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Tenant activism is flaring across the country as renters face skyrocketing rents and deteriorating living conditions in the most brutal housing market in memory. (slMacLean's)
comment posted at 8:45 PM on Nov-25-23

I just yesterday discovered that all three seasons of James Burke's history series Connections [Wikipedia] are available on the Internet Archive. That's 40 episodes for streaming or download. This comes along with news [ArsTechnica] that Curiosity Stream has a new short series Connections With James Burke [Trailer] now on their platform. Previously, from 2010.
comment posted at 11:38 PM on Nov-15-23

The new research, published in a peer-reviewed biological sciences journal from The Royal Society last month, suggests that resilience is an ability that societies can gain and lose over time. Researchers found that a stable society can withstand even a dramatic climate shock, whereas a small shock can lead to chaos in a vulnerable one.
comment posted at 11:15 PM on Oct-22-23

OpenAI announce ChatGPT (alt via nitter.net) with ... an unquantifiable amount of more.
comment posted at 6:23 PM on Mar-14-23

On the 20th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, Ars Technica published two articles; the first asks if NASA has fixed its safety culture, and the second, a reprint of a 2014 article with some updates, wonders if, had the damage to the ship's wing that occurred on launch been detected before they started reentry, the crew could have been saved. (Previously on the blue; Columbia previouslies)
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The Rezvani Vengeance is a quarter-million dollar SUV designed exclusively for idiots [Kotaku.com] “You know where you’re going wrong? After a long day indiscriminately firing your Beretta 1301 in the desert, you’re home chugging back your InfoWars Ultimate Bone Broth Plus, when you discover you’re all out of SSI Sight-Rite chamber cartridge laser bore sights. So you jump into your SUV to head to the nearest Dick’s Sporting Goods, right? Only, in that SUV? Is it bulletproof? Does it fire pepper spray out the wing mirrors? Does it even come with gas masks? No I don’t think it does. Which is why you want to get yourself a Rezvani Vengeance, designed by video game vehicle artist, Milen Ivanov. [...] This laughably silly vehicle, yours starting at $285,000, is made to order, and thanks to bizarre TikTok influencer videos, a demonstrably extant creation. Based on the Cadillac Escalade, your standard model comes with all the features you’d expect in your bog-standard quarter-million dollar car.”
comment posted at 3:00 PM on Jan-27-23

Montgomery Burns or Elon Musk?
comment posted at 11:58 AM on Nov-14-22

Russia’s chain of command for authorization of the use of nuclear weapons. Russia’s nuclear doctrine as of 2020 (summary of recent developments, more information below). Nuclear Deterrence 101. Under what circumstances might nuclear weapons be used?
comment posted at 11:02 PM on Mar-31-22

Michael Caine Loves The Muppet Christmas Carol as Much as You Do [GQ Interview] "I had never made a movie that a 7-year-old can see. And so a man mentioned the Muppets and I said, “That’s it! I’ll do that!” And it’s A Christmas Carol, it’s a fabulous tale! You’ll be old Scrooge, it’ll be marvelous! And it was absolutely perfect at that time for what I wanted. I could make it, and my daughter could see it. That’s why I did it. And it was lovely."
comment posted at 2:21 PM on Dec-27-21

Happy JamesWebbLaunchMass! (Other holidays may apply in your household.) NASA have the live stream ready to go from 6.0am USA Eastern Time for and enduring piece of human legacy -- both the insights into the cosmos around us and for the management and funding processes which got this device where it is today.
comment posted at 4:10 AM on Dec-25-21

"Graduate school application season is upon us and so I wanted to take this as an opportunity to talk about it. Every year, I talk with undergraduate students who are considering pursuing a graduate degree in the humanities, who mostly come to me because they know that my graduate school experience was relatively more recent and so they hope I can offer some useful advice beyond what they might get from a more senior academic who attended graduate school decades ago. So this week I am going to give all of you a version of the advice I offer those students."
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U.S. Capitol is on lockdown as protesters clash with police and breach the building; D.C. mayor imposes curfew.
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Organic Compounds in Plumes of Saturn's Moon Enceladus NASA's Cassini spacecraft collected invaluable data and images of Saturn and its moons over the approximately 20 years that the mission took place. While the mission ended on Sept. 15, 2017, scientists continue to study the wealth of data that they gathered during the mission.
comment posted at 10:40 PM on Oct-5-19

