Flutterby™! From 2021-09-01 to 2021-09-30

Just sat through the pitch for Petaluma's participation in the Cool City Challenge, and... even though it feels like a lot of the things Charlene and I are already doing, I didn't volunteer to be a "block leader". It felt too much like trying to gamify relationships for me to want to sign on to a formal program. But I realized: What we need is like "Tinder, but for civic engagement". Like if someone wanted to be a "block leader" and approached me to participate, I'd say "yes", but I'm not gonna proselytize.

So it's like we both need to swipe right on being good neighbors.

https://coolblock.org/cool-city-challenge

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Software Engineering ]

[ related topics: Photography Sports Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Air & Space Magazine: Wingwalker to the Rescue

Without the bolt through the axle, the wheel could slide off in a bank or on landing. While I was pondering the next move, the motor spit, coughed, and died. I glanced at the gas gauge—empty. After a few convulsions, the propeller stopped at a 45-degree angle.

Al, momentarily concerned by the dead motor, suddenly brightened. “Go on in and land her, Jerry. I’ll hold that wheel on with my foot.”

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Aviation Space & Astronomy Fabrication Real Estate ]

Hadley Freeman in The Guardian: Frank Oz on life as Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy and Yoda: ‘I’d love to do the Muppets again but Disney doesn’t want me’

[ related topics: Ziffle Star Wars Sociology California Culture Guns ]

RT @qDot:

Ugh.

Working on learning drawing again.

Now every time I look at furry porn all my brain does is try to break it down into shape components.

I see why artists are just constantly angry, depressed, or both.

RT @qDot

Me: Listen I'm trying to be horny ok.

My brain: But you're training me to do visual pattern recognition for geometry and spacial organization, so that's what I'm doing!

Me: I hate you.

My brain: I know.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Education ]

Mayor suggests Helsinki declare itself an English-language city

Juhana Vartiainen says too many highly skilled foreigners shun Finnish capital because of difficult language

The always wonderful Dr. Kate Lister (of "Whores of Yore" fame): The surprising history of male celibacy, and the women who fought to stop it

A man who refused to marry could find himself the subject of a ‘bachelor tax’, eviction, and being barred from certain careers

More in the Twitter thread

[ related topics: Politics Sociology ]

A lot of people have suggested that Texas gives more reproductive choice to COVID than to women, but that's not fair: Texas sure looks to be making sure that COVID is forced to reproduce.

When Tara sent me this, the headline was cropped and I thought it was literal. It's just The Register being hyperbolic, but: US Air Force chief software officer quits after launching Hellfire missile of a LinkedIn post at his former bosses

Nicolas Chaillan's impressively blunt leaving note, which he posted to his LinkedIn profile, castigated USAF senior hierarchy for failing to prioritise basic IT issues, saying: "A lack of response and alignment is certainly a contributor to my accelerated exit."

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Copying this note from yesterday across from Facebook because I want a place to store the resulting conversation (which I'll add in the comments):

Went to the Petaluma Pride picnic last night. Met some cool people. And realized something: There are a number of us who are casting around, trying to create community, managing to create small pockets of people, and...

There's a lot of value in being someone who shows up. Not just someone who puts things together, figures out the venue, coordinates the logistics, but just going to events and hanging out.

And as I look around at creating community, I'm realizing that sometimes I just need to be the person who shows up. Maybe even more often than one of the organizers. Because we have an awful lot of events that are pulling ten or twenty people, or even fifty or sixty, and maybe joining those events together would create more energy and momentum than running them separately...

[ related topics: Television Sports Community ]

Sitting by the American River

Spent the weekend in the foothills, helping out the parents of a square dancing friend. The things I get into...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Lots of sitting on the back porch, next to graves from the cholera epidemic, watching the quail and mockingbirds harass the cat, and the turkey and deer facing off

[ related topics: Photography Food Birds ]

Prop 13 means that one of California's most profitable exports is under-educated white people. Texas is doubling down on the effect: Survey: Two Thirds of College-Educated Workers May Avoid Texas Because Of Abortion Ban

[ related topics: Sexual Culture California Culture Education Race ]

‘We didn’t know police could lie’: Day care worker ‘naive’ until convicted of murder

“I was confident,” she said in an interview in her home last week, a few days after her release from the Topeka Correctional Facility. This was the first time she’d talked to a reporter in the nearly five years since Ollie died. From that day almost until the verdict came back, “I thought, ‘I didn’t do anything, so why would I be going to prison?’ It was really only when they were deliberating and asked the judge the difference between first degree and second degree that I knew things were not good. I was slow to catch on. Naive.”

