the 1880s, people were buried with landmines to keep grave robbers at bay: Victorian ‘Coffin Torpedoes’ Blasted Would-Be Body Snatchers

Via MeFi

[ related topics: California Culture ]

Dan Savage on the latest Republican hypocrites:

Murphy and DesJarlais support abortion rights but only for women they've ejaculated inside, a price most American women are unwilling to pay.

Via FB

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Sociology Civil Liberties ]

The gamification of childhood: Pretending to be Batman helps kids stay on task. 180 kids, 4 to 6 years old:

Some of the children were assigned to a “self-immersed condition”, akin to a control group, and before and during the task were told to reflect on how they were doing, asking themselves “Am I working hard?”. Other children were asked to reflect from a third- person perspective, asking themselves “Is James [insert child’s actual name] working hard?” Finally, the rest of the kids were in the Batman condition, in which they were asked to imagine they were either Batman, Bob The Builder, Rapunzel or Dora the Explorer and to ask themselves “Is Batman [or whichever character they were] working hard?”. Children in this last condition were given a relevant prop to help, such as Batman’s cape. Once every minute through the task, a recorded voice asked the question appropriate for the condition each child was in [Are you working hard? or Is James working hard? or Is Batman working hard?].

In the "Batman" condition, 55% of the six year olds and 32% of the 4 year olds stayed on task, vs 35% and 20% of the control group.

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

Eyeo2013 Ignite #12 - Kevin Slavin - Toxoplasmosis: Describing, among other things, a virus hijacking a robot by way of a cat...

[ related topics: virus Robotics ]

Ga. sheriff indicted for sexual battery in high school drug search.

A south Georgia grand jury indicted Worth County Sheriff Jeff Hobby on Tuesday for sexual battery, false imprisonment and violation of oath of office after he ordered a school-wide search of hundreds of high school students. Deputies allegedly touched girls vaginas and breasts and groped boys in their groin area during the search at the Worth County High School April 14.

Two of Hobby’s deputies were also indicted Tuesday in connection with the case.

Pretty sure they mean "vulvas" and not "vaginas", but even so I hope these people end up on the sex offender's registry.

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

NFL Assures Fans There's No Tolerance For Racial Slurs At Redskins Games

H/T ResearchBuzz.

[ related topics: Games Sports ]

All sorts of reasons to fork carefully

[ related topics: Photography ]

So wash your hands often and sneeze into your elbow.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Indiana Supreme Court decides that sending nude pictures to a 16 year old is illegal, even though the age of consent is 16 so actually having sex with that 16 year old wouldn't be illegal.

Indiana Supreme Court: Sex with 16-year-olds is legal, but sending them nude photos is not:

"The Dissemination Statute clearly protects minors under the age of 18 from the dissemination of matter harmful to them," Justice Mark S. Massa wrote in the unanimous opinion. "Whether this inconsistent statutory treatment of minors aged 16 and 17 is advisable with respect to sexually-related activity is a matter for the legislature, and whether Thakar’s alleged conduct violated the Dissemination Statute is a matter for the jury."

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Nudity Law Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Eccentric Flower: Four Hazards, on writing and pitfalls.

[ related topics: Writing ]

RT Kathryn C-K‏ @kathrynbck  Trying to imagine what a statistically accurate Law & Order series would look like.

Samuel Sinyangwe ‏@samswey

One-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police.

https://granta.com/violence-in-blue/

The article is Patrick Ball in Granta magazine: Violence in Blue: Police Homicides in the United States, a look at the data that's falling out now that there are efforts to track and document police homicides.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

At Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Tried to change stages, our space is gone.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy ]

At Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Tried to change stages, our space is gone. (W/pic...)

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Space & Astronomy Embedded Devices ]

If You Want to Know Bike Laws, Don’t Ask the California Highway Patrol, a breakdown of when it's legal for California bicyclists to take the entire lane and/or ride two abreast.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Law Enforcement California Culture Bicycling Government ]

Charlene and Dominique in the Exuberant Calamity. I got a chance to take pictures

[ related topics: Photography ]

Ash falling from the sky, limited visibility, but Petaluma seems to be safe for the moment.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area ]

VG exposed the largest child sexual abuse forum. It was run by the police. The translation is a little rough, but basically there was an existing Tor web site, the police tracked a Bitcoin wallet and discovered the owners and took it over, moving it to Australia where they'd have broad latitude.

