September 18, 2017
The first known footage of a white giraffe and her calf
The footage, courtesy of Hirola Conservation Programme. Reporting in The New York Times, with more photos of white animals.
But don't add glitter to your vote
Australians are receiving a special postal survey from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The survey asks one simple question that can only be answered yes or no: "Do you support a change in the law to allow same-sex couples to marry?" The postal survey is a first for Australia - and not only is it not mandatory to vote in the survey, the results will not be legally binding. [more inside]
NARRATOR: it wasn't.
What if colonialism.... was good?[PDF] Bruce Gilley makes The Case For Colonialism. A nice timeline at The Daily Nous of some responses, as well as how the original piece failed peer review. [more inside]
Pox across the water
As the 1800s dawned, 22 orphans boarded a Spanish ship, under the care of their orphanage director and a team of doctors and nurses. As they set sail across the Atlantic, the plan was set in motion: they infected one of the children with cowpox. Over the following months, they passed the virus from one child to the other, in carefully spaced succession, to create a living transmission chain that would reach the Americas. They thus carried the smallpox vaccine to the new world in what became known as the Balmis Expedition.
Bodies Like Oceans (VERY NSFW)
Shoog McDaniel, is a southern, queer, non-binary, fat photographer and artist living in Gainesville, Florida.
"My work is about highlighting bodies and lives that are often overlooked by popular society. I enjoy photographing fat bodies, trans bodies, and queer bodies. People`with gap-toothed smiles and missing buttons. I capture images of my friends. With little exceptions, I have a connection with the humans in my photos and I intend to show that through the intimacy of my portraits. I strive to connect the viewer of each photo to beauty within themselves, through understanding the brilliancy of diversity, by showing them that there are many ways to be beautiful." (ALL LINKS VERY NSFW) [more inside]
Astronomy photographer of the year
What Do You Mean You Can't Refold the Map?
It's been a teeth-gnashing irritant since there's been paper maps that folding and refolding them is so difficult but inventors to the rescue! Sort of. More or less. Here are some patents to solve the problem. Sort of. More or less.
CCleaner Hiding Malware
The popular disc cleaning software CCleaner's most recent version is a payload for malware. Bleeping Computer has more detail.
White Americuh
"September 1997: Kid Rock had just landed a major-label record deal. Little-known Eminem was about to catch Dr. Dre’s ear and land his own. The face-painted duo Insane Clown Posse was grabbing headlines and hitting the charts amid controversy. Within 15 months, all would be household names in the wider music world, a strange bit of synchronicity that sparked magazine essays, cultural analysis and no small amount of head-scratching: Detroit had not only managed to produce three white rap acts. It had produced three of the most prominent of all time."20 years in, Kid Rock, Eminem and ICP are politically relevant — and culturally divided [more inside]
If you're worried about identity theft...
This is an amazingly detailed and smart overview of what to do in the face of identity theft.
(pre,viou,sly posts on business and programming from kalzumeus)
(pre,viou,sly posts on business and programming from kalzumeus)
Dorothy???
Going... going...
The Sphinx - Scotland's longest lasting patch of snow - is about to vanish... it has only done so six times in the last 300 years.
Meet the Transgender NCAA Swimmer from Harvard
It's Fresh Hop Time!
Eastern Washington is officially the hop capital of the world. It's that time of year again, fresh hop harvest season. One of our favorite little cones growing on a bine is making it's way across the US into kettles to make the beer we all love. This year Eastern Washington toppled Germany as producing more hops than anywhere else in the world. As part of a hop growing family this makes my heart swell with pride. Washington is a really neat state. Lots of news tends to focus on the Seattle area, but the Yakima area of the state is unique and a really cool experience. Also be sure to check out Fresh Hop Festival!
California v. Johnson
Kern County got a $200,000+ grant and started using closed-source software to perform a new kind of DNA testing for criminal forensics. Now, the principle at stake in California v. Johnson (California's 5th district court of appeals): does due process require that the defendant be able to examine the evidence used to convict them, which includes auditing forensics software to check for bugs? The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among others, have filed amicus curiae briefs. [more inside]
EFF resigns from W3C over their Encrypted Media Extension DRM standard
"Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. They give media companies the power to sue or intimidate away those who might re-purpose video for people with disabilities. They side against the archivists who are scrambling to preserve the public record of our era. The W3C process has been abused by companies that made their fortunes by upsetting the established order, and now, thanks to EME, they’ll be able to ensure no one ever subjects them to the same innovative pressures." [more inside]
These are truths. Guard them, because you worked so hard to find them.
