Luke.stirling

I don’t buy much retail brand LEGO, but I made an exception for LEGO Ideas 21301 Birds which was released earlier this year. Hec, I even built all the models, rather than just stripping the set for parts!

There are a couple of things I love about this set (other than the models themselves, based on designs by British builder and bird enthusiast Thomas Poulsom). Firstly, the set gives LEGO’s larger audience a taste of some styles and techniques that are normally the preserve of die-hard builders. Secondly, this set is overflowing with plates! As a sculptoral builder I get little value out of most retail sets because they contain so many specialized parts. And while Creator buckets offer a more generic selection of parts, they usually focus on bricks, and less on plates.

In the LEGO fan community there is a tradition of creating “alternate” models from the parts in one set. And for many sets it’s a challenge to come up with good alternates. But the Birds set makes this so easy that I was able to come up with a collection of alternate models, that even adhere to the theme of the original set. Enjoy…

Fans of Thomas’ original bird designs will be excited to learn that next March he will be releasing a book entitled Birds from Bricks that features 15 entirely new LEGO birds, complete with building instructions. Pre-order it now!

TSA screeners' ability to detect weapons in luggage is "pitiful," according to classified reports on the security administration's ongoing story of failure and fear.

We know about them because lawmakers are tiring of the charade and the complacency that comes with it. Ars Technica reports:

"In looking at the number of times people got through with guns or bombs in these covert testing exercises it really was pathetic. When I say that I mean pitiful," said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), speaking Tuesday during a House Oversight hearing concerning classified reports from federal watchdogs. "Just thinking about the breaches there, it's horrific," he added.

Auditors from the Inspector General's Office, posing as travelers, discovered enormous loopholes in the TSA's screening process. A leaked classified report this summer found that as much as 95 percent of contraband, like weapons and explosives, got through during clandestine testings. Lynch's comments were in response to the classified report's findings.

What will the future bring? We all love puppies, don't we?

The case at hand is Instagram, where gentlemen often realize too late that their friends and family know when they like pictures of scantily-clad barely-legals.

I'd never reached the level of boredom, or stalkerdom, that led me to the Following tab on the Activity page — the place where you can see what posts the people you follow are liking.

Never, until a friend complained that not only was the guy she was dating constantly liking the swimsuit photos of random 17-year-old girls, but, as she breathlessly informed me, so were many of our mutual male friends and acquaintances! "Anytime you wake up early, just look," she advised, shaking her head. "You won't believe it."

Suddenly, the Following tab became much more interesting.

Welcome to the nasty karma of social networking: Facebook encourages us to be an active consumer of other people's privacy failures, and when we do so, it turns us into the next dish.

P.S. That feeling when a new friend or follower rifles through old pics of you, liking their way backwards through the years, roughly until the age of consent.

P.P.S. When PR people and journalists and peers friend you but never actually say anything. "Just browsing" in the shopfront of life!

Mozilla has shipped a new version of Firefox whose private mode also blocks tracking beacons for ad networks, which will make private Web usage much harder to track. (more…)

From Walmart to Hershey to Campbell's Soup, America's biggest retailers and manufacturers are warning their shareholders that flat growth is a fact of life because of "consumer bifurcation," which is plutocrat-speak for "everyone is broke except the one percent." The companies' plan for rescuing themselves is to turn themselves into luxury brands targeted at the wealthy. (more…)

Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was released 40 years ago. Here is Queen's Brian May and Roger Taylor along with the group's studio engineer Justin Shirley Smith on the history of this feat of rock opera. This clip is from the bonus DVD on Queen's Greatest Video Hits 1. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is on Queen's LP A Night at the Opera and the track will be released as a special edition vinyl 12" this month on Record Store Day Black Friday!

