Flutterby™! From 2017-11-04 to 2017-11-30

Gratuitous pussy picture.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Gratuitous pussy picture

[ related topics: Photography ]

NPR: 'Invisible No More' Examines Police Violence Against Minority Women:

The Buffalo News did an investigation that showed a police officer is caught in an act of sexual misconduct every five days. It's already an invisible issue and certainly more invisible when sexual assault and sexual harassment is perpetrated by people who are the ones society has decided are the ones who should protect us.

An interview with Andrea J. Ritchie, author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color

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

So this weekend, a gunman with a history of domestic violence killed 26 people at The First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs Texas.

There's a whole lot of debate on gun control and whatnot, I just saw an observation that I thought was pertinent that one of the reasons we don't crack down on firearms ownership by those with a history of domestic violence is that "Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, (...) in contrast to 10% of families in the general population. ..."

[ related topics: Religion Law Enforcement Guns Woodworking ]

Not sure if the white in the valleys of western Sonoma is frost or fog.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Race ]

MantisTek GK2's Keylogger Is A Warning Against Cheap Gadgets.

Updated, 11/7/2017, 8:40am PT: An earlier version of the article stated that the keyboard's software was sending key presses. However, in a closer look, it seems that the Cloud Driver software doesn't send the key presses to the Alibaba server but only how many times each key has been pressed.

But still... cheap Chinese knock-off mechanical keyboard comes with configuration software that installs a driver that sends keypress data back to cloud servers.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Current Events ]

And another local vendor that I'd have happily paid double to for their expertise just told me "we don't carry those parts, get them online". Killing retail, one transaction at a time.

LA Times: Op-Ed Police chiefs across the country support sanctuary cities because they keep crime down.

Or RT LOLGOP LOLGOP:

From now on, the answer on sanctuary cities is:

Police chiefs support sanctuary cities. Why do you hate the police?

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Fashion ]

The weather has definitely turned: automobile hoods have replaced patches of sun.

[ related topics: Photography Automobiles Java ]

Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour:

Our study demonstrates that video games offer a unique opportunity to examine variation in sexist behaviours and the situations that result in changes in sexist attitudes. By demonstrating that female-directed hostility primarily originates from low- status, poorer-performing males, our results suggest that a way to counter it may be through teaching young males that losing to the opposite sex is not socially debilitating. ...

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138399

Using Halo 3 to explore gender dynamics in team video game play.

[ related topics: Erotic Games Sexual Culture Theater & Plays Video ]

Mathematica Stackexchange: How do I draw a pair of buttocks. For all your parametric posterior needs.

Bunnie Huang: A Clash of Cultures:

There’s an Internet controversy going on between Dale Dougherty, the CEO of Maker Media and Naomi Wu (@realsexycyborg), a Chinese Maker and Internet personality. Briefly, Dale Doughtery tweeted a single line questioning Naomi Wu’s authenticity, which is destroying Naomi’s reputation and livelihood in China.

Bunnie is always thoughtful, in this case he's talking about culture, women in engineering, and, yeah, it's worth a read.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Weblogs Sociology Law Journalism and Media California Culture Net Culture ]

Y'all know this, but I tossed this link up on Facebook and felt like I should copy it here:

I've been doing this social media thing for long enough that grad students call me up to interview me about my role in the history (and to try to get introductions to the people who were famous in it...). My "blog" (formed before Peter Merholz and/or Brad Graham coined the term) is coming up on 20 years of pretty continuous updating. We were talking about echo chambers and the dynamics of curation back in the '90s, and I was late to Metafilter because I hated the idea of centralized discussion. I wanted those conversations to happen on my web site and your web site. Anyway, as we seem to have ceded our human curation of the world over to the opaque and likely malicious algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and the like, this struck me as some worthwhile thoughts on building and nurturing (online) community...

Josh Millard - Keeping Web Communities Healthy in a Dark Timeline - DonutJS October 2017 YOUTUBE.COM

[ related topics: Weblogs Health Movies Journalism and Media Community Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

Like where lighting technology is going... LED panels are da bomb.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Springer Select: Legalizing child pornography is linked to lower rates of child sex abuse

Results from the Czech Republic showed, as seen everywhere else studied (Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sweden, USA), that rape and other sex crimes have not increased following the legalization and wide availability of pornography. And most significantly, the incidence of child sex abuse has fallen considerably since 1989, when child pornography became readily accessible – a phenomenon also seen in Denmark and Japan. Their findings are published online today in Springer’s journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Interesting in light of the fact that simulated child pornography is banned.

