Luke.stirling

Some 41 superhero movies are in the works at various movie studios, and they're all due to be released over the next five years. Read the rest

I am reminded that Scalia wrote the dissent in Edwards v. Aguillard. I have been trying to forget.

The body of scientific evidence supporting creation science is as strong as that supporting evolution. In fact, it may be stronger…. The evidence for evolution is far less compelling than we have been led to believe. Evolution is not a scientific “fact,” since it cannot actually be observed in a laboratory. Rather, evolution is merely a scientific theory or “guess.”… It is a very bad guess at that. The scientific problems with evolution are so serious that it could accurately be termed a “myth.”…

Shocking, isn’t it? Who would have thought a Supreme Court justice could be such a pompous ignoramus?

The occasion for this unpleasant reminder is that Scalia gave a commencement address at a high school recently, and offered some evidence that he hasn’t learned a thing in 28 years.

Class of 2015, you should not leave Stone Ridge High School thinking that you face challenges that are at all, in any important sense, unprecedented. Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges as confronted are any worse now, or alas even much different, from what they ever were.

at least some 5,000 years…multiply that by at least 20.

Somebody ought to let Scalia know that that 5-6000 year old Earth nonsense is a specifically Protestant idea, and not even all Protestants — just the particularly rabidly goofy ones. But maybe those are the people he identifies with.

Our Supreme Court. Once again, an international embarrassment.

hiyoko-photo:

うちのオカメインコ。

机の脚に隠れたりするの。

(はみ出てるけど。笑)

inconspicuous

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

Nichelle Nichols, 82, suffered a mild stroke last night. Read the rest

In my latest Guardian column, I talk about the real danger from the UK Tories' plan to ban effective cryptography: not the initial mandate forcing companies to help spy on their users, but all the things we'll have to do when that doesn't work. Read the rest

bookoisseur:

PayPal is splitting away from eBay on July 1. When that happens, PayPal users will be pleased to know that they've agreed to allow PayPal to robotext and robocall the bejesus out of them.

Read the rest

elainemorisi:

aiffe:

chainofaffection:

“Have you ever come across a homeless individual and felt totally uncomfortable? You see them and you know they are in need, but you are not sure what to do. You know that handing them money is not the best thing. But, you also see that they clearly have some needs. Their lips are chapped. They are hungry. They are thirsty. They are asking for help. How can you help? Here is a simple idea - blessing bags.

This was such an easy project. We are now going to keep a few “Blessing Bags” in our car so that when we do happen to see someone on the streets who is homeless, we can hand them a Blessing Bag. I first learned of these bags from my friend, Julie. I am using the picture of her bags (see above) because the ones we took were taken in horrible lighting and turned out really grainy and hard to see what is inside of them.

If you’d like to make your own Blessing Bags, this is what you would need: Gallon size Ziplock bags items to go in the bags, such as: chap stick packages of tissues toothbrush and toothpaste comb soap trail mix granola bars crackers pack of gum band aids mouthwash coins (could be used to make a phone call, or purchase a food item) hand wipes you could also put in a warm pair of socks, and maybe a Starbucks gift card Assemble all the items in the bags, and maybe throw in a note of encouragement. Seal the bags and stow in your car for a moment of providence. This would be a great activity to do with some other families. Each family could bring one of the items going into the bags (ex: toothbrushes). Set up all the items around a table and walk around it with the ziplocks and fill the bags.” http://kwavs.blogspot.com/2011/05/blessing-bags-how-to.html

Hey, words from an actual former homeless person here.

Those people you see who make you uncomfortable? Those aren’t homeless people, they’re beggars. Well, some of them are also homeless. Some of them are not. NOT ALL HOMELESS PEOPLE ARE BEGGARS. (Also, they’re not all addicts, though some are. You literally know nothing about a beggar’s life except that they are beggars.)

Beggars have a uniform like any other kind of worker. They have to look as bedraggled and dirty and pathetic as possible. If you gave a beggar a chance to shower and wash their clothes, you would be damaging their earning potential. They make their money by manipulating the feelings of people who don’t know much about poverty. That means they have to play to stereotypes, some of which are like a hundred years out of date.

