Flutterby™! From 2019-05-01 to 2019-05-31

Damn the New York Times is getting snarky. Posted for this quote:

...While the Murrays received about $400 from Mr. Trump’s farm aid program, it was not enough to keep their milking operations afloat.

Stung by Trump’s Trade Wars, Wisconsin’s Milk Farmers Face Extinction.

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Software Engineering History New York ]

Hey, this patent expired today! You are now free to build straps which allow you to play your "guitars, banjos, mandolins and the like" in this manner. (Although as others have pointed out, the patent should have been invalidated because this picture does not depict the stripes.)

The patent is https://patents.google.com/patent/US4656917

Via https://twitter.com/playazball/status/601449638504177664

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Music Photography ]

A helpful librarian tracked down the original ad for our house. From June of 1940!

[ related topics: Photography Real Estate ]

We took a gamble and... There was no wind. Still took home craftsmanship and audience favorite awards from the Bodega Bay Wooden Boat Challenge.

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Boats Machinery Gambling ]

Why individual vehicles are not a substitute for mass transit, and why the induced demand from self-driving vehicles will make traffic worse: ‘Uber Was Supposed To Be Our Public Transit’

Innisfil, Ontario, decided to partially subsidize ride-hailing trips rather than pay for a public bus system. It worked so well that now they have to raise fares and cap rides.

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

Bike lanes need physical protection from car traffic, study shows

And the roadscape appears to have an effect on how close drivers get to people on bikes. On average, cars left 10 inches (29 cm) less room when cyclists were using painted cycle lanes, 12 inches (30cm) less room when there were rows of parked cars along the curbs, and 15.7 inches (40cm) less room when a road had both parked cars along the curb, then a painted cycle lane. (In other words, cars left cyclists the most room on stretches of road with no painted cycle lanes and no parked cars.)

10.1016/j.aap.2019.03.007

‘Simple but Empowering’: Cyclists Place Red Cups Along Bike Lanes to Show How Vulnerable They Are

[ related topics: Current Events Television Sports Automobiles Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Lookout, A Parody Phone Product That Live Streams What's In Front Of You On Screen So You Don't Have To Look Up

Lookout: A phone camera that looks up, so you can keep looking down (YouTube video)

Ya know, the situational awareness coupled with the social signal of "fuck off, I don't want to interact" might make the bulge of a prism on the back of the phone worth it...

[ related topics: Photography Theater & Plays ]

Musician friends: I've already heard from the square dance callers. What's the best way to learn about good headset microphones for singers and vocalists? Gonna need a wireless setup too, but I'd love to learn about how various different headset options handle directionality, wind/breath noise, and response curves and clarity.

And I'm kinda assuming, in this, that the Sennheiser D1-ME3 is the low-end of acceptable. How well do the Countryman mics hold up for dancing and singing at the same time? Samson's AirLine 77 AH1 is intriguing because I like the idea of not having a cable to get tangled up in things, but I don't know about response curves.

Having a super directional mic is a must; I (and the other guy I'm asking for) will be on the loud side of the sound system while using this (dancing and square dance calling at the same time).

My speakers are QSC K-8s, bought on the recommendation of musicians, and I want something that at least matches those nicely.

[ related topics: Wireless Aviation ]

Today in "unclear on the fundamentals": ‘Uber Was Supposed To Be Our Public Transit’:

Innisfil, Ontario, decided to partially subsidize ride-hailing trips rather than pay for a public bus system. It worked so well that now they have to raise fares and cap rides.

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

If a Cocoa API isn't working, it may be that you're just not calling it enough. Wrapping [view setFrame:...] in a for(...) loop is an OS/X idiom that can solve your problems... #onlyhalfkidding #maybenotevenhalf #onlyaquarter...

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

Denver first in U.S. to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms:

Psilocybin possession would remain illegal but would become police’s “lowest law-enforcement priority”

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Clowns ]

Holocaust Remembrance Day Event In Russellville Interrupted By White Supremacists Rally.