[ related topics: Libertarian Erotic Sexual Culture Journalism and Media Hong Kong Archival ]

Rebecca Traister in The Cut: Your Reckoning. And Mine.

As stories about abuse, assault, and complicity come flooding out, how do we think about the culprits in our lives? Including, sometimes, ourselves.

A long worth reading meditation on the recent flood of abuse revelations.

Whoah: The Atlantic: The Secret Correspondence Between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks didn’t respond to that message, but on October 12, 2016, the account again messaged Trump Jr. “Hey Donald, great to see you and your dad talking about our publications,” WikiLeaks wrote. (At a rally on October 10, Donald Trump had proclaimed, “I love WikiLeaks!”)

“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks went on, pointing Trump Jr. to the link wlsearch.tk, which it said would help Trump’s followers dig through the trove of stolen documents and find stories. “There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.”

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Weblogs Current Events ]

Ugh. I hate abandoned Ubuntu packages. I'd love to use the .deb version of pocketsphinx, but even in 17.10 it's outdated far enough to be unusable for anything that reads its output in real-time.

And some nights the square dancers make the caller work for every single successful sequence. Being a top is hard.

[ related topics: Bioinformatics Work, productivity and environment ]

Detroit police officers fight each other in undercover op gone wrong:

FOX 2 is told the rest of the special ops team from the 12th Precinct showed up, and officers began raiding a house in the 19300 block of Andover. But instead of fighting crime, officers from both precincts began fighting with each other.

Detroit police chief embarrassed after cops from neighboring precincts trade punches:

Video from the scene captured arguing and shoving among some of the two dozen officers there, Craig said. The video has not been released but is being reviewed as part of the investigation that will be turned over to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office to determine whether charges will be filed.

“At one point during this situation, one officer grabbed another,” Craig said, adding one was put in a headlock and a punch flew. Then an officer punched back.

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement Fashion Video Real Estate ]

Another case of officers forgetting that their bodycams record from 30 seconds before they punch the "start recording" button: Only On 2: LAPD Bodycam Video Appears To Contradict Officer Testimony, Investigation Discovers:

In video from another angle, LAPD Officer Gaxiola picks up Shields’ wallet from the street and shows it to Lee, who points to the suspect as if to say it’s his.

He then puts it back down, steps to the street, bends over and picks up a small bag with white powder. It eventually tested positive for drugs.

Gaxiola goes back onto the sidewalk, picks up the wallet, motions to Lee and appears to put the bag into the wallet.

LA Cops Allegedly Film Themselves Planting Cocaine on Suspect With Their Own Body Cams.

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama Health Law Law Enforcement Television Race Video Gardening ]

Houston Chronicle: Speed limits lowered in residential areas:

Residents with children playing in or near the street had asked law enforcement agencies to serve them by positing 20 mph speed limit signs in neighborhoods to protect their children. Many felt that, with or without children, the 30 mph speed limit set by the state was just too high for neighborhoods. Many of the 20 mph signs, which could not legally be enforced, were set in place.

Lower speed limits got enforced anyway, causing the DA to complain to police. Luckily, there appears to be legislative relief, lowering residential speed limits.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Law Enforcement ]

Amazon: ♡♡♡♡Shagsall SEX MACHINE ADAPTER for SAWZALL / RECIPROCATING SAW WORKS WITH VAC U LOCK DILDOS ♡♡♡♡

(Hearts are in the original title)

[ related topics: Books Erotic Sexual Culture Woodworking ]

A long time ago (late 1980s, early '90s), in a place far, far away (Chattanooga, TN), there was an online community. Some members of that community left their computers hooked up to phone lines so that others could dial in and leave messages (a "Bulletin Board System", or "BBS"), and those computers talked to each to send messages between users who frequented one or the other.

Many, perhaps most, users of those systems used pseudonyms. "The Old Man" was central to that larger community, he was also very active in connecting those computers to the outside world: we pooled together and paid phone bills to the computers which dialed out to other areas to exchange messages with the larger world, and I remember John coordinating the reimbursement of monthly thousands of dollars long distance bills to expand this community to the broader world.

