Rocketgeek

It has been almost three months since Apple's last incremental update for various devices like Apple Watch, iPhones and Apple TV. While the upcoming iterations of the company's operating systems (iOS 12, watchOS 5 and macOS Mojave are still in beta,...

Leonard Leo has been on the forefront of the Federalist Society's decades-long goal to take away bodily autonomy from women since the days of George W. Bush. The Federalist Society claims credit for both Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts on the highest court of the land.

“No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a supreme court that will overturn Roe v Wade than the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo,” Ed Whelan, a conservative legal activist and commentator, said in 2016.

And so, when Donald Trump decided to farm out the hard work of vetting possible SCOTUS nominees, Leo was only too happy to volunteer for the effort, to guarantee that whomever gets the final nod will be acceptable to his uber-conservative, Opus Dei cohorts. Funnily enough, whatever dogma that causes them to believe that they must control women's reproductive lies does not also apply to being honest because Leo flat out lies to This Week host George Stephanopoulos and denies that any speculation that Roe v. Wade may be endangered with the new make up of the court is nothing more than unwarranted fear-mongering.

read more

YouTube

The Parkland kids have had to suffer a number of cruel trends with increasingly ridiculous names like "swatting" and "crisis acting."

Oh hooray another conference! Nice Mangos presents:

Hey guys! I 'designed' a poster for a super Rational, High IQ event. Hope you'll come. Tickets are only $9055! #Logic #Science #Reason #IQ pic.twitter.com/mHdF73WwDh

— Eiynah — (@NiceMangos) June 15, 2018

Where in the world is Amelia Earhart? It’s a question that has captivated the public ever since the famed aviator went missing in 1937 over the Pacific Ocean. Theories and conspiracies abound, but most of the detective work has focused on a collection of bones unearthed on Nikumaroro, one of a spray of remote atolls scattered like freckles in the Pacific between Hawaii and Australia. Mystery Bones In 1940, a skull and several other bones, bearing signs of having been nibbled by coconut

You may have seen attempts at real-world Pong before, but rarely have they been so... athletic. Moment Factory has created GRiD, a Pong variant that uses a LiDAR sensor (the same tech as in self-driving cars) to create an enormous, 40-by-60 foot pla...

Via MOTHERBOARD:

The conceit of Humans Not Invited is essentially a reverse CAPTCHA. Visitors to the site are greeted with a vision test not unlike the ones you’ve done before, but instead it’s filled with seemingly indistinguishable blue and gray blurry boxes. When I tried, I was prompted to “select all squares with selfie sticks.”

Most humans, like me, will fail to decipher the hidden selfie sticks and will be shown a message that says “YOU’RE A HUMAN. YOU’RE NOT INVITED.”

To the human eye these boxes appear indistinguishable, a specially programmed bot can spot out the correct image simply by identifying a handful of pixels, according to the project’s creator, Damjanski, (his real name is Danjan Pita).

Read more!

I've got some good news and some bad news. by Heidi Groover

As state lawmakers from both parties scramble to placate drivers at the expense of transit by giving some of them a tax credit on their car tabs, one Democrat has another idea.

Federal Way Representative Kristine Reeves is sponsoring a bill that would allow drivers who owe $200 or more in car tab fees to pay those fees in installments throughout the year. (Each payment would also incur a $5 service fee, as one-time car tab payments already do.) Payment plans would be one way to ease the burden of higher car tab taxes without stripping money Sound Transit needs to massively expand light rail.

That's the good news. The bad news for transit advocates who might like this approach:

Reeves—just like every other House Democrat—voted last year for the car tab bill that would have stripped $780 million from Sound Transit (or $2 billion after higher borrowing costs). And in an interview with The Stranger, she would not take a position on whether she will again vote for that bill this session.

"I’m really focused on making sure Sound Transit can build projects and bring light rail to my community and making sure families that are struggling can afford [the car tab taxes]," Reeves said.