When I was homeless, I did not beg. (I stole, dealt with charities, sometimes even worked. Yes, you can be homeless with a full-time job. I’ve worked 60 hours a week and been homeless. And I mean sleeping in a car or a tent homeless, not on somebody’s couch homeless, though that’s an under-counted form of homelessness. I asked for food once or twice, but I didn’t look like a beggar.) I kept myself clean. I looked like anyone else. That person you pass in the store, on the bus, someone who looks just like anyone else, they could be homeless. The sales clerk who helps you for minimum wage. They could have lost their apartment because you can’t pay rent on that salary.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with begging. And it’s true that some people do actually just look like that because due to mental illness or addiction they sincerely can’t take care of themselves. Some of them are honestly nothing more than scam artists who have no real need, though, playing off people’s sympathy for those who genuinely do need help. But let’s assume that you were giving these to an actual homeless person.

- soap is not that difficult to come by if you are so inclined to have/use it. Many public bathrooms have it. Homeless shelters will give you a bar of it. If you have $10 or so for a truck stop shower, soap is provided. Running water is a lot more difficult.

- believe it or not, they may already have a toothbrush and toothpaste, and if they don’t, it’s unlikely they have any interest in using them. Homeless people commonly cache useful items wrapped in plastic in a bunch of hidden places. If you want to help the homeless, next time you find one of those caches, don’t throw them away. I mean, think about it. If you had to start living on the street, would you stop brushing your teeth? I didn’t either. Plus, if everyone gave homeless people one of these packs, they’d have more toothbrushes than they did teeth. Same with the deodorant—one stick lasts a long time, and they give them to you in shelters. This kind of mismanagement and waste is incredibly frustrating. People are willing to flush money down the toilet to avoid helping you TOO much.

- food is nice! But keep in mind that not everyone can eat stuff you give them. Dietary restrictions like diabetes and Crohn’s unfortunately don’t go away when you become homeless. Maybe this is why they were hoping for cash? Also, some (though not all) homeless people have access to food already through food stamps, soup kitchens, charities, etc. A granola bar is nice, but they likely have other problems. If they need food, they will usually have a sign asking for food, or ask for it verbally! Otherwise food might not be a problem for them.

- I’ve given medicine to beggars when it was asked for. Medicine can be super useful if you have a need of it. But when you don’t have a place to put your shit, you realize what a luxury it is to be able to store shit you don’t need at the moment. At best, it could go into one of those caches, if that individual uses caches, or into a shopping cart if they haul one of those around. Or in a car if they have one.

You know what’s useful, lightweight, and portable? MONEY.

You know what money can be used for?

- the nightly fee of some pay-shelters to keep you out of the elements.

- minutes for a pay-as-you-go phone, which can be used for emergencies, scheduling appointments with therapists, doctors, and addiction counselors, even searching for jobs or housing. There is a TON of bureaucracy involved in getting help when you have nothing, and that shit burns through your minutes. Payphones? What is this, 1980? I still have and use a phone I bought while living in my car. It was $10.

- gas for a car, if they have one. (Commoner in rural areas.)

- a hot shower at a truck stop.

- medicine, including prescription medication.

- items that protect against the elements, in their size!

- transportation. News flash, no bus will let you on for pocket change.

- items you might not even think of, like pet food (some homeless people have pets!) sanitary napkins (even if they don’t look female—remember how the homeless rates go up if you’re queer? Yeah.) condoms (possibly for sex work? Not something you want to assume though!) diapers (adult or otherwise! seriously! You don’t know their lives!) or pretty much anything else THAT IS BOUGHT AND SOLD WITH MONEY.

Does that include cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol? You bet it does. But you know what, if that’s what they need, you’re in no position to judge. I’ve never been through withdrawal, but I’ve seen people go through it, and it’s complete shit. If that were you, yeah, you wouldn’t want to get drug sick, are you fucking kidding me? Offset it with a contribution to a rehab center, whatever helps you sleep at night.