John was incredibly welcoming and helpful to new people coming into the community. He was cranky and curmudgeonly and an old softy, who bore the trauma of his Vietnam war experiences without complaint, though sometimes the hurt leaked through. He gave selflessly to coordinate this vibrant space, which was then wiped out into irrelevance when the Internet came through.

I lost contact with him when I left Chattanooga, and actually thought he'd died some years ago. I remember him fondly.

Obituary for John I. Finney III

[ related topics: Star Wars Technology and Culture Invention and Design History Space & Astronomy Chattanooga Net Culture Community ]

Waiting for the bus in SF

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Public Transportation ]

Bunches of these dudes waving their claws on the trail beside the sewer treatment ponds

[ related topics: Photography ]

Navy admits to being involved in obscene skydrawings spotted in Okanogan Co. In which a pilot uses a contrail to draw a penis.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events ]

HAMs: Where do I get a cable to do USB (sound card+PTT) to BaoFeng, so that I can use Direwolf for APRS? The whole packet radio BBS scene makes a whole lot more sense to me than most of the other HAM usage, and I'd happily pay $35 for a pre-soldered cable.

Dear ebook/music/whatever providers: Please give me a "last used" time for every device. I have had 3 LG V10 phones brick on me, and need to know which ones I can disable in Kindle, etc.

[ related topics: Music ]

"If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them...."

Well, I found them...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades:

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

See also: Slate: Pseudoscience in the Witness Box — The FBI faked an entire field of forensic science. Rounding up hair analysis, bite marks, and arson analysis.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Just ordered this $20 wireless remote 0-10v LED dimmer controller because I think those LED panels are gonna go everywhere, and I don't want to pay $80 for the panel and $90 for the controller...

[ related topics: Wireless ]

Feds: Philly officer sold drugs stolen by corrupt Baltimore police squad:

Prosecutors say that Eric Troy Snell, 33, earned thousands of dollars serving as a conduit between corrupt members of a Baltimore police task force who stole the drugs and his brother, who sold them in Philadelphia.

Investigators also have accused Snell of threatening the children of a Baltimore officer who pleaded guilty in the case.

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up Health Law Current Events Law Enforcement ]

If you're gonna sell us premium tickets to a multimedia show, seems like a clear view of the screen should be included...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

CNN: 15 men exonerated in one day -- and 7 Chicago cops taken off the street

Watts and then-Officer Kallatt Mohammed pleaded guilty in federal court in 2013 and 2012, respectively, in connection with stealing money from a drug suspect who turned out to be an FBI informant. Watts was sentenced to 22 months in prison; Mohammed got 18 months.

[ related topics: Health Law Enforcement Currency ]

Good morning

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

If we'd had the Slack conversation in email, I'd have an easily searchable archive with all the follow-ups in one place. But nooo, it's across 17 channels and private messages, with bad searching tools.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

It's great that Firefox 57 seems to be competitive on speed and memory use again. It's a shame that they had to destroy their bookmarks UX in order to do it. Grrr.

Before I start this ramble, I want to make it clear that my own experiences with John Lasseter have been overwhelmingly positive. Yeah, I've been around him when he was staggering drunk (not at an official Pixar event, at a festival up in Sonoma), but he has never been anything but gracious and generous with me.

I'm also not writing this to pick on Pixar. I think very highly of most everyone I worked with there. This is is a little rant about human dynamics and social interaction and being a young person trying to make it in the world.

A few days ago, on a forum of past and present Pixar employees, someone posted about being contacted by reporters. The ensuing thread was split between "I wonder what they were looking for?" and "If you don't know, I'm shocked..." and some subtle circling of the wagons.

Hollywood Reporter: John Lasseter Taking Leave of Absence From Pixar Amid "Missteps"

Hollywood Reporter: John Lasseter's Pattern of Alleged Misconduct Detailed by Disney/Pixar Insiders

There were some mentions in my Twitter feed. RT Mo Ryan‏Verified account @moryan:

"missteps" "mentoring" "irresponsible" "I've come to understand" "it has been brought to my attention" "I have been made aware" "I am an unfrozen cave man, I do not know your hu-man ways" blah blah blah blaaghghghhghgh

I saw this quote, didn't immediately tie it to Lasseter, and responded:

This has been the behavior strongly associated with career success, so the asshattery we're seeing exposed seems pretty core to "human ways", at least as they've been practiced.