The VG journalists' efforts similarly cracked the location of the server, uncovered the law enforcement people running it, and ... there's some seriously dark grey areas here.

("VG" is Verdens Gang, a Norwegian tabloid)

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Sports Community ]

Probably can't see the flames in the picture, but smoke on the east side of Sonoma Valley

[ related topics: Photography ]

Believing a drug costs more can amplify the patients placebo/nocebo experience of negative side-effects: Interactions between brain and spinal cord mediate value effects in nocebo hyperalgesia

Value information about a drug, such as the price tag, can strongly affect its therapeutic effect. We discovered that value information influences adverse treatment outcomes in humans even in the absence of an active substance. Labeling an inert treatment as expensive medication led to stronger nocebo hyperalgesia than labeling it as cheap medication. This effect was mediated by neural interactions between cortex, brainstem, and spinal cord. In particular, activity in the prefrontal cortex mediated the effect of value on nocebo hyperalgesia. Value furthermore modulated coupling between prefrontal areas, brainstem, and spinal cord, which might represent a flexible mechanism through which higher-cognitive representations, such as value, can modulate early pain processing.

Science 06 Oct 2017: Vol. 358, Issue 6359, pp. 44 DOI: 10.1126/science.aap8488

Letter to Science by the author.

Via the Ars Technica write-up: Potent Nocebo: The more expensive a harmless cream, the more pain it inflicts.

Specifically, researchers gave patients a sham anti-itch cream for eczema (atopic dermatitis) and told them it increases sensitivity to pain as a side effect—which is a side effect of real medicines, but the phony cream shouldn’t have any side effects. Nevertheless, patients not only reported more pain, but the amount of pain they reported depended on the cream’s price and packaging. The cream caused more pain in patients when they were told it had a hefty price tag and came in a brand-name-looking box, compared with when they thought it was a cheap cream that came in a generic-looking box. ...

[ related topics: Drugs Health moron ]

Today's air quality. More blue sky, but the ground level smoke is worse.

[ related topics: Photography ]

This article is interesting not so much for its direct subject matter (taking down a paper alleging a link between aluminum and autism) as for its critiques, and I think it's worth reading for good ways to look critically at papers and studies: Torturing more mice in the name of antivaccine pseudoscience, 2017 aluminum edition

[ related topics: Gambling ]

Report on Facebook of a new local fire, I think "I should be able to see that from the workshop roof". Hah. Can't see through the smoke.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Pyrotechnics ]

Petaluma Police Department: 51 Year Old Male from Eureka arrested in Downtown Petaluma with rifle.

A short time later, Morgan was seen by a witness on Western Ave. near American Alley holding an AR-15 assault type rifle. The citizen grabbed Morgan and was able to get the rifle away from Morgan who then ran northbound down American Alley. The citizen who was able to get the rifle from Morgan lost sight of him as he ran down American Alley.

Bad guy with gun stopped by good guy with superior grappling skills. Go unnamed citizen!

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Guns ]

Oakland Police Chief Made False Statements About ICE Raid — Anne Kirkpatrick said Oakland police had assisted in a federal human trafficking investigation, but the only charges filed so far are civil immigration violations.

Immigration advocates are worried that the West Oakland raid could be an example of a new and troubling trend: ICE has recently begun to classify the act of providing shelter and other assistance to unaccompanied minors who recently immigrated to the United States as "human trafficking," and is charging adults, often close family members, with the crime.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Bay Area Sociology Journalism and Media Law Enforcement ]

In light of the current disaster, the HAM guys got to me. Putting the details here so I can find 'em again rather than on the Facebook thread that will inevitably not be findable.

Just ordered a pair of BaoFeng UV-5R Dual Band Two Way Radios with Authentic Genuine Nagoya NA-771 15.6-Inch Whip VHF/UHF (144/430Mhz) Antenna SMA-Female for BTECH and BaoFeng Radios.

Joe said:

146.910 tone 88.5 - Petaluma repeater is coms for all the shelters. Marin English Hill is doing fire watch, or was. 147.315 tone 88.5 + There are also other frequencies that have been busy and good to listen to.

Rich said:

But you don't have to program it to punch in 146.910 and listen :-)

[ related topics: Books Movies Bay Area Software Engineering Pyrotechnics ]

Dear Harbor Freight: Maybe check to see that a store hasn't burned to the ground before emailing about specials at it?

