Flutterby™! From 2018-12-01 to 2018-12-30

The Onion has read LinkedIn spam: Recruiter Saw Your Background In Computer Science And Thought Maybe You’d Be Interested In Working Part-Time At A Kohl’s In Sioux City

[ related topics: Spam Food Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Woodworking ]

Saved off 'cause a friend of mine is playing with writing C64 and NES games: Portal for the Commodore 64.

[ related topics: Games Writing ]

Trans woman Roxsana Hern�ndez Rodriguez, from Honduras, was beaten in ICE custody before death, pathologist finds.

Even before her detention in New Mexico, Hernández Rodriguez had walked an extremely difficult path on her way to the United States. In an interview with Buzzfeed News a month before her death, Hernández Rodriguez said she decided to flee Honduras after she was gang-raped by four members of the MS-13 gang, resulting in her being infected with HIV.

FDA warns StemGenex Biologic Laboratories LLC of illegally marketing an unapproved cellular product manufactured in a facility with significant manufacturing violations, putting patients at risk:

"...these stem cell producers are leveraging the field’s hype to push unapproved, unproven, illegal, and potentially unsafe products. This is putting patients’ health at risk. It’s also putting at risk the long-term viability of the industry and of effective products, when other operators are misleading consumers by marketing unproven therapies using claims of safety and benefit,” said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D.

[ related topics: Health Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

Catching up on older messages from Shadow: freaky terrifying cat (video) that was making the social media rounds a few weeks ago...

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Video ]

Meet the Scientist and Autism Dad Who’s Fighting the Anti-Vaccine Movement

<blocoquote>Peter Hotez predicts deadly measles outbreaks in Texas if the growing trend of nonmedical vaccine exemptions continues.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Does Fox & Wolf Urine Repel Rodents? Mousetrap Monday (YouTube video). Because we had a problem with rodents eating wiring insulation on the BMW i3.

[ related topics: Movies Automobiles Video ]

Sigh. @DuckDuckGo links to right wing fake news website as part of their results. (Perpetrator was actually sentenced to two years per https://www.lamanchelibre.fr/a...l-d-une-lyceenne-il-est-acquitte )

[ related topics: Current Events ]

What’s a Bernie Sanders Strategist Doing in the Manafort Files?

Tad Devine’s presence in Mueller’s case against Manafort smells less like collusion than it reeks of the swamp.

[ related topics: Law Current Events ]

Why metadata is important... and why the Saudis should probably up their comms game: CIA Intercepts Show Saudi Crown Prince Sent 11 Messages To Team That Murdered Jamal Khashoggi: report

[ related topics: Games ]

Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th.

Presumably to make themselves more attractive to advertisers.

This is rape culture, played out so we can see it. RT Guy New York @Quickiesnewyork

Tumblr and Apple (and most other US companies to be sure) believe that mass murder, serial killings, rape, eye gouging, strangling, mutilation, child abuse, and a thousand other graphic images, videos, and GIFS are more acceptable to them than a nipple.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Bay Area Sociology Consumerism and advertising California Culture New York ]

Colorado Police Officer Who Forced Handcuffed Woman He Was Taking Home From Hospital Into Sex Gets 90 Days in Jail

90 days.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Law Enforcement ]

Cue the chorus of "see, Democrats should have taken those allegations of election fraud more seriously": Unusual pattern of signatures emerges as North Carolina probes allegations in House race:

As North Carolina officials investigate allegations that absentee ballots were tampered with in a tight congressional race, a review of some of those ballots revealed many were signed by the same small group of people -- some of whom are connected to a longtime operative working for the Republican candidate's campaign.

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

Re the Tumblr pornocalypse: From last year, More Women Are Getting Off to Porn GIFs, Thanks to Tumblr. Of course this doesn't address getting content creators paid, but that Tumblr's user base has been predominantly women is an interesting cultural artifact...

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology ]

NTSB: Preliminary Report Pipeline: Over-pressure of a Columbia Gas of Massachusetts Low-pressure Natural Gas Distribution System

Construction decoupled the sensors from the pressure control, as the segment with the sensors dropped pressure, the control systems kept trying to raise the pressure.

But this does raise some questions I've got about how my neighborhood gas distribution works, because:

Title 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 192.3 defines a low-pressure distribution system as “a distribution system in which the gas pressure in the main is substantially the same as the pressure provided to the customer.”

but when I ran the line for the pool heater, the tables told me I had to run something that was like twice the size (thus 4x the volume) of the feed line pre-regulator for the entire house, so I assume that the gas pressure to my house is actually substantially higher than what I get post-meter... Hmmm.

