Flutterby™! From 2020-05-01 to 2020-05-31

Back in May, President Trump told states to manage their own PPE acquisitions:

“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work, and they are doing a lot of this work,” Trump said. “The Federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”

Then Robert Kraft used the Patriots plain to airlift Coronavirus masks and supplies to Massachusetts, because the supplies kept getting co-opted at the federal level.

Now Maryland has gone full armed-guard, potentially pitting the state's National Guard against Federal forces: Governor Hogan: Maryland keeping coronavirus tests acquired from South Korea at secret, protected location:

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan told Washington Post Live on Thursday that the state has hidden coronavirus test kits it obtained from South Korea in order to prevent the federal government from seizing them for redistribution.

“The National Guard and the State Police are both guarding these tests at an undisclosed location," he said. "They’re helping us distribute the tests. They're also helping in all kinds of other humanitarian needs. We have about 1,300 members of the Maryland National Guard who've been activated."

Maryland called in National Guard troops to defend coronavirus tests from South Korea against seizure

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan told The Washington Post Thursday that National Guard troops and state police were guarding coronavirus tests that the state purchased from South Korea at a secret location to prevent the federal government from seizing them.

It has been seeming for quite a while like FEMA is redistributing medical supplies for political reasons: From March 28, Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile:

Florida has been an exception in its dealings with the stockpile: The state submitted a request on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves, among other supplies — and received a shipment with everything three days later, according to figures from the state’s Division of Emergency Management. It received an identical shipment on March 23, according to the division, and is awaiting a third.

“The governor has spoken to the president daily, and the entire congressional delegation has been working as one for the betterment of the state of Florida,” said Jared Moskowitz, the emergency management division’s director. “We are leaving no stone unturned.”

President Trump repeatedly has warned states not to complain about how much they are receiving, including Friday during a White House briefing, where he advised Vice President Pence not to call governors who are critical of the administration’s response. “I want them to be appreciative,” he said.

So I'm not sure what the hell is going on, but...

[ related topics: Politics Health moron Theater & Plays Current Events Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Heinlein Guns Race Video Real Estate Woodworking ]

The fridge just got filled, but next time I go shopping, I'm gonna get pupusa making supplies: Spice Roots: Homemade Pupusas

Influential video games, day 7: Kingdom of Loathing

In the history of games, you've got to have a cow-clicker of some sort. And I also like to celebrate the triumph of small teams or individual authors; there's something about the rawer stories that connects with me better.

So you'd probably expect that I'd go for Stardew Valley. It has all of the traits that I like: very open world, resource management, exploration, a story that gradually unfolds, and, sure, that kinda made my list, but...

I didn't play Kingdom of Loathing very long. I think I did send them money for the upgrade, and I even forget what the particular beneficence upon other players that that upgrade allowed you to bestow, although I do remember that I was stuck somewhere and someone else gifted me.

But KoL is the multi-user exploration reduced to its raw simple self in the same way that Cow Clicker managed to reduce the whole Tamagotchi/Farmville/etc experience to one simple action. And with stick figure drawings and a surrealist sense of humor that had me referring to the wiki and then going "duh", or "huh, I don't get it". It's a small team operation that managed to capture the hearts of many former Glitch players.

And in the era of multi-million dollar AAA titles, and MMORPGs with tens of millions of players, it's carved out a neat little niche for itself.

#VideoGameInfluence

[ related topics: Humor Games Currency Video ]

ElectroBOOM [Mehdi Sadaghdar]: Presidential BEEF, Difference of Light Technology. I did not know that LED lights were actually that smooth in their light curves.

[ related topics: Movies Food ]

This is super cool: Exploiting a difference between Apple's IOKit and CF XML parsers to escape the iOS sandbox. https://siguza.github.io/psychicpaper/

[ related topics: Apple Computer Web development Content Management ]

Influential Video Games, Day 8: Toy Story Animated StoryBook, and Toy Story Activity Center

These likely aren't going to show up on anyone else's list. They sold... I think between a quarter milllion and a half a million copies each, which was pretty good for a children's title of the multimedia boom, but wasn't the tens of millions of units we expect an AAA game to ship.

They did, however, look spectacular.

With Mike & Debbie and the whole danged community who stood up to help us, I had been a part of starting Chattanooga On-Line. I think that when I filed my 1994 taxes I had made roughly $8k. So I was eating rice and beans, and wonderful Catherine was occasionally buying nicer groceries, trying to figure out how to make a living on this Internet thing.

I was trying to hitch my ride to a number of startups, driving down to Huntsville once a week to talk with a game company that was trying to build an ABM/Anti-Air missile simulation with a couple of (ex-?)military guys and a couple of kids doing animation and music.

