Cowboy Who?

The craft has been collecting rock and soil samples. China is only the second country to plant its national banner on the lunar surface.

(Image credit: Xinhua News Agency via AP)

Setting up and exploring the Yamaha CBX-T3 synth module and testing it with classic MS-DOS games and early nineties Windows MIDI sequencer software! It may not be a popular General MIDI music option, but being based on the TG100 it still held its own when it launched at $450 in late 1992/early 93.

● LGR links:
https://www.patreon.com/LazyGameReviews
https://www.twitter.com/LazyGameReviews
https://www.facebook.com/LazyGameReviews

● Download floppy disk images of the software here:
https://archive.org/details/trax-222

● Background music courtesy of:
http://www.epidemicsound.com

● Featuring MIDI soundtracks from:
Rise of the Triad
Duke Nukem 3D
SimCity 2000
X-COM: UFO Defense
Tyrian
Doom
Space Quest III
Passport Designs Jukebox

#LGR #MIDI #Music

Men, are you tired of being treated like a goddamned cuck by the CHINAVIRUS? Pissed off that Olive Garden won’t let you inside unless you’re wearing a thin piece of FABRIC on your face? Has your manhood taken a hit because chicks can’t see your greying goatee when it’s hidden by “SCIENCE”?

God granted you high levels of testosterone to make you immune to disease, yet your civil liberties are being trampled on by SNOWFLAKEY assholes who won’t let you show off your manly man mouth. What’s a gladiator like you to do when liberal PUSSIES tamper with your right to both catch and spread a deadly virus?

Introducing MUSK: The Mask for Men.

Our masks aren’t made out of SOFT FABRICS. None of that BREATHABLE DAINTY ASS COTTON for us, Jack. OUR masks are made from material that’s as TOUGH and unyielding and uncomfortable as the comments you leave on Barstool Sports’ articles about how lady sports commentators SUCK.

Once we receive payment to our offshore bitcoin account, we’ll custom make your MUSK Mask from one of the following HARDCORE textiles:

• Muscle Car Leather Seats
• Gold’s Gym Tank Tops
• Talladega Superspeedway asphalt
• Assorted Sturgis Motorcycle Rally memorabilia and collectibles
• Drywall
• Slats that fell off THE INDESTRUCTIBLE BORDER WALL
• Grit 7000 High-Precision Sandpaper Sheets
• Crunchy, yet moist strip club dollar bills
• The hide from a rabid honey badger
• 18-gauge, 4-point galvanized barbed wire (in Steely Silver, Midnight Black, or Cuck-free Copper)
• Shards of Russian vodka bottles
• 1993-1998 issues of Playboy — when women were WOMEN
• Giordano’s Famous Chicago Stuffed Deep Dish Pizza Crust (Must be worn within 24 hours)

And, when it’s time for a special occasion, like a Proud Boys awards banquet or a White House superspreader event, show those jabronis that you’re the most macho of all by draping your face in something from our MUSK Luxury Mask Collection, featuring fabrics collected from rare and sometimes illegal sources:

• Felt from a Golden Nugget blackjack table once puked on by Steve McQueen
• Armor plating from an M1 Abrams battle tank
• African elephant tail donated by AMERICAN PATRIOT Don Jr.
• Genetically replicated and regrown tissue sample of Clint Eastwood’s foreskin
• Authentically bloodstained Civil War uniform undershirt
• Paul Manafort’s ostrich jacket sleeves (pending release from FBI evidence room)
• Upside-down Mexico flag signed by William Barr with the inscription, CAGE ’EM UP!
• Commemorative President Donald J. TRUMP authentic gold¹ coins² celebrating his 2020 election win³

MUSK for Men masks are designed to be 1-inch shorter than most standard masks, meaning they won’t COVER your NOSE and you can breathe in the sweet, sweet scent of America, brother. And if the greeter at Walmart has a problem with that, feel free to throw hands and KNOCK that elderly fucker OUT, because every MUSK mask is also imprinted with the 1-800 number for super lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s office. Because freedom isn’t always FREE and it sometimes requires A SIZABLE HOURLY RATE.