We all were, says her husband, Tim Buchhorn, an active duty master sergeant in the U.S. Army. “We didn’t think you could lie on the stand, and we didn’t know the police could lie to us.” Since enlisting at age 19, he has fought for the beautiful idea of America.

Twitter thread with all sorts of misconduct from this prosecutor. When are we gonna start sending crooked prosecutors and cops to jail?

[ related topics: Law Law Enforcement Marriage ]

Via the security roundup from Violet Blue's Patreon subscription, Juniper Breach Mystery Starts to Clear With New Details on Hackers and U.S. Role, in which we discover that Chinese agents exploited the back door that the NSA had RSA install in the Dual EC random number generator.

There is no secure "back door".

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Cryptography ]

And on the day the web designer understands why `width: 100%;` gives a different result than `width:@calc(100%);`, they ascend to the heavens in a blaze of #fff light.

The thing about spending the day attempting to maintain someone else's CSS is that I better understand the causes of violence in the world.

Remember the '90s? Cyberspace? Jacking in to VR? When you had to torture your computer until it screamed in order to get online? Psychedelic drugs were the future of mind expansion and zines and punks were going to save us all from a corporatized dystopia?

Meuon, fellow early cybernaut,​​ turned me on to this, and if your nostalgia for the gritty Wired future we never got needs its steel stringed burnt chrome polished in the back room of an underground dive, this is your jam. Grab those mirrored shades, because those dilated pupils need protection from the neon:

http://www.drugsandwires.fail/

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama Cool Science Health ]

WhatsApp moderators can read your messages. This is my surprised face. How Facebook Undermines Privacy Protections for Its 2 Billion WhatsApp Users.

I mean, it's a little more complex than that, someone either has to report your message, or their automated client-side image scanning service (like the one Apple is rolling out) has to report your message, but the assertion is that there are a hell of a lot of false positives on that.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Privacy ]

This is the first time I've seen that colour scheme on a Tesla

[ related topics: Photography ]

Like Washington and Jefferson, he championed liberty. Unlike the founders, he freed his slaves

(CNN)It was 230 years ago Sunday that Robert Carter III, the patriarch of one of the wealthiest families in Virginia, quietly walked into a Northumberland County courthouse and delivered an airtight legal document announcing his intention to free, or manumit, more than 500 slaves.

He titled it the "deed of gift." It was, by far, experts say, the largest liberation of Black people before President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act and Emancipation Proclamation more than seven decades later.

[ related topics: Law Automobiles ]

Dear every Zoom attendee: Zoom bombing is totally a thing. We who admin meetings are on edge. *Please* use a name that at least looks like a name, and check your chat window because the admin is probably saying "hey, who are you?" when you're not getting let in.

Requires registration to read, but: Developers Offer Mobility Services to Lure Car-Free Renters. They're contractually forbidden to park within 1/4 mile of the development:

The $170 million residential development will feature a plaza with scooter docks, car-share parking, and ride-hail pickup zones, with a light rail station across the street. When the first units open in July 2022, residents are set to receive complimentary access to a Lyft Pink subscription, preferred pricing for a fleet of Bird scooters, an Envoy car share membership, and free unlimited passes on the Valley Metro transit system.

If you're wondering just how much parking requirements cost developers (and increase housing costs), this is a good opportunity to do some comparisons.

Via https://twitter.com/mateosfo/status/1435742200101437444

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Current Events Automobiles Trains Birds Public Transportation Real Estate ]

Men fart more when eating a plant-based diet due to good gut bacteria

The men did a similar number of poos per day on the two diets, but each one was about double the size while they were on the plant diet. The men collected and weighed their own stools using digital scales and found they produced about 200 grams per day on the plant diet, compared with 100 grams on the Western diet.

As someone with a Toto toilet that's got an 800 MaP score, if I'm only outputting around 200 grams per day, MaP scores are some serious bullshit.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Maps and Mapping ]

"What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do and crosswise to our purposes? For love to bridge these opposites through joy it must not eliminate or deny them.—Even self-love presupposes an irreconcilable duality (or multiplicity) in a single person."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche (Mixed Opinions and Maxims, 1879)

Oh, honey, I'm all for stopping speeding, but your mailing list database has some ... uh ... let's say ... "data quality issues".