This was also pre-Toy Story. I'd heard about Pixar, had the shorts on VHS, along with all of the non-Pixar I could get my hands on, Minds Eye and those other early ones. I had a copy of 3d Studio I'd bought for another attempt to build a business, and a Targa card for (single frame input and output). I was writing a couple of renderers.

So I was on the internet, and I was working on computer graphics stuff, and got going on the Usenet group comp.graphics.algorithms (kinda like a forum or mailing list, for you kids these days) talking about fast ways to do polygon fills; trimming CPU cycles here and there.

And one day while downloading my email, I saw the name "Ed Catmull" flash across the screen. I had a moment of "no way", but I looked, and sure enough, Ed (the core force behind Pixar) had written to me, telling me that he'd seen what I'd been writing on comp.graphics.algorithms and would I be interested in coming out and interviewing.

So I ended up at Pixar in Point Richmond, California ("just turn left at the refinery") a few days after Jerry Garcia died.

And when I got there, I saw that the Windows codecs for the Toy Story interactive products needed some work, so I dived in hard to those.

Andreas Wittenstein had written a video compression system that was able to update 1/4 of a 640x480 screen 15 times a second plus audio off of a 2x CD-ROM. This worked swimmingly on a Mac, but the PC side of things wasn't working well on the 25MHz 486 PC that we were targeting. Cycle counting in assembly language? I was in heaven.

And, of course, the problem with 2x CD-ROM is that a CD can hold 80 minutes of audio, which meant that we could hold 40 minutes of animation. Which meant that we needed even more, so Andreas and I worked on putting a layer of Huffman compression over his lossy video techniques, and squeezed even more on that CD, although for reasons we never figured out, some video would compress in a way that just went pessimally slow on certain frames, so we had to be careful about which clips we compressed how.

Toy Story Activity Center had a couple things of note: It was my first time writing audio processing code. A coworker (who's probably reading this) came into my office and said "help, the spec says there needs to be a slider for 'faster' and 'slower', and a slider for 'higher' and 'lower', what are we gonna do?"

I sure didn't know what I know now about audio, in fact it's possible that nobody did at the time, so we ended up with a basic speed-up and slow-down resampler (we might have done some basic curve-based anti-aliasing), and a high-pass/low-pass filter.

The other coolness was that one of the mini-games was a "solve this routing puzzle with various different shaped pipes". I worked with some TD, I forget who, to get animated frames of the different pipes with their projected locations, and we made a neat little "visualize flow in 3 dimensions" thing out of 2d sprites.

Last year, Charlene was working with a math teacher who asked me to come in and talk about using math in my work. I talked about a whole bunch of things I'd worked on, but this was the "oh, yeah, I played with that!" thing that the kids connected with.

And for the "running down the stairs on the skateboard" thing, I wrote a prototype texture mapper to try to actually render polys rather than slide around sprites. This didn't work terribly well, but did serve us when, after these projects, Phil, Bill, and I built the RAPIX real-time rendering system.

I have a CD of TSASB around here, probably even one of TSAC, and I know that I left a .ini easter egg in there that'd let it play on modern full-RGB display Windows machines; it was decided that we'd get fewer support calls if we forced the users to run in 8 bit color mode, which was pushing the ability of 486sx/25 based machines, our low-end target, to move data around.

(And, yes, I had a crash-cart with a whole bunch of different video cards and a couple of different motherboards and sound cards for testing the different video configurations.)

[ related topics: Pixar Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Music Games Animation Microsoft Writing Work, productivity and environment Graphics Mathematics California Culture Chattanooga Sports Macintosh Net Culture Machinery Community Currency Pedal Power Video Bicycling Woodworking Government ]

Are Men Who Pay for Sex Sexist? Masculinity and Client Attitudes Toward Gender Role Equality in Different Prostitution Markets. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X20901561

Abstract Prostitution clients’ attitudes toward gender equality are important indicators of how masculinity relates to the demand for commercial sexual services. Research on male client misogyny has been inconclusive, and few studies compare men in different markets. Using an online survey of 519 clients of sexual services, we examine whether male client attitudes toward gender role equality are related to the main methods customers used to access prostitution services (i.e., through print or online media vs. in-person contact). We found no differences among men in these markets in attitudes toward gender role equality in the workplace and home. This is in a context where all clients had more egalitarian attitudes toward women’s roles than the U.S. male population in the General Social Survey (GSS). However, clients in in-person markets were less supportive of affirmative action than in online markets in a context where all clients were less supportive compared to the national average. These findings point to need to rethink how masculinity and gender role attitudes affect patterns of male demand for paid sex.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Political Correctness Journalism and Media Economics ]

it doesn't look like I've accomplished much since the last picture, but today was about leveling, which means most of these stones have been lifted several times, and cutting filler stones.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Influential Video Games, Day 9 (a day late): Total Annihilation

Open worlds. Real-time Strategy (better if multi-player, because the AI for the single-player wasn't that smart and... I forget how the balancing happened, but it was really about multi-player).