As the superior gender, species, and race of the planet, white men know that wearing a face mask is for weak, FAUCI-LOVING SHEEPLE. But if you have to wear one, do it with masculine style, even if you’re on your way to the hospital with no health insurance to get hooked up to a ventilator. Only then will you need to take this BADGE OF AMERICAN HONOR off your quickly reddening face while you gasp for air and whisper, “It’s a HOAX."

So this pandemic (and the next one and the one after that!), be part of a dying breed. Be a man — A MUSK Mask Man.

¹ Not actually gold.

² Not actually coins.

³ Not actually a win YET.

Luckily, the man in the cockpit of the single-engine plane Wednesday night happened to be an experienced aerobatic pilot, whose maneuvers impressed even the state's Department of Transportation.

(Image credit: Minnesota Department of Transportation @MnDOT via Twitter)

We've made it repeatedly clear that 5G now exists in some kind of alternate reality, untethered from this complicated mortal plane. One one side, you've got telecom giants, hardware vendors, and some politicians busy pretending that 5G is a revolutionary game changer, something you just sprinkle around to create near Utopian smart cities, smart vehicles, and miracle cancer cures. On the other side, you've got an international cabal of conspiracy theorists with a head full of pudding, who think 5G gives them COVID or is a diabolical deep state, mind-surveillance tool.

Of course 5G is neither of those things. It's a pretty modest evolution for existing wireless standards. One that's technically less dangerous than existing cellular networks, according to actual experts. And while it will offer faster speeds eventually, U.S. implementation of 5G is spotty and slow (in some cases slower than 4G), resulting in some fairly underwhelming first impressions. It's worth neither the hype nor the fear expended on it so far.

That's not stopping the 5G conspiracy theorists. Earlier this year, folks began burning down 5G cell towers and even hiding razor blades on utility polls in the mistaken belief that 5G spreads COVID, controls minds, or is part of a new diabolical surveillance effort by the "deep state." (If you think any of these claims are true, your head has been filled with gibberish by charlatans and you need a time out).

More recently, scammers selling micro faraday cages for your router have popped up to target the gullible, promising to block the harmful impact of 5G. The products themselves are hysterical in their innate stupidity, actively blocking all wireless signals emitting from wireless routers, at prices that make no coherent sense:

Judging from the overwhelmingly positive Amazon reviews, folks really don't seem to understand they'd be better off just, you know, not buying a wireless router and settling for a traditional (and much cheaper) fixed line router:

Again, 5G exists in this really kind of amazing alternative reality where it's either some amazing technological revolution that's going to change everything, or it's part of some diabolical plot to kill or monitor people who watch too much YouTube. The reality, that 5G is a semi-important but kind of dull evolution of existing technology, rarely makes an appearance.

My Opinions on the Stardew Valley Bachelors and Bachelorettes
localamity
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/localamity

My Opinions on the Stardew Valley Bachelors and Bachelorettes is a full-colour A7 zine about the marriage candidates in the game ‘Stardew Valley‘.

The top of this zine says “A zine that nobody wanted” but I absolutely wanted it. I just didn’t know I wanted it until I saw it.

If you’re not familiar, Stardew Valley is an incredibly popular farming simulation game that incorporates other elements like combat and dungeons. You also have the option of romancing and marrying a number of characters in the game.

As a zine about a specific game, this is going to be a touch lost on some people. That said, I’m a big fan of the game, and I’m thrilled to see this mini.

Each page features two marriageable characters with a colour picture and Localamity’s thoughts on each candidate.

I found myself chuckling quite a bit because my thoughts line up with Localamity’s a lot. (Harvey is the first character I ever married, Abigail was my first wife, and I also haven’t pursue Leah for absolutely no particular reason.) I love that Localamity included Krobus as a candidate as well even though they technically aren’t. I 100% support the inclusion of shadow babies in a future update. Fingers crossed.

If you like Stardew Valley, then grab this mini. It’s a fun addition to a relaxing game.

Inventing a vaccine for COVID-19 was hard, but getting billions of doses to billions of people is going to be even harder. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Google is showing again that you rely on its products at your peril. The search giant announced that it’s shutting down Poly, its 3D object library and platform that arrived in 2017 aimed primarily and VR and AR creators. The service will end on June 30, 2021, so you’ll need to go here to download any models before then. All uploads will cease on April 30, 2021.

