Flutterby™! From 2019-10-01 to 2019-10-31

At $work, I've been getting involved in the sidelines of some issues. Summary: Central Church publishes audio of what is essentially bible snippet readings on their website along with snippets from another book, available with a nominal subscription/donation. Regional Church puts them on their phone system for people to listen to, mostly it seemsfor while they are driving down the road for the "whats a podcast/MP3? generation". Most of the regional church members subscript to the central church website and publishing company 'cause it's the thing they do. Central church is grumbling about massively increasing licensing fees and such, it's already getting $500 every three months for letting the regional church broadcast it's content. My blasphemous suggestion to the regional church association was: Why not produce/record your own?

And the argument of is it a "Church" or "Publishing Company" begins....

For me, it's just re-enforced how "Religion" becomes a cluster of people that didn't have sense to find their own way being used by others. If the purpose of the Church is to spread the word/works for the good of humankind, why is licensing/republishing so expensive? Sure, you want/need to pay for production, but I'm watching this spiral quickly. In my mind, you raise money for production and distribution and try to get it out there. Other groups wanting to share your materials are a bonus, not a licensing/revenue problem.

Just therapeutically ranting into a corner of the void. Thank You.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Books Music moron Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Currency ]

2 suspects scaled 6-foot fence to put porn on Michigan freeway billboard

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events ]

And the news goes from batshit insane to WTF bonkers: Moby Is Connected to Congress’ Investigation of Trump and Deutsche Bank

Moby apparently introduced whistleblower Val Broeksmit to Rep. Adam Schiff

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Cryptography Engineering: Looking back at the Snowden revelations, a retrospective on how software and computing expectations changed after we discovered what the NSA was really up to.

[ related topics: Privacy Weblogs Software Engineering Cryptography ]

Honkify.js:

Need a little more chaos in your life? Inspired by Untitled Goose Game, you can now set a goose loose on your site to act like a jerk.

When activated, all links on the site will stop working, instead triggering a “honk!” sound effect.

[ related topics: Games Work, productivity and environment ]

When the writers of this season introduced alligators in electrified moots moats (an idea that comes pre- mocked), or Moby introducing the Deutsche Bank whistleblower to Adam Schiff, I was willing to suspend disbelief. But when Comcast is the good guys? I'm sorry, this story line has become so ridiculous that I don't think I can continue following the show.

Comcast emerges as new Google antitrust foe

Edit: I did not have Nickelback uses the DMCA to fight for the country on my Bingo card.

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Writing Current Events ]

Modern Waste is an Economic Strategy.

Beyond disposability, present day waste practices like recycling continue the extension of profit through trash. The Container Corporation of America sponsored the creation of the recycling symbol for the first Earth Day in 1970 (Rogers 2006: 171). The American Chemistry Council, the world’s largest plastics lobby, enthusiastically testified in favor of expanding New York City’s curbside recycling program to accept rigid plastics (ACC 2010). Recycling is a far greater benefit to industry than to the environment. Recycling is an industrial process that produces waste, uses energy, requires virgin (non-recyclable) materials, and often results in down-cycling, where created products are less robust than their predecessors (McDonough and Braungart 2002: 56-60). Moreover, of the fifteen to thirty percent of recyclables that are retrieved from the US waste stream, nearly half are buried or burned due to contamination or market fluctuations that devalue recyclables over virgin materials (Rogers 2006: 176-179). Industry champions recycling because if a company has reusable bottles, for example, it has to pay for those bottles to return, but if it makes cheap disposables, municipalities pick up the bill for running them to the landfill or recycling station. The money industry saves can translate into profit because waste costs are “externalized” into the public realm (Robertson 2011). Externalization is integral to profit. Accordingly, industry spends a great deal of money, energy, and creativity making recyclables into beacons of environmentality so they continue to circulate as “green” externalities, thereby shifting responsibility to consumers and local government (Liboiron 2010). Recyclables are just disposables by another name.

Interestingly, though, cities are often dependent on revenue from their contracts with garbage collection services for street maintenance.

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Nature and environment Invention and Design Software Engineering moron Writing Current Events Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Sports Currency Pedal Power New York Bicycling Economics ]

The New Way To Hack Democracy: The Political Operatives Who Fake Voter Outrage With Millions Of Made-Up Comments. On lobbying organizations mining data breaches to submit false public comment.

