Cowboy Who?

"I've had my eye on that job for a long time," the actor and director said recently. Nearly 250,000 people have signed a petition backing his dream.

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The rapper and producer who animated the Bay Area crew had a huge hit in 1990 with "The Humpty Dance," introduced the world to Tupac Shakur and was a foundational figure in West Coast hip-hop.

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Time marches ever onward, and soon we will all be dust. Portal 2 turned ten this week, and one modder celebrated by releasing Portal Reloaded, a fan-sequel to the puzzle game that brings in elements of Titanfall 2.

In Portal Reloaded, you've another 25 Aperture Science maps to navigate and solve, except this time, the solutions are stretched across time, as well as space. Your portal gun now has a third, green option, that opens a door 20 years into the future, and you'll need both timelines to find your way out, not too far removed from the timeline jumping in Respawn Entertainment's FPS game sequel.

The mod was created by one person, Jannis, and on the official site, he writes that this is aimed at "portal veterans" who want to push the mechanics of the series. "The mechanics of Portal Reloaded can seem complicated at first, but the mod tries its best to explain them in a slow and engaging way with some relatively simple puzzles," he writes. "However, the mod also wants to push its concepts to their limits and explore many new and interesting ways of puzzle solving." In the launch trailer below, you can see some real M. C. Escher-like mind-bending design at work, capturing the scale of Valve's own levels across the two base games.

This post, people who have been at work all along are exhausted , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

We’ve talked a lot lately about how anxious many people feel over returning to their offices later this year — and how much of that stems from a break in trust in the people and institutions that have shown they can’t be counted on to protect us.

But plenty of people won’t be returning to their workplaces, because they’ve been there all along — essential workers, workers whose jobs can’t be done remotely, and many people whose employers brought them back early on even though they didn’t need to.

They’ve been dealing not only with the risks of being on-site, but also with colleagues who refuse to wear masks, members of the public who throw tantrums (and worse) when asked to, and employers that don’t enforce safety measures. And some of them are frustrated when people who have been able to stay at home — and who were able to do that thanks to others who took on more of the risks so they didn’t have to — complain about having to return, when they’re not hearing much about their own experiences in that conversation.

Here’s what one person wrote to me:

“I have to say that some of the more recent letters about people reluctant to return to work despite being vaccinated, drops in positivity rates, and improved safety measures are really getting to me.

I know that each of us has experienced trauma this past year. But can we please stop pretending that the trauma of working from home and not wanting to go back is the same as the trauma of never being able to be home in the first place? It is defeating at best to hear from people who have been safe at home for an entire year talk about how nervous they are to go back and the level of unawareness in some of the responses is dumbfounding. These are people who have asked others to sacrifice their health and safety so that they could have access to food, healthcare, and essential services. And now that the tide is shifting and returning to the office is possible, the narrative is focused on them again.

Essential workers have spent the last year exposed to hate and anger and the fear of dying. People not wanting to leave their home offices is not the same and the more that we pretend that it is, the more we ignore the burden put upon those out and working every single day.

There are no winners in this pandemic, but there are certainly those who have paid a bigger price. Please stop pretending we are all in the same boat. Some people never had a boat to weather the storm and are barely hanging on.”

So, people who have already been back at work for a while or never left, let’s talk about how you’re doing. What’s your workplace getting right and what’s it getting wrong? How is this moment in the pandemic — where there’s so much cause for hope, but also so much anxiety — playing out for you?

How to Respond to the Latter Day Saints
Kaiser
1977

Submitter: Jaded me, read the cover and said “Turn the lights off and don’t answer the door? ” This book was published in 1977, one year before the church changed its viewpoints on some of its traditions and values.

Holly: Religion is a section that is easily overlooked because you think of it as having a longer shelf life than other subject areas, but many faiths make official updates to their doctrines over time! It’s actually a pretty complicated collection to manage if you’re not familiar with the timelines of different sects and denominations.

Side note: I wonder if the Mormons published a document on how to respond to the Lutherans about their “cult”?

The post Your LDS Neighbors appeared first on Awful Library Books.

My Dad Lives in a Downtown Hotel
Mann
1973

For those of you looking for a totally depressing book about divorce for your kids, this might qualify. The beginning has our kid, Joey, found his mother sad and depressed when he got up for breakfast. Evidently, Dad didn’t come back after a fight last night. Mother is just devastated. Joey has trouble coping and hides in a closet at school.