Uber, Lyft reduce transit use, increase vehicle miles, report says

“Although we found that ride-hailing can be complementary to transit and reduce vehicle ownership for a small portion of individuals, we found that (overall) these services currently facilitate a shift away from more sustainable modes towards low occupancy vehicles in major cities,” said Regina Clewlow, lead author of the report, in a statement.

The PDF of the report (Currently on the bus, so can't finish the download...)

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

Petaluma PD says no immediate evacuation orders, but be ready to go, especially east of Sonoma Mountain Pkwy https://local.nixle.com/alert/6202429/

Back in Petaluma. I can see across the valley to Sonoma Mountain. That's hopeful for here, at least.

Wednesday evening it seemed like there was less smoke. Thursday at 12:30AM woke up to lots of smoke. Can't be good.

Visibility in Petaluma is a bit better today. Still smells awful.

Visibility in Petaluma is a bit better today. Still smells awful. W/pic

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Flu shots may not protect the elderly or the very young

One oft-cited claim, based on several large meta-analyses published more than a decade ago, is that seasonal flu shots cut the risk of winter death among older people by half. But the research behind that claim has been largely debunked. A 2005 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine noted that influenza only causes about 5 percent of all excess winter deaths among the elderly—which works out to one death from flu per 1,000 older people each season—so it’s impossible for the shot to prevent half of all their winter deaths. The following year, a study reported that as vaccine coverage increased among the elderly in Italy in the late 1980s, there was no corresponding drop in excess deaths. In another 2006 paper, Lisa Jackson, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle, and her colleagues showed that although vaccinated seniors were 44 percent less likely to die during flu season than unvaccinated seniors were, the vaccinated ones were also 61 percent less likely to die before flu season even started. “Naturally, you would not expect the vaccine to work before the thing it protects against is going around,” says Lone Simonsen, a research professor in global health at George Washington University and a co-author of the 2005 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

[ related topics: Health Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Education Seattle Archival ]

Complaint: Airport bomb suspect wanted 'to fight a war on US soil':

The man authorities say left an explosive device at Asheville Regional Airport on Friday morning that contained ammonium nitrate and fuel oil said he was preparing to "fight a war on U.S. soil," according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

A number of people are pointing out that this seems to be getting remarkably little coverage.

• A thwarted airport bombing receives little national press — and some activists cry foul
• The Airport Bomber From Last Week You Never Heard About

[ related topics: Aviation History Current Events Journalism and Media Heinlein Salon magazine ]

1PM briefing

https://www.facebook.com/sonoma.sheriff/videos/1737760369581862/

A few notes from the 1PM briefing and other places.

• Tubbs: 34270 acres burned, 10% contained. Evacuations in Calistoga, Santa Rosa, Larkville
• Pocket: 8130 acres, 0% contained. Geyserville, etc.
• Adobe: 7255 acres, 1% contained. Evacuations in Oakmont, south of Santa Rosa
• Nuns/Norbaum(sp?): 4698 acres, 3% contained. Northern portions of Sonoma city, greater Sonoma valley.

Within the Santa Rosa city limits alone, 2834 residential units destroyed, 410,360 square feet of commercial (those numbers could get larger), lots of other infrastructure including the newest fire station and 2 sewer lift stations. There are still fires and dangers in the evacuation zones, no access back into them yet.

Though they are asking for names at shelters, they are not asking about not immigration status. IMMIGRATION STATUS DOESN'T MATTER AND ISN'T ASKED AT SHELTERS.

Contingency plans do exist for if the wind pushes over Taylor Mountain towards Rohnert Park and Petaluma (no details on what, but it's obviously part of scenario planning). There are plans for assistance for bill paying and mail distribution, but those are still being implemented.

Reiterating from this morning: identifying ash and bone of deceased by serial numbers on medical devices. Finding and identifying the dead will be a long process.

9AM Sheriff Briefing

From the Sonoma Sheriff's 9AM briefing. 900 missing person reports, 437 safe, 463 outstanding. Most of those found are miscommunications between family members. 14 confirmed deceased (in Sonoma County). Into the recovery phase, majority of recoveries involve specific tips, and going into places they've specifically gone into (in the places they can get to). IDs are hard, some are being made by medical devices.

Q1: Asking about the reports that the Sonoma County officials decided against using emergency alerts/text alerts. Sheriff is unaware of that. Recommends 1 o'clock briefing. Q1.5 follow-up.

Q2: Situation in jail. "Good", nobody staying longer, doing arraignments.