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design moron ]

Doing research on an indie author (we're building work use cases). Search Amazon for author name + title. Get *5* unrelated "Sponsored" results before the one I wanted. Yikes.

[ related topics: Books Work, productivity and environment ]

Saved because holy shit does Sonoma County need this: San Diego County Offering Free, Pre-Approved Housing Plans For Granny Flats.

[ related topics: Current Events Real Estate ]

So serial surrealist Jacob Wohl held a press conference today. RT Will Sommer @willsommer:

Today’s Jacob Wohl press conference topic:

Ignoring the fact that "Elizabeth Warren, cougar?" would make an awesome yard sign, apparently he distributed some bad fan-fic apparently written by someone who'd never actually had sex before, with someone whose explanation for his injuries on Instagram didn't agree with the testimony of the press conference.

The internet exploded in hilarity. RT Louisa🌈👭 @LouisatheLast:

Imagine thinking that Liz Warren would be LESS cool if she had a BDSM affair with a 25 year old, muscular Marine

Michael Stahlke @MichaelStahlke

Seriously though. Jacob Wohl just tried to claim that a septuagenarian law professor can outfight, outfuck, and presumably outdrink our brave marines.

The media got involved: A Trump booster promised to reveal the whistleblower’s name from his front yard. The neighbors just laughed.

And then came the epic finale: RT Elizabeth Warren @ewarren:

It's always a good day to be reminded that I got where I am because a great education was available for $50 a semester at the University of Houston (go Cougars!). We need to cancel student debt and make college free for everyone who wants it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Erotic Sexual Culture tolkien Current Events Journalism and Media Net Culture Education Conferences hubris ]

The Problem With ‘Cool Pavements’: They Make People Hot. More trees and foliage and things that convert that energy to something.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Page Weight Matters. Dude working at YouTube works on project to trim page load from 1.2MB to a few hundred k and a tenth the request.

Page load times increased.

But.... they increased because a web site that was previously inaccessible to people on low-bandwidth connections now became accessible, so more people were using it.

Be careful of what you measure...

[ related topics: Weblogs broadband Work, productivity and environment ]

Been drinking a lot of carbonated water at work, realized I should probably get a carbonation system for home. On the recommendation of my coworker Barry, I just purchased:

• Kegco KC LH-542 Draft Beer Regulator, Chrome
• 5/16" Gas Line Assembly - Ball Lock
• MRbrew Carbonation Cap 304 Stainless Steel with 2 Micron Diffusion Stone and 12'' Silicone Tube(Cap with Stone)

That latter is kind of a crap shoot on two fronts: Barry's bought a couple of caps, some of which work better than others on some brands of bottles (Perrier plastic bottles are the least likely to work), and our current carbonation procedure involves chilling the water, and then shaking the hell out of it while it's under pressure. I hope that the diffusion stone makes the shaking less necessary.

At any rate, this should be a cheaper better alternative to the SodaStream.

[ related topics: Books Cool Science Work, productivity and environment Beer ]

"Why do you have an aversion to apps when for 99.44% of applications web pages work just fine, Dan?"

Egypt used Google Play in spy campaign targeting its own citizens, researchers say

The app, called IndexY, posed as a means for looking up details about phone numbers. It claimed to tap into a database of more than 160 million Arabic numbers. One of the permissions it required was access to a user’s call history and contacts. Despite the sensitivity of that data, those permissions were understandable, given the the app’s focus on phone numbers. It had about 5,000 installations before Google removed it from Play in August. Check Point doesn’t know when IndexY first became available in Play.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Databases ]

Declines in Sexual Activity and Function Predict Incident Health Problems in Older Adults: Prospective Findings from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing ( https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-1443-4 )

Conclusions The present study revealed novel associations between declines in sexual activity and function and a range of health outcomes. To varying degrees in men and women, reductions in sexual activity and desire and increases in sexual problems were associated with greater risk of cancer, CHD, stroke, and, more broadly, limiting long-standing illness and poor self-rated health. These findings have important implications for research and clinical practice. Physicians should be mindful that older adults are not asexual and that a decline in their sexual activity or desire and the onset of sexual problems may indicate ill health. The development of interventions to promote sexual health and well-being at older ages may offer considerable opportunities to reduce the burden of disease in later life.