So that's where I'd like to jump off.

Columbina‏ @EccentricFlower wrote:

When I read Lasseter's statement I did not immediately parse it as "he's talking about sexual harassment" it read to me more as "I have been promoting a culture here that ain't good for women." Not saying that's great either, y'understand

And needless to say, even if that interpretation is true it raises the question for Lasseter of "How big did your blinders have to be to not notice/admit that Pixar had become a toxic swamp well before now?"

When I left Pixar, there were some huge changes being set in place because the cost for workman's comp claims for RSI was rivaling coal mines. Nobody at Pixar set out to create an environment in which people worked themselves into early disability. I think I can can safely say that that was the furthest thing from Ed Catmull's vision of the company you could possibly create.

But if you have an amazing in-group, an amazing set of idols, and a bunch of mortals who want nothing more than to be like those gods, you get people willing, even wanting, to work themselves into total exhaustion to achieve this. And the established people don't want this, they don't see themselves this way, they're just people doing what they're awesome at. So a 20-something with imposter syndrome and probably some good shots of Dunning-Kruger dropped into this environment has the feeling of the one big break, and as an additional constraint: They can't show the pain to their coworkers.

Unless you've got a particularly emotionally sensitive leadership, nobody's going to see what's happening at the bottom. It's kind of like the way teenagers manage to hide the horrors of high school from the adults involved. Administrators and teenagers are clueless about the life and death struggles of high school, except when it actually ends in a death and then everyone's shocked, but even in my relatively well-off suburban high school there was a whole undercurrent of weapons and what-not that most adults were completely unaware of.

And Pixar at the time I was there was largely led by some of the most amazing technical minds, probably not the people I'd point to as emotionally sensitive.

Now add to that the circling of the wagons effect that I mentioned earlier: If we're in the "in" group, we're insulated from the negative, because the afflicted want so much to be a part of the "in" group that they will actively hide any struggles in order to stay a part of the cool crowd.

If we're not part of the "in" group, we desperately want to feel like we are, and to the outside world we've already made it. The ego boost of wearing a Pixar badge at SIGGRAPH (at least back in the late ྖs) is substantial. If there are some pains, well, that's part of being part of success, and we're not sleeping under our desks all of the time. Someone from the outside wants to tear down our gods? Not on my watch.

So I can't speak to the particular allegations here. I'm not saying Pixar had any more toxic environment than any other company that people really aspire to work at, and I think that's really the problem: The current rash of exposing sexual harassment is an exposition of the society we live in and the ways we relate to each other. The gender imbalance is real, and makes the transgressions worse, but the dynamics which keep it entrenched are a part of the myth of success of this culture.

And fixing that problem makes fixing sexual harassment look easy.

A friend on a private channel noted:

.. at least .. .and this is a low bar.. he's getting out in front of it a little bit..

I responded that I suspect (hope) that the Pixar culture wouldn't let him push through once it's public outside that space (once the wagon circle has been broken), but I think people are learning about disaster response. I also suspect that Ed Catmull could have been clueless (because of the social pressures I mentioned above), and got woke.

[ related topics: Pixar Children and growing up Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Animation Movies Nature and environment History Theater & Plays Sociology Writing Current Events Work, productivity and environment Graphics California Culture Community Guns Conferences Woodworking hubris ]

Facebook (Still) Letting Housing Advertisers Exclude Users by Race:

Last week, ProPublica bought dozens of rental housing ads on Facebook, but asked that they not be shown to certain categories of users, such as African Americans, mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, expats from Argentina and Spanish speakers.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology Consumerism and advertising Race Handicaps & Disabilities Real Estate ]

The strangeness of kinders.

Net Neutrality Violations: A Brief History

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Sermon: "with the eyes of the heart"? Nuh uh, the eyes are up here, buddy.

[ related topics: Religion Photography ]

RT Robert Berry‏ @retrocrush

A Bitcoin bought in 2015 is now worth 4,300 Beanie Babies!

Oh, hey, there's an app that does exactly what I want! Except it's in NodeJS, which means I'm gonna spend the next two weeks dealing with package management issues. Kill me now.

git-blame-someone-else, a handy little script to put someone else's name in the commit logs...