Q3: Recovery phase. Missed the number of dogs & people working on this

Q4: About confusion over lines of where evacuation zones are. "If there's police blocking your street, don't go home".

Q5: Missing persons list is not being published. Families for deceased are being notified first.

Q6: Comment on the enormity of the mutual aid: "Yes as long as you know that my numbers are estimates". 436 National Guard troops, roughly 100 deputy sheriff's, 200+ law enforcement from other agencies on the street right now (takes another 300 behind them to come out tonight). No concerns about mutual aid and amount of resources from the rest of the state. "Ray of sunshine is the cooperation..."

Q7: Comment on erroneous reports from social media. "I think erroneous reports are part of life". Sonoma Sheriff and Sonoma County Facebook, and Nixle.

Q8: Missed the q, seemed to be about looting, 2 new arrests last night, 5 total.

Q9: Don't know number evacuated

Q10: Didn't hear.

Q11: Resident from west side of Bennett Valley, said most people have voluntarily left, there is looting problem. A: "The goal is to patrol everywhere".

Q12: About when areas are re-opened. A is "no predictions"

Q13: Where are cadaver dogs searching? Don't know yet.

Q14: About escorts into areas. Not going to answer questions any more.

Q15: No new evacs last night. No new info about new evacs.

Q16: Are deaths and missing reports from Tubbs fire? Inside or outside structures? A: Don't know.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Bay Area Sociology Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Pyrotechnics Dogs ]

If you want to wrap your head around the scale of the devastation in Santa Rosa, here's some DigitalGlobe IR imagery showing the destruction, overlaid over the old imagery. Note the Fountaingrove area at the bottom of where this map opens to. Go left across 101 where it bends and look for the intersection of Coffey Ln and (zooming in a hair so the label becomes visible) Hopper Ave. Back up to the neighborhoods burned around Mark West Springs Rd. Based on this the fires didn't get as far as we'd feared, but holy crap. (And, yes, I suppose that Harbor Freight at Piner & Airway didn't burn after all).

It has been suggested that it's interesting that it seems like the primary fuel source in much of this was houses rather than foliage. Not so much in the Coffey Park area, but it sure looks like a lot of foliage left in the Fountaingrove area.

https://api.mapbox.com/styles/...SOE3HYbw#13.34/38.4721/-122.7258

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Maps and Mapping Real Estate ]

Wow, the top ad link when searching for how to track an Amazon package has some nasty fine-print

[ related topics: Books Photography ]

incident briefing camera is sideways. My monitor mounts rotate...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Car and Driver looks at 4 current cars with "autonomous" features, the Tesla model S, the Honda Civic, the Audi Q7 and the Cadillac CT6. And suddenly I don't lust for the Tesla over our BMW i3. Much.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

People who complain about open source software documentation have never delved into HAM radio.

[ related topics: Free Software Software Engineering ]

Housing shortages and supply and demand are something that I've been thinking about and discussing with various folks before the recent Sonoma Fires destroyed thousands of homes in an area with < 1% vacancy. Now I'm seeing a whole lot of complaints about rents going up and price gouging, and...

On the one hand I see that we have a lot of displaced people who need housing. On the other hand, we have a local political scene that has created suburban sprawl that we can't afford to maintain, and a reluctance to allow the density that'd both give us affordable housing and maintainable infrastructure.

I have to say that if I were a landlord thinking rationally about incomes, and had vacancies right now, I'd undertake some maintenance and upgrades. Keep those buildings off the market for a month or three until the complaining about price gouging wore off and the higher rents were the new normal. Yeah, it's heartless, but it's rational behavior.

So if we want to fix the housing crisis in Sonoma County, we need a two-pronged approach: First, acknowledge that, yes, we have a set of (artificially) limited resources, and that prices on those resources are going to go up until we do something about the root causes.

Second, let's address the root causes: let's start talking about high density multi-story buildings that are walkable distances from urban cores. Let's build attractive housing that doesn't require the expense of an automobile. Let's get some good condos and apartments fast-tracked and up so that we have the housing stock to support the demand.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Invention and Design moron Sociology Automobiles Architecture Economics Real Estate ]

How porn director Erika Lust gives her daughters "the talk".

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Marcos Alberti: The O Project:

Alberti captured the facial expressions of more than 20 women before, during, and after their sexual journey, while using personal massagers. The four photos unveil the slow or, in some cases, rapid progression of each woman’s facial changes as she reaches and recovers from orgasm. The headshots are fun and sexy, but tasteful, keeping everything below the waist hidden from view – ­­­­­­­­­­even from the photographer.