But asked directly whether she would vote for or against House Bill 2201, the Democratic plan that would cost Sound Transit, she would not say. "In my mind it doesn’t matter whether 2201 passes or no," Reeves said. "It’s an independent, stand alone bill."

Sound Transit spokesperson Geoff Patrick said by email the agency is "supportive of the principle behind [Reeves'] bill as it could provide relief for families who are hard pressed to pay the annual license fee all at once."

However, Patrick said lawmakers should ensure there is a way to make sure drivers pay their full car tab taxes so the agency doesn't lose funding. (Today, you get your tabs after paying the taxes you owe in full. If you were to get your tabs after paying only one installment of your taxes, the state would need a way of making sure you follow through and pay the rest of your payments.) Sound Transit opposes cuts to car tab revenue unless the cuts are accompanied by new funding to replace the lost revenue.

Reeves' payment plan bill will get its first public hearing in the House Committee on Transportation at 3:30 pm on Thursday.

[ Comment on this story ]

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

by Dan Savage

A year ago I started a FWB situation with a friend's BF, a poly dude. About a month in his GF of two years, my friend, moved to another city and into an apartment with her other BF. Dude & GF stayed in touch and saw each other occasionally when in the others' cities. Meanwhile, I saw dude every 4-5 days for a while. I wanted a more poly BF/GF sitch but he wasn't interested and said he was still processing his GF moving away. My heart was hopeful but my brain knew people rarely change their feelings for someone after their feelings have settled.

A couple of months ago he met a new woman. They fell fast for each other. We saw each other less. I was hurt and jealous but I dealt with it. It was the risk I took by having the relationship, so it was my responsibility. Dude was understanding and I was impressed. I saw my other casual partner more and started looking outside for something serious.

Today his GF, my friend, asked if she could talk to me. She said she'd finally saved up the money to come back to the city where we live for a weekend — a big expense for her — but when she'd talked to her BF about it he said he mixed up the dates and now has plans with his new woman. He offered to spend time with her around his plans, but his offer of just Friday and Sunday nights seems measly to me. He says it's hard to spend time with new woman because of her work but he can spend time after this weekend!

This is a bit of a red flag for me. I see "poly" dudes neglect pre-existing partners when they meet new ones, almost in a way that seems designed to anger the pre-existing partner into breaking it off, so they can then devote all of their time to the new partner while feeling okay about not being the one who broke things off with their previous partner. Since the pre-existing partner knew they were poly from the start, it's the pre-existing partner's responsibility if they have feelings.

I know that the dude had a partner when he first met my friend, now his GF, and that she possibly left because she felt neglected. But I gave the benefit of the doubt when I learned this because I just didn't know enough about the situation.

Are my instincts right, Dan? Is not putting off the new woman to spend time with his GF shitty on his part?
Doesn't he owe more to three years than three months?

I won't see him until after this weekend, Dan, but should I say anything when I do? And if so what? Part of me wants to call him out. Most of me wants to stay the fuck out of the potential drama. I feel bad being friendly with him when I think he's being a dick to my friend. Should I just back out of this whole situation gracefully?

Finding Love A Grind

Maybe dude is playing, as they say, but it seems to me that [deep inhalation] a guy with a partner at home and at least one FWB we know about (that would be you, FLAG) and a GF in another city (where she lives with her other BF) who doesn't also have an executive secretary keeping track of his schedule is at high risk for double- or triple-booking himself. Dude could be manipulative shit who's lying to his out-of-town GF (OOTGF) about when he made plans with his shiny new GF — an out-of-town GF who "possibly" moved away because she felt neglected (nothing manipulative about that!) — or he could have thoughtlessly exceeded his romantic bandwidth and unintentionally found himself in a situation where he had to cancel on someone.