Articles:

• The Conversation: Having sex in older age could make you happier and healthier – new research
• Indenpendent: Older people should have more sex, study shows

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health Invention and Design Current Events Television Mathematics ]

Monkeys With Smaller Testicles Scream Louder to Compensate

Evolutionary Trade-Off between Vocal Tract and Testes Dimensions in Howler Monkeys

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.029

[ related topics: Erotic ]

Saw the phrase "Could you please save the old ones for our preschool?", read it in a Lovecraftian context...

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

At Petaluma Copperfield's books for the Lin Oliver & Henry Winkler author talk for Alien Superstar.

[ related topics: Books ]

Lin Oliver, Henry Winkler, Charlene and me

[ related topics: Photography ]

I don't have a before shot, but I found it striking how much this simple sign changed the tenor of Helen Putnam Plaza

[ related topics: Photography ]

Fantastic look at the protests in Hong Kong, the kindness of strangers, and how the unrest there goes far beyond the protesters: October 1 in Hong Kong: Solidarity, resistance and the kindness of strangers

[ related topics: Hong Kong ]

Today in "department of duh": The cost of Trump’s tariffs has fallen ‘entirely’ on US businesses and households: Goldman

As Donald Trump abandons our allies the Kurds (presumably in pursuit of trying to get Biden dirt out of Erdogan), it's pretty awful to see this batshit insanity: RT Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Food Birds Economics ]

US Department of Justice: Former Yahoo Software Engineer Pleads Guilty To Using Work Access To Hack Into Yahoo Users’ Personal Accounts

In pleading guilty, Ruiz, a former Yahoo software engineer, admitted to using his access through his work at the company to hack into about 6,000 Yahoo accounts. Ruiz cracked user passwords, and accessed internal Yahoo systems to compromise the Yahoo accounts. Ruiz admitted to targeting accounts belonging to younger women, including his personal friends and work colleagues. He made copies of images and videos that he found in the personal accounts without permission, and stored the data at his home. Once he had access to the Yahoo accounts, Ruiz admitted to compromising the iCloud, Facebook, Gmail, DropBox, and other online accounts of the Yahoo users in search of more private images and videos. After his employer observed the suspicious account activity, Ruiz admitted to destroying the computer and hard drive on which he stored the images.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement ]

Among the awful of China's brutal crackdown in Hong Kong is seeing how quickly organizations that have said they can't do anything about neo-Nazis are to suppress pro-freedom speech. At least seeing all the conservatives become suddenly pro-authoritarian is validating.

[ related topics: Privacy Civil Liberties Hong Kong Government ]

Secret Court: FBI Warrantless Searches Were Illegal

Judge James Boasberg of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court found last October that elements of FBI procedures for querying the databases and then purging irrelevant results – a mechanism to protect Americans’ privacy – “inconsistent with statutory minimization requirements and the requirements of the Fourth Amendment,” which protects Americans against unreasonable searches.

[ related topics: Privacy Law Law Enforcement Databases ]

I was prepared to give the Dallas PD the benefit of the doubt, but... Dallas police name three suspects in Joshua Brown murder investigation. Joshua Brown was a witness in the prosecution of Dallas police officer Amber Guyger's murder of her neighbor Botham Jean.

The assertion is that 3 people drove 300 miles from Alexandria, Louisiana, to buy cannabis from Joshua Brown.

So, yeah: 3 dudes from the middle of Louisiana drove all the way to Dallas to buy weed? There are way way more plausible scenarios.

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Consumers sue Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, StarKist over 'dolphin-safe' tuna claims.

What's most surprising to me about this (another friend who's reading legal briefs on this has passed along) is that there are actually legit brands:

"Several tuna companies use traditional pole-and-line and trolling methods of catching tuna. These products include Safe Catch, Ocean Naturals (for its Albacore tuna), and Wild Planet, which are caught using pole-and-line and trolling, and American Tuna, Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value brand (for its skipjack and albacore tuna), and Trader Joe’s (for its yellowfin tuna), which are caught using exclusively pole-and-line."

https://www.dolphin-safe-tuna-lawsuits.com/case-information/

[ related topics: Food Bay Area Space & Astronomy Law Current Events Consumerism and advertising Birds ]

So, apparently Medium is over and it's now just all cryptocurrency shilling, all the time?