Sir Beryl Wolfson, a 96-year-old World War II veteran, was invited to speak at the event.

Wolfson says he saw the liberation of the concentration camps with his own eyes. He says he's traveled all over the state sharing his story for a reason.

"Never forget, because it could happen again, and I'm trying to get this out to the people so it won't happen again in any place, " Wolfson said.

[ related topics: Religion History Race Woodworking ]

After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

Unexpectedly, though, the researchers also found that families who were eligible for the paternity leave were less likely to have kids in the future. In a study published in the Journal of Public Economics (paywall), economists Lídia Farré of the University of Barcelona and Libertad González of University of Pompeu Fabra estimate that two years on, parents who had been eligible for the newly introduced program were 7% to 15% less likely to have another kid than parents who just missed the eligibility cutoff. While the difference dissipated further into the future, even after six years, parents who had been eligible for the leave were still less likely to have a child again.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.12.002

[ related topics: Children and growing up Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Education Economics Model Building ]

I piss and moan about the ridiculousness of throwing good money after bad in automobile infrastructure. The number $2T comes up regularly, whether it's the recent Trump/Schumer/Pelosi proposal (that won't make it past the senate) https://www.npr.org/2019/04/30...astructure-but-not-on-how-to-pay or the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) famously suggesting that if we didn't spend $2.2T on fixing roads and bridges we were going to end up losing out on $1T of economic growth https://www.strongtowns.org/jo...ing-the-asce-infrastructure-cult .

The ASCE later revised those numbers to claiming we need to spend $5.2T https://www.strongtowns.org/jo...ailure-to-act-like-professionals

Anyway, ignoring things like the carbon and health externalities, here's what it would take to raise two trillion dollars for infrastructure. It starts with $1.60/gallon gas tax, assuming inelastic demand for gas.

https://www.enotrans.org/artic...e-2-trillion-for-infrastructure/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Health History Automobiles Currency Economics ]

RT Geoff Graham @geoffreydgraham

If children started school at six months old and their teachers gave them walking lessons, within a single generation people would come to believe that humans couldn't learn to walk without going to school.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama ]

Not all heroes wear capes: The Florida Man Arrested For His "I EAT ASS" Sticker Might Sue The Sheriff's Office:

Bonderud noted that the dashcam footage shows the deputy at first telling his client that the sticker was "derogatory" instead of "offensive." He also highlighted that at several points, one of the deputy's colleagues can be heard telling him via the radio to "tow his shit."

"Not only were they wrong on the law, but they happen to be hypocrites," he said.

[ related topics: Food Political Correctness Television ]

I love (modern (western)) square dancing. I love that it combines a mental workout with some brisk walking. I appreciate the square dancers who dance to my music. But I just found out that Jazzercise was founded in 1969, CALLERLAB started to come together circa 1971.

They are, admittedly, slightly different things, but Jazzercise has 228 corporate staff, over 8,300 franchisees, and some of those franchisees are doing well enough to be able to live in the SF North Bay on 6 classes a week.

I thought about this as I cashed a check in the double-digits for a two and a half hour dance I called for which I had to allow 3 hours of drive time...

[ related topics: Music Bay Area Theater & Plays California Culture ]

Vegan Ass Getting Closer and Closer to Tasting Like Real Thing

“For years, a vegan’s anus was a bland, disappointing imitation of the real thing,” said nutritionist and voracious rimmer Doyle Cartwright, a tenured professor at the National College of Natural Medicine. “Plant-based diets didn’t provide enough challenging material to the bowels; thus, almost all taste-containing cells and molecules were fully absorbed by the body or passed through as waste. Thankfully, that is no longer the case.”

[ related topics: Sociology Law California Culture Education ]

Thought I had uploaded this, but: the stands I built to hold up moving blankets to improve the sound when we're square dancing

[ related topics: Photography ]

Apollo rocks showed how the moon was made, and now they're about to solve more mysteries. An article on some plans to open some vacuum sealed moon rock samples that have been waiting for the technology to analyze them to be ready.