Poly was designed to help developers create low-poly VR objects, while hosting a library of assets that could be used in VR games and experiences. It offered an easier way to create assets than tools like Google’s Tilt Brush or advanced 3D creation apps from Autodesk, Blender and others.

The move isn’t exactly a shocker, as Google recently stopped selling its Daydream VR headsets and shut down its Spotlight Stories VR studio along with the Daydream Play Movies and TV app. It wound down its Jump VR platform in 2019, as well.

As Upload VR points out, Sketchfab is still a good option for VR creators, and in the wake of Poly closing, the company tweeted that it “just became profitable, so we are here to stay” — in contrast of Google’s ephemeral products. The company also noted that “everything you share becomes VR/AR ready.” Other sites with 3D content that can be used in VR/AR apps include TurboSquid and CGTrader, among many others.

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Suddenly regretting that I didn't make him look like Nate Silver.

Today's News:

The former presidents' comments come as polls show many Americans would be hesitant to receive a vaccine once one becomes available.

(Image credit: Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Yesterday, China’s Chang’e-5 robotic lunar lander successfully set down on the lunar surface marking, for the first time in four decades, that humans have travelled to the moon to collect soil samples. Today, the Chang’e-5 reported back to Earth, transmitting a full-color recording of its descent.

The lander has already begun its sampling protocols by starting to bore into the surface and scooping up bits of lunar regolith. Come Thursday, once the samples are safely onboard the lander, the Chang’e-5 will attempt to escape the moon’s weak gravity well and rendezvous with an orbiting spacecraft before handing off the materials for transport back to Earth. This marks the third time that China has set a lander down on the lunar surface. The Chang’e-3 arrived in 2013 with the Chang’e-4 following suit in 2019.

A deep sea encounter between a crab and some apparently appetizing methane gas bubbles, documented on video:

(Thanks to Upasana Sarraju for bringing this to our our attention.)

Houston’s Fotofest has announced five scholarships for Black photographers, a new addition to its International Meeting Place 2021 Virtual Portfolio Review. The online initiative will give each of five recipients 16 one-on-one portfolio review slots with curators, gallerists, photo editors, book publishers and collectors, lasting 25 minutes each, via Zoom. The online portal Submittable will be used for photographer submissions, and the deadline for all applicants is December 11, 2020 at 11:59pm Central Time.

Via FotoFest:

“This call is open to all Black photographic artists who can present at least one complete body of work (20-30 images) that is ready for exhibition or publication. Applicants can be artists, photojournalists, documentary photographers, and/or visual storytellers. English is the primary shared-language of the portfolio reviews. Please be aware that FotoFest is unable to provide translator services, but third-party translators can be accommodated”

In addition to the scholarships, FotoFest has announced an online seminar that will share insights on how to organize a digital portfolio, as well as tips for participating in online reviews. The Zoom seminar will happen in late January and will be free to all Meeting Place participants.

Jurors for the 2021 Virtual Portfolio review include the following:

Nicole Acheampong, Assistant Editor, Aperture Magazine, NYC; Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; Lyle Ashton Harris, Contemporary Photographic Artist, NYC; Dr. Alvia J. Wardlaw, Director and Curator, University Museum at Texas Southern University, Houston, TX; Danielle Burns Wilson, Curator and Manager, African American Library at the Gregory School, Houston, TX; April Frazier Peters, Advancement Director, FotoFest Literacy Through Photography Learning Program, Houston, TX, and Sarah Ansell, Manager, FotoFest Meeting Place Portfolio Review, Houston, TX.

To apply to the International Meeting Place 2021 Virtual Portfolio Review, please go here.

****

The FotoFest Meeting Place Portfolio Review is the world’s largest, and is the longest-running and most international portfolio review program in the United States. It is a conduit for photographers to meet with and present their work to many national and international art leaders in one place and in a short amount of time. It has served as a crucial jumping off point for thousands of photographers during its 34-year existence, and is designed to benefit the participating photographers long after their reviews conclude. FotoFest has organized portfolio reviews as part of its FotoFest Biennial since 1986, and this virtual review is the first of its kind for FotoFest, conceived of in response to COVID-19.

The post FotoFest Announces Portfolio Review Scholarships For Black Photographers; Deadline is Dec. 11 appeared first on Glasstire.

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If you don't find this funny, blame physics.