Via The Sun: Photographer captures women’s ‘orgasm faces’ before, during and after they climax in intimate photo series

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Java ]

Snerk: CGI Animated Short HD: "The D in David" - by Michelle Yi & Yaron Farkash

[ related topics: Animation Movies ]

https://github.com/teledildonics/private_kink_intersection

A very simple example of a Private Set Intersection (PSI) protocol that is usable to compare your interests privately. Built on NaCl, using SHA256 hashing and curve 25519 to implement the Diffie-Hellman based PSI protocol on elliptic curves.

Marx was wrong: The means of production aren't nearly as valuable as those of distribution and marketing.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Marketing ]

Smoke has subsided enough that I finally got a chance to run this morning. I wasn't coordinated well with the other runners, so I was out alone for the first half, and my headlamp wasn't strong enough to tell me definitively that the dark creature scampering down the trail in front of me with tail held very high wasn't a skunk, so I spent a lot of time walking...

Cal Fire structure status information map for the Sonoma County Tubbs and Nuns fire.

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics Maps and Mapping ]

Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: The real story behind the California wildfires. Looking at the wind storm that caused the fires to grow so quickly.

Geography and luck spared Petaluma from the fires

[ related topics: Weblogs California Culture Global Warming ]

Skeptical OB: Natural parenting harms mothers … as it’s meant to do:

So I'm going to this little shindig, you might wanna too: North Bay Python

[ related topics: Health Food Gardening ]

Herbal remedies embraced by naturopaths, alt med widely linked to liver cancers:

According to a study published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine, traditional components of herbal remedies used throughout Asia are widely implicated in liver cancers there. In Taiwan, for instance, 78 percent of 98 liver tumors sampled displayed a pattern of mutations consistent with exposure to herbs containing aristolochic acids (AAs). These are carcinogenic components found in a variety of centuries-old herbal remedies said to treat everything from snakebites to gout, asthma, and pain.

Because of their toxicity, some (but not all) of the herbs and plants known to contain AAs have been banned in Taiwan and other places. These flora tend to come from the genera Aristolochia (e.g., birthwort, pipevine) and Asarum (wild gingers). The Food and Drug Administration has also issued several warnings and advisories over AA-containing remedies.

Science Translational Medicine, 2017. DOI: 10.1126/scitrans lmed.aan6446

[ related topics: Health Food Gardening ]

Nice: Sonoma County Sheriff takes ICE to school: http://www.nixle.us/alert/6216269/

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Commentary: Why George W. Bush stood there and took the wrath of a soldier's mom. Listen up, Donald Trump.

And lest we forget how bad W was when viewed in isolation: Do I Applaud This Speech from George W. Bush?

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Shadow forwarded along some notes about New York City mayor De Blasio's war on electric bicycles:

• New York Post: De Blasio takes e-bike fight to business owners
• A Twitter thread about ebikes

Apparently the issue that's bringing this to the fore right now is delivery services.

Putting all of those deliverers in automobiles, or even in full-fledged scooters, seems like a bad idea...

[ related topics: Invention and Design History Automobiles New York Bicycling ]

Craigslist’s erotic services site appears to have reduced female homicide rates by 17 percent:

The study, which has been submitted to a peer-reviewed economics journal, offers the first solid evidence of what sex workers have been saying for years: that having the ability to advertise online for their services allows them to work in safer indoor environments and screen out violent clients. The new study reinforces previous research showing a decline in sexual violence in regions where prostitution has been legalized or decriminalized. I wrote about such research in my book, Getting Screwed; Sex Workers and the Law and in an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times.

Edited to add: Think Progress: Female homicide rate dropped after Craigslist launched its erotic services platform — Sex workers have long argued that online erotic services platforms make their jobs safer. A new study proves it.

[ related topics: Books Music Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Fashion Economics ]

Kat Stark: The lonely pervert, some musings on finding community.

[ related topics: Community ]

Learning from the fight against lead.

According to some estimates, the use of leaded gasoline stole five or more IQ points from those of us who grew up in big U.S. cities during the 1960s and early 1970s, when contamination peaked. Studies show that children with higher levels of lead in their baby teeth do worse on tests of reading ability, grammatical reasoning, vocabulary, reaction times and hand-eye coordination. And the doses back then were massive -- typical kids had blood levels five times what’s known to cause brain damage. In case there was any doubt, newer studies confirm that lead’s damaging effects on children are permanent.