[ related topics: Machinery Fabrication Real Estate Model Building Furniture ]

RT Cody @cocdcy:

The tumblr ban summed up in two screenshots:

[ related topics: Photography ]

Max has a good rundown of some of the ongoing failures of US foreign policy and endless war: Hoist that rag:

It’s one thing when host-nation partners turn coat and shoot you in the back. That is just the cost of doing business. In 2012 the US instituted the “Guardian Angel” policy, under which soldiers interacting with host-nation forces were required to have their own guards to stop insider attacks. Now our own guys are turning on one another over slush funds and hookers.

If this all seems sickeningly normal that’s because it is normal.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Software Engineering History Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

Tired: black helicopters. Wired: black RVs.

(Film shoot of some sort)

[ related topics: Photography Conspiracy Aviation - Helicopters ]

Rudy Giuliani’s typo became an anti-Trump message. He blamed Twitter, but this Atlanta man pranked him.

As you read through this, remember that Rudy's claimed some sort of expertise in security and the cybers and stuff.

RT ashkan soltani @ashk4n:

BREAKING: @CommonsCMS @DamianCollins just released previously sealed #Six4Three @Facebook documents: https://www.parliament.uk/docu...ments-ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf

Various excerpts which show Facebook perfidy, including working around permissions issues to grab call and SMS log data on Android. Thread is unrolled at https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1070344140708171776.html

[ related topics: Sociology Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment California Culture Furniture ]

The LackRack: https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack because the Ikea LACK side table legs have exactly equipment rack spacing...

[ related topics: Furniture ]

The dingo... er, Google stole my patent! Biz boss tells how Choc Factory staff tried to rip off idea from interview:

Jie Qi, cofounder of edu-tech electronics biz Chibitronics, marked the launch of patent education site PatentPandas.org with her account of how Google tried to patent her research after inviting her to meet with company executives.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Movies Space & Astronomy Education ]

24 Amazon workers sent to hospital after robot accidentally unleashes bear spray

The two dozen workers were treated at five local hospitals, Robbinsville Township communications and public information officer John Nalbone told ABC News. One remains in critical condition and 30 additional workers were treated at the scene.

Hat tip to Tara of https://researchbuzz.me/

[ related topics: Books Robotics Current Events ]

How Facebook Outs Sex Workers

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

The Rise of Microsoft Visual Studio Code.

Although, as Jeff Trull observes:

The buried lede here is that Emacs users, only 2.5% of the total, vastly outperformed in interviews.

[ related topics: Humor Weblogs Microsoft moron ]

Grabbed as a screencap from https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/1070388901922201601 on Facebook, FOSTA/SESTA, being gay, and the new terms of service:

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Invention and Design ]

Progmas 2011 - The 12 Days of Christmas, Progressive Rock style (again) (YouTube video). Maximum progosity.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Amazing Twitter thread by Maggie Mayhem on the road to SESTA/FOSTA and history of sexual suppression and control.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Interesting: Microsoft On The Issues (The Official Microsoft Blog): Facial recognition: It’s time for action

In particular, we don’t believe that the world will be best served by a commercial race to the bottom, with tech companies forced to choose between social responsibility and market success. We believe that the only way to protect against this race to the bottom is to build a floor of responsibility that supports healthy market competition. And a solid floor requires that we ensure that this technology, and the organizations that develop and use it, are governed by the rule of law.

[ related topics: Humor Weblogs Microsoft Health moron Economics ]

This is a freakin' amazing Aha! easter egg in Just Cause 4 (Twitter Video), both for the easter egg, but also for the throwaway technology that created it.

[ related topics: Video ]

♥️ danhon ♥️ @Danhon@mastodon.cloud:

Arranged marriages between family houses to create new cryptographically secure mother’s maiden names for a descendent household

[ related topics: Invention and Design Sociology Real Estate ]

Today in "missing the fucking point": Study Calls for Major Program to Rebuild Interstate Highway System.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study, released on Dec. 6, says that its program to improve the 60-year-old Interstate system would average $45 billion to $70 million per year in combined state and federal spending over 20 years—or $20 billion to $45 billion more than the current $25-billion annual capital spending level. [View report here.]