Remember when Rupert Murdoch and 21st Century Fox bought National Geographic and we all gasped in horror and thought, “Well, there goes a distinguished brand,” and they went, “No, no, it’s all good, this infusion of cash will give us stability,” and we all gave them the suspicious side-eye and said we’ll wait and see? Remember that? I wouldn’t want you to have forgotten, since the latest news from National Geographic is all…

Employees across the National Geographic Society came into work Tuesday knowing only that they could expect “information about your employment status,” based on a vague email they had received from the organization’s president on Monday. By late morning, dozens of them had been laid off, including photo editors, an online science news writer, members of the TV channels, members of the digital NG Kids team, members of the legal team, administrative employees, and one higher-up position in graphics, multiple people who work there told me. It’s not yet clear how many layoffs there will be in total.

And they’re all biggest layoff in NatGeo’s history…

The National Geographic Society of Washington will lay off about 180 of its 2,000-member workforce in a cost-cutting move that follows the sale of its famous magazine and other assets to a company controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

The reduction, the largest in the organization’s 127-year history, appears to affect almost every department of the nonprofit organization, including the magazine, which the society has published since just after its founding in 1888. It also will affect people who work for the National Geographic Channel, the most profitable part of the organization. Several people in the channel’s fact-checking department, for example, were terminated on Tuesday, employees said.

Rupert Murdoch has a different definition of stability than I do, I guess.

Oh, and do you remember the fussy prudes who declared that my presence was going to poison the dignified reputation of NatGeo? I am amused.

No, wait, I am horrified.

liberalsarecool:

iammyfather:

daily-political-humor:

European nightmare

America defined by fear of two different Dystopias.  The “Hunger Games” to most people, Modern Europe to the Republicans.  

‘Health care as a right’ is a nightmare for Republicans? I guess going bankrupt over medical bills is not a nightmare for conservatives.

Yeah idk what this guy is even thinking.

Christians are adamant that they are persecuted, despite being a majority in this country and despite controlling all of politics — not only is it almost impossible to get elected to high office unless you’re Christian, but one of the most common complaints about politicians people don’t like is that they are non-Christian, as if that’s enough reason to impeach. Look at Obama, who’s always getting called a Muslim. He’s clearly not, by all that he says and does, and besides, it shouldn’t matter if he were a Muslim or a Satanist.

As a vocal and activist atheist, I’m in a peculiar position. I ought to be in a position to hammer young minds with godless propaganda, but I don’t — I’m actually very conscientious about avoiding making students think about the anti-scientific nature of religion in the classroom, because we’ve got more than enough topics to cover. Yet over and over again, I learn that Christian educators have no such compunction, and are happily engaged in indoctrinating their students, while at the same time, whining that they get no respect and are oppressed by godless scientists.

Zack Kopplin interviewed students in Louisiana. It’s all preachin’ and bible-thumpin’.

I spoke with another Airline graduate, Ben, who had been an officer in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes while in high school. He told me that the faculty was “extremely involved” in the FCA and said that Airline’s principal Rowland “often led the FCA large group sessions with his testimony and preaching.”

Allie, the recent graduate, mentioned a dispute she had with principal Rowland about song lyrics on T-shirts. “Not only did he discuss how it was not Christian, but then proceeded to point to the Holy Bible sitting smack-dab in the middle of the desk,” Allie said. “I’m not the only person who was told ‘no’ and then [he] used his Bible as a reference.”

Rowland “definitely used/uses his position of authority as an avenue to evangelize and push his religious beliefs,” Ben said.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is supposed to be student-led, but Michelle told me, “teachers encourage you to join the FCA.” Sometimes teachers even forced students to attend FCA meetings. “My freshman year one of my teachers … took all of his kids to FCA,” said Tina. “I had no option whether or not to go and didn’t want to make a scene so I simply followed and sat quietly.” She also told me another teacher made students write her letters to request permission to avoid going to FCA club meetings, forcing non-Christian students to out themselves to her.

Can you imagine the squawking I would hear from all directions if I used my position of authority as an avenue to evangelize and push atheist ideas? I’d be complaining about myself! This week my students are learning about cell cycle regulation, I can’t possibly disrupt class by telling them that Jesus-crap is nonsense.

Teachers and administrators who wave Bibles around as a source of authority are simply not doing their jobs properly.