You start with a "commander" unit, who is irreplaceable and has a lot of capabilities, but mostly you use the commander for building things, like resource extractors and energy generators, a few different sorts of factories, and turrets and missile systems.

The tech tree means that, of course, different sorts of factories can build various different types of vehicles, and some of those vehicles can create build level 2 units, and so forth.

Commands can be queued, so you can easily set up patrol routes for units, or build a whole field of solar collectors, or set up a sacrificial unit that you just tell to build mines with some protective turrets around on every single visible piece of exposed ore on the map, and if it gets destroyed, well, it was something you didn't have to pay attention to until later.

It both had "expose the whole map", and "only show things within some range of your units" modes, which meant a bunch of recon drones flying around, and a strategy to both shooting them down, and flight patterns which avoided the other fixed emplacements.

And aggressive units could be set to a couple of different modes of reaction (fire at anything, fire only if fired upon, don 't fire, I think one of the more aggressive modes was even if fired upon, chase down).

I've played a few other games of this type, but for me TA struck just the right balance between speed of play, tech tree complexity, enough graphics to portray what was happening but not so much that it lagged on the machines I was trying to play it on.

And I didn't get much into them, but there were mods.

There's an attempt at building an open-source recreation, called Spring RTS. I've installed it on an Android tablet. It was kinda cool. I'm not in that space any more, but I've got fond memories, and it brought some of them back.

https://springrts.com/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Aviation Space & Astronomy Graphics Pyrotechnics Artificial Intelligence Maps and Mapping Video Photovoltaics ]

Influential Video Games, Day 10: Counter-Strike

I played Castle Wolfenstein 3d (I also played the original Castle Wolfenstein back in the ྌs, but you kids are too young to appreciate actual spoken German played through the Apple ][ speaker). I played Doom. I never got into multi-player Doom, both because of life circumstance, and because it looked like just a lot of building reflexes. At that point in my life I had a bunch of real-life reflexes and didn't feel the need to build ones for virtual worlds.

2000 came along, and a group of people created a mod for the Half-Life 1 engine to create a multi-player game that felt different: Several of the weapons killed in one or two shots. The game play had objectives that encouraged stealth over run-and-gun. "Camping" was built in to the game, but balanced by objectives and time limits.

If I remember right, there were 3 basic scenarios, all 2 teams:

1. Rescue the hostages from the terrorists, hostages were stupid NPCs that would follow you if you told them to, and there were costs for shooting hostages, but if you were on the bad guy team using the hostages as cover to get the good guys to shoot them was totally on-point, but generally the goal was to keep the hostages secure for the length of the round.
2. Bomb a site. Usually there were two bomb sites on the map. There was an advantage to surviving the round, so there was strategy in setting the bomb, protecting the bomb site from the counter-terrorists, and then escaping alive before the bomb detonated.
3. Protect the VIP. One player on the counter-terrorist team is designated the VIP and only gets a pistol (but gets extra armor), the goal is to move this player across the map.

It spread quickly through the 30-somethings of that era. We had a consulting company over in El Cerrito, and lunch often involved a few rounds.

Charlene had worked as a nanny for many years, and she'd... well... long story, but on Friday evenings I'd load up a car full of teenagers in the San Geronimo valley, and we'd head over to the offices in El Cerrito and play multi-user video games into the early hours of Saturday morning, and Counter-Strike was one of my favorites.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Children and growing up Interactive Drama Games Bay Area Graphics Heinlein Automobiles Machinery Guns Maps and Mapping Video hubris ]

From the top of Raymond Heights. The air is so clear.

[ related topics: Photography ]

On some of the allegations of sexual assault against Joe Biden: Current Affairs: The Attacks on Tara Reade are Unbelievable Bullshit

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Astronomy ]

Been dealing with someone with addiction recently. Seeing The Matrix in a whole new light; Neo as someone who thinks he's got new powers and the ability to see reality, but really he's just moving in slow motion and seeing monsters where there aren't any.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Raw Story: Trump-loving Georgia governor issues dire COVID-19 warning less than two weeks after grand ‘reopening’

Another version of the story leaving the subtext in place: Kemp Warns Of Growing Outbreak Stressing Northeast Georgia

It's hard to keep up with the idiocy out of Washington, but apparently yesterday there was some comment about how some sort of "cubic model" showed COVID-19 deaths dropping to 0 relatively shortly. RT Sam Wang @SamWangPhD

Uncharitable view: one could take a bunch of data points and get an equation of the form y=a*x^3+b*x^2+c*x+d to go through the points.