[ related topics: Health ]

I mentioned before that I was so far out of the popular culture that, in high school, when sheet music for "Billie Jean" or some such was handed out in marching band, I asked "who the hell is Michael Jackson?"

Eric took me to task for that, pointing out that Michael Jackson's place in cultural history as someone who effectively bridged the racial divide as a black artist finding acceptance in white culture as essentially white culture, was an amazing achievement. My beliefs on race have evolved quite a bit since then, but I still find myself torn between, for instance, seeing that "The Wiz" was an amazing cultural touchstone, and fundamentally a bad movie.

But as I try to embrace more popular culture, both of now and of my peers, which means my high school years, I have a couple of Michael Jackson tunes that I use in square dancing. And I've kinda been wondering whether I can ever use them again.

Ann Powers on NPR: Before And After — What it's like listening to Michael Jackson now

This is the impetus behind the idea of canceling Michael Jackson, which has been raised and endlessly debated in the past two months. To cancel, according to the social media forces where the term originated, means to make an individual decision to eradicate a cultural presence — a pop star, for example — from one's consciousness. ...

I was kinda reading through, pondering my own slightly negative feelings against his work, but realizing that his music can move a floor, and read:

Jackson's contribution to the public conversation about sex in the 1980s and 1990s was grounded in the very fixation on perversion and paranoia that now seems so perverse. The darkness of individuals that runs through popular art only resonates because it reflects impulses — maybe not the same ones, but connected ones — in its audience.

And maybe this is it. Rather than exploring the taboo in the way that Madonna did, rather than exposing the desires, in lyrics like "Annie are you okay?" Jackson was creating a voyeuristic spectacle that conflated... I dunno... domestic violence with CPR training. Or something.

At any rate, I think I'm not gonna miss those few songs from my catalog, even if Thriller does make a decent Halloween patter. I'm okay with canceling Michael Jackson. And I haven't even seen Finding Neverland.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Music Erotic Sexual Culture Movies History Space & Astronomy Sociology Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture California Culture Pop Culture Race Archival Aviation - Helicopters ]

Via Violet Blue's cybersecurity roundup: WhatsApp voice calls used to inject Israeli spyware on phones

The malicious code, developed by the secretive Israeli company NSO Group, could be transmitted even if users did not answer their phones, and the calls often disappeared from call logs, said the spyware dealer, who was recently briefed on the WhatsApp hack.

If you had WhatsApp on your phone, it's probably time for a factory reset.

MeFi thread

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Just a place to drop a couple of photos next time I'm looking for traditional square dance or square dancing attire or clothing:

• http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a36043
• http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.00469
• http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b25466

[ related topics: Photography Clothing ]

Is There a Connection Between Undocumented Immigrants and Crime?

There is no exact count of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. To create estimates, experts at Pew subtracted Department of Homeland Security counts of immigrants with legal status from the number of foreign-born people counted by the Census Bureau. Many organizations and agencies, including the DHS, use this residual estimation method; it is generally considered the best one available. As of 2016, there were an estimated 10.7 million undocumented immigrants nationwide, down a million and a half since 2007.

(And, of course, there's all of the previous data on this.)

[ related topics: Law ]

Jessica Valenti's twitter thread on ways in which women are currently being punished for miscarriages, even before the new anti-abortion laws, because I'll want to refer back to it.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Invention and Design Government ]

Special shout-out to this person who this morningpassed on the right on narrow Petaluma Blvd S lanes at probably 10mph over the speed limit, in rainy wet conditions, and then made two unsignalled lane changes

[ related topics: Photography ]

Not commenting on Nextdoor right now because phrases like "when did 'fiscal responsibility' become 'social engineering'?" and "I guess conservatives are for tax increases when progressives are against them" are rolling off my fingers.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Nature Scientific Reports: Assessment of Glyphosate Induced Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance of Pathologies and Sperm Epimutations: Generational Toxicology:

In summary, glyphosate was found to promote the epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of disease and pathology through germline (i.e. sperm) epimutations. Negligible pathology was observed in the F0 and F1 generations, while a significant increase in pathology and disease was observed in the F2 generation grand-offspring and F3 generation great-grand-offspring. Therefore, glyphosate appears to have a low or negligible toxic risk for direct exposure, but promotes generational toxicology in future generations. ...