Well, bad news for those very few people (currently 14 out of 1,135 voters; see below) who think the TSA is more like a panther than, say, an elderly orangutan or the mythical skunk ape. John Roth, DHS’s hard-working but continually frustrated inspector general, is back in front of Congress today to talk about why the department’s least-popular child keeps coming home with big red Fs on its report card.

When we last left our heroes back in July, they had more or less shut down the Houston airport because they were worried it might be under attack by several hundred sorority members, an attack that came just one day after it allegedly caught Morrissey trying to smuggle his junk onto a plane in San Francisco. Granted, at the time the agency had just come under new management (see “New TSA Administrator to Explain Why Agency Will Fail Differently From Now On,” and this followup), so there was at least some reason to believe that it might at least, well, fail differently in the future.

This belief was unjustified.

The IG’s office itself last appeared here in June when it released a report entitled “TSA Can Improve Aviation Worker Vetting,” which I thought was something of an understatement given the finding that TSA had in fact cleared 73 people who were on the terrorist watchlist at the time. Roth’s prepared statement today is entitled “TSA: Security Gaps,” so I’m betting Mr. Picky is going to be all critical again. Let’s see if I’m right.

Roth begins by mentioning his “unusually blunt testimony” before Congress in the past, when he has mentioned not only that TSA sucks but that it had developed a culture “that resisted oversight and was unwilling to accept the need for change.” Trying to be optimistic, Roth notes that there is a new administrator now, and so he is “hopeful that the days of TSA sweeping its problems under the rug and simply ignoring the findings and recommendations of the [IG] and [Government Accountability Office] are coming to an end.”

Hm. Okay, so how have things been going lately?

“In September 2015, we completed and distributed our report on our most recent round of covert testing.” This is where undercover DHS inspectors do stuff like try to smuggle bomb parts through checkpoints, and succeed … let’s see … 96% of the time. Or at least that’s how it’s gone in the past. How about now?

“While I cannot talk about the specifics in this setting [it’s classified, y’all], I am able to say that … the test results were disappointing and troubling,” and were “consistent across every airport” tested. Roth also noted that the tests were conducted by personnel “without any special knowledge or training,” which might seem odd unless you know that the TSA reacted to the earlier 96-percent-failure-rate findings partly by complaining that the IG had used personnel who were specially trained to defeat TSA’s efforts. (You know, sort of like an actual terrorist might be.) So this time, the IG deliberately chose people with no special knowledge or training to carry out its audits. I interpret this to mean that people who basically had no real idea what they were doing consistently and successfully breached security at every airport tested.

What exactly were the failures? Well, again, the details are classified until someone leaks them, but Roth was able to say that they included “failures in the technology, failures in TSA procedures, and human error.” So just those three areas.

The TSA administrator is also testifying today, and to be fair I should include a link to his prepared statement as well. There we learn, for example, that the agency is doing fine in the three areas above but could do better, has taken steps “to ensure a laser-focus on mission,” and has made a “commitment to right-sizing and resourcing TSA to effectively secure the aviation enterprise,” guided by a “principled, strategic approach.” Also, they have prototypes of lots more screening machines, apparently, “which hold great promise for the traveling public.” Or at least those members of the traveling public who have stock in the relevant companies, at least.

        

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femme-nymphet:

I think one of the worst forms of child abuse is injecting them with a terminal sense of guilt. parents who constantly use guilt as a disciplinary tactic end up raising children who are unable and afraid to stand up for themselves. they are taught that their needs are unimportant, that they’re selfish for trying to individuate, and that they don’t really matter. they essentially begin to look at themselves as a burden, as something to be tolerated instead of loved - how cruel is it to make a person feel apologetic for their own existence?

the worst part is that since the abuse isn’t “actively” vicious, it’s difficult to identify it. when a person is raised on guilt, they have difficulty establishing boundaries, and they have difficulty developing themselves spiritually. as such, they’re more likely to become victims of further abuse in their adulthood. when something bad happens to them, they assume they deserved it.

it’s the people who apologize for everything, it’s the people who deprive themselves of things that are good for them, it’s the people who end up isolating themselves from others because they feel inherently damaged.

guilt is a poison and the only antidote is compassion

Jar Jar Binks, evil genius and Sith mastermind? We have to admit, it adds up.