But you're right, FLAG: people will sometimes make themselves unpleasant, unavailable, or even unbearable in the hopes that their partner(s) will end the relationship — they want out, they don't have the balls ova to end things themselves, they words say one thing (everything's fine!) and their actions say something very different (get out!). That shit isn't an exclusively straight male thing or an exclusively poly thing — men do it, women do it, queer people do it, straight people do it, monogamous people do it, open/poly/monogamish people do it. Some people would rather be the (supposedly) heartbroken dumpee than the (supposedly) heartless dumper. It's not always a conscious thing, FLAG, but it's always an incredibly annoying one.

All that said, FLAG, your friend, who has more than one partner herself, announced she's coming to town and her BF, who also has more than one partner, has plans with his new/newest GF that he doesn't want to cancel. That sucks. But your FWB did offer to spend two out the three nights she's in town with your friend/his OOTGF — Friday + Sunday = 2/3 of the weekend — and that seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Your friend/his OOTGF could spend two nights hanging out with him and one night seeing you and other friends. If your friend feel like she isn't being prioritized the way she should be, she has the option of staying home with her other BF and saving her money.

And finally, FLAG, none of this is really any of your business. As a human being and an observer, FLAG, you are entitled to your opinion and you can, like an advice columnist, share your opinion with your FWB if he asks for it.. But I don't think you have a regulatory role to play here — and you're hardly an unbiased observer/regulator. You're not only fucking the dude, FLAG, but the dude rejected you. You were hoping for something more serious and romantic and he was obviously open to that, but not with you. Even if you're capable of setting your own personal involvement/hurt aside, your still wouldn't be the best messenger. Be a sounding board for your friend/his OOTGF, but otherwise make like Jeff Sessions and recuse yourself.

[ Comment on this story ]

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

I’ve been reading Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House off and on. It’s tough. It’s terribly written, this kind of gossipy gibbering, and the only thing keeping me going at all is the occasional deliciously vicious insider story that pops up at you. I think, though, that Jeff Sharlet has the right perspective on it.

A number of my fellow journalists are saying privately and publicly that Michael Wolff’s book is no big deal — “nothing we didn’t know already.” This makes me think of people who see some piece of modern art, a Jackson Pollack or an Ellsworth Kelly, and say, “I could do that.” Yeah, but did you?

Exactly. I know it’s a bad book, but why didn’t any of the excellent journalists who are sneering at it now write a better book first? Wolff is a hack and a bit sleazy, but if he’s saying what everyone already knew, at least he had the guts to actually go against the cozy insider culture that infects government and the media right now.

Which would you prefer: An asshole who relishes his access to power as an ornament with which to improve his status with other elites, or an asshole who betrays it? Wolff, who by many accounts will betray just about anybody, was the writer for the job of bringing us inside the administration that wants to screw everybody.

When you put it that way…I want the asshole that’s willing to write about the bad crap going down at the cost of getting kicked out of the White House press room. I want a newspaper publisher who is willing to go to press with the story that will cost them easy access to the spin the administration wants to give to everyone, and instead has to work to get the story.

Harness the power. Intended for right-handed cosplayers, a switch on the disc lets you swing the blade out or sheathe it along your arm. The adjustable forearm strap means this fits a wide variety of Sheps and non-Sheps, armored or not. $59.99

vicanlp:

goddamn nerd

Unless you've had to take care of an NMR facility, you might not have realized how many large chunks of ferromagnetic material might be moving around close to your building, and how much stray radio-frequency noise is banging around. Here's a story on the University of Minnesota, where a research building sits right next to a light rail line, and I can easily believe that they're having problems. A lot of folks in Cambridge and Boston can tell you stories about the trains (above and below ground) and their effects on NMR experiments.

It's not just electromagnetic effects, of course. Good old vibration will hose things up, too, since a high-field NMR magnet needs very precise positioning of the sample and the probe for a sharp spectrum. That's why the big magnets are always sitting on top of very expensive vibration-damping legs, and the bigger the magnet, the more impressive the technology that goes into canceling out the shakes. But radio noise is a real killer. The more machines you have, and the more nuclei you observe, the higher your chances of picking up police radios, having your observed frequencies wander into the commercial FM band (good luck there), and who knows what else.

