Flutterby™! From 2020-02-01 to 2020-02-29

Unless something unlikely happens in the next few days in the Senate, I think we can completely give up the sham that we are living in even a sham of a Democracy.

Maybe a shame of Democracy?

If I meet Lamar Alexander or Marsha Blackburn (Senators from Tennessee) in public... Will any of you visit it me in jail before I'm executed?

Yeah, that's a dark thing to say, and I hope I'm not seriously that far gone, but I lost a lot of faith in humanity and the USA today.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics moron Chattanooga ]

California doesn't have the cheap real estate to support used book stores. I'm in Ohio, and am kind of shocked to see how many SF authors I associate with the '80s overall the shelves.

[ related topics: Books Bay Area California Culture Real Estate ]

The disruption to civilized society cannot be understated

[ related topics: Photography ]

The musket distinguishes between the types of tzedakah, the Colt treats everyone equally

[ related topics: Photography ]

I'd like to think we value children a little more than that...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography ]

Here's the Medical Marijuana Ad CBS Banned From Super Bowl Broadcast

[ related topics: Drugs Sports ]

As a 28-Year-Old Latino, I’m Shocked My New Novel, Memoirs of a Middle-Aged White Lady, Has Been So Poorly Received by Carlos Greaves

[ related topics: Invention and Design Race ]

Economic Incentives Surrounding Fertility: Evidence from Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend

Starting in 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend allows each full-time resident in Alaska, including infants born in the qualifying year, to receive a sizable dividend. This dividend, which represents a form of a Universal Basic Income on a small scale, could alter incentives surrounding fertility. Using synthetic control and difference-in-differences models to account for confounding factors and unobserved heterogeneity, we model the effect of income on fertility by exploiting this income shock around 1982 using Natality files from Vital Statistics and abortion data from the Centers for Disease Control, merged with data from the Census on various state characteristics. Primary results suggest that the dividend increased fertility and reduced the spacing between births, particularly for females in the 20-44 year age group. Our results suggest that policies aimed at increasing income should consider fertility consequences and their implications for economic growth.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Mathematics Economics Alaska ]

Bitcoin’s Network Operations Are Controlled by Five Companies. Five mining entities control 49.9% of the computing power on the network.

The five mining entities -- AntPool, BTC.com, BTC.top, F2 Pool and ViaBTC -- are available via BitDeer, which lets consumers rent mining power without buying or setting up crypto mining hardware. BitDeer acts effectively as the connective tissue between the five mining pools, each of which allows individual miners to pull their resources and to share the freshly minted Bitcoins that serve as rewards. Problem is, a miner with more than 50% of hash power can potentially wreck havoc on the network, raising the likelihood of double-counted coins, stopped payments and stalled transactions.”

[ related topics: broadband Current Events Consumerism and advertising Cryptography Currency Databases ]

Bitcoin’s Network Operations Are Controlled by Five Companies. Five mining entities control 49.9% of the computing power on the network.

The five mining entities -- AntPool, BTC.com, BTC.top, F2 Pool and ViaBTC -- are available via BitDeer, which lets consumers rent mining power without buying or setting up crypto mining hardware. BitDeer acts effectively as the connective tissue between the five mining pools, each of which allows individual miners to pull their resources and to share the freshly minted Bitcoins that serve as rewards. Problem is, a miner with more than 50% of hash power can potentially wreck havoc on the network, raising the likelihood of double-counted coins, stopped payments and stalled transactions.”

[ related topics: broadband Current Events Consumerism and advertising Cryptography Currency Databases ]

Genealogy discussion this weekend had my wondering about all the people with the last name "Lyke" of African ancestry. I figured former Dutch colonies, someone pointed out the obvious, that often slaves ended up with the last names of their masters. Haven't found that branch yet

[ related topics: Community Race ]

Big-O tires sending us an oil change reminder for the i3...

Effects of sexual arousal on lymphocyte subset circulation and cytokine production in man.

RESULTS: The results confirmed transient increases in adrenaline and prolactin plasma concentrations. Sexual arousal and orgasm increased the absolute number of leukocytes, in particular natural killer cells (CD3-CD16+CD56+), in the peripheral blood. In contrast, T cell (CD3+) and B cell (CD3-CD20+) subpopulations as well as the production of interleukin 6 and tumor necrosins factor alpha remained unaffected by sexual activity.

CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that components of the innate immune system are activated by sexual arousal and orgasm.