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

tumblr required ratio of male chest to owl, exploring the limits of Tumblr's new porn filters.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Astronomy ]

Vex Ashley: Porn on Tumblr — a eulogy / love letter. Too many amazing observations to single out a quote from.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

One of the things I've found interesting is the way that the libertarian movement ends up creating some uneasy alliances between groups that, from my perspective, have antithetical goals. Often in pursuit of one freedom, alliances form with groups that have as their goal wiping out another (see, for instance, the number of anti-porn or anti-abortion crusaders amongst the libertarian ranks). Part of my migration away from those viewpoints was realizing that most libertarians seemed completely happy to ally with those who'd fight against the freedoms that most directly impacted my life.

So this is a fascinating read: Ammon Bundy Is Quitting The Militia Movement After Breaking With Trump On Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Erotic Privacy Sexual Culture Civil Liberties Government ]

Violet Blue: The internet war on sex is here, on the new Facebook TOS changes:

According to the policy, public discussion of "sexual violence and exploitation" is okay, but anything encouraging sex for pleasure between adults is now a bannable offense in public posts. They don't say anything about private messages, but we know they comb DM's and have a less than transparent approach about it, so maybe watch what you say there, too.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Invention and Design History Net Culture Community ]

Study: THC Removes Toxic Protein that Causes Alzheimer’s:

Cannabinoids remove plaque-forming Alzheimer's proteins from brain cells

Amyloid proteotoxicity initiates an inflammatory response blocked by cannabinoids

https://doi.org/10.1038/npjamd.2016.12

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Poetry Foundation: Why I Don't Trust The Cloud:

In response to the recent rumblings from Facebook, a bunch o' folks are creating accounts at mewe.com (which I pronounce like a cat).

I've created an account there, https://mewe.com/i/danlyke , but I also wrote a little bit about the weirdness of a new space, which I'll toss in the comments.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Space & Astronomy ]

The Air Force Failed to Report a Troubled Veteran’s Fingerprints to the FBI. Then He Killed 26 People.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Law Enforcement ]

Back in high school print shop we did this by hand. Cool to see it as a product

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography ]

Shadow forwarded along this video of subverting a lock made to deter crimes of opportunity: Ottolock Cut in 2 Seconds! (YouTube video). I hadn't heard of an OttoLock, so went searching, and was amazed at how many YouTube videos there were touting how amazing this lock was based on trying to cut it with bolt cutters rather than tin snips. Right tool for the job, folks.

(Also, if your goal is lightweight and slow down the bike thieves for half a minute, as in you've parked the bike outside a cafe where you'll be sitting on the patio, some galvanzed cable with crimped loops and a small padlock are probably as good a bet as anything commercially available.)

He also sent Hydraulic Cutter EXPLODES vs. Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit Lock (YouTube video), take this as a reminder to use precautions, including serious eye protection, whenever using hardened tools

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Invention and Design Heinlein Fabrication New York Video Bicycling ]

Google is shutting down its Plus social network sooner than expected after discovering a second security bug

[ related topics: broadband Invention and Design ]

Rule of law: Inside the Philadelphia DA’s side hustle — selling seized homes to speculators and cops

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Domestic slayings: Brutal and foreseeable

The Washington Post found that nearly half of the women who were murdered during the past decade were, like Parnell and Cisneros, killed by a current or former intimate partner. In a close analysis of five cities, about a third of the male killers were known to be a potential threat ahead of the attack.

Also, this leaped out at me:

She and Sigala were required to enter couples counseling, and she took a class on how to manage her husband’s violent behavior, said Allenna Bangs, a Tarrant County prosecutor.

Holy fuck everything about that process needs changing.

And, actually, as I read further, holy crap how much of how various legal systems deal with domestic violence is beyond wrong.

[ related topics: History Law Graphics Marriage ]

Population Mountains, by Matt Daniels. Some really cool 3d visualizations of cities and population densities.

[ related topics: Graphics ]

I do my work on a laptop that, at work, I plug into a monitor and use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The keyboard came from my boss. A while after he brought in that mouse he brought in another computer from home, which has seen occasional use and testing by another coworker who's only here occasionally.

This morning that coworker got in before me. So I came in, plugged in my laptop, and the Bluetooth keyboard wasn't working. I've got some browser tabs I want to close, and I'm mashing Cmd-W, and nothing's happening. It's got the lights on, I'm poking around in the Bluetooth control panel, and can't connect to it...

...and from behind me I hear "well, this is bizarre, do I have a virus? Tabs and windows are randomly closing."

Be careful what you type where...