[ related topics: Photography Databases ]

A simple actuarial analysis.

GOP leadership, FOX News, Trump/MAGA etc don't appear to care how many of their own voters die as long as they damage President Biden's approval rating in the process.

While I'm sure they'd much rather every person who dies of COVID be a Democrat, losing ~220,000 of their own supporters appears to be a small price to pay if it results in them flipping control of the House and/or Senate next year.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Current Events Gambling Real Estate ]

RT Print: A Bookstore @printbookstore

Customer: oh hey u guys are talking about buying books early for the holidays a whole lot lately

Bookseller: supply chain’s broken

Customer: what?

Bookseller: *cocks barcode scanner and climbs back on the UPS truck* supply chain’s broken

[ related topics: Books Machinery ]

Reasons Dan needs a 3d Printer: carving replicas of plastic fixtures from HDPE is kinda funky...

[ related topics: Photography Graphics ]

1% algorithm, 99% "is it .push, .add, .append, .appendChild or something else, in this language and this object set?"

Broke Ass Stuart: Remembering when San Francisco was the porn capital of America

The most successful San Francisco pornographers of the 1970s  were Jim and Artie Mitchell of the still-rocking Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater theater, the venue directly responsible for the legalization of lap dancing. In the 70s, the joint was a strip-club-slash-adult-theater. The blockbuster porn hit “Behind the Green Door” was filmed there, your typical story of a wealthy San Francisco socialite who gets group-sexed by a gang of lesbians and then gangbanged on a trapeze. The film became a blockbuster international phenomenon and grossed more than $50 million.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area California Culture ]

How come people make a big deal about the Met Gala and not their local furry con? I mean, better outfits, more socially uplifting participants, more meaningful interactions...

Meet the Toronto Sex Educator behind Cara Delevingne’s ‘Peg The Patriarchy’ Met Gala Look

In a video by The Independent, the supermodel shares that wearing “Peg the Patriarchy” on her chest is about female empowerment and “sticking it to the man,” but Luna is quick to clarify that her design, which she trademarked in 2015, is not about punishing people, or men. “Patriarchy has no gender, it’s a system. Pegging is a sexual metaphor… It’s a fantasy about subversion,” she says, sharing how fantasy is often used to explore power dynamics, in sex and beyond. “‘Peg the Patriarchy’ is about subversion, not about an anal sex act, and not about men. It’s a metaphor about subverting all of these behaviours that continue to make us subservient within a system, within a gender binary, within how patriarchy supports other systems like white supremacy.”

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Graphic Design Race Video ]

Am I the only person who tries really hard to get into these newfangled IDEs and editors, but eventually the many seconds of lag between keystrokes and changes becomes intolerable, and back to Emacs? (today it's XCode.)

OH: "Most expensive French Laundry dinner ever."

Watched the SpaceX Inspiration4 launch, and I think we need more use of nominal: "My, you're looking downright nominal today!"

[ related topics: Movies Space & Astronomy ]

2021 Ig® Nobel Prize Winners, including Can Sex Improve Nasal Function?—An Exploration of the Link Between Sex and Nasal Function

Results Nasal breathing improved significantly after sexual intercourse with climax to the same degree as after application of nasal decongestant for up to 60 minutes, as measured subjectively with the VAS (sex −3.6, P < .001; spray −3.2, P < .001). This was confirmed in the objective rhinometric data as mean nasal flow (mL/s) increased while resistance decreased immediately (flow sex +214, P < .001; flow spray +235, P < .001), 30 (flow sex +249, P < .001; flow spray +287, P < .001), and 60 minutes (flow sex +180, P < .001; flow spray +287, P < .001) post-intervention. Nasal breathing was back to the baseline level after 3 hours following sexual intercourse, while it continued to be improved for longer after application of nasal decongestant. Only participants having nasal obstruction (Nasal Obstruction Symptom Evaluation score >30) showed nasal function improvement after sex.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0145561320981441

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Mathematics ]

We've been talking about a Hawaii trip for a while, but I've been trying to figure out how to do so responsibly, with awareness of the impacts of colonialism. After, of course, the whole COVID thing dies down.

AFAR Travel Magazine — Hawai‘i Is Not Our Playground has some context, nd links to some additional suggestions.

[ related topics: Travel Education ]

And now the MacBook Pro has decided that driving an external monitor is outside of its purview. sigh.