By way of Big Think: Is masturbation the new cold & flu medicine?

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health Invention and Design Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment ]

CBP Lied About Iranian-American Detentions, Leaked Memo Suggests

Last Thursday, a local Washington paper published a leaked CBP directive, which appears to have originated with CBP’s Seattle Field Office. Sure enough, the directive instructs officers to target and detain travelers based on their national origin and to interrogate them about their religious background and beliefs.

[ related topics: Religion Current Events Civil Liberties Seattle ]

Violet Blue: Phishing scams leveled up, and we didn’t

The thing is, as I'm reading through this, it's pretty clear that the difference between a malicious actor and "hey, this thing you expressed interest in is on sale" is not at all a clear cut line. It's a big ol' grey fuzzy world out there when it comes to things that are vying for our attention and trying to get us to do things we don't necessarily want to...

[ related topics: Movies ]

Fantastic thread on the history of black people, slavery, and rights, in the United States": RT michaelharriot @michaelharriot

One of the most popular misconceptions about black history is that over time, America has gradually become less racist and more tolerant.

That is not true.

Since y'all want a BHM thread, here's a thread about the evolution of racism in America.

Threadreader unroll

[ related topics: Civil Liberties Race ]

For later listening and reading: Metafilter: The Automotive Police State, on how the rise of the automobile assisted the modern police state, and how we might work towards fairer systems of traffic enforcement that don't depend on so much subjective policing.

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

Bosch Gets Smartglasses Right With Tiny Eyeball Lasers, painting the picture straight on to your retina.

Video which I haven't yet watched.

[ related topics: Movies Consumerism and advertising Video ]

Clickbait works in journal article titles, and men use it: Male authors boost research impact through self-hyping studies

A language analysis of titles and abstracts in more than 100,000 scientific articles found that papers with first and last authors who were both women were about 12% less likely than male-authored papers to include sensationalistic terms such as ‘unprecedented’, ‘novel’, ‘excellent’ or ‘remarkable’. The study, published in The BMJ, also found that papers missing such words garnered significantly fewer citations.

Paper in the BMJ is Exley, C. L. & Kessler, J. B. NBER working paper 26345 (2019).

[ related topics: Nature and environment Work, productivity and environment ]

Quick acquittal: How Mitch McConnell orchestrated the end to Trump's impeachment trial in 15 days

"Out of 100 senators, zero believe you on the argument there is no quid pro quo," Cruz said he told the defense counsel. "Stop making it."

[ related topics: Politics ]

Saved off so I can try it: Oven Fries — CRISPIER Than Deep-Fried (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Typo of the moment: `git heckout`

Oh, look, we found the massive welfare fraud: Former welfare agency head, others arrested for embezzling millions intended for poor Mississippians.

Special agents arrested John Davis, the former Human Services director, along with his employee, Latimer Smith.

Nancy New, Zach New, Anne McGrew — all officials from the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center — as well as retired professional wrestler Brett DiBiase were also arrested in connection with the scheme uncovered during an eight-month investigation. Indictments include charges of fraud and embezzlement.

“The funds that were illegally obtained in this case were intended to help the poorest among us. The funds were instead taken by a group of influential people for their own benefit, and the scheme is massive. It ends today,” said State Auditor Shad White.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Work, productivity and environment Community Education Race ]

Details of how the grift is occurring: What President Trump’s company charges the Secret Service

[ related topics: Politics Graphics ]

Well, I guess we're not headed for a Mad Max world after all: University of Sydney: Should Australia ban petrol cars?

[ related topics: Current Events Education ]

how the CIA and the BND used Crypto AG encryption devices to spy.

From 1970 on, the CIA and its code-breaking sibling, the National Security Agency, controlled nearly every aspect of Crypto’s operations — presiding with their German partners over hiring decisions, designing its technology, sabotaging its algorithms and directing its sales targets.

Then, the U.S. and West German spies sat back and listened.

[ related topics: Graphics Cryptography ]

And in today's double-face-palm news, "hey, people are kinda over cryptocurrencies, but what if we crossed them with mesh radio networking?" Did nobody read the Gupta paper on the scalability of mesh networks? https://ccs.getmonero.org/proposals/randybrito-locha-mesh.html

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events ]

More Than 20 ‘Ghost Kitchens’ Are Operating Out Of This Dump In South Of Market.