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

All computers connected to the internet are are cloud computers. And "the cloud" is still other people's computers.

That'll help you sleep better...

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

The more I learn about how US food policy has essentially recreated sharecropping, along with huge tax dodges for the ultra rich, the more I think we've gotta dial back some of the centralized control that runs our farming in this country.

Is it a Farm if it Doesn’t Sell Food?:

More than one-fifth of all farms in the U.S. report making $0 in annual sales. Because the USDA won’t release that data, the nation is missing critical information about the health of the food system.

RT Dr Sarah Taber @SarahTaber_bww

So I've long had the sense that a lot of "farms" were tax dodges & raised crops/livestock just for show, if at all.

Now there are statistics!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Health Food Mathematics ]

Linking to Wired: Tesla’s Latest Autopilot Death Looks Just Like a Prior Crash for this bit of innumeracy:

... At 68 mph, the car was covering 100 feet a second. A Model 3 going 60 mph needs 133 feet to stop. If that ratio holds, the Tesla in question could have stopped within 151 feet. ...

Uh, no, stopping distance is squared with speed, not linear with speed. That'd be closer to 171'. How did this make it past an editor?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History Automobiles ]

Jimmy Carter Took Call About China From Concerned Donald Trump: 'China Has Not Wasted a Single Penny on War'

Carter—who normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979—suggested that China’s breakneck growth had been facilitated by sensible investment and buoyed by peace.

“Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?” Carter asked. “None. And we have stayed at war.” The U.S., he noted, has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” Carter said. This is, he said, because of America’s tendency to force other nations to “adopt our American principles.”

[ related topics: Religion History Currency Economics ]

Cyclists Break Far Fewer Road Rules Than Motorists, Finds New Video Study

[ related topics: Invention and Design Video ]

Rochester Institute of Technology: GRE fails to identify successful Ph.D. students.

Whoah, test which everyone puts lots of credence in turns out to not accurately measure what it purports to measure.

This is my shocked face.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

macOS '.DS_Store' format: format specification

[ related topics: Macintosh ]

Huh. Wonder what Ukrainian scammers get out of having bogus @AirBNB listings in Sonoma County? I'm trying to set up a night in St Helena and getting results in Kiev...

American Diabetes Association and shilling for Metformin: Prediabetes: The epidemic that never was, and shouldn't be.

Lowering the diagnostic threshold has clear economic implications. It's a gold mine for the pharmaceutical industry, thanks to the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists' recommendation that diabetes drugs be used in patients with prediabetes. More diagnoses mean more sales, even though pharmaceutical interventions rarely work for prediabetes and their side effects are well reported.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

Gaming the game: Uber, Lyft drivers manipulate fares at Reagan National causing artificial price surges

[ related topics: Games Current Events ]

The good news is that I have an MRI scheduled for this knee that hurts like hell. The bad news is that I really didn't need to add a severe case of allergies on top of the chronic pain. Ugh.

[ related topics: Law Current Events ]

This is fascinating on a number of fronts. The most obvious is the lack of recourse on crypto currencies, and the reminder that there are so many attacks against SMS that it's not a 2 factor option, but it's also a reminder that I should start carrying my Yubikey (even though that's also gonna mean carrying a USB-C adapter), and paying more attention to how I store my 2FA recovery keys.

The Most Expensive Lesson Of My Life: Details of SIM port hack.