Alternatives to Financial Education for inclusion in The Handbook of Financial Literacy (Cude & Nicolini, eds., Routledge 2021) Lauren E. Willis

In addition, many programs intentionally inculcate trust in the current financial structure of society, and in the formal banking system in particular. However, unwarranted trust is financially dangerous and politically disempowering. An anecdote is instructive. To teach children about the banking system, a U.S. primary school walked its students to a local bank where each opened a savings account into which each deposited $5. Implicit in this activity is the message that the bank is trustworthy. Another bank then acquired that bank and charged all low balance accountholders a monthly maintenance fee that wiped out the children’s savings. The children may have learned a more important lesson about the financial sector than the school intended.

[ related topics: Language Children and growing up Education ]

So, yeah, we bought an electric car with 250 miles of range. We were promptly told to not run it past 90% or below 40%. Soooo, 125 miles of range. Now we're asked to not park closer than 50' to other cars... Our lot is 52' wide... There are various reasons we didn't go with a Tesla, and there have been all sorts of complaints about initial quality on the them, but it's really making me wonder how much catch-up the conventional automakers are gonna have to do, 'cause they've been fucking around on this for so long...

GM Tells Bolt Owners to Park 50 Feet Away From Other Cars

[ related topics: History Current Events Automobiles Fabrication ]

Tony Parkes did an *amazing* presentation on the history of square dancing, from the European court and country dances through the African and American Black slave influences, to Henry Ford, all the way through to now, in this morning's Newbie Callers chat. Fascinating and really well done, and in the discussion afterwards there was even touching on the story of how square dancing was introduced to Australia.

Newbie Callers 2021-09-18: Tony Parkes on the history of square dancing

[ related topics: Automobiles Community Race ]

Shout-out to the kid screaming "how do you stop?" in the group skateboarding down the hill in front of our house. #doingitright

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Why do I love this town? Sitting beside the River House listening to the band across the Turning Basin while waiting for Charlene's Amtrak bus to arrive at the transit center.

[ related topics: Photography Pop Culture Trains Public Transportation Real Estate ]

Bubbles

[ related topics: Photography ]

More Bubbles

[ related topics: Photography ]

Even more bubbles

[ related topics: Photography ]

Great reads on how the US military fucked up in Afghanistan: The Other Afghan Women. How the U.S. Created the Afghan War—and Then Lost It

Via MeFi.

Related: Britain's dirty secret, how, post WWII in Greece, Britain armed the Nazi sympathizers to kill partisans who also happened to self-describe as Communists, and how that's led to the far right revival in Greece today.

[ related topics: History ]

I had read summaries of this that I thought were satirizing the original, but no: John Nolte of Breitbart: Howard Stern Proves Democrats Want Unvaccinated Trump Voters Dead

Do you want to know why I think Howard Stern is going full-monster with his mockery of three fellow human beings who died of the coronavirus? Because leftists like Stern and CNNLOL and Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Fauci are deliberately looking to manipulate Trump supporters into not getting vaccinated.

Nothing else makes sense to me.

In a country where elections are decided on razor-thin margins, does it not benefit one side if their opponents simply drop dead?

If I wanted to use reverse psychology to convince people not to get a life-saving vaccination, I would do exactly what Stern and the left are doing… I would bully and taunt and mock and ridicule you for not getting vaccinated, knowing the human response would be, Hey, fuck you, I’m never getting vaccinated!

It goes on, but the "now look what you made me do" is pretty astounding here.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

RT golden phantom (50(1 + sqrt(5))/100) @realjdburn

the trolley 𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺

"911 Hazmat Cleanup"? Maybe I won't wash and reuse that fabric facemask that was in the sidewalk there...

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

RT Eλf Sternberg @elfsternberg

Irony! Anti-smoking drug causes cancer:

Pfizer recalls all lots of Chantix for high levels of nitrosamine, which can increase cancer risk — Pfizer is voluntarily recalling lots of its popular anti-smoking drug Chantix for high levels of nitrosamine, which can increase the risk of cancer.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Currency ]

Shadow forwarded this one along, and... I've got a friend who bike commutes from western Sonoma County (I think he's currently in Forestville, used to be much further out) into Santa Rosa, and he's constantly posting pictures like this. We really have ceded public space to cars.