However, that would be a completely boneheaded approach to the data, and lead to uninterpretable nonsense.

They didn't do that....did they?

Apparently, they fucking did.

• https://mobile.twitter.com/donnermaps/status/1257440466188087296
• https://mobile.twitter.com/joh...rheis/status/1257469940665384963

State health department tells Arizona State University and University of Arizona COVID-19 modeling team to stop work, limits data access.

The universities' model had shown that reopening at the end of May was the only scenario that didn't dramatically increase cases.

More: Arizona state health department tells modeling team to stop work

As the US surpasses the world in COVID-19 infection rates, and the number of COVID-19 deaths exceeds those of service-members killed in the Vietnam War, the metaphor of Trump's Wall to the Vietnam War Memorial isn't even subtle any more: Trump order to paint border wall black could drive up cost $500 million or more.

Twitter thread about bizarre business deals gone wonky and N95 masks.

Shady fly-by-night companies popping up to try to sell 3M N95 masks when 3M is saying the only way to get legit ones is free through FEMA

Live and Let die playing while Trump and entourage walk around PPE plant without facemasks, presumably contaminating the production line.

[ related topics: Health History Current Events Work, productivity and environment Education ]

U.S. denies involvement in alleged Venezuela invasion attempt as details remain murky

Note to US Special Forces veterans: You might wanna be more careful about what documentation you carry with you when engaging in operations like this, it is unlikely that the Caracas Applebees is gonna give you the service members' discount when you show them your card.

RT Emily Andras @emtothea

Murder Hornets, but with the right lawyer, Manslaughter Bees

RT Kaden Harris @kaden_harris

If they're Caucasian and Christian, aggravated assault moths

RT Jen @ChampneyJen:

If they’re rich, Caucasian, and Christian, they’re reckless endangerment ladybugs.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Law Race ]

So I can find it again. RT Lisa Shmeesa🦎🦎🦎 @LisaRieffel

My kid wrote a song called, “I Wonder What’s Inside your Butthole” Quite honestly, it slaps.

(With attached video)

Metal cover

Heartfelt cover (YouTube)

Punk/Pop cover

The Cure cover

Folk pop

Slow folk

Jonathan Mann remix

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Also so I can find it again when I need to Big ol' Google Doc with lots of links about PlanDemic and Judy Mikovits

Oh, this is awesome: Shadow forwards along Reddit: your licence(sic) is expired. Or why you should do all of your time calculations in UTC.

Why you should especially not be comparing years for your license code validation in localized times when one of those locales is Thailand and the other one isn't.

RT Charlotte A. Cavatica @cavaticat

teenagers, you never again have to tolerate sexual abstinence lectures from adults who couldn’t abstain from spreading a lethal virus for three months. you are excused. you have my permission

...:

next time Aunt Carol, her French tips freshly buffed by an immigrant manicurist wearing three layers of face mask, starts up with “sweetie, I know it’s tough to wait, but...” just show her this note from Dr. Char and tell her it’s too bad they don’t make condoms for personalities

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture virus ]

Kept around so I can find it, because holy crap the flat earthers are moving into other fields: Why It’s Important To Push Back On ‘Plandemic’—And How To Do It, a good look at the techniques of the video and of persuasion.

And Fact-checking ‘Plandemic’: A documentary full of false conspiracy theories about the coronavirus

[ related topics: Conspiracy Video Government ]

Cold, Crowded, Deadly: How U.S. Meat Plants Became a Virus Breeding Ground. As we watch Tyson Foods and others plead for bailouts and attempt to socialize risk, it's important that we not excuse their behavior and allow them to get away with the moral hazards:

There are exceptions in the U.S., too. Sanderson Farms Inc., America’s third-largest poultry producer, has had about 100 workers test positive for Covid-19 out of 17,000 employees in its 13 plants across the South. In late March, Sanderson became aware of a coronavirus outbreak in Dougherty County, Ga., near its 1,400-worker plant in the city of Moultrie. It sent more than 400 workers home, with pay, to quarantine for two weeks whether or not they were showing symptoms. The plant had to slow its line speed by 15%, but it averted a spike in infection, a closure, and possibly worse. None of the Dougherty County workers tested positive, and there have been no reports of deaths among Sanderson workers.

[ related topics: Movies Ethics virus Food Current Events Work, productivity and environment Gardening ]

Seattle will permanently close 20 miles of residential streets to most vehicle traffic

Basically closing a lot of residential streets to through traffic.

[ related topics: Current Events Seattle ]

Woman who accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of sexual assault now claims Trump supporters paid her to lie. Dafuq are Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman doing unincarcerated?

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Salon magazine ]

Judy Mikovits in Plandemic: An antivax conspiracy theorist becomes a COVID-19 grifter.