The post Reddit Has Given Us the Most Insane Star Wars Theory Ever appeared first on WIRED.

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE, first, that this is NOT an official court notice regarding the settlement, but rather is a notice you found on a legal-humor website that may to some extent make fun of that settlement, as you would expect, and yet also providing further and additional notice of the same, not in the sense of legal notice but in the general sense, and also providing links to the official settlement website, such as that one right there, which is what you should consult for real information about said settlement instead of this legal-humor website.

HAVING SAID THE FOREGOING:

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that if you bought a qualifying sandwich during the relevant class period, your rights could be affected by the pending settlement of numerous class actions involving said sandwiches, actions in which the plaintiffs, a group that may include but is not necessarily limited to you, claim that the defendant “has marketed Subway® Footlong sandwiches as being 12 inches when they are not in fact 12 inches,” and “make a similar claim about the marketing of Six Inch sandwiches,” SAID CLAIM BEING THAT the “Six Inch sandwiches” are not in fact six inches in length.

They are allegedly shorter sometimes.

The presiding judge has certified a preliminary settlement class, which you are in (if, see above, etc.), and has approved a preliminary settlement, about which you may have questions (people frequently do).

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Have Plaintiffs proven Subway did anything wrong? No.

Has Subway admitted it did anything wrong? No.

Has the Court ruled on the merits? No.

Then why is there a settlement? The parties have agreed that settlement will be beneficial because each side will avoid the risks, delay, and costs of trial, and consumers will get benefits.

Will consumers get benefits? No.

No? Well, sort of.

What will I get? Nothing.

Nothing? Not a thing, unless you buy Subway sandwiches of the aforedescribed ilk in the future. This is because under the settlement, Subway has agreed only to change various business practices relating to said sandwiches, including among other things the following:

• Requiring franchisees to use a “tool for measuring bread” (perhaps including but not limited to that tool sometimes known as a “ruler”) to help ensure the relevant length is attained;
• Regular inspections;
• Alteration of all protocols that previously allowed for “a small tolerance” in the length of said sandwiches to require that they be at least the stated length;
• Display of the following notice in each Subway restaurant: “Due to natural variations in the bread baking process, the size and shape of bread may vary.”

But you said they would all be at least the advertised length from now on. Yes.

So why do I care that “the size and shape of bread may vary?” I guess you don’t.

Okay. Okay.

What if I believed that “footlong” and “six-inch” were approximations in the first place and was, in fact, not displeased by and had no objection to the sandwich or sandwiches that was or were handed to me at all relevant times during the class period? I don’t understand the question.

Do I have lawyers in this case? You sure do.

Are they getting anything? You mean besides very slightly longer sandwiches? Of course.

How much? Half a million bucks, give or take.

That seems like a lot. You’re new to this, aren’t you? Also, that isn’t a question.

Can I object? Sure, if you’re a class member or otherwise have standing. You have to object by December 16, though.

What sense does all this make? Depends who you ask.

I’m asking you. Let me finish. Some people would argue that consumer class actions like this one are reasonable because they are one way to protect consumers from widespread practices that are deceptive or unfair but involve small amounts that don’t give any one person an incentive to sue, and because government doesn’t have the resources to regulate everything. Consumers have benefited, at least in the abstract, and the defendant has had to pay something as a penalty for the alleged wrongdoing. Other people would argue that this approach is inefficient and encourages frivolous lawsuits that benefit only or primarily the attorneys on both sides; these people might also point out that there is another regulatory system out there, namely the market—if the defendant has done something wrong and you make the evidence public, then fewer people will buy from that defendant, so its non-cheating competitors will do better. So, it depends who you ask.

Sorry, I thought I saw a Kardashian. What did you say? Nothing interesting.

So should I object? That’s up to you. Personally, I’d like to see somebody object on the grounds that “six inch” needs to be hyphenated because “six-inch sandwiches” and “six inch sandwiches” mean two totally different things. But I’ll probably have to do that myself.

Maybe I should look at the official notice and not rely on a legal-humor website for information about the settlement. I couldn’t agree more.

