Flutterby™! From 2019-08-01 to 2019-08-31

Schizophrenic man realizes he's having an episode, calls 911, is killed by first responders. 'You're gonna kill me!': Dallas police body cam footage reveals the final minutes of Tony Timpa's life

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Remember when Republicans were screaming about widespread voter fraud? Turns out it's 'cause they were in a position to know: Criminal charges filed in 9th District absentee ballot fraud scandal

[ related topics: History ]

Don’t Tread On Me: Vancouver Island woman fends off cougar by blasting Metallica

Woman uses Metallica music to save herself from cougar attack

Metal will save your life. It'll also drive off cougars...

Courtesy of Tara: https://twitter.com/ResearchBuzz/status/1157305714655801355

[ related topics: Music Current Events ]

Instagram and WhatsApp will add ‘from Facebook’ to their names. My initial thought was "that'll only hurt those brands", but apparently Facebook is trying to raise the value of that brand in the minds of younger consumers.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

The more I learn about the politics of the 1600s through the 1800s, the more I side with the pirates. This intensifies those leanings: The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe

[ related topics: Politics Food Writing ]

"The iTunes Store is unable to process purchases at this time. Please try again later". Slack and Facebook hiccup, and the social media world explodes. Apple's Mac app store goes down and nobody notices...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Journalism and Media Macintosh ]

Square Dancers: This Friday August 9th, Kurt Gollhardt and I are trading Plus & Mainstream tips at the Oaktown 8s/Elks & Does Second Friday dance. Come mess with us! 7:30-10PM at the Lake Merritt Dance Center, 200 Grand Ave, Oakland CA

[ related topics: Bay Area Heinlein ]

Everybody's throwin' shade: FBI faces skepticism over its efforts against domestic terrorism

“I believe Christopher A. Wray is an honorable man, but I think in many ways the FBI is hamstrung in trying to investigate the white supremacist movement like the old FBI would,” [former FBI supervisor Dave] Gomez said. “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base. It’s a no-win situation for the FBI agent or supervisor.”

RT @TheHill (with video):

Mayor of Dayton Nan Whaley: "I've heard that [President Trump's] coming Wednesday but I have not gotten a call. And you know he might be going to Toledo, I don't know."

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Race Video ]

Today's sock game

[ related topics: Photography Games ]

AT&T employees took bribes to plant malware on the company's network:

DOJ charges Pakistani man with bribing AT&T employees more than $1 million to install malware on the company's network, unlock more than 2 million devices.

[ related topics: broadband Work, productivity and environment ]

Yelp was already evil, but... Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers:

The phone numbers add tracking before connecting to a restaurant so that Grubhub can bill for a marketing fee.

[ related topics: Food Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

When "your calls are translated by AI" isn't: Revealed: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

Documents, screenshots, and audio obtained by Motherboard show that humans listen to Skype calls made using the app's translation function.

[ related topics: Humor Music Microsoft moron Mathematics Pop Culture Artificial Intelligence ]

Exchange on Twitter here

[ related topics: Photography ]

The Real Costs of the U.S. Health-Care Mess

For average wage workers living in a family of four, this premium is equal to 26.4 percent of their total labor compensation. If you count this premium as taxes for international comparison purposes, the average wage worker in the United States has the second-highest tax rate in the developed world, behind the Netherlands.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Health Sociology Work, productivity and environment Government ]

That's what it is.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Today in victim blaming: Many post on social media under the influence of drugs -- and regret it

Posting on social media, texting, and appearing in photos while high is prevalent among people who use drugs--and many regret these behaviors, according to a study by the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) at NYU College of Global Public Health.

Posting, texting, and related social risk behavior while high Joseph J. Palamar , PhD, MPH, Austin Le , MSE & Patricia Acosta , BA. https://doi.org/10.1080/08897077.2019.1635966

Results: Of the participants, 34.3% posted on social media while high (with 21.4% regretting it), 55.9% had texted or called someone while high (with 30.5% regretting it), and 47.6% had been in a photo while high (with 32.7% regretting it). Females and young adults (ages 18–24) were at high risk for posting on social media while high and at higher risk for engaging in more of these behaviors. Past-month marijuana users in particular were at increased risk for engaging in each of these behaviors. Conclusion: Engaging in these behaviors while high on drugs appears to be prevalent, and prevention and harm reduction efforts should seek to prevent or reduce likelihood of social harm that can result from such situations.

[ related topics: Drugs Photography Health History Journalism and Media Education Gambling ]

I often scoff at the ads Facebook shows me, but sometimes... I mean, it's not like I have a particular use for something that'll lift a human being (or 400lb load) on a 30" platform to 16' in the air from a 4'x4' box, but dayumn this is cool!