Highlights include links to things like the Max Pfost affidavit I in WPI theft of intellectual property case, and a paper retraction notice that notes some pretty serious omissions.

Later edit, just stuffin' all the Plandemic notes here:

• If You Found That ‘Plandemic’ Video Convincing, Read This Too
• Why It’s Important To Push Back On ‘Plandemic’—And How To Do It

[ related topics: Law Conspiracy Government ]

Stuck In The Middle With You arr. by Luna Vocal, Guitar Han Oh. And now I know that a Gayageum is a Korean zither-like instrument with a kickass whammy-bar like assembly.

Bonus: ZZ Top-La Grange Gayageum ver. by Luna

[ related topics: Music Movies ]

What if a famous novel about the innate savagery of man was just an authoritarian English schoolmaster projecting his own evil on to fictionalized versions of his students, and the reality was a tale of cooperation and mutual support?

The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months

Among other places, via MeFi

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books ]

Well, some of you are safe: Cannabis shows promise blocking coronavirus infection: Alberta researcher

“It will take a long time to find what the active ingredient is — there may be many,” said Kovalchuk, whose Pathway RX is owned partly by Olds-based licensed cannabis producer Sundial Growers and partnered with Alberta cannabis researcher Swysh.

But it’s generally the anti-inflammatory properties of high-CBD content that have shown most promise, he added.

[ related topics: Bay Area Television ]

New Yorker: A Forgotten Twentieth-Century Photographer’s Wild Portraits of Women in Nature, a profile of Anne Brigman.

Previous mention of Anne Brigman on Flutterby.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Invention and Design Sociology California Culture Archival ]

submitted without comment

[ related topics: Photography ]

"🎶...only you... Can set my heart on fire...🎶"

”STOP, DROP, AND ROLL! "

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics ]

Newsweek: Facebook Will Stop Labeling Fake News Because It Backfired, Made More Users Believe Hoaxes

Facebook: Replacing Disputed Flags With Related Articles

Academic research on correcting misinformation has shown that putting a strong image, like a red flag, next to an article may actually entrench deeply held beliefs – the opposite effect to what we intended. Related Articles, by contrast, are simply designed to give more context, which our research has shown is a more effective way to help people get to the facts. Indeed, we’ve found that when we show Related Articles next to a false news story, it leads to fewer shares than when the Disputed Flag is shown.

Second, we are starting a new initiative to better understand how people decide whether information is accurate or not based on the news sources they depend upon. This will not directly impact News Feed in the near term. However, it may help us better measure our success in improving the quality of information on Facebook over time.

Further FB staffers explaining Medium: Designing Against Misinformation

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Graphic Design ]

Science 13 May 2020: Estimating the burden of SARS-CoV-2 in France DOI: 10.1126/science.abc3517

France has been heavily affected by the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and went into lockdown on the 17 March 2020. Using models applied to hospital and death data, we estimate the impact of the lockdown and current population immunity. We find 3.6% of infected individuals are hospitalized and 0.7% die, ranging from 0.001% in those <20 years of age (ya) to 10.1% in those >80ya. Across all ages, men are more likely to be hospitalized, enter intensive care, and die than women. The lockdown reduced the reproductive number from 2.90 to 0.67 (77% reduction). By 11 May 2020, when interventions are scheduled to be eased, we project 2.8 million (range: 1.8–4.7) people, or 4.4% (range: 2.8–7.2) of the population, will have been infected. Population immunity appears insufficient to avoid a second wave if all control measures are released at the end of the lockdown.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Working hypothesis: The chat sessions of video conferences are where the actual useful information gets transmitted. largely because of the filtering effects on those who can't figure out how to access it.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Video Conferences ]

Raw Draw Android — Build android apps without any java, entirely in C and Make

Ever wanted to write C code and run it on Android? Sick of multi-megabyte packages just to do the most basic of things. Well, this is a demo of how to make your own APKs and build, install and automatically run them in about 2 seconds, and with an apk size of about 25kB.

With this framework you get a demo which has:

• To make a window with OpenGL ES support
• Accelerometer/gyro input, multi-touch
• An android keyboard for key input
• Ability to store asset files in your APK and read them with AAssetManager
• Permissions support for using things like sound. Example in https://github.com/cnlohr/cnfa
• Directly access USB devices. Example in https://github.com/cnlohr/androidusbtest

[ related topics: Software Engineering Graphics ]

Nature: Meet this super-spotter of duplicated images in science papers

Elisabeth Bik quit her job to spot errors in research papers — and has become the public face of image sleuthing.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Heinlein ]

Copied over from Facebook, y'all know this stuff already...