[ related topics: Wireless Microsoft virus Work, productivity and environment ]

Customs And Border Protection Paid A Firm $13.6 Million To Hire Recruits. It Hired 2:

The audit found that as of Oct. 1, CBP had paid Accenture Federal Services approximately $13.6 million of a $297 million contract to recruit and hire 7,500 applicants, including Customs and Border Protection officers, Border Patrol agents, and Air and Marine Interdiction agents. But 10 months into the first year of a five-year contract, Accenture had processed only "two accepted job offers," according to the report.

[ related topics: Andersen/Accenture Heinlein ]

RT John Van Praag @JohnVanPraag:

Two pieces of black tarmac drinking in a pub when a piece of red tarmac burst through the doors.

“Watch out” said one piece of black tarmac “I know him,he’s a cycle path”

[ related topics: Movies Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Absence of evidence is evidence: Oops! Mapping Service Blurs Out Military Bases, But Accidentally Locates Secret Ones:

Yandex Maps, Russia’s leading online map service, blurred the precise locations of Turkish and Israeli military bases, pinpointing their location. The bases host sensitive surface-to-air missile sites and facilities housing nuclear weapons.

[ related topics: Guns Fashion Maps and Mapping Real Estate ]

Jeffrey D. Sachs in Project Syndicate: The War on Huawei:

Meng is charged with violating US sanctions on Iran. Yet consider her arrest in the context of the large number of companies, US and non-US, that have violated US sanctions against Iran and other countries. In 2011, for example, JP Morgan Chase paid $88.3 million in fines in 2011 for violating US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Sudan. Yet Jamie Dimon wasn’t grabbed off a plane and whisked into custody.

[ related topics: History Woodworking ]

NPR: Reading the game: Walden:

Walden, A Game is a fascinating experiment in what I would call "tactical irony." Yes, it is precisely the kind of thing that Thoreau would've loathed. But it is also exactly the right tool to employ if your end-goal is to introduce more people to Thoreau's words.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games ]

As that New York Times propaganda piece about Max Harris and his role in the Oakland Ghost Ship fire makes its way around, issues of restorative justice and ignorance and whatnot aside, I can't bring myself to link to it.

Instead, I'm gonna link to Tessa Hulls in The Rumpus — Spotlight: My dead friend's favorite book.

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Bay Area Law Enforcement Pyrotechnics Machinery New York ]

Twitter thread on some of the evils inflicted on victims by US "anti-trafficking" organizations.:

What we need as sex trafficking survivors is the creation of philosohies that are purely survivor-led and begin with the telling of our own stories

Why Ashton Kutcher's tears are everything that's wrong with the anti-trafficking movement

and many more good reads

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Law Enforcement ]

I know a couple of y'all had bad experiences working on PhDs. I realize that as advisors go, this one's pretty extraordinary, but if you ever wanted to make sure you had a never-ending supply of grad students, hiring mercenaries to bust one out of a family visit gone wrong is, in my book, the most awesome way possible to do it.

Lund professor freed student from Islamic State war zone

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books History Sociology Work, productivity and environment ]

Does Australia's access and assistance law impact 1Password?

We do not, at this point, know whether it will be necessary or useful to place extra monitoring on people working for 1Password who may be subject to Australian laws. Our existing security and privacy design and internal controls may well be sufficient without adding additional controls on our people in Australia. Nor do we yet know to what extent we should consider Australian nationality in hiring decisions. It may be a long time before any such internal policies and practices go into place, if they ever do, but these are discussions we have been forced to have.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy Weblogs Work, productivity and environment Graphic Design Government ]

Third person to be charged in connection with terrorism cases in Toledo

In addition to the arrest of Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Lecron, Damon Joseph, 21, of Holland, was arrested Friday. He’s accused of separately planning to commit a totally unrelated mass shooting at a Toledo synagogue.

But please, let's build the wall... sigh.

[ related topics: Religion Law Law Enforcement Heinlein Pyrotechnics Gambling ]

Iranian phishers bypass 2fa protections offered by Yahoo Mail and Gmail. Sounds like this was basic MitM phishing, but worth thinking about in environments like Iran where the CA infrastructure has a history of compromise and someone else controls the DNS.

Also just worth thinking about in terms of your own workflow. In these days of unicode replacements for almost every character, never ever trust a URL you didn't type in yourself.

Facebook bug exposed private photos of 6.8 million users:

Up to 1,500 apps built by 876 developers could have had accessed the private photos of 6.8 million users.

Don't be putting anything on Facebook you wouldn't want above the fold on the front page of the NYT.