Maybe my square dance calling needs a little more aerial theatrics or something... All Access Staging Productions Ribbon Lift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARlw8zim3R8

[ related topics: Movies Television ]

Cut off wheels. The "that wasn't a request" of stuck set screws in coupling collars.

[ related topics: Photography Fabrication ]

Heather Heyer's not on this FBI list. How hate crimes become invisible.

Relying on individual police agencies to have enough resources and good will to report leaves huge holes in the data. And experts say that makes it difficult if not impossible to understand the full scope of hate in America with the ultimate goal of tackling it and even saving lives.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Enforcement ]

'I'm Back to Riding My Own Bike.' Higher Prices Threaten Silicon Valley’s Mobility Revolution

JUMP’s price increases were part of a larger trend across the sharing economy. On-demand services of all kinds have been significantly subsidized by investors as a means of attracting users with low prices. But as companies like Uber and Lyft go public and face shareholder pressure to make money, those subsidizes are ending. That means customers are now being asked to pay what it actually costs companies to provide them with shareable bikes, scooters, and rides. “The amount that venture capitalists are subsidizing people’s lives right now is much higher than people realized,” says Sam Korus, an analyst with investment firm ARK Invest.

[ related topics: Currency Bicycling Economics ]

In case you can handle some horror. Prison, as instituted in the United States, is a horrible barbaric institution: Thirty-Two Short Stories About Death in Prison — These stories don’t mention Jeffrey Epstein, but they are about him.

[ related topics: Law ]

RT the hypo @TheHyyyype:

law professor: you're currently failing your ethics class

me: *slides a $20 across the desk* how about now

Reply by Gary Anderson @DamagedWriter

law professor: A twenty? Now you're failing economics as well.

[ related topics: Ethics ]

Amazon's Facial Recognition Misidentified 1 in 5 California Lawmakers as Criminals

The ACLU tested Rekognition, Amazon's facial recognition technology, on photographs of California lawmakers. It matched 26 of them to mugshots.

[ related topics: Books Photography California Culture ]

So another way to view this whole Tumblr thing is that it was worth a billion dollars to Verizon to remove that porn from the Internet. Something to ponder as we serve our corporate masters.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Net Culture ]

New York Times: A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5,000 Check (Yes, a Check). American surgeons and American patients flying to Mexico, and the insurer paying some of the net back to the patient.

Given that the staff for this operation was all US, this implies that the problem is hospital overhead. I wonder if the US's insane healthcare costs and awful outcomes relative to the developed world are due to the lack of social safety net that pushes a lot of that bottom tier on to hospitals.

Or whether we've just got hospital administrators who are milking every spare bit of value out of the system...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Health Invention and Design Aviation New York ]

As summer camps turn on facial recognition, parents demand: More smiles, please. Summer camps are using facial recognition to automatically send parents pictures of their kids involved in various activities.

Unrelated: Major breach found in biometrics system used by banks, UK police and defence firms — Fingerprints, facial recognition and other personal information from Biostar 2 discovered on publicly accessible database:

The researchers said the sheer scale of the breach was alarming because the service is in 1.5m locations across the world and because, unlike passwords being leaked, when fingerprints are leaked, you can’t change your fingerprint.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Law Enforcement Guns Databases ]

Richland County South Carolina deputy caught in child sex sting by his own department

The State reports Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott announced the arrest of Deputy Derek Vandenham on Tuesday. Twelve other law enforcement agencies assisted in “Operation Relentless Guardian,” during which deputies pretended to be 13- to 15-year-old girls and chatted with men online.

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

U.S. Rep. Steve King: If not for rape and incest, 'would there be any population left?'.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events ]

Banks are paying people to borrow money. That’s alarming news for the global economy. (Mirror at MSN) (Via MeFi, with more examples of modern financial instruments that have negative yields)

“It’s an absurdly odd world and it signals two things,” said investment banker Daniel Alpert, managing partner at Westwood Capital. “There’s an obvious, persistent and continuous glut of underutilized capital and there’s no place in the advanced world for that capital to be invested without excess risk.”

Except for... Oh, I dunno... companies like WeWork and Uber?

I'm not sure if I understand economics, but I think money is a proxy for utility, or work accomplished that has value to other people. Money supply is an attempt to match the potential for utility, in the hopes that it will enable the exchanges necessary for the work that will accomplish that utility to be done.

As I read it, the money keeps flowing out from Central Banks which believe there is potential for utility, but to people who are tying it up in unproductive uses: high end real estate, art, yachts, etc. Indications are that there's this huge potentially productive potential out there, but somehow those ending up with the money aren't using it in that way; they're frittering it away in hopes of keeping it, rather than circulating it.