Joey then begins his quest to talk to his father. This Dad is no prize. Joey remember how is Dad taught him to swim by throwing him in a pool with the “sink or swim” comment. After school Joey decides to find his dad and talk to him about being a better kid. Dad is disinterested and is barely engaged as Joey presents him with a written promise to be a better kid. Dad still says no to being married to Mom. Joey makes peace after his friend, Pepe says lots of kids don’t have a dad at home.

This book was about a 100 pages. I am guessing this was targeted at grades 3-5. It is really dated (25 cents for the bus ride!) Not to mention, Joey seems to be wandering around New York City unsupervised.

Evidently, there was an Afterschool Special in the early 1970s with Beau Bridges. I guess I missed this one when I was a young teen.

Mary

The post Friday Fiction: Another Dad dumps his family story appeared first on Awful Library Books.

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Technically all cars are self-driving, for at least a little while.

I worry that I've forgotten how to hang out with other people.

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Texas’ deep freeze didn’t just disrupt natural gas supplies throughout Lone Star country—its effects rippled across the country, extending as far north as Minnesota. There, gas utilities had to pay $800 million more than they anticipated during the event, and Minnesota regulators are furious.

“The ineptness and disregard for common-sense utility regulation in Texas makes my blood boil and keeps me up at night,” Katie Sieben, chairwoman of the Minnesota Public Utility Commission, told The Washington Post. “It is maddening and outrageous and completely inexcusable that Texas’s lack of sound utility regulation is having this impact on the rest of the country.”

The gas and electric markets in Texas are lightly regulated and highly competitive, which has pushed companies to deliver energy at the lowest possible cost. But it also means that many companies were ill-prepared when the mercury dropped. To save money, they had skimped on winterizing their equipment. As a result, gas lines across the state—which has about 23 percent of the country’s reserves—quite literally froze. The spot price of natural gas soared to 70-times what it would normally be in Minnesota, and gas utilities paid a hefty premium when they used the daily market to match demand.

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A decade ago we wrote a post about what we called Schrodinger's Download, which was that the big companies in the music space would refer to digital downloads as a sale or a license in varying ways depending on which benefited them the most. This was most evident in lawsuits between artists and labels, especially with contracts signed in the pre-digital era, where the royalties for "licensing" were much higher than the royalties for "sales." In those cases, the labels tried to claim that MP3 downloads were "sales" in order to pay lower licensing fees -- but, on the flip side, when there were cases about reselling those files, suddenly the labels would insist that wasn't allowed, since it wasn't actually a sale, but a license.

And, of course, over the years, we've seen this play out in many ways -- especially with our never ending series of posts on how you don't own what you've bought, as more and more companies try to use technology and DRM to retain control over things you've "purchased." Last year, we wrote about someone suing Amazon for claiming that she had "purchased" movie downloads, but the fine print showing that she was merely "renting" them. The argument was that this was false advertising. That case is still going, but what we hadn't realized was that someone else had filed a very similar case against Apple, arguing the same thing. And, yes, it's the same lawyers on both cases...

And even though the Apple case was filed three months after the Amazon case, it's actually seen more progress. This week the judge denied Apple's motion to dismiss (first spotted on Courthouse News), saying that there's enough of a case to move forward. Apple tried to argue that the harm here is merely speculative. It hasn't actually removed the plaintiff's downloads. But the court says that Apple's wrong about that:

Apple argues that Plaintiff’s alleged injury — which it describes as the possibility that the purchased content may one day disappear — is not concrete but rather speculative.... This, however, as Plaintiff points out, misconstrues the injury. Plaintiff responds that his injury is not that he may one day lose access to his content.... Rather the injury Plaintiff asserts, is that he spent money purchasing the content that he wouldn’t have otherwise as a result of Apple’s misrepresentation.... This occurred at the time of purchase.

Another point raised by Apple is that "no reasonable consumer would believe" that when you buy a digital file, it means that it will always be available for you on iTunes. But the Court says, uh, yeah, actually, plenty of reasonable consumers probably would believe that, because that's what "buy" means:

Apple contends that “[n]o reasonable consumer would believe” that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely. Id. at 12. But in common usage, the term “buy” means to acquire possession over something. Buy Definition, merriam-webster.com, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/buy (13 April 2021). It seems plausible, at least at the motion to dismiss stage, that reasonable consumers would expect their access couldn’t be revoked.

The court did dismiss a few extraneous claims, but the key ones can now move forward -- and there's a decent chance that this will eventually become a class action lawsuit.

While some might argue that it doesn't really matter that much whether or not you're "buying" or "renting" this content, it really does matter in the legal sense, and big companies have used the distinction to their own advantage (often swapping out the words when convenient, as noted up top). Forcing the companies to actually be upfront about this stuff would be much better -- and might even get them to provide some more accurate descriptions of what they're really providing.

