November 24, 2015
The ISIS Twitter Census
Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter Although much ink has been spilled on the topic of ISIS activity on Twitter, very basic questions remain unanswered, including such fundamental issues as how many Twitter users support ISIS, who they are, and how many of those supporters take part in its highly organized online activities. ... We set out to answer some of these important questions using innovative techniques to create a large, representative sample of accounts that can be clearly defined as ISIS supporters, and to attempt to define the boundaries of ISIS’s online social network. [SLPDF] [via]
Pregnant women get sick, and sick women get pregnant
Emily Anthes on drug testing and pregnancy
Because it has long been considered unethical to include expectant mothers in clinical trials, scientists simply don’t know whether many common medicines are safe for pregnant women. Of the more than 600 prescription drugs that the US Food and Drug Administration approved between 1980 and 2010, 91 per cent have been so meagrely researched that their safety during pregnancy remains uncertain.
Over the last few years, however, a small, tight-knit group of ethicists, including Lyerly, have become determined to reverse this longstanding scientific neglect of pregnant women. Science and society, they argue, have got it utterly wrong: our efforts to protect women and their fetuses have actually put them both in jeopardy. “Ethics doesn’t preclude including pregnant women in research,” says Lyerly. “Actually, ethics requires it.”
1986 in Comics
David Gibbons talks Watchmen vs Dark Knight Returns - part of a series of posts on The Dark Knight Returns.
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, the first Thanksgiving dino film
Pixar's new film, The Good Dinosaur, is the second animated dinosaur film to come out in time for Thanksgiving. The previous one came out 22 years ago, with executive producer credits for Steven Spielberg and a whole host of stars lending their voices to the film, telling the story of dinosaurs coming to New York City. And it bombed. Let's go back in time and look at We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. [more inside]
The Seven Essential Southern Dishes
“The Bitter Southerner never shies away from grand pronouncements, but when we make one, we try hard to make sure it’s based on substance. As the holidays — that special time of year when calories don’t count — approached, we wanted to challenge a great Southern food writer to do the impossible: Define the most essential Southern dishes, the ones that speak most clearly about who we are. Today, North Carolina writer Sheri Castle — the only person alive who can legitimately claim to have read every recipe ever published in Southern Living magazine — takes the big leap.”
Those who wish for deflation should think through what it means.
Nick Rowe is a Canadian macroeconomist at Carleton University. He's the most prolific of several bloggers at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, a group (mostly macro) economics blog. He often writes on, often colorful, (for a macroeconomist) thought experiments and analyses probing intuitive understandings of 'money,' and generally on the topic of exactly what money and monetary policy are:
Is money a liability?
Was Milton Friedman a crypto-communist?
Can we actually avoid helicopter money?
Could we have an economy with negatively valued money?
How many markets are there?
And of course, what if Chuck Norris was a central banker?
He also writes on the nominal GDP level targeting, mentioned previously.
Tune your turkey.
Set it and rock out to it; Spotify times playlists to your turkey's suggested cooking time.
Battle demons with Hyde's PSYCHO-WAVE
Cinemassacre brings us the trailer to the long-awaited film adaptation of the infamously terrible and bizarre Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde for NES.
Goodnight Moon and Gertrude Stein
In the Great Green Room: This dovetailed with another observation: my students are not as puzzled by Stein as I expect them to be. Stein writes: “Glazed Glitter. Nickel, what is nickel” and my students recognize the moment of wondering. This habit of wonder is familiar in part because we have been raised on the lists of Goodnight Moon. [more inside]
Why don't they leave ?
Hitting Home: The hard truth about Australia's domestic violence crime wave (comments best ignored) Documenting the epidemic of domestic violence in Australia.
Sara Ferguson's report into domestic violence can be seen on ABC iView (probably need a proxy)
Also - These women had a right to be safe tells the story of the victims that have died in 2015. [more inside]
Hugh. George. Matthew. Johnny. Ryan. Bradley. Channing. Pierce. Ben...
“As though the New Jersey suburbs were grafted onto South Carolina”
StoryCorps Launches "The Great Thanksgiving Listen"
"StoryCorps is an oral history project that has collected 65,000 stories from 100,000 participants since 2003 using sound booths and mobile studios. However, with the newly developed StoryCorps mobile app, the booth is no longer needed. Now anyone with a mobile phone can record an interview and upload the audio to the StoryCorps archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress." [more inside]
Before I go any further, I want to address the purists.
hope, love, and a teddy bear
You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else.
Of cakes and cancer
After Breast Cancer Diagnosis, a Baking Blogger Uses Cake to Tell Her Story About a year into blogging, one of Sung’s cakes went viral: a cupcake version of the Very Hungry Caterpillar...and Sung’s social media following exploded ...She was even approached by a publisher to write a cookbook.