A reader sent us this photo of a ghost kitchen in the Mission, where six ‘delivery-only’ kitchens are operating out of one location. The New York Times described another ghost kitchen at the old Discolandia location on 24th Street, funded by Uber Eats, a venture that TechCrunch describes as “essentially WeWork for restaurant kitchens.” (so you know that’s gonna end well). Last week the Chronicle found a ghost kitchen operating several restaurants out of “a long white trailer occupying four parking spots” beneath a highway overpass. When you order food on GrubHub or Uber Eats, you may not realize that you are not ordering from a real established restaurant, but from a warehouse, and with a business name and listing that is more or less catfishing you with fake photos on their interior or offerings.

Sometimes these ghost kitchens completely steal an established restaurant’s identity to market themselves as the real thing. SFist recently discovered a fake version of Michelin-starred Kin Khao listed on both GrubHub and Seamless.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Food Bay Area Work, productivity and environment New York Race Gambling Economics ]

Unlimited capacity in wireless networks with massive MIMO

MIMO is an acronym for "Multiple Input, Multiple Output" and the technology involves connecting hundreds of small antennas, each with a power of around 10 mW, either in something that can resemble a large computer monitor or distributed across the façade of a building.

All the antennas send a few tens of signals with carefully determined delays. The delays are chosen so that the copies of a signal arrive at the intended receivers at exactly the same instant, but at slightly different times at all other receivers. This gives a strong signal at the intended receiver and only a slight disturbance at all the others. Pilot contamination arises when the delays are to be estimated using signals known as "pilots."

[ related topics: Wireless ]

Justine Haupt - Rotary Cell Phone. A cool device, but/and also a reminder of different use cases for phones. Voice calls are about the lowest priority on my current list of what a phone can do, but it's clearly what she designed for.

[ related topics: Wireless ]

Ohio medical board committee says Browns, Bengals fandom not enough for medical marijuana

According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, the panel that met in Columbus turned down several petitions regarding conditions that could help Ohio residents take advantage of a 2016 law that allowed them to buy marijuana medicinally.

In December, being a "Browns/Bengals fan" was among the multiple petitions filed, according to the newspaper. In three of the past four years, one of those two franchises has been the worst in the NFL. The fandom was rejected among other petitions that lacked the required support to continue with the process.

[ related topics: Drugs History Current Events Journalism and Media Sports ]

LSD Overdoses: Three Case Reports Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 81(1), 115–118 (2020).

The first case report documents significant improvements in mood symptoms, including reductions in mania with psychotic features, following an accidental lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) overdose, changes that have been sustained for almost 20 years. The second case documents how an accidental overdose of LSD early in the first trimester of pregnancy did not negatively affect the course of the pregnancy or have any obvious teratogenic or other negative developmental effects on the child. The third report indicates that intranasal ingestion of 550 times the normal recreational dosage of LSD was not fatal and had positive effects on pain levels and subsequent morphine withdrawal.

Oh, look, the side-effects of overdosing on LSD are either neutral or positive.

But, please, tell me again how we're overprescribing opiods and hallucinogens are still illegal.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Law ]

‘Old-boy-style racism’ by small-town cops leads to $600,000 payout to Portland man

“This case vividly illustrates a ready willingness on the part of the West Linn police to abuse the enormous power they have been given, and a casual, jocular, old-boy-style racism of the kind that we Oregonians tend to want to associate with the Deep South rather than our own institutions,” Buchanan said.

That settlement isn't enough, and isn't coming from the right people.

[ related topics: Law Law Enforcement Race ]

Tara Calishain, of Research Buzz fame, forwarded me this: How to 3D Print Something That Convincingly Looks Like Wood, Using Simple Hand Techniques which is basically a click-baity republishing of Justine Haupt's 3d printed concertina, which she gave a wood look to by way of filler and 60 grit sandpaper.

Previously, you saw Justine Haupt's rotary cell phone.

[ related topics: Wireless Graphics Woodworking ]

Because Charlene is doing some writing about bullying, and this is an easy way to send this article to her: Trump’s words, bullied kids, scarred schools — The president’s rhetoric has changed the way hundreds of children are harassed in American classrooms, The Post found

[ related topics: Children and growing up Writing Graphics ]

A few notes on a mis-spent Sunday afternoon with a piece of cherry scrap: https://www.flutterby.net/2020-02-17_Carving

We have given up any pretense of the rule of law: Trump Commutes Sentence Of Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich

Dear composer of the grocery store easy listening jazz version of Ma Cherie Amour: who hurt you?