Streetlight Data: SB 743: Why All States Should Use Vehicle Miles Traveled vs Level of Service

California road planning has long been driven by "level of service", which in practice means "keep building more lanes until traffic is free-flowing".

The problem is that drivers pay very little of the cost of using their automobiles directly. Gas taxes cover about half of the costs of infrastructure, but by most measures there is on average about $.29 per mile driven in health and other external costs imposed on everyone else.

If you know the bill's gonna get split evenly in the end, why wouldn't you order the Dom Perignon with your steak and lobster?

So, of course, you build more road capacity, people drive more. In fact, since the only real direct cost of driving that people face is the time spent in traffic, people drive more until there's enough traffic that it's annoying.

Huge step forward, California is starting to evaluate transportation projects based on additional vehicle miles traveled.

California’s SB 743 is an inspired way to evaluate transportation projects. Here’s why VMT impact should inform planning in all states

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Health California Culture Automobiles Government ]

Via the ever awesome Tara over at ResearchBuzz: Inflatable E-Bike Fits in a Backpack

The trend towards communal sidewalk-based personal mobility systems (like shared bikes and scooters) has resulted in some amount of actual personal mobility, but also a lot of cluttered sidewalks, injured riders and pedestrians, and questionable business models. Fortunately, there are other solutions to the last-kilometer problem that are less dangerous and annoying, like this prototype for an inflatable e-bike under development at the University of Tokyo. From a package of folded-up fabric that fits in a backpack, Poimo (POrtable and Inflatable MObility) can be quickly inflated with a small pump into a comfortable and intrinsically safe mobility system that can be deflated again and packed away once you get where you’re going.

INT032: Soft yet Strong Inflatable Structures for a Foldable and Portable Mobility (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Bay Area Education Video Bicycling Model Building ]

Brazilian skateboarder Gui Khury, 11, lands 1080 on vert ramp

A 1080 — three complete revolutions in the air — is one of the rarest moves in skateboarding, and it usually favors the youth. Tom Schaar became the first rider to land a 1080 in 2012 at age 12, but used a mega ramp, which allows riders to soar higher in the air and allows for more time to complete the turns.

[ related topics: Birds Real Estate ]

Okay, this is kinda fascinating. We kinda think that the Great Depression brought an extra 10-12 suicides per hundred thousand people, and of course The New Deal dropped that dramatically, but Japan's seen a huge decrease in suicides. This article attributes that to fewer people commuting, and fewer students in high pressure classes.

Japan suicides decline as Covid-19 lockdown causes shift in stress factors

April’s 20% drop compared with a year earlier may be the result of delays to start of school year, less commuting and more time with family

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

Charlene is looking at ground cover options, found "creeping thyme". I am uncomfortable with this metaphor for middle age.

and sometimes everything breaks just right

[ related topics: Photography ]

The fit of that seam, I think it'll look nice when it's grouted with polymerized sand.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Ugh. That's all 3 cans of Trader Joe's anchovies that were swelling and smelled awful when I opened them. Guess my Caesar salad is gonna use Worcestershire sauce.

I've heard about the current state of restaurant search results and web sites, such that I'm no longer sure whether or not I'm getting the actual restaurant when I'm calling them, vs some sleazy VC funded startup that's trying to insert itself into the purchase chain.

Anyway, I found this little tale of arbitrage and Doordash attempting to loss-leader itself into monopoly status hilarious. Pizza restaurant owner realizes that Doordash is taking a loss, starts ordering dough from himeslf: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage — There is such a thing as a free lunch

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Food Consumerism and advertising ]

Saved because I know I'm gonna have to talk someone through this: CNET : Webcams out of stock? Use your phone camera instead

Lots of webcams are sold out right now. But you can use your iPhone or Android to improve the video quality on video chat apps such as Zoom and FaceTime. Here's how.

[ related topics: Photography Video Economics iPhone ]

Well, this is a shitshow. Close the lid when you flush! CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases: Research Letter — Infectious SARS-CoV-2 in Feces of Patient with Severe COVID-19

Isolation of infectious SARS-CoV-2 in feces indicates the possibility of fecal–oral transmission or fecal–respiratory transmission through aerosolized feces. During the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome pandemic, 329 residents of a private housing estate in Hong Kong were infected; 42 died (10). Investigation of the building’s structure showed that faulty sewage pipelines led to aerosolization of contaminated feces, which was believed to be the source of infection.

The "10" reference is to Evidence of airborne transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome virus.