Trump defends diplomat's wife involved in car crash that killed British teenager: 'It happens'

I don't mean to emphasize the "Trump" part of this story, 'cause I frankly believe that most US Presidents would react the same way; we've normalized automobile violence.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Current Events Automobiles Marriage ]

So I can find it for future discussions: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control: Vaccination schedules for individual European countries and specific age groups

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anime...u/guess_i_will_hold_the_fuck_up/

[ related topics: Photography ]

Actual product: Amazon.com: Goskyn — Creepy Halloween Masks Latex Conch Shell Mask Party Costume for Men and Women

[ related topics: Books Photography ]

Don't point your cameras at anything you don't want the world seeing: Amazon Workers May Be Watching Your Cloud Cam Home Footage

Teams in India and Romania use video snippets sent by customers for troubleshooting purposes and to train artificial intelligence algorithms.

And, once again, "AI" means "underpaid human".

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Books Photography Current Events Machinery Trains Artificial Intelligence Video ]

SFPD officer accused of lying under oath after severely beating bicyclist in SF’s Mission

Officers celebrated with ‘high-fives’ and ‘fist-bumps’ after beating man who rode bike on sidewalk, per witness testimony — and body camera footage

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Bicycling ]

A number of people have been posting this story as indication of some sort of malfeasance by PG&E. I'm not gonna defend PG&E, but this is a failure of social services, or the medical system, not PG&E. Here in relatively dense Petaluma we had an 18 hour outage because someone missed the curve at Mountain View and Fairview (the one in the middle of https://goo.gl/maps/VVxmYsqJQ43gc5kb6 with the white rocks and the reflectors) and took out the power pole. I realize California doesn't have much in the way of thunderstorms, but they occur, and when I lived in Chattanooga we lost power regularly because of such things.

Yes, 4 or 5 days without power is a thing (although when we lived in Lagunitas, within an hour of San Francisco, that wasn't that unusual.

If you're 12 minutes of power failure away from death, in freakin' Pollock Pines California, that's not the fault of the power company.

Northern California man found dead 12 minutes after PG&E power shutoff, fire district says

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bay Area Current Events California Culture Chattanooga Pyrotechnics Maps and Mapping Race ]

If you are at all interested in the intersection of consent and sex and work and all that stuff rolled into one, this is an amazing essay: N+1 Magazine: Lorelei Lee — Cash/Consent — The war on sex work

... I remember Hall testifying to the committee that he had written this bill because someone needed to be “a voice for the voiceless,” and that person would be him. I sat beside him at a podium microphone. My coworkers stood in a long line at a microphone behind him, waiting for him to stop so we could speak.

Via Eros Blog: Making Porn And Doing Sex Work: It’s Complicated

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs History Writing Work, productivity and environment ]

Don't call the police unless you want someone killed: Woman killed in own home when Fort Worth officer shoots her, police and witness say :

Police released a statement Saturday afternoon saying officers responded at 2:25 a.m. to a report the front door of a home was open in the 1200 block of East Allen Avenue. James Smith, who called a non-emergency police number, said he saw the doors were open and the lights were on, which struck him as unusual. He knew Jefferson, his neighbor, was home with her 8-year-old nephew.

Apparently they shot her through the window.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Current Events Law Enforcement Maps and Mapping Aviation - Helicopters Woodworking ]

Car Pollution In Boston Area Neighborhoods Poses Health Risk To Residents, New Research Finds

Levy's research also found minorities in Massachusetts are breathing in more of this stuff than white people because of living in communities with greater exposure. And those with lower educational attainment have more exposure than more educated people. Massachusetts is currently working with eight other states to develop a policy for reducing the region's transportation emissions.

[ related topics: Health Invention and Design Current Events Work, productivity and environment Automobiles Community Race ]

Oh geez: ABC News apparently aired some video from the "Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot" as video of Syria attacks

Source video: Knob Creek Machine gun shoot. 2017, Merica (YouTube video)

I guess what bothers me most about this is that a Google news search for "abc news all out military assault kurdish civilians" is bringing up a whole bunch of "404" or "this video has been marked private" results; rather than taking responsibility and posting corrections on those search results, it's just "memory hole, this didn't exist".

I hope ABC posts a full post-mortem of how this happened.