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“I’m glad I ran into you today @AOC to plan our debate about the Green New Deal. After I finish reading all 14 pages, like we agreed, I’ll schedule time for our debate.” — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, in a tweet about the Green New Deal, a proposal she has apparently railed against without reading.

As I have been saying for years, The Very Hungry Caterpillar is terrible, and no child should read it. And I will gladly explain why I think that, just as soon as I finish reading all 22 pages of this picture book.

You might be wondering how I can have an opinion on a book I haven’t read yet. The answer is pretty simple: I don’t like you, and you’re the one who recommended the book to me, so I’m pretty sure it’s a bad book.

You also might ask why it’s taken me this long to read a 22-page children’s picture book. Well, I’ll tell you: I’ve been too busy letting everyone know how much I hate The Very Hungry Caterpillar to have had time to read it. Also, it’s 22 pages long! Aren’t children’s books supposed to be short? Who has time to read 22 pages of mostly illustrations?

Besides, during any downtime I do end up having, I am fully occupied making it clear I despise another supposed children’s classic, Make Way For Ducklings. Where are these ducklings going that’s so important that I need to make way for them? Why don’t they make way for themselves, like real Americans?

And as for The Very Hungry Caterpillar, how hungry could this caterpillar even be? Caterpillars are so small, they barely need to eat anything. I bet I’m hungrier than this caterpillar. In fact, I’m actually really hungry right now. I have to delay reading this book, as I need to eat lunch first.

A friend of mine knows someone whose son read the book, and they told me that the caterpillar doesn’t even finish any of its meals — that it simply eats a hole through one piece of food to the next. So, who is to blame for the caterpillar’s hunger? Clearly not whoever is supplying the food. I don’t need to read the book to know that the caterpillar isn’t doing itself any favors.

In fact, I don’t need to read a single page to explain why I hate this book! I can just tell you what I assume happens at the end: the caterpillar eventually eats everyone else’s food, and the entire world starves to death, and life as we know it ceases to exist. Now, who would think a book like that would be enjoyable for adults, never mind for children? I rest my case.

Next, I’ll explain why Where’s Waldo? is despicable and inappropriate. Just as soon as I find Waldo.

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I'm just saying, meeting all my deadlines at this point may be a form of murder.

This story was originally published by Scalawag, a journalism and storytelling organization that disrupts dominant narratives about the South.

Texas is home to more Black farmers than any state. The USDA’s Census of Agriculture estimated in 2017 that of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States, roughly 48,000 are Black, and nearly a quarter of them are located in the Lone Star State.

The number of Black folks sinking their hands into Texas soil, however, used to be much larger. The early 1900s witnessed the terrors of Jim Crow, which ran Black families in Texas off of their own land. The societal and business practices of the 1950s didn’t allow Black farmers access to the fields and credit necessary to keep their farms afloat, and by the 1980s, an estimated 170 farms a week were being forced into foreclosure, most of them Black-owned.

In recent years, Black farmers were also overlooked and undercompensated by the stimulus package put forth by President Trump. In a Washington Post interview, Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack stated, “We saw 99 percent of the money going to white farmers and 1 percent going to socially disadvantaged farmers, and if you break that down to how much went to Black farmers, it’s 0.1 percent. Look at it another way: The top 10 percent of farmers in the country received 60 percent of the value of the COVID-19 payments. And the bottom 10 percent received 0.26 percent.”

But that’s not the whole story. Despite the difficulties, the percentage of Black farmers nationally has increased slightly over the last 20 years. A new crop of Black urban farmers in Houston are continuing traditions and pioneering innovative solutions to address food insecurity, community sustainability, and nutritional wellness. And while the majority of the $4 billion recently earmarked for Black farmers in H.R. 1319—The American Rescue Plan—went towards eradicating debt, a portion of the funds were allocated to direct payouts for farmers.

This photo essay celebrates Houston’s Black farmers who are busy tilling the soil and feeding the people. Whether its Ivy Wells, who left her corporate job to start Ivy Leaf Farms and address the local issue of food deserts; Jeremy Peaches, who started Fresh Life Organic Produce Company & Agricultural Consulting Firm to provide fresh produce to urban and rural communities; or former NASA scientist Robert Harding, who took his knowledge of space to Earth by applying the latest developments in hydroponics and vertical farming to the urban environment, the seeds have been sown for the next generation of Black Texas farmers to feast on the fruits of their labor.

The post A New Crop: Portraits of Houston’s Black Urban Farmers appeared first on The Texas Observer.