        

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Andy G made these little Minimoog Synthesizers out of Lego bricks, If 10,000 people approve his proposal on Lego Ideas, Lego might create a kit and sell them.

Go retro-analog with these miniaturized versions of the classic Minimoog synthesizer! The Model D (left) and the Voyager Old School (right) are both represented in a small display set that would look great on the shelf of any synth geek, electronics buff, or general music lover.

In 1970, Bob Moog's company revolutionized the synthesizer industry once again by incorporating elements of his monumental Moog Modular in an all-in-one portable package, enabling electronic musicians to easily bring these spectacular sounds onstage. The iconic Model D and its subsequent revisions defined the sound of bass and lead sounds in pop and rock music for decades. In 2002, along with the resurgence of retro synthesis, Moog repackaged the Minimoog into a new model, the Voyager. The Voyager "Old School" is the model depicted here.

The control panels are not intended to be a one-to-one reproduction of the control panels of these instruments, which would be practically impossible at this scale. Instead, I chose to simply suggest the knobs and switches and panel prints with simple elements. The design of the side panels closely resembles that of the original models: metallic on the Model D and wood-grain on the Voyager Old School. Both synths sit on simple Lego recreations of an X-style keyboard stand.

Another detail of note is the accurate representation of the keyboard. Many piano and organ builds do not accurately reflect the pattern of black keys in alternating groupings of 2 and 3, but I found a way to achieve this with a combination of a could hinge elements oriented in different directions. These all reside atop white grille tiles, but utilizing hidden jumper tiles to achieve the most correct proportion possible.

Possible project updates include additional Minimoog models and refinements. Models of synths or keyboards from other manufacturers will likely merit their own projects.

Synth lovers unite, and help make these recreations a reality! They look great on my desk, and they'd certainly look great on yours!

Jonathan Marks has written a terribly wrong-headed article — it’s embarrassingly bad, especially for someone who claims to be writing popular anthropology articles. He’s adamant that humans aren’t apes. He’s not denying evolutionary descent from a common ancestor, he just seems to fail to understand the nature of taxonomic categories.

What are we? We are human. Apes are hairy, sleep in trees, and fling their poo. I should make it clear: Nobody likes apes more than I do; I support their preservation in the wild and their sensitive treatment in captivity. I also don’t think I’m better than them. I’m smarter than they are, and they are stronger than I am. I’m just not one of them, regardless of my ancestry. I am different from them. And so are you. You and I have 46 chromosomes in our cells; chimpanzees have 48. They are indeed very similar, but if you know what to look for, you can tell their cells apart quite readily.

Wow. So wrong.

He’s confusing species with higher levels of the taxonomic hierarchy, that is, the leaves for the branches. If he’s going to take that attitude, there are no apes anywhere — there is no single species we’d call “apes”. Chimpanzees could similarly protest that they aren’t apes, they have a set of characteristics that distinguish them from those other apes, gorillas, humans, and orangutans. Gorillas could announce that they are Gorilla gorilla gorillia, not some damn dirty ape like chimps or humans or orangutans. And so on.

Of course we’re apes. We’re members of a broad group of related animals, and we call that taxonomic group the apes. What he’s doing is similar to if I declared that I’m not human, I’m an American — rejecting affiliation with a general category to claim exclusive membership to a subcategory.

And he goes on and on about it. Sorry, but I detest that definition by chromosome number. Are Down syndrome people not human? Minor rearrangements of chromosomes are fairly common — do they break some membership rule, so that you’re kicked out of the human club if you don’t have your genes in the right order?

He also has a cartoonish definition of apes. They live in trees and are hairy and throw poo. Again, it’s using the circumstantial to displace the general. “Ape” is a statement of relationship, not an individual — so to deny your apishness is to deny your history.

He almost sort of gets it.

And indeed we–that is, Homo sapiens–fall phylogenetically within the group that we call “apes.” Shouldn’t that make us apes?

Yes.

On the other hand, we also fall phylogenetically within the group that we call “fish.” That is to say, a coelacanth is more closely related to us than it is to a trout. So we fall within the category that encompasses both coelacanths and trout, namely, fish.