Seems like this imbalance will be solved by those who have the unrealized potential to be productive appropriating that money. Since it isn't happening voluntarily, that's gonna be ugly.

Later addition: How Monopolies Broke The Federal Reserve

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Current Events Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Television Currency Economics Real Estate ]

FDA announces tobacco warnings and labeling. NYT article on the new warnings.

Writes a friend:

In 2009, congress passed a law requiring FDA to adopt graphic warning labels, which they did in 2010. The tobacco industry successfully challenged those specific labels as being overblown and going beyond the science. Today, FDA announces a proposed rule to require graphic warning labels. The rule will be open for public comment for a year.

A comparison with Canada's warnings which, I'm told, are reasonably tame.

US	Canada

[ related topics: Politics Photography Health Invention and Design Furniture ]

Because I'm gonna want this come initiatives on the ballot time, a Twitter thread on the "Livable California" / "Sustainable Communities Alliance" family of PACs, with amusing forays into the new name and re-branding to shed the image of being "white suburban NIMBYs."

[ related topics: Invention and Design Sociology California Culture Community Race ]

Barn Dance with Evie Ladin out at Tara Firma Farms this evening. One of these in 2012 was what got me into square dancing.

So there's alcohol, and lots of people who are out there for the first night, but it's high energy, family environment. Lot of fun. Charlene wasn't dancing, later in the evening I was looking for a partner, a woman started squaring up with her young daughter, who got distracted by something and took off running somewhere, so I said "wanna dance?", and she did.

So we're doing the walkthrough, and there's an Allemande Left your Corner, Swing your Partner. We do the hooked right arm swing, but in the process I say something about a Ballroom Swing, and she says "what's that?", so I show her, and the fancy twirl into promenade position, and then the unwinding to end the promenade back at home...

And she says "Oh, apparently it's something adults know."

Jesus, when did I get old?

[ related topics: Religion Humor Nature and environment Sociology Sports ]

A decade or a decade and a half a go, I helped a pour the foundation for a laundry shed. If I knew then what I knew now, we'd have found a place to set a concrete pump, but instead rented an electric mixer and poured from bagged concrete.

Memory is hazy. It was tens of of bags. At least 35, something is telling me it may have been as many as 65 bags. At any rate it was a brutal tiring day.

What I'm saying is that I realize that I was doing a bunch of digging in summer Petaluma clay with the pick to dig the place for the footings, and I was mixing the bags by hand today, but the 11 bags I poured today just kicked my ass.

I gotta do more upper body stuff.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

The $1 million a month business behind your favorite Twitter accounts.

Poynter: Fact-checkers personally targeted by partisan attacks

Department of "Duh": Websites that peddle disinformation make millions of dollars in ads, new study finds

At least $235 million in revenue is generated annually from ads running on extremist and disinformation websites, according to a new study from the Global Disinformation Index provided exclusively to CNN ahead of its September release. That means the people behind websites propagating hate or false information don't just have an ideological influence — they can also make big money from advertisers who often are unhappy or unaware that their brand name is being displayed alongside content they do not endorse.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Sports Currency ]

Twitter Safety: Information operations directed at Hong Kong:

This disclosure consists of 936 accounts originating from within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Overall, these accounts were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground. Based on our intensive investigations, we have reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation. Specifically, we identified large clusters of accounts behaving in a coordinated manner to amplify messages related to the Hong Kong protests.

As Twitter is blocked in PRC, many of these accounts accessed Twitter using VPNs. However, some accounts accessed Twitter from specific unblocked IP addresses originating in mainland China. The accounts we are sharing today represent the most active portions of this campaign; a larger, spammy network of approximately 200,000 accounts — many created following our initial suspensions — were proactively suspended before they were substantially active on the service.

And on another side, Falun Gong, aliens from undiscovered dimensions, a commune in upstate new york with arranged relationships, often for immigration purposes: Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise of The Epoch Times

Started almost two decades ago with a stated mission to “provide information to Chinese communities to help immigrants assimilate into American society,” The Epoch Times now wields one of the biggest social media followings of any news outlet.

Via this Twitter thread. Bonus: White House reviews incident involving Epoch Times photographer handing a folder to Trump

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs broadband Invention and Design moron Current Events Journalism and Media Civil Liberties Community Hong Kong New York ]

[Effortpost] Drag References 101: Summer School Is Now In Session:

In this post, I've compiled the curriculum for Drag References 101. Starting around 1929 and coming up to about 1995, I've compiled clips from dozens of films you can watch, TV shows you can pick up, divas you can study, and specific moments which will help you go deeper into the drag world.