[ related topics: Photography Space & Astronomy Bicycling ]

It’s Not Wrong that "🤦🏼‍♂️".length == 7

But It’s Better that "🤦🏼‍♂️".len() == 17 and Rather Useless that len("🤦🏼‍♂️") == 5

From time to time, someone shows that in JavaScript the .length of a string containing an emoji results in a number greater than 1 (typically 2) and then proceeds to the conclusion that haha JavaScript is so broken—and is rewarded with many likes. In this post, I will try to convince you that ridiculing JavaScript for this is less insightful than it first appears and that Swift’s approach to string length isn’t unambiguously the best one. Python 3’s approach is unambiguously the worst one, though.

[ related topics: Monty Python Television Python ]

Kent County (Michigan) health director tells commissioners after almost being run off the road: ‘I need help’

“I need help,” London wrote in an Aug. 22 email to the county commissioners, which Michigan Advance received today after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Kent County Board of Commissioners last week. “My team and I are broken. I’m about done. I’ve done my job to the best of my ability. I’ve given just about everything to Kent County, and now I’ve given some more of my safety.”

Reddit comment from someone who says that they work for his office, expressing displeasure with the lack of support from the County Supervisors.

[ related topics: Privacy Health Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Civil Liberties Typography Graphic Design Guns Government ]

Holy fuck does this look like a bad idea: "Try the CryptoTab Browser. It works like a regular web browser but mines Bitcoin for you while you browse! Works on all devices." Found on /.

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

Seeing this "Democrats, name one Republican you'd vote for" meme, and uh uh: I rarely vote *for* anyone, I vote against the other candidate. Aside from primaries, most of my votes "for" are a "hold my nose and compromise" situation.

[ related topics: Marketing ]

Fascinating Twitter thread on the various toilets and urinals shaped like skulls.

OH: "That operation should be so solid that it flows effortlessly."

Holy shit. Is this our tax dollars being spent to kill pedestrians and trash the planet, or is it industry funding?

[ related topics: Politics Photography Space & Astronomy ]

Just facilitated a Zoom discussion with Doug Farr, author of Sustainable Nation, and Monica Meagher, Sustainability Project Manager at BART. Both were great, and I'm ordering Doug's book as soon as Copperfield's opens tomorrow.

[ related topics: Books Community Trains Public Transportation ]

Petaluma Know Before You Grow forum on Transit Oriented Development, with Doug Farr, author of Sustainable Nation, and Monica Meagher, Sustainability Project Manager at BART. What else are you gonna watch, binge Ted Lasso again? https://youtu.be/QU3ZNL3qh2E

[ related topics: Movies Community Trains Public Transportation ]

Federal court indicts ex-Rohnert Park officers for extortion

The indictment filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco Tuesday accuses former Sgt. Brendan Jacy Tatum and former Officer Joseph Huffaker of extortion under color of law and conspiracy to commit extortion under color of law. Tatum was also accused of tax evasion and falsifying records in the federal investigation.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Current Events California Culture Conspiracy Government ]

I am deep in trying to understand why Google Finance doesn't work in a WKWebView, and holy shit did we make a mistake by letting people think that JavaScript was a way to handle clicks on links...

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Part of the project I've been working on is looking at, conceptually, how we navigate our virtual spaces and track our data. This is a fascinating look at how the next generation doesn't see folders, and why my complaints about the way that the Mac Finder and other filesystem navigation things deliberately abstracting and confusing the directory structure might just be adaptation to how "kids these days" use computers: FILE NOT FOUND: A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans

Garland thought it would be an easy fix. She asked each student where they’d saved their project. Could they be on the desktop? Perhaps in the shared drive? But over and over, she was met with confusion. “What are you talking about?” multiple students inquired. Not only did they not know where their files were saved — they didn’t understand the question.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Work, productivity and environment Macintosh Education ]

Super cool compact marble kinetic sculptures (YouTube video). h/t topspin.

[ related topics: Video ]

Science: Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum DOI: 10.1126/science.abg7586

... Here, we present evidence from excavated surfaces in White Sands National Park (New Mexico, United States), where multiple in situ human footprints are stratigraphically constrained and bracketed by seed layers that yield calibrated radiocarbon ages between ~23 and 21 thousand years ago. These findings confirm the presence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum, adding evidence to the antiquity of human colonization of the Americas and providing a temporal range extension for the coexistence of early inhabitants and Pleistocene megafauna.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design Race Gambling ]

JAMA Psychiatry: Effects of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy on Major Depressive Disorder — A Randomized Clinical Trial doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.3285

Conclusions and Relevance Findings suggest that psilocybin with therapy is efficacious in treating MDD, thus extending the results of previous studies of this intervention in patients with cancer and depression and of a nonrandomized study in patients with treatment-resistant depression.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Wonder how long it's gonna be before Monoprice and Amazon Basics start doing laptops...