To put in context: Facebook Wants Your Nude Photos; What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, from all the way back in May.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Johnson & Johnson shares plunge 9% after report that the company knew for decades about asbestos in baby powder

Reuters based its report on a review of documents and deposition and trial testimony. It said the review showed that from 1971 to the early 2000s, J&J executives, mine managers, doctors and lawyers were aware the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos. Those involved discussed the problem but they did not disclose it to regulators or the public, Reuters’ examination found.

Evangelical Christians Helped Elect Donald Trump, but Their Time as a Major Political Force Is Coming to an End

[ related topics: Politics moron Gambling ]

FlyThere.com. Schedule a time to remotely pilot a drone elsewhere in the world. Right now it looks like it's free to fly an n-copter in Cancun during the beta period...

So hear me out: What if the sun is a CPU and the reason it puts out so much excess heat is that it's running OS/X?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sports Java ]

Sexual content bans are dog whistles to conservatism

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Dogs ]

Charles Pierce in Esquire: 'We' Did Not Miss the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism. You Did.

The New York Times plays itself—but offers a useful window into how establishment media has enabled all this.

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Current Events Journalism and Media New York Race ]

Well, the existence of this fascinates me... that there's a market for high quality simulations of surface to air missile systems, written in Hungary... (Free) SAM (Surface to Air Missile System) SimulatorS

[ related topics: Economics ]

What I Found When I Applied Hundreds of Fentanyl Tests to Philly’s Street Drugs

[ related topics: Drugs Health ]

Decorating the tree. Thinking about the Newtown ornament both in the context of my teen years, and of more recent events.

[ related topics: Photography Pop Culture ]

Charlene got herself a scroll saw. I borrowed some time on it today to learn a little bit about how intarsia works. Stacked 3 pieces of wood, cut out some shapes, reassembled them in a different order. Normally you bevel the cuts to make the gaps narrower, I'm still working on that technique.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Woodworking ]

Because I mentioned this to Charlene but couldn't find it: RT Diana Rowland @dianarowland

An update to yesterday's tweet re the letter I received from an anonymous, judgy-mcjudgyface neighbor who disapproved of my dragon display and asked me to consider removing them: I have added more dragons.

More at https://www.boredpanda.com/nei...ve-dragon-display-diana-rowland/

RT Jillian Buriak @JBuriak

“Mom, I need to make a heart-shaped cake for school!”.

“OK we got this!”. (kid #2)

(Click through for the picture)

[ related topics: Children and growing up Food - Cake ]

Jun Ye: Let There Be Light (and Thus, Time) -- DARPA "Wait, What?" (YouTube video). On building extremely accurate clocks.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

RT Violet Blue® @violetblue

"In one instance, through its page "Army of Jesus," which was targeting Christians, the group offered "free counseling to people with sexual addiction," New Knowledge found."

Russians sought to recruit 'assets' through social media, Senate told

[ related topics: Religion Politics Humor Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Journalism and Media ]

I think I need that "feel the eco power" sticker as a T shirt

[ related topics: Photography Clothing ]

Fantastic thread on US agriculture from Sarah Taber on Twitter:

If you want to understand US agriculture, you gotta understand one thing.

It's not even about making food.

It's a real estate hustle.

I know I've become pretty amazed at just how much modern farming is essentially sharecropping.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Real Estate ]

RT NO MORE FREEWAYS @nomorefreeways:

don't believe in induced demand? check out los angeles. the city spent $1.6 billion on what it deemed the worst bottleneck in the region.

You'll never believe what happened.

Los Angeles Drivers on the 405 Ask: Was $1.6 Billion Worth It?

Frequent sex will make life better as you get older: study

Study shows benefits of sex for older adults

Led by Dr Lee Smith from Anglia Ruskin University and Dr Sarah Jackson from UCL, the study involved analysing survey data from 6,879 older adults, with an average age of 65, living in England.

It found that older men and women who reported any type of sexual activity in the previous 12 months had a higher life enjoyment score than those who were not sexually active.

Can't find the actual study, though.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Television Education ]

More from Max over at Fucking Inappropriate: Flowers for Algernon where he continues his musings on mental health and military service:

The military is a world unto itself. Like living in a bizarro mirror dimension where culture and reality are distorted into a crude reflection of what most people think is normal. That reality is skewed even farther for an infantryman. The highest good you can achieve is to die well. I don’t need to explain what the point of the job is. It is an obsession with death.

[ related topics: Health Sociology Heinlein California Culture ]

Poyner: How do you make fact-checking viral? Make it look like misinformation.

These are the three assumptions that we made when we at Maldito Bulo chose our debunking format. The disinformation we were seeing came in visual layouts, adapted to mobile devices and created to reach virality by being light to share and easy to consume.