And all this is assuming the person giving you a case of the guilts is actually homeless. When they may not be. And other people you don’t notice around you almost surely are.

That uncomfortable feeling you get, though? That has a name. It’s called INEQUALITY. It means that you know you have shit other people don’t have access to. You probably have resources so that even if you were in trouble, there’d be safety nets. You have the kind of money that you can buy a bunch of care packages to assuage this horrible guilt you feel every time you’re in bed in the rain and you know someone else out there isn’t. Those feelings are right. The world shouldn’t be this unequal. We shouldn’t have houses standing empty while people live on the street. We shouldn’t have food sitting in warehouses till it spoils while people starve. We shouldn’t be punishing people for trying to medicate away the pain we gave them.

If you want to REALLY help the poor, go buy a pen and paper and write to your representatives. Stop blaming “generational welfare users” for being “leeches on the system.” Tell them you want to see real aid going to people in your community. Tell them to fund the mental health system, which is inadequate for the demand and constantly getting slashed. Tell them you don’t want to see food stamps cut for bad grades! Tell them a stitch in time saves nine, and if they helped people who were losing their homes, maybe there wouldn’t be so many homeless. Tell them to decriminalize drug use and prostitution. Tell them to support programs like Insite. Support universal healthcare, because you’d be surprised how many people end up homeless due to illness, either in themselves or a family member. If you’re ever in a position of power, such as a landlord or employer, don’t discriminate against people who don’t have a current address. Also don’t discriminate against marginalized groups by race, gender, orientation, ability, etc. These people are more likely to end up homeless because of this BS. Check out charities in your area doing actual outreach with the poor, many of whom are not beggars and not visible. And if you’re going to give a beggar something, either ask them what they need or just give them fucking money.

You can’t make that uncomfortable feeling go away with the wave of a magic wand. You can’t buy exemption from the fact that you HAVE and others DON’T with some soap and granola.

And if you’re going to give a beggar something, either ask them what they need or just give them fucking money.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies plans to break ground on a section of Elon Musk's Hyperloop early next year. From National Geographic:

This (five mile) stretch, near the new town of Quay Valley along Interstate-5 midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, is estimated to cost $100 million and could start carrying passengers in 2018 after extensive safety testing.

Read the rest

This month’s raffle winner is Jean-François, who gets a signed print of his choice.

Patreon.

obscuruslupa:

qjunior:

THIS SHOW WILL KILL ME

OMG

Don’t show these to your kids unless you want them to be completely underwhelmed by every balloon animal they see for the rest of their lives. Japanese balloon twister Masayoshi Matsumoto makes some of the most intricate balloon sculptures I’ve ever encountered. From prickly iguanas to glowing sea creatures it seems no life form is too difficult for Matsumoto to faithfully interpret using nothing but balloons. You can follow more of his work on Tumblr and on FB. (via Neatorama)

Joe's proposed SXSW panel is "Science on YouTube: Where the Smart Kids Are". Vote for it before 9/4! http://vid.io/xqTj
Check out our whole series on ENERGY! http://bit.ly/1BnH5zu
Subscribe: http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub Twitter: @okaytobesmart
↓ More info and sources below ↓

We use a LOT of energy, but we waste a lot too. Where that waste happens might surprise, you though. We don't just waste energy when we leave the lights on or the thermostat cranked down too low. It happens at the dinner table and the water faucet as too!