Via https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1262484473221754881

[ related topics: virus Hong Kong Databases Real Estate LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

This 66-Year-Old Woman Is Suing All Gay People—Yes, All of Them

Sylvia Driskell, 66, describes herself as an ambassador of “God, And His, Son Jesus Christ [sic]” and will serve as her own lawyer in Driskell v. Homosexuals, NBC News reports. In her seven-page petition, written entirely in cursive, Driskell doesn’t reference any case laws for U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard to consider, but she does quote the Bible and Webster’s Dictionary.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Sexual Culture Law Current Events Government ]

Unreal Engine 5 is meant to ridicule web developers:

Turns out that the level of computational optimization and sheer power of this incredible technology is meant to make fun of web developers, who struggle to maintain 15fps while scrolling a single-page application on a $2000 MacBook Pro, while enjoying 800ms delays typing the corresponding code into their Electron-based text editors.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

Oh snap: RT andi zeisler @andizeisler

Not to be a Feminist Killjoy® but perhaps journalism should have a baseline standard where if you have at any point had a button under your desk that lets you literally trap people in your office you don't get a platform to discuss why exposing sexual predators is bad

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Journalism and Media ]

Fantastic little video of a preacher talking about when his church's building will re-open: https://twitter.com/luvleemelodie/status/1262419237169172480

"...and warms my feet with the fire of the holy ghost..." ... "...until all of their stuff, and you know who 'their' is..."

[ related topics: Religion Pyrotechnics Video ]

I don't know what I did to deserve to be a friend of Dan.. He has again taught me what that means. - Thank You.

It's a shark socks kind of day

[ related topics: Photography Clothing Gambling ]

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology — Generous heathens? Reputational concerns and atheists' behavior toward Christians in economic games

AbstractM Ample research demonstrates that people are more prosocial toward ingroup than outgroup members, and that religious believers (e.g., Christians) tend to be more prosocial than non-believers (e.g., atheists), in economic games. However, we identify a condition under which ingroup biases in such games are attenuated, focusing on prosociality among atheists. Specifically, we argue that atheists (but not Christians) experience unique reputational concerns due to stereotypes that their group is immoral, which in turn affect their behavior toward outgroup partners. Across three studies, when participants in a Dictator Game believed their religious identity was known to their partner, atheists behaved impartially toward ingroup and outgroup partners, whereas Christians consistently demonstrated an ingroup bias. The effects of religious identity on allocations to the outgroup were partially mediated by concerns about being perceived negatively by others and were eliminated by telling participants that their religious identity would be kept anonymous.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.06.015

Study: Atheists are nicer to Christians than Christians are to Atheists

Atheists are nicer to Christians compared to the other way around if their religious identity is known, study claims

Study: Atheists behave more fairly toward Christians than Christians behave toward atheists

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Games Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Current Events Education Economics Model Building ]

R₀ for Covid-19 research: An early estimate and policy implications Avinash Dixit, Princeton University

Introduction If any pandemicspread faster than Covid-19, it is that of research about Covid-19: its epidemiology, the structure of the virus, development of vaccines, antibodies and treatments, its economic and political consequences, and so on. Covid-19 spread at the rapid rate of air travel, but research about it is spreading at the evenfaster speed of the internet. This alarming development calls for research into this new pandemic, and some thinking about how to cope with it. Here I makea start by using some data to calculate the R for it. Then I offer some preliminary and highly speculative policy recommendations.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics virus Invention and Design moron Net Culture Education Economics ]

Via Shadow: Berlin wants to improve the situation with bycicle. I present you the new "protected Bikelanes" much better then the old situation...

Yeah. More bike lanes as parking spaces. Sigh.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Bicycling ]

Angela Lansbury as teapots, a Twitter thread

Bowiebranchia — Nudibranchia or other opisthobranchia compared to the various looks of David Bowie. A Tumblr

Organ Transplants Down As Stay-At-Home Rules Reduce Fatal Traffic Collisions

[ related topics: Health ]

dear local retailers: I could have these products delivered to my home rather than standing in line, but my false hope is that you'll have the consumables and accessories for the products you sell clearly marked and available... sigh.

as the back yard comes together we are building the jasmine trellis from hell...

[ related topics: Photography ]

RT Prof Tanja Bueltmann @cliodiaspora

German word of the day for you:

🇩🇪 fremdschämen

A feeling of embarrassment and shame on behalf of someone else who doesn’t feel embarrassment or shame while doing something awful ... like failing to apologise or show contrition while demonstrating contempt for a whole country.

RT Karl Sharro @KarlreMarks

The British are finally experiencing what's it like to have the British rule your country

RT Karl Sharro @KarlreMarks

One of the mysteries still out there is why the West colonised half of the world for spices and they still don't know how to use them

Larry Kramer's legacy seems especially important as people are trying to retcon the response to the AIDS crisis to try to draw parallels to the current response to COVID-19.

Matt Baume in The Stranger: Larry Kramer's Great Enduring Legacy

And I think of the gay men I've known who've died relatively young of "pneumonia", and see that his cause of death is "pneumonia", and I don't know how to unpack that.