[ related topics: Typography Graphic Design ]

Fucking Inappropriate: Symptoms of Withdrawal:

“What if the war were over?” I wondered aloud.

My therapy group was silent. I looked to the counselor, himself a two-time veteran of Iraq. He raised his eyebrows and waited for a response.

“All of it. Tomorrow. Then what? How would you feel?”

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality History ]

Shadow forwarded along a couple of links about what seems to be the news of the day, and I 've added a few more: Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small town:

There are so many lies here, that my friend Jake and I had to narrow them down to top 11 most absurd lies (we couldn’t do just 10) for the purpose of this article. We’ve been working on it since the article came out in spring of 2017, but had to set it aside to attend to our lives (raising a family, managing a nonprofit organization, etc.) before coming back to it this fall, and finally wrapped things up a few weeks ago, just in time to hear today that Relotius was fired when he was exposed for fabricating many of his articles.

Germany's Der Spiegel says star reporter Claas Relotius wrote fake stories 'on a grand scale':

Several major features Relotius wrote for Der Spiegel that were also nominated for or won journalism awards are now under scrutiny, according to the magazine.

When the news really is fake: German reporter admits fabricating coverage at leading news magazine:

But at a time when political parties are deeply polarized on both sides of the Atlantic, the Spiegel controversy could also bolster those who now regularly portray reporting as “fake news.” As a publication that often allows its reporters to include subjective observations in their stories, Spiegel’s anti-Trump cover pieces had been widely shared in liberal circles in recent years. The fact that Relotius was initially exposed because of a story from the United States was immediately used to discredit the magazine’s wider coverage.

Among them, "The Last Witness," about an American who allegedly travels to an execution as a witness, "Lion Children," about two Iraqi children who have been kidnapped and reeducated by the Islamic State, and "Number 440," a feature about alleged prisoners at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Writer touted by CNN as 'Journalist of the Year' forced to resign for fabricating stories

The Relotius case resembles past instances where journalists have been caught fabricating stories. Those accused previously have included Stephen Glass, who was fired from the New Republic magazine, Jayson Blair, fired from the New York Times, and Janet Cooke, a Washington Post reporter whose story about a child addicted to heroin won a Pulitzer Prize before it was revealed to be a fabrication.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Invention and Design History moron Space & Astronomy Sociology Writing Law Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Monty Python California Culture New York Rocky Horror Picture Show Aviation - Helicopters ]

Okay, I really need to fix the upload functions on Flutterby... Shadow also forwarded along this groaner: Must have been a tiring job:

[ related topics: Photography Heinlein ]

Oregon Zoo otter, known for slam dunking and self-pleasuring, dies at age 20

Newsweek: Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Who Is America?’ Deleted Scene May Have Exposed Elite Pedophile Sex Ring:

While Baron Cohen judged the interview too “dark” and “extreme” to be included in the show, it’s a revealing look at how the powerful can get away with decades-long sexual abuse, including pedophile sexual abuse, such as in the massive cover-up of the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, orchestrated by President Trump’s Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture tolkien ]

Why dinosaurs really died out.

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

Stop on the way to Roseville

[ related topics: Photography ]

Today's pet peeve: people who block the charging stations because they don't want to walk an extra 50 feet.

[ related topics: Photography ]

The Guardian completes its switch from MongoDB to Postgres. Mostly because they could outsource the admin to AWS.

“But postgres isn’t a document store!” I hear you cry. Well, no, it isn’t, but it does have a JSONB column type, with support for indexes on fields within the JSON blob. We hoped that by using the JSONB type, we could migrate off Mongo onto Postgres with minimal changes to our data model. In addition, if we wanted to move to a more relational model in future we’d have that option. Another great thing about Postgres is how mature it is: every question we wanted to ask had in most cases already been answered on Stack Overflow.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Open Source Databases ]

Beauty and the Beast: Why Belle should have chosen Gaston.

17. What happens in France at the end of the 18th century???

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial BMJ 2018; 363 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k5094 (Published 13 December 2018) Cite this as: BMJ 2018;363:k5094

Results Parachute use did not significantly reduce death or major injury (0% for parachute v 0% for control; P>0.9). This finding was consistent across multiple subgroups. Compared with individuals screened but not enrolled, participants included in the study were on aircraft at significantly lower altitude (mean of 0.6 m for participants v mean of 9146 m for non-participants; P<0.001) and lower velocity (mean of 0 km/h v mean of 800 km/h; P<0.001).