LEARN MORE:
Special thanks to Sheril Kirshenbaum and the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin for their help with this series. http://www.webberenergygroup.com/

Check out their awesome online course "Energy 101" to learn about energy and energy policy from A to Z! http://www.energy101.com/

And to find out what people think about energy, check out the UT Energy Poll: http://www.utenergypoll.com/


Have an idea for an episode or an amazing science question you want answered? Leave a comment or check us out at the links below!
Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/okaytobesmart
http://twitter.com/jtotheizzoe
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-----------------
It's Okay To Be Smart is written and hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
Follow me on Twitter: @jtotheizzoe
Email me: itsokaytobesmart AT gmail DOT com
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For more awesome science, check out: http://www.itsokaytobesmart.com
Produced by PBS Digital Studios: http://www.youtube.com/user/pbsdigitalstudios

Joe Hanson - Creator/Host/Writer
Joe Nicolosi - Director
Amanda Fox - Producer, Spotzen Inc.
Kate Eads - Associate Producer
Andrew Matthews - Editing/Motion Graphics/Animation
Katie Graham - Director of Photography
John Knudsen - Gaffer

Theme music:
"Ouroboros" by Kevin MacLeod

Other music via APM

Stock images from Shutterstock, stock footage from Videoblocks

-----------------

Last week's video:
Does the Moon Orbit the Earth? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cJ3AemeUFM

More videos:
Why Does February Have 28 Days? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgKaHTh-_Gs
Why Vaccines Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aNhzLUL2ys
Why Are Some People Left-Handed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPvMUpcxPSA
Where Does the Smell of Rain Come From? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGcE5x8s0B8

Jelle Knikkers makes incredible "Marble Machines and Rolling Ball Sculptures" including this one containing 11,000 marbles rolling down four paths. Called the "Marble Tsunami," it's located in the indoor playground Monkey Town in Gouda, The Netherlands. The Marble Master

Famed YouTube trencherman Yuka Kinoshita is no fan of low carb diets.

"We've all become so accustomed to stage-managed, focus-group-driven candidates that authenticity comes across as lunacy." - Jon Stewart

Reposted from 2015 to add this information from a new Atlantic article:

The senator from Vermont has been huddling with staff in meetings and brainstorming on phone calls over the past few weeks, chewing over plans. Barring a surprise, last-minute change of heart, he will jump into the 2020 race, convinced he can win, according to people familiar with his plans...

Last time, he didn’t get in until the end of April 2015. This time, the launch will be in February. He sees advantage in a much more crowded 2020 field. The left-leaning politics he campaigned on in 2016 have been broadly embraced in a progressive surge among Democrats, and Sanders has succeeded in diminishing the nominating power of so-called super delegates, the elected officials and party elders who help consolidate establishment power within the Democratic National Committee...

There are also the nuts-and-bolts political considerations that Sanders doesn’t focus as much on, but that his team pays close attention to: He’s the one with the massive email list. Alone among those eyeing the Democratic nomination, he’s the one who had 40,000 people watching various live-streams of his State of the Union response. He’s the one whose team thinks he could, on day one, raise more money online and get more attention than any of the other candidates...

If the early states all come together, Sanders would be positioned to power through the front-ended primary calendar that has California, Texas, and several other big states voting on the first Super Tuesday, March 4, just a month after Iowa. No one else in the field has anything like his proven success with both grassroots supporters and the small-dollar online fundraising that it will take to fund the kind of massive national operation any 2020 campaign will require...

“With all the other people in, the fact is, Bernie is the one whose ideas everyone else is ‘borrowing,’ whether it be Wall Street reforms, or Medicare for all, or free college. These are all ideas that Bernie came up with first and best,” Fort said. “I’m a little bit skeptical of the sincerity of some of the latecomers.”..

What a Sanders candidacy may do for Warren, though, is enable her not to seem as radical as his democratic socialism. It might also enable her to note that she’s a generation younger than Sanders, as opposed to currently being the oldest Democratic candidate in the field. And a Sanders candidacy might allow Warren to argue that she’s largely in line with him politically, but the one who could actually win...

But Sanders skeptics doubt that he fully appreciates how much of the approximately 45 percent of the primary vote he received in 2016 was fundamentally an anti-Clinton vote, and doubt that he realizes how many of those people might leave him once they realize how many other choices they have.

misandry-mermaid:

I think misogynists are constantly saying “I’m a nice guy.“  “I’m such a nice guy.“  "I’m not like that, I’m a nice guy!” for the same reason that Fox News feels compelled to remind their viewers that they are “fair and balanced” literally every 3 minutes.