Sometimes you can get around a specific problem by running your NMR at a bit less than its rated strength, which shifts the corresponding RF-observation windows. That seems like a shame at first (after all, you certainly paid for a 400 MHz magnet or what have you), but it's a lot better to have a clean spectrum at 380 than it is to have unpredictable crap at 400. Good luck to the folks at Minnesota with their light-rail problems, though. At least they know where the noise is coming from!

The Arachnio integrates WiFi into an Arduino Micro-sized package that's breadboard compatible and weighs less than half an ounce. It's fully pin and software compatible with the Arduino Micro, which makes it quick and easy to get up and running with the Arachnio. The ESP8266EX SoC that provides the WIFi connectivity can act as both client and access point.  

We're crowdfunding the launch of the Arachnio on Kickstarter!

Here's what else makes the Arachnio special:

• Integrated WiFi -- No extra parts to buy or integrate -- just load an easy-to-use library and connect to the Internet! The ESP8266EX WiFi chip on the Arachnio works seamlessly with the Arduino core. 
• Small and light -- The Arachnio is only 50 mm long, 18 mm wide, and weighs less than 15 grams with headers installed.
• Rugged -- Due to its small size, light weight, and the robustness of the Atmega32u4 processor, it's hard to kill. 
• Low power draw -- In deep sleep with the power LED removed, current consumption is below 50 microamps on a single Li-Po cell. 
• Arduino Micro pinout -- The Arachnio uses the same pinout as the Arduino Micro and is only slightly larger in order to accommodate the integrated antenna.
• Breadboard compatible -- Standard 0.1" headers enable you to plug directly into a breadboard for easy prototyping.
• Fully open source -- everything including the board layout and the network stack is open source.  

In addition to the core Arachnio, we're also developing two accessories. One is the ArachnoProto, which is a prototyping board for the Arachnio.

ArachnoProto

The other is the Arachnode, which turns your Arachnio into a solar powered sensor node with onboard storage, a real-time clock, and an optional crypto module. 

Arachnode

We are at the point where we have solid hardware for the Arachnio and are refining the design of the ArachnoProto and Arachnode. We just need your help to make it a reality. Please back the Arachnio on Kickstarter!

Arachnio family portrait

rainnecassidy:

ragequeen89:

deducecanoe:

zetsubonna:

kyraneko:

whatnursejack:

thewinterotter:

kyraneko:

doujinshi:

I hate that I laughed at this

"Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there," and another one appears. And dodges the downward sweep of claws, darting to the side, bouncing off the pentagram’s barriers, and tripping over the demon’s tail. "In the Vatican!" she cries out as she moves, using the State Farm Agent summoning charm to modify the situation as she was taught, and mentally thanking her trainer for expecting her to be fast enough to do it on the first incantation.

Most State Farm agents, when they run into trouble, have to get the customer to do the jingle a second time. That guy with the buffalo was lucky.

The magic takes hold, and she materializes in the aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica, still holding the demon by the tail, in the middle of Sunday morning Mass. The music clatters unprofessionally to a halt as laypeople, deacons, priests, monks, nuns, and the Pope all turn their attention to the surprised demon whose fifth course of dinner has turned, unaccountably, into a visit to one of his least favorite places on Earth.

There is chanting in Latin, and vaguely cross-shaped gestures, and clouds of incense, and the demon vanishes in a puff of smoke, whether from the efforts of the clergy or of his own volition no one can say. The Agent doesn’t wait, fleeing towards the doors and escaping in the confusion.

She gains the exit and walks, purposefully, toward Rome proper; there, she ducks into the nearest alley. A burner cell phone comes out of one of the less-used pockets of her purse, and she dials a number from memory.

"Allstate," says a smooth masculine voice after three rings.

"State Farm," she answers. "I’m calling in a favor."

"Yeah?" Interest. "What sort?"