[ related topics: Books ]

If the performance of the new XCode is any indication, those new Apple M1x chips must be screamingly fast.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama Invention and Design Theater & Plays ]

This is really good: My Lover’s Girlfriend Asked Him To Dump Me. Here’s What I Learned When He Did.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Cooking for one tonight: a crude gazpacho made with tomatoes and cucumbers from a neighbor, collards from my voice teacher, and a little sole topped with a medley of olives.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Food ]

The US intelligence community attempts to rehabilitate the image of Julian Assange: Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks

[ related topics: History Current Events Community ]

What is Dan up to?

[ related topics: Photography ]

Why, yes, I did just copy the text from an Apple documentation page into a text buffer, so I could freakin' read it. Geez, not everybody has a 47' high monitor, and wants six and a half inches between lines, dudes!

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

TabFS is a browser extension that mounts your browser tabs as a filesystem on your computer.

A long-time friend came out to me recently. This should not have knocked me for the loop it did. I know plenty of people all across various axes of the sexuality and gender spectrum. And yet, as I was processing that many of the identifiers by which I knew this person had suddenly shifted, I was off-balance.

There's a lot I'm still processing about that. I went back and found something I'd written back in the '90s about coming out, and realized that all sorts of my life is standing in the way of me feeling like my authentic fulfilled self, and the obstacle to that is, more than any social context, my own hang-ups and fears. Of course.

Anyway, this is a fantastic read on a history that it's easy to forget. On my nightstand is Lorna N. Bracewell's "Why We Lost the Sex Wars", and though it seems like there's been stagnation in a lot of social movements since the '90s, a hell of a lot happened in the decades preceding that.

And though the author doesn't make the connection explicit, just a few sentences about the anti-pornography statutes in Minneapolis way back when have now made a connection to current events in Texas that I cannot unsee.

Glad I took the time to read this evening.

A History of Leather at Pride: 1965-1995

Via MeFi, in which the author has chimed in.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Furniture ]

Twitter thread about some of the ridiculous claims about the efficacy of police and serious conflict of interest of sources in recent stories from the New York Times

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Enforcement New York ]

American Medical Association June Special HOD 2021 Meeting Reference Committee D, on the matter of "Removing the Sex Designation from the Public Portion of the Birth Certificate (Resolution 5-I-19)":

CONCLUSION 18

Vital statistics data is a fundamental source of health information. In the U.S., the Standard Certificates of Live Birth form is the primary means by which uniformity of data collection and processing is achieved. Birth certificates, on the other hand, are issued by the government to individuals as proof of birth. Sex designation, as collected through the standard form and included on the birth certificate, refers to the biological difference between males and females. Today, the majority of states (48) and the District of Columbia allow people to amend their sex designation on their birth certificate to reflect their individual gender identities, but only 10 states allow for a gender-neutral designation, typically “X,” on the birth certificate. Existing AMA policy recognizes that every individual has the right to determine their gender identity and sex designation on government documents. To protect individual privacy and to prevent discrimination, U.S. jurisdictions should remove sex designation on the birth certificate. While validation of gender has been raised as a concern with this approach, other government documents could serve this purpose in many jurisdictions. Furthermore, removal of sex designation from the birth certificate would have little to no impact on vital statistics data collected for medical, public health, and statistical purposes.

[ related topics: Erotic Privacy Sexual Culture Health moron Theater & Plays Mathematics ]

MIT Technology Review: Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows

“Instead of users choosing to receive content from these actors, it is our platform that is choosing to give [these troll farms] an enormous reach,” wrote the report’s author, Jeff Allen, a former senior-level data scientist at Facebook.

Looking at this data in a different slice: Relevant Magazine: In 2019, Almost All of Facebook’s Top Christian Pages Were Run By Foreign Troll Farms

[ related topics: Religion Games Sociology Television California Culture ]

I will one of these proposals for distributed social media seriously when the top link on their web site is a protocol description rather than how to opaquely launch a container with their reference implementation.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Journalism and Media ]

RT BlondWonder @BlondWonder

We regret to inform you that your request for transportation has been denied by Calgon.

Walked over to Target on my way home. So many people riding bikes on the sidewalk because Petaluma's street designs are so dangerous for cyclists. Imagining how many cars we could replace if biking wasn't a terrifying ordeal.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bicycling ]