Charlotte Runcie discovers literary depth -- for those of us who need scholar-interpreters -- "Miranda’s poem reaches a climax with the penultimate couplet (which would have been the final couplet in a more conventional 14-line sonnet): And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love; Cannot be killed or swept aside. These two lines show mastery of the form from Miranda. The other lines in the sonnet have five stressed syllables each and are written in iambic pentameter, the meter most famously used by Shakespeare. But in the line “And love is love…” there are three extra syllables...
comment posted at 10:08 PM on Jun-14-16

KSP History is an ongoing webseries which combines information and photos of historic events in human spaceflight with near-perfect recreations of those missions in Kerbal Space Program. The most recent entry recounts the first operational Space Shuttle launch. Highlights below the fold.
comment posted at 8:41 PM on Jan-7-15

Tikker, the happiness watch, has three lines of digits: the first row is the years, the months and the days, and the second row is the hours, minutes and seconds. Till you die. (The third row is just the time of day.) To calculate your estimated time of death, you simply punch in a few details: your age, sex, country of origin, whether or not you smoke, stress level, similar to other life expectancy calculators. The idea is not to haunt people with a little grim reaper on their wrist, but to make them value life more, maybe even become more generous, though terror management theory studies have shown thoughts of death make people xenophobic. There may be another slew of studies in the future, once the watches are available.
comment posted at 5:15 PM on Jan-1-14

President of the United States Barack Obama unveils his Climate Action Plan

While no single step can reverse the effects of climate change, we have a moral obligation to future generations to leave them a planet that is not polluted and damaged. Through steady, responsible action to cut carbon pollution, we can protect our children’s health and begin to slow the effects of climate change so that we leave behind a cleaner, more stable environment.

comment posted at 3:27 PM on Jun-25-13
comment posted at 3:41 PM on Jun-25-13

The Atlantic have published what they feel to be the 23.5 Biggest Ideas of the Year (You can click each idea in the box on the right for an article. Alternatively, you can start on the first one, The Right to Be Forgotten and click Next through each idea. I wish they were all on one huge page, but I couldn't find that).
comment posted at 7:03 AM on Jun-26-12

Air traffic in much of northern Europe halted – due to ash from a volcanic eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. The volcano under the glacier erupted for the first time in 200 years last month and whilst Iceland is renowned for its volcanic and geologic activity the sheer ferocity of the latest eruption (thought to be 20 times more powerful than the initial eruption on the 20th March) and prevailing wind conditions have culminated in the current traffic chaos. Flightradar24.com shows the current impact on the skies. Whilst the particles will disperse at high altitude and pose no threat to those on the ground, the volcanic ash is very dangerous to aircraft . Not only is there the problem of it clouding pilot vision but the ash can cause engine malfunction and damage the delicate airframe skin. One silver lining in all this is the anticipated glorious red sunset that should follow.
comment posted at 7:29 AM on Apr-15-10

7 Dead, 19 Missing "The Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, has cited the Upper Big Branch Mine for hundreds of violations in recent years, including 10 so far this year related to legal requirements for ventilation systems to control methane and dust. The company has contested numerous fines, including two in January totaling more than $130,000 related to mine ventilation."
comment posted at 12:51 PM on Apr-8-10

"Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times." An Ode to DiskWarrior, SuperDuper, and Dropbox: John Gruber talks about his Mac's hard drive failing and how he was able to recover all of his data using DiskWarrior, a file recovery utility, SuperDuper!, a backup utility that creates a fully bootable backup, and the file syncing system DropBox. While his advice is Mac specific, you can get a similar system going on Windows with Acronis for backups and one of many free file recovery programs such as TestDisk (which also has a Mac version).
comment posted at 2:10 PM on Mar-16-10