As she talks she’s pulling out her smartphone, keying an app that was activated by the summoning, and pulling up the policyholder data that enabled the incantation to work.

"Insurance fraud," she said, and can almost hear teeth sharpening on the other end of the line. She gives him the name, the address, the policy number. "Someone needs some mayhem."

"That’s my name," the man says.

She smiles. “Someone needs all the mayhem.”

He chuckles. Slow. Evil. Even with the echoes of demonic laughter ringing in her ears, she’s impressed. “Don’t worry,” he says, almost purring.

"You’re in good hands."

OH MY FUCKING GOD I just read insurance commercial fan fiction and it was so good, bless you, I’m going to remember this day forever.

IT COMES BACK TO ME! *preens*

Part 2:

It’s not too long later—-State Farm will occasionally loan out their teleportation trick, though Heaven help anyone who tries to use it to compete with them—-and the man they call Mayhem is squatting next to a demonic circle with tacky half-dried blood under the leather soles of his shoes. Whoever dispelled the circle didn’t do a good job of it; the ring is still faintly smoldering and Mayhem has already singed his fingers on the air above it. He’s in the basement of a house with a State Farm homeowner’s policy, waiting for his partner in, erm, crime, to show up.

"Oh, good heavens." He smiles at the sound of someone hopping delicately back, then carefully tiptoeing through the mess. Demons are messy eaters, and Flo’s wearing all white.

She steps gingerly over what might be most of a femur, looks from circle to Mayhem to—-is that half a skull on the floor? “Freaky. Whaddaya need?”

"Tech," he says. "State Farm knows the homeowner summoned them, but the Agent reported at least five people present. Maybe six. She isn’t sure, what with being busy evading a demon inside a very small space with zappy walls."

Flo’s already got a—-where does she get those from anyway? a cardboard box in her hands. Mayhem watches as she unfolds it, refolds it, and ends up with something significantly bigger, shaped like a satellite dish. He tries to watch how she does it; they may be working together, but they’re still rivals and his own higher-ups will be very interested in the latest whatever-it-does that Progressive has come up with.

A blue glow lights up the concave side. Mayhem is pretty sure cardboard doesn’t work that way. Flo makes a pleased sound, and starts rattling off names, addresses, policy numbers.

Impressed, Mayhem asks, “How the fuck?” If Progressive is developing some sort of superspy technology, well, that’s kind of ominous.

Flo grins and looks embarrassed. “I, ah, have occasional dealings with a couple guys from That Other Insurance Company. One of them knows someone who knows someone who works in quality control for the Infernal Realms, and it turns out Hell monitors all their summoned manifestations for safety purposes. His contact got me the list of who was there.”

Mayhem nods. He’s had occasional encounters That Other Insurance Company himself. Bland, grey-suited, timid men who are even worse spies than they are insurance agents. “Wait, Hell has a quality control department?”

"And all other forms of administration," Flo says. "I understand it’s to generate maximum paperwork. It is a place of punishment, after all."

Mayhem actually winces. “That’s definitely hellish. All right. The Agent who called me in is flying back from Italy and should meet us in a few hours. Should give us plenty of time to plan an attack. Are they all State Farm customers?”

"Just the one," Flo replies, folding her toy up, and Mayhem watches with vague envy as it becomes a giant sword. "One Allstate, one Progressive, one Geico, two Farmers. We gonna invite anyone else to the party?" She hopes so. Mayhem’s precision strikes on any sort of insurance fraud perpetrators are the stuff of legend, and the Farmers guys would bring in enough absurdity to make it a work of art.

Mayhem’s grin is something that ought to haunt her nightmares. Instead, she finds herself matching it. “Yes,” he says. “Let’s.”

I had to explain WHY insurance fanfiction should exist to an Australian who has not seen American insurance commercials. This is fucking gold.

We live in amazing times

I don’t think I can never not reblog this.