And then..."I felt a thickening of flesh where my breast meets my rib cage, and I was like, ‘Huh. That could just be my rib?’ [But] it turned out that there were two tumors in there.”
built on sand
When workers first arrived on the lot that Monday morning, they got a message through a security guard or a colleague or a handwritten sign taped up to the wall: Don’t turn on your computer. Later, someone might pop in and deliver the latest directive fourth-hand: “Unplug your computer from the wall.“ Which plug? The network cable? The power cord? Who knows? Just unplug everything. Says one worker: “It was all the hysteria of not knowing.” --One year later, what it was like to work at Sony when all their internal systems got hacked.
The Gossamer Pleasures of Faerie Magazine
I would argue that Faerie endeavors to cultivate in readers a quality of attention that registers the most diminutive details, that perceives the world as though under a spell. (SLNYT) [more inside]
"Looking forward, the models see red"
25 years of climate talk history in one comic: Richard Monastersky & Nick Sousanis explore the history of climate treaty negotiations in Nature's special Paris Climate Talks issue. The goal of the Paris Talks is to limit emissions so that Earth won't warm by more than 2°C, and there are many reasons to be optimistic about the prospects for an agreement - but what will it really take to limit warming to 2°C??
Minimum Viable Planet
The inconveniences of daily life are not the significant problems.Bret Victor: What can a technologist do about climate change?
The world that scrolls past you on Twitter is not the real world.
You cannot calibrate your sense of what’s valuable and necessary to the current fashions in your field.
The three witnesses to Lord Vader's skiing mishap were never seen again.
"Two years ago, Finnish illustrator and designer Vesa Lehtimäki put out a 38-page hardcover book of photos of Lego-built scenes showing imagined scenarios on the snow planet Hoth. It was a delightful collection of pictures full of levity, depicting AT-AT Walkers kicking through fresh powder, snowtroopers on skis, and Chewbacca covered in snow. Today, Lehtimäki is back with an expanded collection of Lego Star Wars photography, titled Small Scenes from a Big Galaxy." [more inside]
gather round my friends as we speak of the oneg shabbats of yesteryear
Get a Real Job (or Take This HMO)!
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBSIL), the largest health insurance company in the state, announced in October that it is discontinuing it’s popular Blue PPO provider plans for individuals. BCBSIL says the move was made to keep affordable plan options for all individual plans, citing “applicable laws” requiring plan rates to be based on total medical cost of all members. This move affects only self-insured individuals, while those in group plans continue to have access to the traditional broad PPO network of doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. [more inside]
“Guilt is good! It’s the flip side of empathy.”
The Paris-based magazine Télérama have published a conversation between Thom Yorke and author/activist George Monbiot. Yorke is a professed fan of Monbiot's writing, and throughout the interview, the two men discussed climate change.Throughout the conversation, Yorke and Monbiot discuss how they've responded to climate change in their day-to-day lives—becoming vegetarian, Radiohead's carbon neutral touring initiative, and so on. Yorke said that for a time, figuring out how to reduce his carbon footprint became an obsession.
Sorry, we're closed
Sorry We're Closed is "an awareness project by designer and educator, Kelly Holohan", designed to bring attention to LGBTQ human rights around the world. It's on at the AIGA Philadelphia, but you can see the posters here.
Making Shoes by Hand
Shoemaking (the job of a cordwainer) is a very particular blend of artistry and science. Here are some masters at work: Emiko Matsuda at Foster & Son; artisans at Saint Crispin's; and at Paul Parkman. [more inside]
The Villas™ at Retention Pond®
The Frankenburb: Retrofitting most suburbs is less likely than having a few successful ones remain as they are while many more simply fail outright.
#rogeliomybrogelio
"Jane the Virgin is doing some of the most serious, most valuable work I’ve seen in a long time, and that work is rooted in a radically frank depiction of new motherhood." Links may contain spoilers, but also this show is very silly so knowing some things that happen will probably not ruin your enjoyment of the rest of it [more inside]
ERROR - Rug Not Found - Abort, Retry, Fail?
Faig Ahmed mixes traditional carpet-weaving with 3D sculpting and computer display glitches. It really ties the centuries together.
Tinder Confidential
Ashley Terrill was in hiding the first time I heard her voice, splitting time between her Los Angeles home and a $600-a-night room at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Terrill had locked her laptop and phone in a secret vault, and would only contact me on disposable phones—all because, she claimed, the estranged co-founder of Tinder was trying to destroy her. And that fear was mutual. [more inside]
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