After a flurry of reports, last week the people behind geo-unblocking software Hola were forced to concede that their users’ bandwidth is being sold elsewhere for commercial purposes. But for the Israel-based company, that was the tip of the iceberg.

Following an initial unproofed report that the software operates as a botnet, this weekend researchers published an advisory confirming serious problems with the tool.

“The Hola Unblocker Windows client, Firefox addon, Chrome extension and Android application contain multiple vulnerabilities which allow a remote or local attacker to gain code execution and potentially escalate privileges on a user’s system,” the advisory reads.

Yesterday and after several days of intense pressure, Hola published a response in which it quoted Steve Jobs and admitted that mistakes had been made. Hola said that it would now be making it “completely clear” to its users that their resources are being used elsewhere in exchange for a free product.

Hola also confirmed that two vulnerabilities found by the researchers at Adios-Hola had now been fixed, but the researchers quickly fired back.

“We know this to be false,” they wrote in an update. “The vulnerabilities are *still* there, they just broke our vulnerability checker and exploit demonstration. Not only that; there weren’t two vulnerabilities, there were six.”

With Hola saying it now intends to put things right (it says it has committed to an external audit with “one of the big 4 auditing companies”) the company stood by its claims that its software does not turn users’ computers into a botnet. Today, however, an analysis by cybersecurity firm Vectra is painting Hola in an even more unfavorable light.

In its report Vectra not only insists that Hola behaves like a botnet, but it’s possible it has malicious features by design.

“While analyzing Hola, Vectra Threat Labs researchers found that in addition to behaving like a botnet, Hola contains a variety of capabilities that almost appear to be designed to enable a targeted, human-driven cyber attack on the network in which an Hola user’s machine resides,” the company writes.

“First, the Hola software can download and install any additional software without the user’s knowledge. This is because in addition to being signed with a valid code-signing certificate, once Hola has been installed, the software installs its own code-signing certificate on the user’s system.”

If the implications of that aren’t entirely clear, Vectra assists on that front too. On Windows machines, the certificate is added to the Trusted Publishers Certificate Store which allows *any code* to be installed and run with no notification given to the user. That is frightening.

Furthermore, Vectra found that Hola contains a built-in console (“zconsole”) that is not only constantly active but also has powerful functions including the ability to kill running processes, download a file and run it whilst bypassing anti-virus software, plus read and write content to any IP address or device.[see update]

“These capabilities enable a competent attacker to accomplish almost anything. This shifts the discussion away from a leaky and unscrupulous anonymity network, and instead forces us to acknowledge the possibility that an attacker could easily use Hola as a platform to launch a targeted attack within any network containing the Hola software,” Vectra says.

Finally, Vectra says that while analyzing the protocol used by Hola, its researchers found five different malware samples on VirusTotal that contain the Hola protocol. Worryingly, they existed before the recent bad press.

“Unsurprisingly, this means that bad guys had realized the potential of Hola before the recent flurry of public reports by the good guys,” the company adds.[see update]

For now, Hola is making a big show of the updates being made to its FAQ as part of its efforts to be more transparent. However, items in the FAQ are still phrased in a manner that portrays criticized elements of the service as positive features, something that is likely to mislead non-tech oriented users.

“Since [Hola] uses real peers to route your traffic and not proxy servers, it makes you more anonymous and more secure than regular VPN services,” one item reads.

How Hola will respond to Vectra’s latest analysis remains to be seen, but at this point there appears little that the company can say or do to pacify much of the hardcore tech community. That being said, if Joe Public still can’t see the harm in a free “community” VPN operating a commercial division with full access to his computer, Hola might settle for that.

Update: Vectra have not only published an update to their analysis but have also made a few quiet edits which appear to put Hola in a better light.

They also appear to have retracted their advice to uninstall Hola and are now suggesting that organizations should “determine if Hola is active in their network and decide whether the risks highlighted in this blog are acceptable.”

Following the edits, Hola emailed TF to offer yet more clarity.