Conclusions Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps. When beliefs regarding the effectiveness of an intervention exist in the community, randomized trials might selectively enroll individuals with a lower perceived likelihood of benefit, thus diminishing the applicability of the results to clinical practice.

We jumped from planes without parachutes (and lived to tell the tale)

Via

[ related topics: Aviation Community ]

Planning for the cats on the wall where the wall heater used to be

[ related topics: Photography ]

Normally I'm okay with the casual disregard that most motorists display for stop signs, but today... it's really bad.

From Shadow, this seems appropriate to the day: Everyone needs a Merry Christmas in a language that they don't understand from a heavy metal dinosaur.... Hevisaurus - Tonttuheviä

Hevisaurus appears to be the Finnish answer to Barney, which just shows that those Northern Europeans make everything more awesome.

[ related topics: Movies Television ]

Doomba

Noesis now includes a Roomba script. It will track your Roomba, store tracking data, allow you to visualize that data in a variety of ways, and, of course, turn that data into a randomized DOOM map.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

We had a wonderful breakfast at Hallie's yesterday, but the truth is that there's no place like home for the Hollandaise

[ related topics: Photography ]

Cannabidiol (CBD) as an Adjunctive Therapy in Schizophrenia: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial

RESULTS: After 6 weeks of treatment, compared with the placebo group, the CBD group had lower levels of positive psychotic symptoms (PANSS: treatment difference=-1.4, 95% CI=-2.5, -0.2) and were more likely to have been rated as improved (CGI-I: treatment difference=-0.5, 95% CI=-0.8, -0.1) and as not severely unwell (CGI-S: treatment difference=-0.3, 95% CI=-0.5, 0.0) by the treating clinician. Patients who received CBD also showed greater improvements that fell short of statistical significance in cognitive performance (BACS: treatment difference=1.31, 95% CI=-0.10, 2.72) and in overall functioning (GAF: treatment difference=3.0, 95% CI=-0.4, 6.4). CBD was well tolerated, and rates of adverse events were similar between the CBD and placebo groups.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Invention and Design Theater & Plays ]

Just so I can find it again: NYT obtains surveillance video that shows Proud Boys going around the block to avoid the police blockade between them and the Antifa protesters, and then charging the protestors and throwing the first punches

Edit: I completely misread this paragraph the first time through:

Outside a crowd of left-wing protesters chanted “No Nazis, No KKK, No fascist U.S.A.” After the event, the police kept the attendees and protesters separate, but a handful of leftists, wearing masks, circled the block and tried to intercept the Proud Boys on East 82d Street, the police said.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Television Video ]

A Century Ago, She Photographed Herself in Nature, Naked and Unafraid:

But the story of work like Chicago’s begins at least six decades earlier when, in 1905, the Oakland-based photographer Anne Brigman began creating nude self-portraits in the mountains. Though this act might be unremarkable today, Brigman is considered the first woman to photograph herself nude —or at least the first to publicize it. The work that followed is the foundation of Anne Brigman: A Visionary in Modern Photography, a major retrospective at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Nature and environment Bay Area Nudity Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Gambling ]

And here we see the results of Prop 13, CEQA, NIMBY, and all of the other forces conspiring to drive low wage workers out:

The trend is starkest in Sonoma County, where workers without a high school degree have a 0.2 percent unemployment rate compared to a 4.4 percent rate for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Workers with a high school diploma in that county have an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent.

San Jose Mercury News: Silicon Valley worker shortage creates upside-down labor market — Less-educated workers have low unemployment in Santa Clara, San Mateo counties

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area Astronomy Current Events Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

New episodes of Girl In Space and This Kaiju Life. It's podcast Christmas.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Space & Astronomy ]

Current advice to limit dairy intake should be reconsidered, research suggests:

Professor Banach and his co-researchers examined data from a 1999-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) study of 24,474 adults with a mean age of 47.6 years, 51.4% of whom were female. (NHANES is conducted by the US's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) During the follow-up period of 76.4 months, 3,520 total deaths were recorded, including 827 cancer deaths, 709 cardiac deaths, and 228 cerebrovascular disease deaths. The researchers found consumption of all dairy products to be associated with a 2% lower total mortality risk and consumption of cheese to be associated with an 8% lower total mortality risk (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.98, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.95-0.99; HR: 0.92, 95% CI: 0.87-0.97, respectively). For cerebrovascular mortality, they found a 4% lower risk with total dairy consumption and 7% lower risk with milk consumption (HR: 0.96, 95% CI: 0.94-0.98; HR: 0.93, 95% CI: 0.91-0.96, respectively).