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

Katrina Pierson tweeted about Gaza. The video she posted was filmed 2,000 miles away.

After pushback online, Pierson responded to her tweet, saying the video was simply meant to illustrate what “hundreds of rockets look like.” But the video fails as a representation. The artillery shells shown in the video are ordered and rhythmic; the footage is clean and stable. Rockets fired in Israel and Gaza that weekend had none of these characteristics.

[ related topics: Politics Video Hurricane Katrina ]

"Jones Robbert followed you"... seems legit...

[ related topics: Photography ]

The NTSB Wants American Trains to Be Less Safe:

In 2017, an Amtrak Cascades train derailed outside Seattle. The train driver sped on a curve and the heavy locomotive derailed, dragging the trains with it, as had happened in 2013 in New York and in 2015 in Philadelphia. The primary culprit was the tardy installation of automatic train protection (“positive train control”), which would have prevented overspeed: the Philadelphia accident happened shortly before that section of track was scheduled to get PTC, the New York accident happened on a line with weaker protection against running red signals but not against overspeed, and the Seattle accident happened on a line not-yet equipped with PTC but with ongoing installation.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Bay Area Sports Machinery Trains New York Seattle Public Transportation ]

Restroom Hand Dryers Suck Up Feces Particles and Spray Them All Over Your Hands

Applied & Environmental Microbiology: Deposition of Bacteria and Bacterial Spores by Bathroom Hot-Air Hand Dryers Luz del Carmen Huesca-Espitia, Jaber Aslanzadeh, Richard Feinn, Gabrielle Joseph, Thomas S. Murray, Peter Setlow

DOI: 10.1128/AEM.00044-18

Thought of the moment (based on a morning discussion with a couple of lawyers who specialize in environmental issues): When the only real incremental cost automobile users pay is time spent in congestion, you can't really argue that congestion is a negative impact of density.

[ related topics: Automobiles Community ]

Objective-C: Where sometimes you have to just shrug and say "yeah, the property synthesis sometimes doesn't work, but your refactoring made that variable value stick, so shrug, I guess?"

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

RT Eric Haywood @EricHaywood

When your anaconda

don’t

want

none:

NPR: Baby Anacondas Born At New England Aquarium — Without Any Male Snakes Involved

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events ]

The Trade Secret: Firms That Promised High-Tech Ransomware Solutions Almost Always Just Pay the Hackers

Proven Data promised to help ransomware victims by unlocking their data with the “latest technology,” according to company emails and former clients. Instead, it obtained decryption tools from cyberattackers by paying ransoms, according to Storfer and an FBI affidavit obtained by ProPublica.

Another U.S. company, Florida-based MonsterCloud, also professes to use its own data recovery methods but instead pays ransoms, sometimes without informing victims such as local law enforcement agencies, ProPublica has found. The firms are alike in other ways. Both charge victims substantial fees on top of the ransom amounts. They also offer other services, such as sealing breaches to protect against future attacks. Both firms have used aliases for their workers, rather than real names, in communicating with victims.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Women are happier without children or a spouse, says happiness expert

Speaking at the Hay festival on Saturday, Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, said the latest evidence showed that the traditional markers used to measure success did not correlate with happiness – particularly marriage and raising children.

“Married people are happier than other population subgroups, but only when their spouse is in the room when they’re asked how happy they are. When the spouse is not present: fucking miserable,” he said.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Sociology Economics Marriage ]

(From November of last year) Newly Unsealed Documents Show Top FDIC Officials Running Operation Choke Point. Ignoring what this says about porn, I suspect there's a strong case to be made that this raises the cost of check cashing operations and, yes, payday loans, but generally companies which provide services to lower-income communities.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Law Sports Community ]

RT Andrew Prokop @awprokop:

It was probably unwise for Julian Assange to help elect the party with less sympathetic views toward press freedom.