“One of the pieces that we wanted to clarify as it relates to your article is that even though there is evidence Hackers has been on the network, there is no evidence that the network was exploited before the 8chan attack,” Hola told TF. “[Vectra] compare it to proof that burglars were trying to copy your key, but not that they got in the house.”

Hola also says that the vulnerabilities in Zconsole have now been fixed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.

jasonhorton:

Home: 1 Pants: 0

More no pants

#TeamNoPants No pants is best pants.

“

Aaron Clarey isn’t really a Mad Max fan.

This is pretty clear already given that his viral rant about Fury Road doesn’t betray much knowledge of the franchise at all—he doesn’t seem aware that “the director of Fury Road” he reviles is, in fact, George Miller, the director of the entire Mad Max franchise. He calls one of the most iconic Australian cultural exports of all time a “piece of American culture.” He boldly states “No one barks orders to Max!” when, in fact, all three previous Mad Max films feature Max taking orders from someone (Roger Ward’s Captain Fifi in Mad Max, Michael Preston’s Papagallo in The Road Warrior, Tina Turner’s Auntie Entity in Beyond Thunderdome).

But the single biggest sign Clarey doesn’t know the first damn thing about what George Miller or Mad Max is his triumphalist line: “When the shit hits the fan, it will be men like Mad Max who will be in charge.”

Mad Max isn’t in charge of anything throughout the Mad Max film franchise. Max is emphatically not the archetype of the badass hero who gets the girl, gets the crown, and rules as a patriarch over society as is his due. He’s a fucked-up loner who isn’t fit to live among civilized people; who begins each film alone, wounded, broken, and who ends each film in the same state or worse.
[…]
All the Mad Max films have had tragic endings, and if you don’t grasp that this is the tragedy at the heart of Mad Max (and the gritty Westerns and samurai films Mad Max emulates) then you don’t get Mad Max. If you think Max has an awesome life and we’re supposed to wish we were him, you really don’t get Mad Max.

”

-

Arthur Chu, ‘Mad Max’: How Men’s Rights Activists Killed the World

m r a s    j u s t    g o t   f u c k e n   d r a g g e d d d d d d d d 

(via theimprovfairytale)

empowerment is such a useless concept tbh.

your personal feelings on make-up really don’t matter when you’re talking about structural oppression. feminism doesn’t give a shit whether you are ~empowered~ from wearing eyeliner or not.

what feminism cares about is the fact that girls are pressured and groomed to wear make-up from their childhood on, that employers are less likely to hire you or pay you well if you don’t wear make-up, that the beauty industry is largely controlled by men and focused on making women feel insecure about their natural body so they can advance capitalism, that the beauty industry spends billions of dollars each year to contribute to the idea all girls are raised into that it’s only their looks that matter and give them worth.

i don’t think that wearing make-up or lingerie invalidates someone’s feminism, no. i do think that, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter, you have to be able to criticize make-up and femininity in general on a structural level though. you have to recognize that femininity is compulsory and imposed on women from the patriarchy. you have to recognize that women who don’t or can’t perform femininity the way it is dictated, especially disabled, lbpq+ and trans women and women of colour, are punished for it. and if you can’t do that because you’d rather cling to useless liberal concepts like empowerment then yes, that does invalidate your feminism.

More PROD3000.

"The Grand Overlook Hotel," edited by Steve Ramsden.

This month’s winner of our informal TBB cover photo contest is this invigorating breakfast scene by Swedish builder LegoJalex. Yes, every single part of this scene (even the kitchen) is built from LEGO. And if you’re confused, that’s a popular brand of caviar paste on the toast. Just think of it as the Swedish equivalent of Vegemite!

Remember, you can keep up with the Brothers Brick by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter. And for occasional extra goodies, you can also follow us on Flickr or subscribe to us on YouTube. And keep those cover photo submissions coming!

sandandglass:

TDS, May 26, 2015

Jon Stewart wonders why some Republicans are okay with big government when it comes to surveillance, but not when it comes to healthcare