April 22, 2016
How thick is a sharpie mark?
I think the best way to describe it is corruscatingly, brutally fast.
Do you like electric cars? Renewable energy? How about a certain Service Mechanoid from Red Dwarf? If so, you should be watching Robert Llewellyn having a tremendous time hosting Fully Charged (YouTube). Whether it's acquiring "roadborne Tourettes" driving the Tesla Model S P85D (and the followup in the Model S P90DL), or the slightly modified 1974 Enfield 8000 ECC, called the Flux Capacitor, he's the very picture of a man having a terrific time. [more inside]
'Heram el-Kaddaab'
Take Your Child to Conference Day
UC Berkeley psychology professor Tania Lombrozo tried an unusual tactic when organizing the Misconceptions of the Mind Conference: invite the babies as well as their parents. She wrote: [more inside]
There are no things, there are only truths.
Something terrible happened to you in outer space. All you can remember are the last few moments, the sun fading to a speck as you and your crew broke free from the solar system, the ship’s systems suddenly shutting down, the panic and blackness inside, shouting and sobbing, outside the phosphorescent fringes of the wormhole as it opened up in front of you—and then you woke up, sweat-slick in your own bed at sunrise, with the birds singing outside, in another universe. You are trapped in the world of the popular TV astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and you know this, because here the sunrise isn’t a sunrise at all.
The Wham of that Memphis Man is Silenced.
Lonnie Mack, one of rock & roll's earliest guitar heroes, role model to Stevie Ray and a fine singer to boot, passed yesterday at 74.
Not 72, not 74.
Vogue Magazine produces a semi-regular video feature called 73 Questions. Name cat breeds with Taylor Swift. Hula Hoop with Lupita N'Yongo. Play ping pong with Daniel Radcliffe. Trampoline with Reese Witherspoon. Stretch with Amy Adams.
A riot unfolding
An extraordinary piece (MarylandMorning) on the detailed unfolding of the Baltimore riots from one year ago, with police radio interspersed with interviews of students.
Charges Levied in Flint Water Crisis
The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is proceeding past the finger-pointing phase into the actual-criminal-charges phase, as a city employee and two state Department of Environmental Quality employees have been charged with various crimes related to misconduct in office and tampering with evidence. [more inside]
Doris Roberts RIP
Doris Roberts, an ubiquitous stage and screen actor from the United States, passed away April 17th at the age of 90. [more inside]
One in five African Americans in Virginia is disenfranchised
...until now? "Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia used his executive power on Friday to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 convicted felons, circumventing his Republican-run Legislature. The action overturns a Civil War-era provision in the state’s Constitution aimed, he said, at disenfranchising African-Americans." SLNYT: Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights to Felons
Next year in JeRUsalem
“...spark some reactions from an otherwise staid subway ridership.”
Subway Reading: Taking Fake Book Covers on the Subway [YouTube] [Video] How would you react if you saw someone reading 'Getting Away With Murder for Dummies on public transport?' Comic Scott Rogowsky (@ScottRogowsky) took some pretend, provocative book covers on an underground operation. [via: The Guardian]
Chag Sameach!
I want no part of such elec-trickery.
How could kids today rebel? Stephen Fry suggests going off the grid.
U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High
"Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s." (slNYT) [more inside]
The State of New York City Rent Affordability in 2016
"Using the median rent-to-income ratio, which measures the share of income spent on rent, the typical household in New York City is expected to spend 65.2 percent of its total income on market-rate rent in 2016."
Les bruits de Paris au XVIIIème
Musicologist Mylène Pardoen has researched and recreated the ambient 18th-century sounds of Le Grand Châtelet quarter in Paris. Historians used artwork, surviving machinery and tools to record and bring together 70 different soundscapes, including a recreation of the Notre Dame water pump using an 18th-century water mill whose sound was adapted for the size of the Notre Dame pump. The pump in question brought up water from the Seine for Parisian consumption. [more inside]
Counter-Strike Casino
Datasets over algorithms
"Perhaps the most important news of our day is that datasets — not algorithms — might be the key limiting factor to development of human-level artificial intelligence". Alexander Wissner-Gross responding to Edge. Found here, with some links and a table.
Everybody dies
Pieter Hintjens is an author and programmer best known as the founder of the ZeroMQ project. He was recently diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. A Protocol for Dying is his latest and final blog post in which he reflects on how to interact with the terminally ill.
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