Today's News:

Informed Consent
Cowles
1976

Breast cancer in the 1970s was almost barbaric in terms of treatment and compounded by the treatment of women’s health by the medical community. First Lady Betty Ford was diagnosed in 1974 and was instrumental in bringing awareness to breast cancer. Radical mastectomy was the default treatment of breast cancer and women were given very few options or information about treatment. In many cases, women were in surgery for a biopsy and if it was positive, a complete mastectomy was performed at the same time.

This book details cases and treatments where women were left out of this process. Many women were given radical mastectomy based on an inadequate biopsy. Options of lumpectomy or even performing a biopsy prior to radical surgical intervention was not an option. Although this book focuses on breast cancer treatment, it really is all about patient rights with respect to treatment. Informed consent, in all its application in research and in medicine wasn’t codified until around 1980.

(I actually enjoyed a bit of research on this topic. Feel free to spend a brief nerd moment on this subject:
Murray P. The History of Informed Consent The Iowa Orthopaedic Journal. 1990 Jan;10:104-109.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Ethics Committee Opinion #439 )

Now for some library science:

This particular book was written for a lay audience. For the time period, it was an excellent choice and probably could have stayed on the shelf into the mid to late 1980s without much of a problem. For this century, this book could have a place in a medical ethics collection. For a modern public library, this is a dinosaur of a book. Current issues of privacy and other medical ethics related topics are definitely collection worthy, but this isn’t that book. Medical ethics and informed consent are likely to be front and center as topics worthy of discussion as we deal with issues related to COVID-19 and access to health care.

As always, wash your hands, wear a mask and stay safe everyone.

Mary

The post Patient Education FTW appeared first on Awful Library Books.

Prompted by a tweet about scented candles without smell and Covid-19, Kate Petrova plotted Amazon reviews for scented and unscented candles over time. Notice the downward trend for scented candles after the first confirmed case for Covid-19.

Interesting if true. I’m imagining a bunch of people opening their new scented candles, taking a big whiff, and not smelling anything.

But I wonder if there are outside forces (a.k.a. confounding factors) at work here. For example, Petrova only looked at reviews for the “top 3” scented candles. What do we see with other candles? Maybe a higher demand for scented candles from more people staying at home put a strain on the manufacturer. Maybe there was a shortage of some scented ingredient, which led to less potent candles. Maybe new scented candles customers have unrealistic expectations of what candles smell like.

I don’t know.

Maybe the decreasing average review really is related to Covid-19 symptoms.

Petrova put up the code and data, in case you want to dig into it.

Update: In my original post, I unknowingly used an offensive word unfit for usage. Thank you to those who pointed it out to me.

Tags: Amazon, candles, coronavirus, Kate Petrova, smell

The post Holiday Flavor appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.

The world-famous Arecibo Observatory has collapsed. The National Science Foundation (NSF), the agency that oversees the telescope, announced the unfortunate turn of events on Tuesday. At some point during the night, Arecibo’s receiver platform crashed into its iconic 1,000-foot wide antenna. “The platform fell unexpectedly,” a spokesperson for the NSF told The New York Times. The foundation didn’t say what caused the collapse, something it’s promised to do once it has more information. However, no one at the site was injured.

The instrument platform of the 305m telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico fell overnight. No injuries were reported. NSF is working with stakeholders to assess the situation. Our top priority is maintaining safety. NSF will release more details when they are confirmed. pic.twitter.com/Xjbb9hPUgD

— National Science Foundation (@NSF) December 1, 2020

“NSF is saddened by this development. As we move forward, we will be looking for ways to assist the scientific community and maintain our strong relationship with the people of Puerto Rico,” the agency said on Twitter. 

The collapse of its receiver platform adds another sad chapter to Arecibo’s end. Following two cable failures over the summer, on November 19th, the NSF said it had no choice but to decommission and take down the observatory due to the danger of repairing the structure.

“The decision comes after NSF evaluated multiple assessments by independent engineering companies that found the telescope structure is in danger of a catastrophic failure and its cables may no longer be capable of carrying the loads they were designed to support,” the agency said at the time.

