Cowboy Who?

The City of Houston is terminating its contract with Inframark, which manages five wastewater treatment plants and five drinking water supply facilities in the Kingwood area, effective this Friday.

Richard J. Lonsinger is a member of the Ponca tribe of Oklahoma, who was adopted at a young age into a white family of three. He eventually reconnected with his birth family, but when his birth mother passed away in 2010, he wasn't included in the distribution of her estate. Feeling both hurt and excluded, he asked a judge to re-open her estate, to give him a part of one particular asset: an Osage headright.

An Osage headright is a share of profits from resources like oil, gas, and coal that have been extracted from the Osage Nation's land. These payments can be sizeable - thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a year. Historically, they were even larger – in the 1920s the Osage were some of the wealthiest people in the world. But that wealth also made them a target and subject to paternalistic and predatory laws. Over the previous century, hundreds of millions of dollars in oil money have been taken from the Osage people.

On today's show: the story of how Richard Lonsinger gradually came to learn this history, and how he made his peace with his part of a complicated inheritance.

This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with help from Alyssa Jeong Perry and Emma Peaslee. It was engineered by Brian Jarboe and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was edited by Keith Romer, with help from Shannon Shaw Duty from Osage News.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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While many online firebrands rant and rave against the concept, few take the time to define it. The Onion asked conservatives what “woke” means to them, and this is what they said.

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According to a study published in Nature, a team of scientists from Osaka University in Japan have created mice with two biologically male parents for the first time, a significant milestone in reproductive biology that produced healthy offspring using eggs generated from the skin cells of male mice implanted into…

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KITCHENER – Local carpenter and casual environmentalist Kai Ambrose has announced he’s really excited about using a disposable, paper straw for his recently purchased soft drink, blissfully unaware of the profound frustration waiting for him later in his beverage. “I think it’s a really great thing, phasing out single use plastics and replacing them with […]

The post Local man totally enthusiastic about using new paper straw until about ¾ of the way through his drink appeared first on The Beaverton.

TORONTO – As the debate rages over NHL players refusing to wear Pride jerseys a number of fans have come forward and said they think the Pride Nights are an unwelcome injection of politics into a fan experience that doesn’t contain any political events currently. “The NHL is supposed to be about wicked slapshots, bone-crushing […]

The post NHL fan singing national anthem, honouring soldier with standing ovation thinks Pride Nights are too political appeared first on The Beaverton.

Change the name from TikTok to “Student Loan Debt”

Become a series of collapsing bridges

Turn into the Section 8 housing waitlist

Enroll in a Title 1 school

Get into the predatory lending business

Become an ectopic pregnancy in Texas

Buy up houses and then let them sit vacant in order to drive up housing costs by creating false scarcity

Transform into a high medical bill

Become the federal minimum wage

Walk into an elementary school with an assault rifle

NASHVILLE, TN—In the hours following a violent rampage in Tennessee in which a lone attacker killed at least six individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from…

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North Korea said it has tested a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone designed to launch a “radioactive tsunami,” with leader Kim Jong-un vowing to make his rivals “plunge into despair.” What do you think?

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The nonprofit, which has a mission to provide "universal access to all knowledge," says it will appeal the ruling.

(Image credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Go to https://Nautil.us/SABINE and get 15% off your membership!

Correction to what I say at 11:53 -- I was referring to Milgram's famous experiments in which people administered electroshocks to others when ordered so. It had nothing to do with prisons. The prison experiment was from Philip Zimbardo, not Milgram. Sorry about that.

When we come together in groups we can be so much more than the sum of the parts. But sometimes groups are just much more stupid. Collective stupidity is the flipside of collective intelligence, and we see it a lot on social media. Why are groups sometimes collectively stupid and sometimes not? What can we do to be more intelligent in groups? In this video I explain the most important points.

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00:00 Intro
00:45 Emergent behaviour
04:12 Collective intelligence
07:58 Collective stupidity
14:49 What can we do?
18:34 Nautilus Special Offer!

#science #socialmedia

A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in February, blocking a limited number of prosecutors from going after anyone who helps a Texan travel out of state to terminate a pregnancy. This has given some abortion funds confidence to resume operations.

GENEVA – This week (or maybe it was last week, or the week before, it doesn’t really matter) the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their latest report detailing the horrific future humanity faces if governments don’t immediately take action and virtually no one read it or is reading this. Despite its terrifying subject […]

The post Alarming new IPCC report released and you’ve already stopped reading this headline appeared first on The Beaverton.

petermorwood:

ufocafe:

so i asked a friend what was up and she replied with this and i feel like i’m in an episode of the twilight zone

Echoing the “What?” and augmenting it with a spray of scone crumbs because -

Well, because of several reasons, not least of which is that little detail of having the funeral…

Later.

When our hamster died in Wisconsin in the bleak midwinter we kept him in the freezer, and then, in early spring, when the snow and ice melted enough that the creek was running, we gave him a Viking Funeral on a small burning boat.