I AM SCREAMING

Great piece in Popular Science on littleBits’ process and how they move from concept to product:

Every electronic module in a littleBits kit is, well, little. Their small size and ability to snap together in nearly any combination make them useful prototyping tools: Engineers often use them to build rough versions of a new product. In order to pack a variety of functions into the streamlined modules, or “bits,” the company has to do some prototyping of its own.

Bits range in complexity, from a button to a mini keyboard. But they all start out the same—as electrical schematics. Take the direct current (DC) motor module, for example. The engineering team, led by Geof Lipman, first modeled the circuit on a computer. “Simulations really reduce the number of times you have to mess with stuff,” Lipman says. Next, the team launched into the physical design process—just like the one used by DIYers everywhere.

Read more.

---

Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!

John Purcell, the writer behind the excellent Why Starbucks Spells Your Name Wrong and the NYC Subway Summer 2014 Service Changes videos made a new video about what it's like to "put your foot in your mouth" when asking out a co-worker.

Movie Macabre host and Halloween/horror camp queen Elvira has landed a series at Hulu where she'll do what she does best: making quick-witted snipes at B-grade horror flicks.

Read more...

As of the end of July, global health organizations had reported 53 new cases of guinea worm disease around the world. As many folks don’t know much about guinea worm, 53 might seem like a pretty scant number—it could equally signify outbreak or containment. But what that number indicates is actually tantamount to a revolution in healthcare. In 1986, health officials estimated that there were 3.5 million new cases of guinea worm disease annually across 20 countries. That means in just under three decades, we’ve eliminated more than 99 percent of cases, and restricted it to the most remote and troubled regions of four African countries: Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and South Sudan.

At this pace, it’s likely that guinea worm will be the second human disease (and third disease overall) in history that we defeat—following the 1979 eradication of smallpox and the 2010 elimination of rinderpest in cattle. That means we’re closer to defeating this disease than polio, which counted over 300 new cases in 2013, often thought of as one of the great health campaigns of the modern era. But the conquest of guinea worm may be an even more extraordinary medical achievement than that of smallpox. While smallpox was a virus, long treated and cured through inoculation and finally defeated by a massive, decades-long vaccination campaign, guinea worm disease is caused by a parasite—a living and perceptible organism—and has no known treatment or vaccination. In other words, we’ve almost conquered this foul disease by killing off a species via medical elbow grease alone.

Guinea worm disease, also known as dracunculiasis, is both bizarre and mysterious. It has afflicted humans for at least 3,500 years, but was only first seriously studied in the 1860s. Caused by drinking water containing fleas infected with guinea worm larvae, the disease takes hold as tiny worms hatch in one’s body. The worms grow for about a year, causing no pain or symptoms, until, one day, a worm, as thick as a spaghetti noodle and measuring up to four feet in length, crawls down the leg between the bone and skin, forming a massive blister. Once the blister bursts, after about 72 hours, the worm slowly emerges from the popped pustule over the course of several weeks, causing extreme burning that can only be soothed by dipping the afflicted leg in water, thus allowing the parasite to release more eggs and perpetuate its life cycle.

The disease is rarely deadly, only causing damage when people try to remove the worm all at once and kill it—it must be removed over weeks by winding it around a stick. If the body of the worm breaks, the blister wound can putrefy, leading to dangerous infections. But more importantly for developing regions where a lack of sanitation facilities helps the disease thrive, guinea worm is debilitating, knocking out entire villages for weeks, and can be contracted repeatedly as the body cannot develop a resistance. In one notable case, due to a mass outbreak of guinea worm disease, a Nigerian region lost as much as $20 million in potential earnings per year.