Yes! He almost has it!

Then, failure.

Yet we are not fish. There are certainly things to be understood by confronting our fish ancestry (such as our gestation in a saline, aqueous environment), but fish can’t read, so if you are reading this, then you are not a fish.

Jonathan Marks: go back to school and learn some cladistics. You don’t identify a clade by autapomorphies, or traits that are novel to a species, like reading. It’s like declaring that zebrafish have horizontal stripes, and fish don’t have stripes, therefore they are not fish. It’s stupid on multiple levels.

Until you’ve mastered the basic concepts, I’d appreciate it if you stopped miseducating the public, too.

If you think we aren’t apes, how do you explain the popularity of Alcoholics Anonymous? Lance Dodes takes a sobering look at the data behind the success of 12-step programs. The short answer: they don’t work, and they do harm.

There is a large body of evidence now looking at AA success rate, and the success rate of AA is between 5 and 10 percent. Most people don’t seem to know that because it’s not widely publicized. … There are some studies that have claimed to show scientifically that AA is useful. These studies are riddled with scientific errors and they say no more than what we knew to begin with, which is that AA has probably the worst success rate in all of medicine.

It’s not only that AA has a 5 to 10 percent success rate; if it was successful and was neutral the rest of the time, we’d say OK. But it’s harmful to the 90 percent who don’t do well. And it’s harmful for several important reasons. One of them is that everyone believes that AA is the right treatment. AA is never wrong, according to AA. If you fail in AA, it’s you that’s failed.

I was most entertained by the commenter on that article who attempted to rebut those claims. Read this, and wonder:

I’m a recovering addict/alcoholic with over 5 years of continuous sobriety. I attend AA meetings regularly, and I take exception to Dr. Dodes statement, “AA is never wrong, according to AA. If you fail in AA, it’s you that’s failed.” I have never attended a meeting where this sentiment was expressed. The AA Big Book says, “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” It does not claim any infallibility on the part of the 12 steps. I’ve heard it said around the tables many times that the success rate is around 5%.

So he’s actually confirming exactly what Dodes said: low success rate, and AA says the 95% failures don’t count because they didn’t “thoroughly follow” the path.

AA should be a subject of great interest to atheists, because it demonstrates a common phenomenon: vast numbers of people gladly and even desperately following a pattern of behaviors that do nothing to help them, and are even proven ineffective. Sound familiar?

Writer Jason Sanford kicked a small hornet’s nest earlier today when he discussed “the fossilization of science fiction,” as he called it, and noted that today’s kids who are getting into science fiction are doing it without “Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien.” This is apparently causing a moderate bit of angina in some quarters.

I think Sanford is almost entirely correct (the small quibble being that I suspect Tolkien is still common currency, thanks to recent films and video games), nor does this personally come as any particular shock. I wrote last year about the fact my daughter was notably resistant to Heinlein’s charms, not to mention the charms of other writers who I enjoyed when I was her age… thirty years ago. She has her own set of writers she loves and follows, as she should. As do all the kids her age who read.

The surprise to me is not that today’s kids have their own set of favorite authors, in genre and out of it; the surprise to me is honestly that anyone else is surprised by this. As a practical matter, classic science fiction isn’t selling where today’s kids are buying (or where they are being bought for), namely, in the YA section of the book store. See for yourself: Walk into your local bookstore, head to the YA racks and try to find a science fiction or fantasy-themed book that more than fifteen years old. It’ll be a rough assignment. YA has a high audience turnover rate — kids keep aging out of the demo, don’t you know — and the new kids want their own books. The older books you’ll see tend to be a) ones assigned by schools, b) ones that had movies made from them.

Mind you, generally speaking, book stores stock newer books anyway; book stores, like other entertainment venues, rely on novelty (which in our line of work is called “front list”) to get people through the doors. If you’re doing well as an author, some of your backlist is on the shelf, too. But the shelf in a physical bookstore is only so long. These days, being someone who has been in a lot of bookstores recently, I note the shelf in science fiction and fantasy is mostly skewed to living, working authors, most notably their last couple of books. Some classic (i.e., now dead) authors are there but usually represented by two or three books rather than an extensive backlist.