This is a really good musing on the concept and motivations of software development: An app can be a home-cooked meal

[ related topics: Food Software Engineering ]

@property (nomatomic, strong) Food *lunch;

[ related topics: Food ]

Traumatic flashbacks: too many consecutive hours of my life were spent working on this product, including optimizing the Windows codecs. Pretty sure that I knew more about how QuickTime for Windows worked than anybody at Apple. Game Play: Toy Story Animated StoryBook (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Pixar Apple Computer Games Animation Microsoft Movies Work, productivity and environment Video ]

US Department of Defense: DIB Guide: Detecting Agile BS

Agile is a buzzword of software development, and so all DoD software development projects are, almost by default, now declared to be “agile.” The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to DoD program executives and acquisition professionals on how to detect software projects that are really using agile development versus those that are simply waterfall or spiral development in agile clothing (“agile-scrum-fall”).

Looks like the final version, and other papers, are at Defense Innovation Board — Software Acquisition and Practices (SWAP) Study

[ related topics: Software Engineering Journalism and Media Douglas Adams Clothing ]

Josh Turner Guitar - ABBA Mama Mia cover

[ related topics: Music Movies ]

A Major Study That Fueled National Vape Panic Has Been Retracted

The paper, published by the American Heart Association's scientific journal, claimed that vaping could lead to a heart attack.

Journal of the American Heart Association: Retraction to: Electronic Cigarette Use and Myocardial Infarction Among Adults in the US Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health

[ related topics: Health Douglas Adams ]

Over on Facebook, I asked a question:

Can anyone recommend a good reputable history of the American South?

I was recently in a Facebook discussion where someone tossed in the number that a census showed that only 5.6% of White Southern households owned slaves. I did a little Googling and discovered that, yeah, maybe, but if you consider that there were on average 5 or more people per household, that number was really closer to 1 in 4 households owning slaves. But nobody's really exactly sure.

And I've seen claims that the Antebellum South had some huge income disparities, and some that, in fact, if you where white but didn't own slaves yourself you were still renting them from neighbors.

And then I'm listening to the awesome Dolly Parton's America podcast, and hearing some of the discussion of the history of labor organizing in the period between the Civil War and WWII, and I'm realizing that there are a whole lot of myths I've absorbed through various sources, some of which come from having lived in Tennessee for nearly a decade, that I don't know how to trust.

And of course there's the whole running the Cherokee off the land that I only know a little bit about....

Joe Thompson came up with General Tables Derived From The First And Subsequent Censuses 1790-1900, if you scroll down to around page 88 (of the PDF, not the original doc) you see some fascinating numbers. Like while Pennsylvania had an average of 5 slaves per 100 families/households, and that of those households with slaves, the average was 2.6 slaves per household, North and South Carolina had 191 and 418 slaves per family/household, but with an average per-slave-owning-family of 6.1 and 12.1, both had around a third holding slaves.

[ related topics: Language Interactive Drama Books History Sociology Chattanooga Sports Pop Culture Community Race Real Estate Furniture ]

Charlene and I just got back from seeing Parasite. It was an incredibly crafted film that left us both asking "what was that about?".

This look, with lots of spoilers, helps give the background necessary to see why the second half of the film went the way it did.

Reading Colonialism in "Parasite"

Via MeFi

The problems go way beyond a broken software engineering culture: Boeing Finds Fuel-Tank Debris in Two-Thirds of 737 MAX Jets Inspected So Far

The inspections have raised red flags, some of the officials said, because Boeing's commercial-airplane unit traditionally has been recognized as a leader in devising systems to combat such production lapses. All tools used inside aircraft are supposed to be logged and tagged, with employees double-checking each other to verify each piece of equipment is removed. The Boeing spokesman said the company has ramped up such checks to prevent future problems.

Trying to solve cultural problems with procedures...

[ related topics: Aviation Software Engineering Theater & Plays Sociology Current Events Work, productivity and environment California Culture Economics ]

"He escaped" she whispered. - I'm helping a young woman, under 18 is my guess. try to recover data from a broken mirror set on a Unix server. She's got serious skills, very fast reader with excellent technical comprehension. Mostly a self taught perl programmer and now system admin of a web dev/application hosting "Family Business". The laptop she's syadmining from turns out to be her older brothers.. she's learning his role. I asked if he went off to school.. Loudly she said: he got married and moved to ___.. "He escaped" she whispered.