[ related topics: Movies Nature and environment Current Events Guns Video ]

Whoops

[ related topics: Movies Nature and environment Current Events Guns Video ]

https://copperbadge.tumblr.com...pidgeling-copperbadge-ive-coined

[ related topics: Politics Humor Invention and Design moron Space & Astronomy California Culture Philosophy Economics ]

Washington Post — The Volokh Conspiracy — Remembering the biggest mass murder in the history of the world:

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust. But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.

[ related topics: Religion Current Events Conspiracy Architecture Dictators Government ]

Remember the FBI's promise it wasn’t abusing the NSA’s data on US citizens? Well, guess what…

The FBI routinely misused a database, gathered by the NSA with the specific purpose of searching for foreign intelligence threats, by searching it for everything from vetting to spying on relatives.

Via Violet Blue

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Databases ]

That dark cloud spreading northward is apparently burning storage tanks at the refinery in Crockett

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay...ckett-refinery-caught-on-camera/

[ related topics: Photography ]

US DOJ: South Korean National and Hundreds of Others Charged Worldwide in the Takedown of the Largest Darknet Child Pornography Website, Which was Funded by Bitcoin:

“Through the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions, IRS-CI special agents were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, identify the administrator of the website and ultimately track down the website server’s physical location in South Korea,” said IRS-CI Chief Don Fort. “This largescale criminal enterprise that endangered the safety of children around the world is no more. Regardless of the illicit scheme, and whether the proceeds are virtual or tangible, we will continue to work with our federal and international partners to track down these disgusting organizations and bring them to justice.”

I suppose the best thing about Bitcoin and blockchain based crypto currencies is the immutable public record of every transaction...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Cryptography ]

Live fast, think hard, die young. At least in mice. Excessive brain activity linked to a shorter life

Researchers at Harvard Medical School analyzed brain tissue donated to human brain banks by people ranging in age from their 60s and 70s to centenarians who lived to be 100 or older. They found that people who died before their mid-80s had lower levels in their brains of a protein called REST that tamps down genes involved in sparking brain activity, compared to the very oldest people. REST had already been shown to be protective against Alzheimer’s disease. But they weren’t sure whether REST somehow protected people from death or was just a sign of further aging.

Harvard Medical School press release: In a first, scientists pinpoint neural activity's role in human longevity

The study, published Oct. 16 in Nature, is based on findings from human brains, mice and worms and suggests that excessive activity in the brain is linked to shorter life spans, while suppressing such overactivity extends life.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health Nature and environment Bioinformatics Theater & Plays Skating ]

Yay! Figured out how to remove Siri from the Touchbar (System Preferences -> Extensions -> Touch Bar -> Customize Control Strip ...).

Saving this off so I can pass it along to Charlene and Jim: CALLERLAB document on how North Shore Squares and caller Bruce Holmes brought a square dance club from zero to 50 members. Some take-aways from the how-to story:

• No crinolines!
• SSD 50
• Non square dance music (he specifically mentions EDM)
• Some good flyer content on what square dancing is

[ related topics: Music Gambling ]

Pew Research Center: In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

[ related topics: Religion ]

A Metafilter entry about Lizzo's impact on flute sales by way of the @sashabefluting Instagram account included Lizzo playing jazz flute and Lizzo's NPR Tiny Desk concert.

But really this is all just an excuse to link to the: Lizzo — Truth Hurts literal MSPaint video

[ related topics: Music Movies Video ]

Fred Clark — False witnesses. Fascinating theory about the "satanic panic" and P&G and the spread of unbelievable falsehoods, and how these things are about group identity.

[ related topics: Douglas Adams ]

It's not a competition, some cookies or brownies for the dessert auction would be fine... #itsacompetition

[ related topics: Photography ]

Another shot of the chocolate cups. We're gonna fill them with a Meyer lemon custard, garnish with raspberries, and see what we can do with some pineapple sage...

[ related topics: Photography Chocolate ]

You'd bid on this, right?

[ related topics: Photography ]

Twilight

[ related topics: Photography ]

This Awful Tabloid Predicts a Killer Asteroid Almost Every Day — Is this the worst science journalism on the internet?

On October 4, 2019, writers at the British tabloid The Daily Express published five separate articles about what they claimed were killer asteroids careening toward the Earth.