Via Violet Blue's cybersecurity roundup for May 28, 2019

[ related topics: Privacy Civil Liberties Government ]

Linking because, yeah, the Saudis are evil slime, but also because a lot of news organizations are reporting this based on Thomas Brewster's work, without citing him: Exclusive: Saudi Dissidents Hit With Stealth iPhone Spyware Before Khashoggi's Murder

Almasarir would be the second confirmed Saudi target of Pegasus in the U.K., alongside political activist Yahya Assiri. Both are telling Forbes their stories of assaults on their digital lives for the first time. As previously reported, Pegasus has spread its wings further to attack opponents of the Saudi regime. Other attacks hit an employee working on Saudi-related issues for Amnesty International, a human rights NGO founded in London, and activist Omar Abdulaziz from Quebec, Canada. And Assiri reveals to Forbes that like Abdulaziz he was in frequent contact with the late writer Khashoggi, who was infamously killed at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul in October.

[ related topics: Politics moron Writing Current Events Work, productivity and environment Civil Liberties Gambling iPhone ]

The Allusionist Podcast: The Word "Queer"

Holy shit, I thought this was an Onion article first time I saw the phrase. US Department of Energy press release: Department of Energy Authorizes Additional LNG Exports from Freeport LNG (emphasis mine):

“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy. Further, more exports of U.S. LNG to the world means more U.S. jobs and more domestic economic growth and cleaner air here at home and around the globe,” said U.S. Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes ...

and

“... I am pleased that the Department of Energy is doing what it can to promote an efficient regulatory system that allows for molecules of U.S. freedom to be exported to the world,” said Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg, who signed the export order and was also in attendance at the Clean Energy Ministerial.

US Department of Energy is now referring to fossil fuels as “freedom gas”

[ related topics: Privacy Food Civil Liberties Economics Woodworking Government ]

CSS Grid Generator

RT Sarah Drassner @sarah_edo:

🎇 I made a small tool for everyone: CSS Grid Generator. You can designate rows, columns, gaps, and units, and then drag to create child divs to make dynamic layouts with ease!

Open source on GitHub and deployed on @Netlify

https://cssgrid-generator.netlify.com/

I think the last time I was at SFMOMA, it was for an Ansel Adams exhibit, and I came away thinking that the whole thing was a way to pitch the holdings of various art investors, and if you really wanted to see Ansel Adams' better work, and were fan enough to actually have looked for who had the good stuff, there were a couple of galleries in the city you could call up and get a tour of their back room stacks.

So, yeah, I'm laughing: This Teen Pulled Off The Ultimate Joke At An Art Gallery

"We stumbled upon a stuffed animal on a gray blanket and questioned if this was really impressive to some of the nearby people," he said.

It was then that the teens decided to put a pair of glasses on the floor facing the room, to see how people would react.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Pop Culture Yosemite ]

Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, Volume 56, March 2017, Pages 93-103 — Study Review — Mineral nutrient composition of vegetables, fruits and grains: The context of reports of apparent historical declines. Yes, crop yields are up, and yes, there are some decreases in absolute values of trace minerals, but:

... To follow through on the extreme case of copper with reported apparent historical declines ranging from −34% to −81%, the context is that per 100 g dry weight, vegetables have 0.11–1.71 mg of copper (a natural range of variation of 1555%), fruit 0.01–2.06 mg (20,600% range), and grains 0.1–1.4 mg (1400% range) so even a change of 81% is well within the natural range of variation, and copper composition has been reported to be strongly subject to the dilution effect. The study authors who found statistically significant decreases in the content of particular mineral nutrients per dry weight of fruits, vegetables, or grains all agreed that these changes were not likely to have any significant impact on the nutritional health of consumers, a fact glossed over in some popular press reports citing these studies.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfca.2016.11.012

[ related topics: Health Food Law Consumerism and advertising ]

I want to cook again: A Haunting Coffee Roasted Beet Salad from Ravens Nest

Via MeFi: Beetroot recipes for someone who hates beetroot.

[ related topics: Food ]