Larry Kramer, writer who sounded alarm on AIDS, dies at 84

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Writing ]

Pen Test Partners: Reverse Engineering a 5g ‘Bioshield’

BBC News: Pulling apart a £339 anti-5G USB stick

The 5GBioShield was recommended by a member of Glastonbury Town Council's 5G Advisory Committee, which has called for an inquiry into 5G.

One of nine external members, Toby Hall, said: "We use this device and find it helpful," and provided a link to its website, which describes it as a USB key that "provides protection for your home and family, thanks to the wearable holographic nano-layer catalyser, which can be worn or placed near to a smartphone or any other electrical, radiation or EMF [electromagnetic field] emitting device".

"Through a process of quantum oscillation, the 5GBioShield USB key balances and re-harmonises the disturbing frequencies arising from the electric fog induced by devices, such as laptops, cordless phones, wi-fi, tablets, et cetera," it adds.

[ related topics: Weblogs Sociology Current Events Monty Python ]

Conversation on the company Slack made me realize: we've structured around assuming that the general use credit card is going to get compromised regularly, so the things we want recurring go on cards that only get used for recurring billing, and card compromise is now a consumer feature: It means that recurring billings I don't want get reset. Thank you, criminals!

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

If you need a little touch-up on your math, these are actually kinda cool: Jewish Problems

This is a special collection of problems that were given to select applicants during oral entrance exams to the math department of Moscow State University. These problems were designed to prevent Jews and other undesirables from getting a passing grade. Among problems that were used by the department to blackball unwanted candidate students, these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is difficult to find. Using problems with a simple solution protected the administration from extra complaints and appeals. This collection therefore has mathematical as well as historical value.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Mathematics Education Model Building ]

So that white guy in the brand new respirator who was breaking windows in Minneapolis has been identified as a police officer.

Victim George Floyd and the fired officer who killed him worked overlapping shifts at a South Minneapolis club, and may have known each other.

Minneapolis police are spraying pepper spray out of their car windows while driving by random bystanders and arresting news crews (but apparently only if the news crews weren't white).

RT feminist next door @emrazz

For a minute I was worried that the precinct fire might destroy the chance of testing for any backlogged rape kits that are sitting in their evidence room, but it was just an overreaction, those kits were never going to be tested.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Microsoft Invention and Design Food Current Events Law Enforcement Automobiles Pyrotechnics Race ]

Teen Vogue: How to film police safely

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Pop Culture ]

Rough Notation, a JavaScript library to create and animate annotations that look hand-drawn on a web page. Underline, box, circle, crossed-off, highlight, etc.

https://github.com/pshihn/rough-notation

[ related topics: Language Books ]

The best lines from Chris Rock's new Netflix special 'Tamborine'

Rock addressed social issues early on, asserting that simply referring to a few violent cops as "bad apples" is not a good defense for law enforcement as a whole.

"Bad apple? That's a lovely name for murderer. ... I mean, I've had a bad apple. It was tart, but it didn't choke me out," Rock said.

He continued: "I know it's hard being a cop … But some jobs can't have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like, pilots. American Airlines can't be like, 'You know, most of our pilots like to land, we just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains.'"

[ related topics: Apple Computer Technology and Culture Invention and Design Aviation Law Enforcement Television Real Estate ]

ryan huber @ryanhuber

Isn’t it... um... exactly irony, that some people pushing to reopen churches argue that, because they haven’t seen or experienced the virus themselves, they question whether it even exists?

[ related topics: virus ]

have you ever seen a cuter gear puller?

[ related topics: Photography ]

tightly wound

[ related topics: Photography ]

now we're just being silly...

[ related topics: Photography ]

and sillier

[ related topics: Photography ]

and artier

[ related topics: Photography ]

National Criminal Justice Reference Service: Suspect Restraint and Sudden Death (May 1996). "This article describes how hog-tied restraint can result in death, steps police officers can take to prevent sudden death..."

https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=161292

(Fixed link)

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Black in Blue: Atlanta’s first African American police officers were vanguards of the civil rights movement

They weren’t allowed to patrol white neighborhoods or work in police headquarters. But in 1948, these officers brought community policing to Atlanta and pushed back at Jim Crow

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Community Race ]

Hey, it's true! Firearms are making us safer! World’s Dumbest Criminals – Gun used to rob far South Side hot dog stand misfires, hitting robber in penis

A robber was in the process of robbing a hot dog stand in the Far South Side, Chicago, when he discharged his weapon on himself, The Chicago Tribune reports. The infamous incident was reported in November of 2017. To add a flare of poetic justice to the yarn, the hot dog stand robber shot himself in the penis, citing The Sacramento Bee.

[ related topics: Guns ]