Eventually, science moved policymakers to take action. Now people around the world face the same challenge with mercury -- another metal that’s toxic to children’s brains. Do we stall and debate while risking harm, or act with a greater level of precaution? The lessons of the past offer some guidance.

[ related topics: Children and growing up History Astronomy Law Education ]

Have trouble cooking a grilled cheese sandwich w/o setting off the smoke detectors, but for all the eye watering last week, not a peep.

[ related topics: Food ]

Parking space-sized micro-house is made for city life. Not completely impractical, but mostly a good example of one of the trade-offs when planning code requires 3 off-street parking places for a single family residents.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Sociology Real Estate ]

I’m a Sex Worker Asking the 9th Circuit Court to Decriminalize Prostitution

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture California Culture ]

I'm giggling: Shadow sent along Home » The Deathworlders » Chapter 0: "The Kevin Jenkins Experience" » 0.1: Humanity, Fuck Yeah!. SciFi that I think I'm gonna have to read the whole novel's worth of.

[ related topics: Books ]

Square Dance Caller Lee Kopman on Phil Donahue, with lots of square dancing from 1980.

Interesting to listen to his teach of new dancers around 29 minutes in...

And at the end, audience lady:

"I'm not gonna ask a question, I'm gonna tell some of the women, because there's more women here than men: you're gonna have a hard time gettin' your men out the first time, but once you do you'll never keep 'em at home."

And I hope that young man who asked the last question got his chance to become a caller.

[ related topics: Movies ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

What the world needed was a Bike Trail Ipsum generator. A lorem ipsum for mountain biking content:

http://cogdogblog.com/2017/10/bike-trail-lorem-ipsum/

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Mourning lights from Helen Putnam Park

[ related topics: Photography ]

A view from further up the trail

[ related topics: Photography ]

Productivity: Age Is Just a Number:

New study pushes back on decades of studies suggesting that scientific productivity peaks early and declines thereafter

The paper is behind a paywall: Samuel F. Way, Allison C. Morgan, Aaron Clauset, and Daniel B. Larremore PNAS Plus: The misleading narrative of the canonical faculty productivity trajectory PNAS 2017 ; published ahead of print October 17, 2017

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

What if we created huge social institutions around creating largely meaningless endurance tests to filter human participation in society?

(h/t @thereaIbanksy)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

Chuck Egglinton: Cheap digital signage using Google slides. Some scripts to run Google Slides presentations on a Raspberry Pi. Chuck charges a few bucks for a site license, will happily provide support for a few bucks more, but if you need to manage digital signs this looks like a happy bargain, with support options.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Kaspersky Lab: Preliminary results of the internal investigation into the alleged incident reported by U.S. media, in which Kaspersky is claiming that the leak of the NSA documents came because the user turned off the virus checker, downloaded and installed a pirated copy of Microsoft Office, turned back on the virus checker, at which point the virus checker identified a .zip file (containing the NSA documents) as infected, and uploaded it to Kaspersky Labs for further inspection.

Same press release hosted at The Intercept.

The Intercept: NSA worker's software piracy may have exposed him to Russian spies. Apparently it exposed him to Israeli spies...

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft virus Software Engineering moron Current Events Journalism and Media ]

A million cron jobs logging into a million "this account will be disabled after 60 days of inactivity", forever...

[ related topics: Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Amazing how many people that "free market" the hell out of healthcare will die on the hill of free parking.

[ related topics: Economics ]

"We do not have WiFi. Talk to each other. Pretend it's 1955." Except that there are some social wrongs in which I will not participate...

[ related topics: Photography ]

"Clean air vehicle" means different things to different people....

[ related topics: Photography ]

Uh oh: Homeless guy foils somebody's USB stick dead drop: Terror threat as Heathrow Airport security files found dumped in the street

Man finds USB stick with Heathrow security plans, Queen’s travel details:

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events ]

SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA No. 2017-KK-0954 STATE OF LOUISIANA VERSUS WARREN DEMESME ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH CIRCUIT, PARISH OF ORLEANS CRICHTON, J., additionally concurs and assigns reasons (PDF).

A little bit of nuance around the He Said He Wanted a 'Lawyer[,] Dog'; The Court Ruled That Was Too Vague news stories.

It's not the "lawyer, dog" it's that the conditional in:

“if y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what’s up.”

allowed too much wiggle room for the cops.

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