Her and her 2 sisters are all dressed alike. Same blue smock long dresses, long hair.. long sleeves.. hats and shoes differ. There is less religious art and tchotchke in my wife's church than their office environs.

I may go back to help her more. I hope I don't need to. She's been invited to join Chugalug and 2 other local developer groups. I hope she's allowed to attend. As impressed as I am with what she knows, I think its all self taught without much external influence.

I escaped.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Interactive Drama Perl Open Source Software Engineering Sociology Art & Culture Shoes Education Marriage hubris ]

Just enjoyed Cal Performances presentation of Cirque �loize Hotel. Now down to Palo Alto for a square dance at El Camino Reelers.

[ related topics: Travel ]

Accessibility...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Never have I seen a Facebook ad that's so "reserve your place in the guillotine line today!" Like worshiping Cthulhu, only for the upcoming overthrow of the oligarchy.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Oh, well played, J.M. Smucker Company, well played: Jif settles the great debate with a GIF peanut butter jar

$50k is not enough: Settlement Reached in Case of Cops Who Took Camera From Protester

On September 11, 2015, Picard was protesting near a police DUI checkpoint in West Hartford. One of the defendants, John Barone, approached him under the pretext of public complaints and confiscated Picard’s camera and lawfully carried pistol. Unbeknownst to the troopers, the camera was recording when Barone brought it to where co-defendants Patrick Torneo and John Jacobi were talking.

And, of course, the cops were talking about pretexts on which they could arrest Picard.

[ related topics: Photography Star Trek Law Law Enforcement ]

Shadow writes:

Well, that's a different take on a sofa bed...

https://i.imgur.com/W7hPUJ8.gifv

Super cool fold up from a sofa into a bunkbed.

[ related topics: Bay Area Furniture ]

Coronavirus-infected Americans flown home against CDC’s advice

In Washington, where it was still Sunday afternoon, a fierce debate broke out: The State Department and a top Trump administration health official wanted to forge ahead. The infected passengers had no symptoms and could be segregated on the plane in a plastic-lined enclosure. But officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disagreed, contending they could still spread the virus. The CDC believed the 14 should not be flown back with uninfected passengers.

[ related topics: Cool Science Health virus Invention and Design Skating Woodworking ]

Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain on Internet Archive.

To determine the finite nature of melodies, Riehl and Rubin developed an algorithm that recorded every possible 8-note, 12-beat melody combo. This used the same basic tactic some hackers use to guess passwords: Churning through every possible combination of notes until none remained. Riehl says this algorithm works at a rate of 300,000 melodies per second.</blcokquote>

Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin generated and saved every possible melody to a hard drive, then turned it back around to the commons.

AllTheMusic.info and datasets on Archive.org

[ related topics: Nature and environment Net Culture ]

⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️🅱️🅰️ RIP: Konami Code Creator Kazuhisa Hashimoto Dies

A Key FBI Photo Analysis Method Has Serious Flaws, Study Says

After ProPublica’s reporting last year, scientists at UC Berkeley tested one of the FBI Lab’s photo analysis techniques, identifying bluejeans by the pattern on their seams, and found flaws that challenge the method’s reliability.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Law Enforcement ]

California dam failure inundation maps

[ related topics: California Culture Maps and Mapping ]

Tara of https://researchbuzz.me sent this one along: Clever Browser Tool Erases People From Live Webcam Feeds in Real Time

An extra post-it note is all you really need to prevent someone from spying on you through a laptop’s built-in webcam. But Jason Mayes apparently likes to do things the hard way: He’s developed an AI-powered tool for browsers that can erase people from live webcam feeds in real-time but leave everything else in the shot.

Code at https://github.com/jasonmayes/Real-Time-Person-Removal

[ related topics: Movies Software Engineering Theater & Plays Artificial Intelligence ]

Mike Weaver brought this interesting Lady Gaga/Durex crossover promotion

Predatory Songbirds: the case of the murderous tits

A few months ago, I saw a photo of a European songbird, the great tit (Parus major), proudly standing over a dead vole, surrounded by snow on twitter. I was astonished to learn that it had killed this vole — I had thought that Great Tits typically eat seeds and small invertebrates. The observer described how the bird had only eaten the vole’s brain and left the rest for other scavengers. Apparently, this type of behavior is not so surprising, or even unusual, for this species.

[ related topics: Photography Food Law Birds Woodworking ]

Hey Apple, WTF is "Backup and Sync" and why is it taking 260% of my CPU?

