March 24, 2017
Talk Talk
Google announces the formal end of Talk come June, formally supplanting it with Hangouts.
Lynda Carter's Rock 'n Roll Fantasy
Signs of Spring - TOO SOON?
The Seasons Aren't What They Used to Be "In the latter half of the 20th century, the spring emergence of leaves, frogs, birds and flowers advanced in the Northern Hemisphere by 2.8 days per decade. I’m nearly 50, so springtime has moved, on average, a full two weeks since I was born." [more inside]
Beast is beast and wet is wet and forever the twain shall meet
The only thing that failed harder than these dogs was the Republican Party today [music at beginning and end].
The Young Folks Do Journalism
For years, the Classic had focused on the regular beats of a high school newspaper — — teacher retirements, curriculum changes, bell schedule. It was not an investigative outlet. But with Jahoda's appointment, the very nature of the school appeared to be imperiled, and the paper's staff decided it was time to step in.
G'day Bushwhackers!!
Nick Fry and Caleb (slyt) are two good bros who love Camping, Wildlife, Hunting, Cooking and Eating stuff from
the Aussie bush and ocean. [more inside]
Robert Silvers (1929–2017)
Robert B. Silvers, a founder of The New York Review of Books, which under his editorship became one of the premier intellectual journals in the United States, a showcase for extended, thoughtful essays on literature and politics by eminent writers, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87. [more inside]
You may be let go...
Friday fiction: A short story by Daniel Orozco. As you leave work for the weekend, think about your first day there, and everybody's first day -- think about Orientation. "You must pace your work. What do I mean? I’m glad you asked that. We pace our work according to the eight-hour workday. If you have twelve hours of work in your in-box, for example, you must compress that work into the eight-hour day. If you have one hour of work in your in-box, you must expand that work to fill the eight- hour day. That was a good question. Feel free to ask questions. Ask too many questions, however, and you may be let go...." [more inside]
The Right Answer Is: I Would Run
What happens if you break an artwork? Cautionary tales have been covered in countless articles and immortalized in videos of surveillance footage, though it’s not often told what happens next — or what to do if this happens to you.
So what happens when you break a work of art? What would (or should) you do?
Advocacy begins by sharing stories
Women's Voices Now hosts hundreds of films by women around the globe. Free for anyone to view, these films depict "women's struggles for civil, economic, political, and gender rights". [more inside]
Can’t we talk to the humans and work together? No, because they are dead
The robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to communicate with web crawlers and other web robots, and was first developed by people on the www-talk mailing list in 1994. RobotsTXT.org has information and history, and the similar Robots META tag. As with code in general, you can add silly things in the comments, and Google spoofed the format with their own killer-robots.txt. More recently, robots.txt inspired an alternative file: humans.txt, "a TXT file that contains information about the different people who have contributed to building the website." [more inside]
You can't dismantle capitalism if you have a headache
Some Friday levity for activists Raccoons of the Resistance Activism Self Care Workshop [more inside]
A five-minute cop show (SLVimeo)
Standby is a BAFTA-nominated film (From the original site) "Gary and Jenny share the same cramped “office space” as all beat cops: the front seat of a patrol car. Their evolving relationship is an emotional rollercoaster ride that stands in often-comedic contrast to the procession of thugs and criminals filling the back seat." [more inside]
How Les Misérables Was the Biggest Deal in Book History
Hugo, Inc. For only an eight-year license to publish political exile Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, a Belgian upstart entrepreneur paid an unprecedented and unmatched sum of 300,000 francs (~$3.8 million). Relying upon the first ever bank loan to finance a book, translation rights, and an extraordinary embargo and publicity campaign, the risky venture was a triumphant success.
He's been up all night listening to Mohammed's radio...
Nuclear arms tests by Pyongyang / ICE is deporting everyone that they can / Israel’s ambassador says that Jews are Nazis / And President Bannon does whatever he please / Looks like another threat to world peace / Caused by the POTUS [more inside]
"Can you go and get mummy?"
A four year old boy calls emergency services using his mother's phone to report that she's not breathing. Thanks to the call, things work out well for everyone. Police have released a clip of the call to remind parents about the importance of teaching young children their address and how to use 999 (UK) in an emergency. SLBuzzfeed, with transcript and audio clip of heart-breakingly young boy staying calm under pressure.
Eleven Years
Brad is mad online and wants to know why Cracker Barrel fired his wife.
A Fictive Flight Above Real Mars
A Fictive Flight Above Real Mars - The anaglyph images of Mars taken by the HiRISE camera holds information about the topography of Mars surface. There are hundreds of high-resolution images of this type. This gives the opportunity to create different studies in 3D. In this film I have chosen some locations and processed the images into panning video clips. There is a feeling that you are flying above Mars looking down watching interesting locations on the planet.
The eagle(s) have landed!
Last week, both Hanover Bald Eagle eggs hatched successfully. The young are being fed round-the-clock by their doting parents, "Freedom" and "Liberty."
The frequent feedings result in the nest being liberally decorated with the remains of their fish, squirrel, and rabbit repasts. The live cams (Camera 1, Camera 2) allow excellent viewing opportunities. [more inside]
Undergrowth, earwigs, and The Evening Standard
You’re worried that having George Osborne as editor might compromise the paper’s editorial independence. What editorial independence? The Standard is a jellyfish, a parasitic worm, a creature with a hole at each end and nothing inbetween: it thinks nothing, it feels nothing, it floats through the infinite dark and waits for a tide to carry it along. Hence the fury.Sam Kriss, Against the Evening Standard, Idiot Joy Showland (21 March 2017).
'and the street lights dance in your eyes'
In many towns and cities the familiar orange glow of HPS Sodium street-lighting has given way, or is giving way, to the cooler white glare of LED illumination, giving cost and energy-efficiency savings, and improving nocturnal colour rendition. Many welcome the change: Hal Espen, writing in 2011 for The Atlantic lamented the prevalence of the ‘jaundiced weirdness’ of sodium lighting and looked forward to its obsolescence. But others are unhappy: LED Streetlights Are Giving Neighborhoods the Blues reckons Jeff Hecht at IEEE Spectrum; some complain that ‘LED street lights are disturbing my sleep’ as Brian Wheeler reports for the BBC; research at the University of Exeter suggests LED lighting could have major impact on wildlife; and astronomers, among others, are concerned about the possible effects on the night sky — LEDs: Light Pollution Solution or Night Sky Nemesis? ponders Bob King at Universe Today. Lux Review (‘Your independent guide to lighting’) asks: Will tunable street light breakthrough silence LED critics?, while, at the same site, we learn of a Bird-friendly LED island in the Netherlands. [more inside]
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