Wonder how much electric cars are going to increase vehicle miles traveled as people feel less guilty about pollution (ignoring that direct CO2 emissions are only a small part of automobile pollution, and the other externalities)

[ related topics: Automobiles Global Warming ]

Short vacation in Carson City. Spectacular bleak terrain, nice hot springs hot tubs, but holy crap this is culture shock...

[ related topics: Photography Sociology California Culture ]

Good morning!

[ related topics: Photography ]

A woman approached The Washington Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation.

So, yeah: Woman is paid to lie about rape in order to help elect a child molester.

Earplugs unavoidable for musicians in the orchestra and at home:

The eardrums of trumpet players and flute players are the most burdened. During loud passages they are subjected to average decibel levels of 95 to 100 dB(A), just from their own instruments. The violin and viola produce decibel levels in excess of 90 dB(A) for their players. These levels are similar to those of a rock concert. They also well exceed the 85 dB(A) limit that European regulations stipulate for the compulsory wearing of ear protection on the work floor.

Hmmm... Wonder if high school band will be the next "too dangerous to play" thing after society wakes up to the dangers of football.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Music Current Events Work, productivity and environment Sports Education Databases ]

For Larry: This Slot Car Track Is A Beautiful Homage To Motorsport

Via Dangerous Meta

[ related topics: Weblogs Automobiles ]

So if you weren't aware: MacOS High Sierra has an interesting bug where if you mash "enter" a couple of times, at a login screen, it'll log you in as root. The fix is to give your machine a root password. Note that though you can't SSH into the machine as root, there are various other possible remote access mechanisms which make it vulnerable, so if you're running High Sierra give your machine a root password ASAP.

Initially I thought "Oh, someone replaced the ':x:' or ':*:' in /etc/passwd with '::'", but it turns out it's more complex than that....

Objective-See: Why <blank> Gets You Root › tracking down the cause a serious authentication flaw

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs California Culture Sports Macintosh Cryptography ]

You've probably seen the news that Garrison Keillor fired by MPR: 'I put my hand on a woman's bare back,' he says:

In an email to the Star Tribune Wednesday, Keillor said, “I put my hand on a woman’s bare back. I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.”

Larry linked to this version.

This news comes less than a day after the Washington Post published Garrison Keillor's editorial: Al Franken should resign? That’s absurd.

I have mentioned a number of times that, ages ago, a woman described a date gone bad to me with "I felt very uncomfortable with him, so I gave him a blowjob to get rid of him." I can imagine that if you're as central to the Americana music scene as Garrison Keillor, that when the power imbalance is that extreme, "forgiven" and "don't think about it" may in fact be the equivalent of giving him a blowjob to get rid of him.

But I also think that this is more evidence of Kitty Stryker's assertion that, to some extent, we need to destigmatize sexual assault and coercion so that we can acknowledge that there are broad swaths and degrees. We're not going to have open and honest conversations about it as long as "yes, I stepped over a line" is automatically career- ending. I submit that we have all, male and female, danced delicately over the consent line at one point or another, to differing degrees. We need more conversation about what that means.

Statement from Minnesota Public Radio regarding Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Space & Astronomy Law Current Events Clothing Aviation - Helicopters ]

Comcast deleted net neutrality pledge the same day FCC announced repeal: Three-year-old "no paid prioritization" pledge was suddenly removed.

Quote of the day: "The sad fact is that it looks more and more as if our national sport is not playing at all-but watching. We have become more and more not a nation of athletes but a nation of spectators." -- JFK

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=8473

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama ]

No running buddies this morning, so I get to sightsee.

[ related topics: Photography Sports ]

Sunrise over the dredging spoils ponds

[ related topics: Photography ]

When the singularity comes I'll just be here, adminning the servers and fixing your bugs. Only they really will be your bugs.

Peer review in the age of viral video, or taking University of Michigan's Professor Chinedum Okwudire to task for fueling the hype machine with a misleading video about high speed 3d printing.

[ related topics: Graphics Education Video ]

Elevating to the front page from Brennen's comment in the John Lasseter thread: Alec Nevala-Lee: The secret villain. On trends in Pixar and Disney animated films, and possible easter eggs.

[ related topics: Pixar Content Management Animation Graphics ]