Which is as it should be. All love to Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, et al., but they’re dead now. They don’t need the money from readers; living authors do. Moreover, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, et al have been dead on average two to three decades and their best known work is half a century old. No matter how brilliant they were or how foundational they were to the genre, they’re going to be dated. None of the futures of Heinlein , as just one example, resemble a future that begins from today; they branch off from the 50s or 60s. Readers (in general) don’t want to have to go backwards a half century in order to move forward again.

Certainly you can’t expect new readers to the genre, including young readers, to backshift several decades — or, well, you can, but it would have the same effect as suggesting to a teenager today that if they want to see a movie about people their age, they should watch The Blackboard Jungle. Sure, it’s fine movie, and an important one. It’s just not especially relevant to the teenager of today. It wasn’t made for them, in any event. It was made for their grandparents.

Again, I’m not sure why it comes as a surprise to anyone that people might want entertainment aimed at them, which includes entertainment written by living people with a sense of what’s going on in contemporary culture. Most people aren’t approaching the genre as a survey course. They’re approaching it to be amused. And if they are approaching is as a survey course, then the good news is that it’s not actually that hard to find many if not most of the classics. There is infinite shelf space online, and you don’t have to sell that many copies of an ebook to remain in print. It’s there if you want it.

But — again — it’s okay if you don’t. I don’t expect new readers of the genre today to read much Heinlein or Clarke or Asimov. 60 years from now, and presuming I’m dead, I don’t expect them to read much of me, or Al Reynolds or Ann Leckie, either (to name just two other contemporary SF writers). They’ll be reading their authors, mostly. I hope they’ll enjoy them.

Jaimee Hills writes, "Gerry Canavan has done a short writeup in an academic publication called The Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction on the (amazing) contents of the Octavia E. Butler papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California." (more…)

And punishment is not the cure. This video summarizes the problems in our current war on drugs.

One quibble: near the end, it seems to imply that online social interactions aren’t real, and are even addictive substitutes for the real thing — we’re supposed to get together with our friends physically. I have to disagree: you can form good relationships online, and having a conversation in a chat room can be richer and more productive than going to a bar or a bowling alley, for many of us.

alexfoundation:

Happy Halloween from the flock! Griffin and Athena enjoyed a treat of organic pureed pumpkin to celebrate Halloween.

Griffin had fun tearing up his paper jack-o’-lantern, too!

🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃

Maybe I should run down to the store and pick up a laxative. Maybe I’ll get a bottle of this homeopathic stuff…can’t hurt. Hey, maybe I’ll pick up a case. Yvette d’Entremont recommends CVS’s homeopathic constipation relief.

The bottle, which listed 20 percent alcohol as an inactive ingredient, is sold over the counter with no age requirements. One of the NBC4 I-Team producers recorded her teen daughter buying the product without any questions asked.

“It’s really just alcohol and water,” d’Entremont said.

Yay homeopathy!

Science blogger Yvette d’Entremont, an analytical chemist, conducted an unusual experiment to demonstrate the potential impact. Known as the “Sci-Babe” on YouTube, d’Entremont recorded herself opening and drinking six bottles of the laxative — each has 1 fluid ounce of liquid.

One ounce? That’s about as much as a shot. But it’s a laxative…guzzling down 6 doses must have had her excreting explosively.

Or not?

She rinsed her mouth with a Diet Coke, waited a half-hour and gave herself a breath test that showed she was well above the legal limit. But she said there was “no laxative effect whatsoever.”

So…I bet CVS is going to have a sudden run of constipated teenagers rushing their door now.

The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel.

The label on Aquafina water bottles will soon be changed to spell out that the drink comes from the same source as tap water, the brand's owner PepsiCo said Friday.

A group called Corporate Accountability International has been pressuring bottled water sellers to curb what it calls misleading marketing practices.

Aquafina is the single biggest bottled water brand, and its bottles are now labeled "P.W.S." The new labels will spell out "public water source."