Casey Johnston, writer and Swole Woman, writes about disordered eating, dealing with a friend's thoughtless comments, and the pernicious idea that "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." [more inside]
There is more doubt...about the world’s commitment to development
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has released their first annual report, called "Goalkeepers," focused on 18 indicators of global health drawn from the Millennium Development and Sustainable Development goals set by the UN. Through measurements, projections, and case studies, the report showcases many recent advances and ingenuity while contrasting them with signs of donor fatigue and risk of regression. The report is timed for the UN General Assembly meeting this month, as Mr. Gates fears the world is losing its focus on global health. [more inside]
“There are technical reasons for Tracer's butt's plumpness.”
Getting to the Bottom of Tracer's Derrière By Laura Kate Dale [Kotaku] “It feels like a hell of a lot longer, but it was only a little over a year ago that Tracer from Overwatch became the most newsworthy butt in gaming. [#buttgate] Her posterior, which was undeniably shapely, made a stir when developer Blizzard changed one of her in-game poses to reduce the emphasis placed on her buttocks. The replacement pose still showed her butt, and said butt was still perky and visible, but the new pose was intended to fit better with the character's backstory as a pilot, as well as echoing traditional pin up images from the previous century. What was not, however, covered at this point was something more fundamental. Why is Tracer's butt so pronounced no matter the pose it's hanging off? Even after an alteration of poses, the butt remains eye-catching.”
H A R V E S T
Wind energy used to mine cryptocurrency to fund climate research Taking the form of a 2m wind turbine with environmental sensors, weatherproof computer and 4G uplink, HARVEST ‘feeds’ from two primary symptoms of our changing climate: wind gusts and storms. It does this by transforming wind energy into the electricity required to meet the demanding task of mining cryptocurrency (here Zcash), a decentralised process where computers are financially rewarded for their work maintaining and verifying a public transaction ledger known as the blockchain. Rather than filling the digital wallet of the artist, all rewards earned by the HARVEST mining machine are paid out as donations to non-profit climate change research organisations such that they can better study this planetary-scale challenge.
Prepare to add a very heartfelt dot, everyone
I DON'T WANNA GROW UP / I'M A TOYS R US KID
The self-proclaimed biggest toy store there is (gee whiz!) could file for bankruptcy as soon as this week. [more inside]
The Magic Comes After The Gracelessness
"There are lots of reasons why a person might decide to wear a chest binder; chiefly, I think, you should try it if the idea of wearing a chest binder, even once, appeals to you. I fear this may sound more facile than gently encouraging, which is not my intention." - Product Review: When Every Bra Size is Wrong by Mallory Ortberg
Iceland's Government Has Collapsed
The coalition government ruling Iceland has collapsed over restoring legal status to convicted rapists. New elections for the Alþingi (Icelandic Parliment) have been set for the end of October.
Warning: Some articles describe sexual abuse of minors. [more inside]
A dream of fully automated luxury space communism, 300 years too early.
Spomenik Database: An exploration of Yugoslavia's historic and enigmatic endeavor into abstract anti-fascist WWII monument building from 1960 to 1980. During the zenith of communist Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, over a thousand monuments, or spomeniks, were commissioned to not only honor the many who died in the fight against fascism in World War II, but to help forge a new national identity that transcended ethnic and religious divisions, while also rejecting Soviet-inspired socialist realism in favor of abstract postmodernism. The endeavor did not survive long past Tito's death in 1980, and many spomeniks were abandoned or destroyed after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, though others have been either maintained or repurposed. [more inside]
You hear their influence everywhere. Yet they're not anywhere.
In search of Les Rallizes Dénudés: A writer's search for more information on the enigmatic Japanese psychedelic noise-rock collective, who released no official studio recordings (going into semi-seclusion in the 1970s after their bassist hijacked a plane to North Korea and emerging to play the occasional secret gig, years apart) and are known mostly from a variety of live bootlegs with liner notes of varying reliability.
"just as we never ate together, neither did we sleep together"
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