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

So yesterday I saw a post, forwarded around as a picture (which you can see here), that includes the phrase "The vaccine contained replicating, DIGITIZED (controllable) RNA which were activated by 60GHz mm 5G waves that were just turned on in Wuhan". After wondering WTF units a "Hz mm" could possibly be measuring (I mean, frequency is cycles/time, so is this "cycles / (time * distance)" or "(cycles / time) * distance"?), I tried Googling subportions of the phrase, and found the spread from an apparently now disabled, or name changed, Instagram account, to various WordPress sites, to a Reddit subgroup...

And today I'm seeing that Facebook is fact-checking The Onion:

The Onion: WWE Staff Forced To Shoot Aggressive Wrestler After Child Climbs Into Steel Cage

A few days ago another FB friend posted a ludicrous article claiming CBS47 Investigation: Gov. Newsom redirects gas tax money to fund railway systems, not highways. Which is a "uh, yeah, right, CalTrans budget is $17B, California gas tax revenues are $6.5B, how would that work?" moment (Not to mention that given the huge subsidies of the automobile, we should be viewing state spending as on mobility, but that's a deeper nuance).

Which, I guess, is the long way of saying "holy shit, the Internet is revealing that there's apparently a huge amount of energy being put into spreading misinformation, and our education system is apparently really bad at teaching basic critical thinking.

And Facebook is really bad at figuring out what needs to be tagged as "false information".

[ related topics: Politics Photography Cool Science Food Current Events Work, productivity and environment California Culture Net Culture Automobiles Currency Education Handicaps & Disabilities Public Transportation Woodworking ]

Why the GOV.UK Design System team changed the input type for numbers

However, we recently moved away from <input type=”number”> to <input type=”text” inputmode=”numeric” pattern="[0-9]*"> and published new guidance on how to ask users for numbers.

[ related topics: Weblogs Invention and Design Graphic Design ]

Jewish Vote: How to Dunk on Bloomberg Without Being Antisemitic

[ related topics: Religion ]

Two movies recently that have snuck up on me. We watched "Parasite", came home and read a bunch of stuff on the movie from a Korean perspective, and said "oh, that's what that was about". Which was fine, but last night we watched "Last Black Man in San Francisco". What a gorgeous movie. Even as I was trying to figure out what the film was about, I was rapt by the love letter to the city, and the delicate exploration of the contrast of what SF was when I moved here in the 90s vs what it is now (and what it was in the 1890s vs what it is now).

It's about the lies we tell ourselves about our heritage, and how we put our love into a place that's not really "ours", and what happens when that place becomes something that doesn't have a space for us.

It's slow-paced, beautiful, has layers of meaning that as a white guy who's been living in Marin and Sonoma for decades I can't parse, but has enough that I could connect with that I was enthralled.

[ related topics: Movies Bay Area Space & Astronomy California Culture Race ]

Because it's the easiest way to get this on to Charlene's computer where she can read it: US students lag other countries in math. The reason probably lies in how schools teach it

[ related topics: Children and growing up Current Events Mathematics Education ]

Why teaching science is important: Three die in dry-ice incident at Moscow pool party. Instagram influencer holds a party, people in the sauna complain that the pool is too warm...

A member of the emergency services told Ria news agency that the partygoers had ordered 25kg of dry ice to cool down the pool at the Devyaty Val (Ninth Wave) complex.

Nobody stops to think that 25kg of dry ice isn't gonna cool the pool that much, but is gonna float a layer of CO2 on top of the water...

[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python Boats Global Warming ]

Huh. I generally buy my coffee beans, either roasted or green, at Petaluma Coffee & Tea. They roast on-premises, don't burn their beans (unlike *cough* other coffee places), and people who drink coffee at my house say "wow". So I think I pay $15-18/lb, depending on the bean.

Petaluma Coffee & Tea also sells the cheapest cup of coffee in town, $1.50 for a 12 oz medium.

Google tells me there are 75 tablespoons per pound of coffee, use roughly 4 tablespoons per pound of coffee, so just under 19 12oz cups of coffee per pound.

Add in the cost of filters and heating water, and I'm not sure it's cheaper to buy the beans...

(I write this as I cheaped out and bought a pound of a Honduran bean roasted by Two Wise Guys from Grocery Outlet, I don't remember how much for but probably half of what similar would cost at PC&T, but for all the flowery language on the bag those beans are roasted so dark there's no flavor from the original coming through...)

[ related topics: Real Estate ]