At the Express, this seems fairly typical. It’s rare for a day to go by without the newspaper warning, or heavily implying, that a deadly space rock is about to annihilate civilization. Between September 7 and October 8, for instance, we counted 87 Express articles about killer asteroids — which works out to an average of nearly three doomsday space posts per day.

Poe's Law suggests that it's not, in fact the worst science journalism on the Internet, buuuut...

[ related topics: Religion Space & Astronomy Astronomy Writing Current Events Journalism and Media Net Culture Conspiracy ]

Dr. Kate Lister, whom you may know as "Whores of Yore": Sex, investigated: We are only just starting to realise how important sex is to older people — Horny young people will likely grow up to be horny old people, yet sex in senior years remains taboo

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

This is awesome. You remember the story of the guy with the "NULL" license plate? Well, there's a testing company whose name is Test Company Please Ignore, and bugs get filed against their name as a placeholder

Michael Lewis: Portrait of an Inessential Government Worker

During the shutdown I’d stumbled upon a very long list of federal workers who had been nominated for an obscure public-service award called the Sammies. Virtually all the people on the list had been laid off without pay and more or less told by their society that their work was not all that important. I wondered what it felt like to be at once up for an award for one’s work, and required by law not to do it. The list was in alphabetical order. At the top was Arthur A. Allen.

Arthur A. Allen was an oceanographer focused on search and rescue. Fascinating read.

Via MeFi

[ related topics: moron Work, productivity and environment ]

What's the change in PG&E off-peak hours gonna do to the solar leasing companies?

[ related topics: Photovoltaics ]

Ugh. Somewhere in the flurry of Catalina updates, Gimp (and, from the bug reports, a bunch of other apps) can no longer read directories. It's lucky I don't use the Mac for anything but software development and Logic Pro.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Macintosh ]

The WeWork think demonstrates that we h have a class of investors that thinks that low margin businesses just need cocaine, tequila shots, and private jets to be successful, and an economic system that rewards that view.

[ related topics: Drugs Economics ]

U.S.'s Biggest Christian Charity Reportedly Channeled $56.1 Million to Purported Hate Groups

The nation's eighth-largest nonprofit donated $56.1 million to a series of organizations identified as hate groups from 2015 to 2017, according to a report from Sludge.

National Christian Foundation, which identifies itself as the largest Christian grant maker and one of the largest donor-advised funds in the nation, has served as a vehicle for individuals trying to anonymously send money.

I don't know why particularly to trust Sludge magazine, here's the Kickstarter campaign, I don't know more about them.

[ related topics: Religion Journalism and Media Currency ]

Evolution of the scrollbar. For those keeping track at home, it's been 38 years since 1981, so 25 doublings by Moore's Law, and this is the result...

There were empty seats at Cinnabar's production of Luna Gale this evening. That's a powerful show. Y'all in the Petaluma area should make sure that doesn't happen for any of their remaining shows.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Television ]

Sprouts sign advertising "plant based meat", and I'm thinking that we don't eat that many carnivores...

[ related topics: Food Consumerism and advertising ]

Greta is trying to pretend that she's not harassing Bagheera

[ related topics: Photography ]

Holy shit. I don't think those fire lines are current, based on the Sheriff Nixle alerts. 101 is closed from Santa Rosa north to Cloverdale. That evacuation area...

[ related topics: Photography Pyrotechnics ]

How do you reduce an entire hardware store staff to helpless giggles? Ask about batteries. Or flashlights. Extension cord ends are good to have in the emergency kit, and we're learning by sound volume which neighbors sprung for the Honda generators, and who went cheap.

[ related topics: Education ]

Dang. And, yes, a lot of wind here.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Getting corroded flashlights working has become a game.

[ related topics: Photography Games Work, productivity and environment ]

The Global Legacy of Quebec’s Subsidized Child Daycare

Early estimates anticipated the program would generate 40 percent of its costs via increased income taxes from working parents. Instead, it generated income taxes to cover more than 100 percent of the cost. “In other words, it costs zero, or the cost is negative,” Fortin said. “The governments are making money out of the program.”

[ related topics: Politics Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Currency Government ]

Autism spectrum disorder risk linked to insufficient placental steroid

CHICAGO-A study in experimental models suggests that allopregnanolone, one of many hormones produced by the placenta during pregnancy, is so essential to normal fetal brain development that when provision of that hormone decreases or stops abruptly - as occurs with premature birth - offspring are more likely to develop autism-like behaviors. A Children's National Hospital research team reports the findings Oct. 20, 2019, at the Neuroscience 2019 annual meeting.