Perhaps because it was a disease that affected the most marginal, poor people, a global eradication program didn’t emerge until 1980, led by the United States’ Center for Disease Control. But the campaign only took off in 1986, when former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center decided to make guinea worm their flagship cause. They operated on a low-tech basis, using principles similar to those employed in tracking down, containing, and eliminating smallpox outbreaks. Teams were sent into the hinterland to identify villages with outbreaks, to teach locals simple ways to filter their water using little more than cloth, to chemically kill the parasites in water, to recruit local volunteers to help spread general sanitation messages, as well as to minister to those infected and prevent them from contaminating the drinking water. Along with local partners, these aid workers would continue to monitor a region after the outbreak had been contained to make sure no new cases emerged. And since guinea worm is unique to humans and cannot infect other animals, the proper education and treatment could break the cycle of reproduction and fully eradicate the parasite from a region.

These low-tech solutions are appealing for their simplicity, but would have meant nothing without strong partnerships on the ground. That’s where Carter came in, not only recruiting partners from major health organizations, but also zeroing in on prominent leaders in nations susceptible to guinea worm infestation, like generals-cum-heads of state Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali and Yakubu Gowan of Nigeria. By 1995, the World Health Organization had begun officially declaring countries free of guinea worm, and by the mid-2000s the Gates Foundation joined the action, donating millions to track down and monitor the most remote cases. By 2012 the WHO announced plans to eliminate guinea worm entirely by 2020. In 2014 alone, both Ghana and Nigeria became eligible for guinea worm-free certification. The Carter Center believes up to 80 million cases have been averted to date.

The last obstacles standing between Carter and the complete eradication of the worm are bad infrastructure and local conflicts in some of these remote areas. Most of the remaining cases have emerged in Mali and South Sudan, in regions of civil strife where it’s extremely difficult to get monitors. But amazingly, in 1995, Carter actually negotiated a four-month ceasefire in the Sudanese civil war for the sole purpose of containing guinea worm outbreaks.

Given how close we’ve come to eradicating the worms, though, some have begun to question the ethics of exterminating a species, which, no matter how vicious, is part of the ecosystem. Parasite Rex author and parasite-loving science writer Carl Zimmer wrote a preemptive obituary for the pest last year, mourning the loss of potential scientific knowledge concerning the little known creature. But, he concluded, as the parasite’s ecosystem is exclusively our own bodies, it’s probably not so bad to kill them off. The New Yorker joined in the fray recently as well, publishing a piece by a parasitologist entitled “An Extinction to Celebrate,” predicting that the elimination of the disease would have no negative ramifications, but was instead promising for the growth and health of long neglected communities. 

It seems now that little can stop the demise of the guinea worm. Despite past failures in preventative and behavioral change efforts, regardless of wars, and without much concern for the ethics of extinction, the numbers continue to dwindle each year. The success of such a low-tech, low-cost, and grassroots initiative ought to give us hope for our power to combat diseases in the future. Perhaps once guinea worm is gone, we can take what we’ve learned and double down on efforts to eradicate polio, and whatever lies beyond. 

credit: Jordan

Czech architecture firm Atelier SAD recently unveiled an interesting modular prefab home that can either be installed on the ground like a normal home, or float on the water like a (non-motorized) houseboat. Dubbed Port X, the unusual dwelling comes in several sizes, can be expanded upon to increase living space if needed, and operates either on or off-grid. .. Continue Reading Port X: An off-grid modular home for land or sea

Section: Architecture

Tags: Floating, House, Modular, Off-grid, Solar Power, Sustainable, Water

Related Articles:

• Freedomky prefab house designed for affordable off-grid living
• Studio H:T's off-grid Shipping Container House
• Kensington 4-Port USB Charger for Mobile Devices
• "World's fastest" docking station charges six devices at once
• The US$55,000 Port-a-bach relocatable home (in a shipping container)
• Scosche goBAT II dual portable charger for smartphones and tablets

Movie Trivia: The original version of Alien didn’t cast Sigourney Weaver in the lead role. She ultimately landed the role when it was learned that the original lead, Mitzy the Cat, had a debilitating allergic reaction to cephalopods. 

gameoflaughs:

game of thrones pickup lines part 1

If you hear “You look like my brother” from Cersei: run. Just run like hell.