‘What do we say to the God of Death?’ Nothing – just offer him some cheese!

[ related topics: Religion Health ]

RT Joseph Cox at 35c3 @josephfcox:

Left: doc the NYTimes published in its new piece on Facebook.

Right: the same internal document we published, back in... August.

Piece also includes other docs we have published, that no one else has. God NYTimes is awful at this https://motherboard.vice.com/e...acebook-content-moderation-works … https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...7/world/facebook-moderators.html …

[ related topics: Religion Invention and Design ]

Whoops: National Review: PC Culture: Being Bigger Than the Person You’re Asking Out Deemed Title IX Violation

Editor’s Note: This article and its headline originally stated that a male student at the University of Missouri was found in violation of Title IX because he asked a female student on a date and “was perceived as having power over her.” The article accurately quoted the deposition of the Title IX case, but it left out relevant details. In fact, the male student had made repeated, unwelcome advances toward the female student and was found in violation of Title IX for stalking her. He is suing the university and alleging that its Title IX office engaged in arbitrary enforcement and racial discrimination, but his lawsuit does not contest the fact pattern left out of this article. We are retracting the article and we regret the error. The article, including the the initial editor’s note, is below.

Via.

[ related topics: Quotes Sociology Law California Culture Education ]

I have been thinking a lot recently about how the way that we, with various cultural myths, enable abusive employer relationships, and how that ends up playing out in the culture longer-term. For one thing, the current job is fantastic about how we relate to each other, and how there's a lot of negative interpersonal bullshit we don't tolerate.

So this: How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success:

“The Apprentice” was built around a weekly series of business challenges. At the end of each episode, Trump determined which competitor should be “fired.” But, as Braun explained, Trump was frequently unprepared for these sessions, with little grasp of who had performed well. Sometimes a candidate distinguished herself during the contest only to get fired, on a whim, by Trump. When this happened, Braun said, the editors were often obliged to “reverse engineer” the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage to emphasize the few moments when the exemplary candidate might have slipped up, in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense. During the making of “The Apprentice,” Burnett conceded that the stories were constructed in this way, saying, “We know each week who has been fired, and, therefore, you’re editing in reverse.” ...

[ related topics: Sociology Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Heinlein California Culture ]

This thread. I feel very seen. RT Captain Awkward @CAwkward:

Fellow #ADHD kids, what elaborate new planning/organization systems and rituals are we going to embrace enthusiastically for the first half of January?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design ]

Damn it, the GoFundMe campaign has been deleted, but, really, it's the first completely honest pitch I've seen. RT Kilgore Trout @KT_So_It_Goes

hello I am catching the crowdfunding wave but also being extremely honest please contribute today

The campaign was called: "I am just taking your money. There is no reason."

The follow-ups are funny.

[ related topics: Currency ]

Bacardi Installs Bat Caves at Bottling Plant to Save Bats

The wooden bat caves, which stand 20-feet off the ground, are engraved with both the BACARDÍ and Lubee Bat Conservancy logos. The mutual goal between the two organizations is to preserve and provide crucial habitats for the local bat population to help maintain the community’s natural wetlands, farming, and forest areas. In fact, the Bacardi wildlife team consists of 11 employees who volunteer to manage 21 acres of wildlife habitat as part of a Wildlife at Work program that has been certified by the Wildlife Habitat Council since 2013. Several of these Bacardi employees, as well as several Lubee Bat Conservancy employees, worked together on this project.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Community Gambling Archival ]

Duffelblog: Troops ask to live with Mattis after divorce is finalized

“Mattis makes us do pushups and wants our family to be more lethal,” said Marine Lt. Philip Allison. “Meanwhile, when I asked Trump whether he’d like to throw the nuclear football around, he said, ‘oh sure, kid, just give me a few minutes,’ and then never came out.”

“Last time I talked with him all he kept telling me was how I was an idiot for paying anything over a 4% tax rate,” Allison added.

[ related topics: Politics moron Theater & Plays Sociology Sports ]

When a Sponsored Facebook Post Doesn’t Pay Off:

The agency Speakr set influencers up with brands for lucrative campaigns— and then stiffed them.

Charlene suggested that we should put some more shared experiences on the tree. Whale watching is something we love doing together, so I did a little intarsia and turned it into an ornament.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Psychology Today: The seeds of love contain the roots of hate:

... People are violent because of their morality, not in spite of it.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Weblogs ]

Greta has no pressing appointments.

[ related topics: Photography ]