"To our knowledge, no other research team has studied how placental allopregnanolone (ALLO) contributes to brain development and long-term behaviors," says Claire-Marie Vacher, Ph.D., lead author. "Our study finds that targeted loss of ALLO in the womb leads to long-term structural alterations of the cerebellum - a brain region that is essential for motor coordination, balance and social cognition - and increases the risk of developing autism," Vacher says.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

hacker:HUNTER - Wannacry: The Marcus Hutchins Story - All 3 Chapters (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

After resigning, Rep. Katie Hill vows to battle revenge porn, which critics blame for her downfall. Surprise move from Republican Florida rep Matt Gaetz:

But fewer lawmakers have outwardly addressed the problem of revenge porn, or nonconsensual pornography. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was a notable exception. Last week, Gaetz called the House ethics investigation “absurd,” questioning, “Who among us would look perfect if every ex leaked every photo/text?” He suggested that the real reason Hill was being investigated “is because she is different.” Hill is also one of the first openly bisexual members of Congress.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Ethics Real Estate ]

Charlene was talking to the cat, but if "could you not put your claws in me?" isn't a Santana lyric, it should be.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

NPR author interview with Lance Dodes, author of The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry

[ related topics: Health ]

Kids Raised in Walkable Cities Earn More Money As Adults

That’s the key finding from a new study published in the American Psychologist. The study, “The Socioecological Psychology of Upward Social Mobility,” by psychologists at Columbia University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, looks at the effect of growing up in a walkable community on the economic mobility of children. The walkability measure comes from Walk Score. The economic mobility measure is based on the detailed data developed by economist Raj Chetty and his research team. Their data cover more than 9 million Americans born between 1980 and 1982 and gauges the probability that children from households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution will reach the top fifth by age 30.

Not really news, we've known for quite a while that economic opportunity derives from urban lifestyles.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Invention and Design Community Currency Education Economics ]

New Robot Makes Soldiers Obsolete (Bosstown Dynamics) (YouTube video)

I LOLed.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Invention and Design Video ]

Mike Pence used his private email for official business, and was hacked

INDIANAPOLIS — Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Vehicle crash data for every street in Ohio now mapped on the web .

Ohio State Highway Patrol interactive map

Via ResearchBuzz

Blast from Waukee gender reveal felt over 2 miles away.

... "I looked at my neighbor's yard. Everyone behind me looked like they were intact.

Circumcision commentary?

In further news: Grandmother killed by inadvertently made 'pipe bomb' at gender-reveal party: Sheriff

RT lilith @bampersandand: �

It's just not fair, a cis walks up with a blurry ultrasound of a dick & they've got free rein to blow as much shit up as they want, but I struggle for 27 years to work out my gender & still don't have a single explosion to show for it.

RT Evil Midweek Cutie @EccentricFlower

When I occasionally make remarks about how gender should be weaponized this is not what I have in mind

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

"Dream Bone"? "Furry"? They have to know, right?

[ related topics: Photography ]

A Moderate-Fat Diet with One Avocado per Day Increases Plasma Antioxidants and Decreases the Oxidation of Small, Dense LDL in Adults with Overweight and Obesity: A Randomized Controlled Trial, The Journal of Nutrition, nxz231, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/nxz231

The Twitter thread that deconstructs how remarkably unimpressive the results are, and points out that it was funded by the Hass Avocado Board

[ related topics: Health California Culture ]

Missouri’s spreadsheet on women’s menstrual cycles is totally normal. In dystopia

As you’ve probably heard, the Missouri state health director, Dr. Randall Williams, testified this week at a hearing on revoking the license of the state’s last Planned Parenthood clinic that his department kept a spreadsheet on the menstrual periods of women who were patients there. This was to help the health department identify those who’d had complicated abortions. Put another way, it was to help them find something, anything, to justify closing the St. Louis facility.

[ related topics: Health ]

Nature: New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding

SRTM models the elevation of upper surfaces and not bare earth terrain. It thus suffers from large error with a positive bias when used to represent terrain elevations. This is especially true in densely vegetated and in densely populated areas ...

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design ]