Hackaday recently shared some thoughts on "purpose-built" distros: Some examples are Kali for security testing, DragonOS for software-defined radio, or Hannah Montana Linux for certain music fans. Anyone can roll their own Linux distribution with the right tools, including [Shadly], who recently created one which only loads enough software to launch the 1993 classic DOOM.... It loads the Linux kernel and the standard utilities via BusyBox, then runs fbDOOM, which is a port of the game specifically designed to run on the Linux framebuffer with minimal dependencies. Their report includes video of the distro booting up and playing Doom. "The entire distribution is placed into a bootable ISO file that can be placed on any bootable drive."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
God he is just absolutely destroying the spine of that book.

Today's News:

I am signing at Telegraph in Charlottesville: Today at 2! If you want a signed copy, this is my only remaining scheduled signing right now so please come buy or purchase a signed copy online.

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Today’s lower court decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive is a blow to all libraries and the communities we serve. This decision impacts libraries across the US who rely on controlled digital lending to connect their patrons with books online. It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online. And it holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.

But it’s not over—we will keep fighting for the traditional right of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books. We will be appealing the judgment and encourage everyone to come together as a community to support libraries against this attack by corporate publishers. 

We will continue our work as a library. This case does not challenge many of the services we provide with digitized books including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data mining, purchasing ebooks, and ongoing donation and preservation of books.

Statement from Internet Archive founder, Brewster Kahle:
“Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products. For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books.

This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors and we plan to appeal it.”

Take Action!

Stand up for libraries
Stand up for the digital rights of all libraries! Join the Battle for Libraries: https://www.battleforlibraries.com/ 

Support the Internet Archive  
Support the Internet Archive to continue fighting for libraries in court!

Stay connected
Sign up for the Empowering Libraries newsletter for ongoing updates about the lawsuit and our library.

The post The Fight Continues appeared first on Internet Archive Blogs.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

There is something inherently perverted about sanitiser on wet hands

SALT LAKE CITY—In an attempt to crack down on predators who seek to manipulate children they meet on social media platforms, the Republican supermajority in Utah’s state legislature passed a law Friday stating that teens could only be groomed in person by religious leaders. “I intend to sign this bill so we can curb…

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A great deal of the aliens in the "Star Trek" franchise are humanoid for pretty practical reasons (they have human actors!), but that doesn't mean that they have the exact same anatomy. We know that Vulcans are much stronger than your basic Earth humans, for example, and Cardassians really can't handle freezing temperatures because they're thought to be cold-blooded, like reptiles on our own world. One of the most notorious bits of trivia about alien anatomy on "Star Trek" revolves around the Klingons, however, and their unusual "anatomical redundancy." 

The idea was introduced into the canon in a 1992 episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," when Klingon Starfleet officer Worf needed to undergo serious surgery and it was revealed that Klingons have extras of many of their organs in case the first ones are injured or fail. They have two hearts, three lungs, and various other redundancies, but the one that fans fixated on was, well, their genitals. That's right, Klingons have two sets of reproductive organs, which means two vaginas and two penises! 

The whole double-dong thing was mostly just fan conjecture for years until the writers of "Star Trek: Discovery" decided to make it canon, putting pretty clear evidence of dual dingalings in the season 1 finale. While guesting on the Alpha Quadrant Podcast (via TrekMovie.com), writer Yeon Kim revealed the full story behind this bizarre bit of alien biology, and it's honestly kind of comical. 

Whizzin' On A Wall

Apparently the writers' room of "Star Trek: Discovery" is just like any group of "Star Trek" fans, and the conversation eventually turned to some of the sillier sexy theories in the franchise. ("Star Trek" has always been horny, and that rules.) Apparently the series executive producer and director Akiva Goldsman thought the idea of Klingons having dual sex organs was kind of amusing, and it made its way onto the show:

"That was an ongoing writers' room debate. According to canon, Klingons have two organs, they have two of everything, right? So ... we had this debate, when we say two of everything, does that include the penis? ... I think this was something that Akiva really liked the notion of. He just kept joking, 'Klingons have two dicks, Klingons have two dicks.' And then finally showed it on television."

As someone who's argued about the anatomy of "Star Trek" aliens and various comic book characters for decades now, having it confirmed in such a big and bold way was pretty freaking fun. It's a bit juvenile, of course, but part of what makes "Star Trek" so great is that it can combine high-minded ideas and very serious allegory with some much sillier stuff as well. "Star Trek: Discovery" will be ending with its fifth season, but that doesn't mean we've seen or heard the last about Klingon genitalia. After all, "Star Trek: Lower Decks" has no fear of crude humor, so paired penises are sure to make some kind of appearance, right?

Read this next: 11 Reasons Why The Next Generation Is The Best Star Trek Show

The post Yes, It's True: Star Trek Klingons Have Two of, Uh, Every Organ appeared first on /Film.

NEW YORK—In the wake of a cost-cutting decision to terminate roughly 10% of its workforce, National Public Radio announced Friday that it had launched a new podcast exploring the lives of employees they just laid off. “Although the decision to eliminate roughly 100 employees was not taken lightly, we are so excited…

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The lawsuit comes after protests each day this week, calling for university president Walter Wendler to reinstate the drag show and step down.

Proposed legislation from Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would criminalize explicit performances where children are present and strip libraries of state funding for hosting any event featuring performers in drag. Critics say the bill is discriminatory and unconstitutional.

An Idaho hospital has planned to stop delivering babies, with the medical center’s managers citing increasing criminalization of physicians and the inability to retain pediatricians as major reasons. What do you think?

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