Aquafina is a brand of purified bottled water products produced by PepsiCo, consisting of both unflavored and flavored water... It was first distributed in Wichita, Kansas in 1994, before becoming more widely sold across the United States, Spain, Canada, Lebanon, Turkey, the GCC countries, Iran, Egypt, Vietnam, Pakistan and India to compete with The Coca-Cola Company's Dasani and Dr. Pepper Snapple's Deja Blue. As of 2009, Aquafina represented 13.4 percent of domestic bottled water sales in the United States, making it the number 1 bottled water brand as measured by retail sales.

When you’re trying to do homework but your parrot wants to play Peek-a-boo.

A lesbian couple were arrested after kissing in a grocery store, and now the Hawaii cop who targeted them is the target of a lawsuit.

The Honolulu Police Department has also opened an internal investigation into the conduct of officer Bobby Harrison, who allegedly punched one of the women in the face after they ignored his objections to their public display of affection.

Courtney Wilson and Taylor Guerrero were taken into custody in March after the incident, at a Foodland store on Oahu's North Shore. They were charged with felony assault on an officer and spent three days in jail. The charges were dropped after five months, during which the women were forced to remain on the islands.

Foodland apologized to the women, according to their Honolulu attorney Eric Seitz, but did not otherwise comment on the lawsuit. Store staff reportedly helped the officer, who was in uniform but off-duty, restrain the women during the encounter.

According to the lawsuit, Harrison saw the women kissing and "in a loud voice, ordered plaintiffs to stop and 'take it somewhere else.'" Though the women walked away, Harrison followed them and "ordered Plaintiffs to stop, and threatened to have them thrown out of the store."

In the checkout line, according to the lawsuit, Harrison told them they were trespassing, and ordered them to "move out of the cashier line." Wilson started to call 911, but Harrison grabbed Wilson by the wrist to prevent her doing so and told them "you girls don't know how to act."

When Guerrero tried to separate the two, she told reporters, Harrison shoved her then punched her in the face.

A Hawaii News Now report says Foodland staff helped Harrison zip-tie the women.

The women said Foodland employees were then instructed to hold them down until someone found zip ties.

"They took us down to the basement of Foodland where they continued to harass us about our conduct in the store, asking us if it was worth it, if we were happy where we are," Wilson said. "We were just shocked that it all happened." …

Wilson also told reporters that she was denied medical treatment at the scene and after she was arrested. Pictures of her injuries weren't taken until two days after the assault.

Police at first told the Associated Press they would not comment on the pending litigation, but soon announced the internal investigation. Harrison, reportedly a 26-year veteran, remains on full active duty.

The UK government continues to exhibit its historic, dangerous cluelessness about crypto. After promising to ban working crypto in the previous election campaign, the Tory government has advanced a nonsensical compromise: apps can use working crypto, but also have to be able to break that crypto on demand, without using backdoors. (more…)

A few months ago, I posted a series of tweets about some of the most disturbing and vile sexual harassment I receive online.

(Read my entire series of tweets here)

Because the behaviors of online harassers are often so predictable, I feared that doing this would result in a flood of similar harassment, but I felt it was important to speak out about it precisely because men use tactics like this in an effort to silence and disempower women, and because I know that gendered online harassment of this sort is hardly unique to me. It is important that people understand just how ugly and horrifying the epidemic of online harassment can be. This is not something that can be dismissed or ignored; being the target of such sustained, widespread harassment tactics can and does take a very real mental and emotional toll. Nobody should simply have to accept this as the price of participating in social media.

The tweets you see here represent just a small fraction of the responses I received within the first 24 hours of my comments about this particular online sexual harassment tactic. The responses number well into the hundreds and continued to pour in for weeks. Please note that while I’m not sharing any of the copycat responses that included pictures of genitalia or other explicit imagery, I did receive a great deal of those in addition to the responses below.

Content warning for misogyny, gendered insults, victim blaming, sexual violence, sexual harassment, and threats.

It’s a Compliment

Prove it!

Just Stop Internetting

Victim Blaming

What About The Menz!?

It’s No Big Deal