Via MeFi.

I have not gotten suckered into Ru Paul's Drag Race (though if Charlene caught me in a weak moment I might be able to get pulled into Pose), but the cultural background...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Technology and Culture Movies Sociology Television ]

RT Kristian Köhntopp @isotopp:

Unfucking Chrome.

1. chrome://flags
2. Search UI Hide.
3. Disable these 3.

Also, thank you for nothing Google.

[ related topics: User Interface Photography ]

Oh this is fascinating, and a good thing to ponder when considering commodity-backed currencies (as in "the gold standard") vs fiat currencies. From Transatlantic Trade and Global Cultural Transfers Since 1492:

In 1707, Spanish colonial authorities in New Granada forbade the adulteration of gold with platinum, and subsequently, the mining of the metal was prohbiited and its export to Europe banned. These measures, taken to ensure the purity of the Spanish coin, resulted in dumping large quantities of platinum ore into rivers and inaccessible locations. ...

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Sociology Currency ]

Secret Memos Show the Government Has Been Lying About Backpage. The Backpage prosecutions came despite Backpage staff bending over backwards to initiate, not just respond to, investigations of child prostitution. Moralizing became so important to the Justice Department that proseuctors (and lawmakers) ran roughshod over the facts.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture moron Law Enforcement ]

In trying to deal with the spammers, I just blew away everyone's Flutterby password. Will try to recreate from backups. If I have valid ones. Sigh.

Addendum: Okay, think I've recovered to February of this year, which I think gets most of the active users.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Emojipedia has no mercy: https://emojipedia.org/briefcase/

💼 Briefcase

A place to store notes and other office materials. Primarily used by older people.

(emphasis mine)

Psychology Today: The Strange Link Between Pet Ownership and Cancer In Women:

Why should owning cats and birds be linked to cancer in women but not in men?

• International Journal of Environmental Health Research: Pet ownership and risk of dying from cancer: observation from a nationally representative cohort, https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2019.1577366
• Environmental Research: Pet ownership and the risk of dying from lung cancer, findings from an 18 year follow-up of a US national cohort. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2019.01.037
• Journal of Public Health: Association between pet ownership and the risk of dying from colorectal cancer: an 18-year follow-up of a national cohort. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-019-01069-1

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Weblogs Health Birds Model Building ]

The Public Domain Review: John Margolies’ Photographs of Roadside America

The architectural critic and photographer John Margolies (1940–2016), on the other hand, saw there could also be home-made beauty in the buildings and signs locals built on the American roadside. For almost forty years, he documented the most remarkable examples he found, publishing some of his discoveries in books and consigning the rest to an archive, which has now been purchased by the Library of Congress who, in a wonderfully gracious move, have lifted all copyright restrictions on the photographs (though art works shown in some photographs may still be under copyright).

[ related topics: Language Politics Books Photography Art & Culture Copyright/Trademark Architecture Woodworking ]

Aggregating Voters and the Electoral Connection: The Effect of District Representation on the Distributive Equity of the Housing Supply, Michael Hankinson, Asya Magazinnik, August 21, 2019

We find that the switch to district elections causes a 44 percent decrease in the permitting of multifamily housing. However, housing which is permitted is more likely to be affordable to low-income residents. Additionally, district elections decrease the spatial concentration of new housing by breaking the correlation between a neighborhood’s racial composition and the number of new units permitted. Not only is new housing more equitably distributed across the city, but it is less likely to be concentrated in minority neighborhoods. We close by discussing the policy implications of these findings—how to balance descriptive representation and local interests with collective outcomes in responding to the housing affordability crisis.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Conferences Gambling Real Estate Aviation - Helicopters ]

Bang Bros Bought a Huge Porn Doxing Forum PornWikiLeaks and Set Fire to It

In place of the PornWikiLeaks homepage, users see a letter from BangBros, stating that the company has taken possession "of all [PornWikiLeaks'] hard-drives full of sensitive and personal information," and included a link to a video of someone pouring flammable fluid onto a pile of hard drives and lighting it on fire.

Related: Pornhub promises to plant a tree for every 100 videos watched.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Nature and environment Pyrotechnics Community Video ]

Woot! We got two squares in Petaluma for square dancing tonight! Even with a few brand new dancers we managed to teach some new calls, the energy was awesome, and I'm excited!

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

My layover at O'Hare is longer on the way back so I can figure out what the heck this is actually about...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Today in clear and damning evidence of the commission of architecture: three guesses as to where the entrance to this building is...

[ related topics: Photography Architecture ]