What I will miss the most is the joy that we found at the Observatory. The sheer joy of sharing astronomical discovery with people from all walks of life, something we could do at Arecibo only because of where it was. It's why I decided to be an astronomer. #WhatAreciboMeansToMe pic.twitter.com/iiylRxLy8p

— Kevin Ortiz Ceballos 🇵🇷 (@kortizceballos) December 1, 2020

In demolishing Arecibo, NSF said it would try to save as many of the surrounding structures and facilities as possible while maintaining the location as a place of education and learning. It’s not clear how this latest development will affect those plans.

As you might imagine, scientists and Puerto Ricans have taken to Twitter to mourn Arecibo’s end. For the better part of almost six decades, the observatory stood as a beacon of human knowledge, assisting astronomers searching for extraterrestrial life and furthering our understanding of the cosmos. With appearances in movies like GoldenEye, the facility also made its way into the popular imagination. At the very least, everyone knows what Arecibo looks like, even if they’ve never been to Puerto Rico.

It’s the launch of this year’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager! Every day this month, I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. To kick us off…

Remember the letter-writer whose employee kept getting deadnamed by a coworker? The coworker, Lizzy, insisted she would only use the name the coworker was given at birth “out of respect for his mother.” Here’s the (epic) update.

Hearing from Alison and all of the commenters made me realize that I needed to talk to John about what he wanted to do. I apologized to him for not being proactive enough with this problem and for underestimating just how offensive Lizzy’s actions were, reiterated that I was on his side, told him that I was setting up a meeting with Lizzy and her manager for later that day, and asked what he wanted to do and what he wanted me to do. He admitted that although he was joking about it, he was actually really upset by Lizzy constantly dead naming him, so in addition to needing her to stop, he would rather not work with her anymore, or at least work with her as little as possible. I also told him that I was willing to make a big stink about both Lizzy’s actions and HR’s inaction to my boss (Lizzy’s grandboss) and the higher ups in HR, but that I wanted to make sure he was comfortable with being explicitly identified as being transgender and experiencing transphobic harassment. He said he was worried about escalating the issue himself, because he didn’t want to come off as pushy or overly sensitive, but that he did want me to do it.

I took Alison’s advice with Lizzy’s boss and just checked his and Lizzy’s Outlook calendars to find a time when they were both free and set up a meeting, figuring that his dislike of confrontation meant that he would go along with it. I said that Lizzy’s offensive behavior towards John had gone on way too long and that she needed to immediately stop calling him any name other than John. She tried to say that she had no problem with transgender people (I had not mentioned anything about him being trans, only that she had to call him by his name) and that it was a matter of respect for his mother, but I interrupted her and said that John’s mother and her feelings were irrelevant and that she was being deeply disrespectful to John, who is actually her coworker and thus actually needed her respect. I also said that it didn’t matter how she felt about trans people or if she didn’t intend to be transphobic, purposely calling John by his dead name was a transphobic action and it needed to stop, and that until I could trust her to treat him with respect, she was not to attend any of our team meetings and any workflow that would normally pass between her and John would go through me first and I would pass on the information. Her boss spoke for the first time then and said that that sounded like it might make us miss deadlines on some of our tighter turnarounds, which I agreed was true, but that given that Lizzy refused to use John’s name, I felt I had an ethical duty to prevent her from speaking to him at all, not to mention that allowing her to continue harassing him would open us up to litigation. I tried to say this all as matter-of-factly as possible, so it would be clear that I didn’t care how Lizzy actually felt about mothers or trans people, and that I wasn’t asking for suggestions on what should be done.

After that meeting, I emailed my team and explained that due to Lizzy’s outrageous and offensive behavior, I was changing our procedures so that she and John would no longer have direct contact, and that they should expect some delays in communication between her and our team. I also apologized for having allowed her to behave in such a blatantly transphobic fashion for close to a month, which should never have been tolerated at all, and explained that I had told her that she had to stop immediately, so if she referred to John as Sally again, they should let me know, either by forwarding me an email if it was in writing or by documenting the incident if it were over the phone or video chat, and should also feel free to tell her that she was being offensive and needed to stop.

This is when things get satisfying! My boss was included on the email to my team, and he called me about half an hour later asking about it. I hadn’t told him much about the Lizzy situation, because he has very little patience for people complaining about their interpersonal conflicts to their boss, and while this is a lot more significant than an interpersonal conflict, I thought he wouldn’t want to hear about it anyway, especially since he doesn’t have much contact with my team in normal times and has had even less while we’ve been virtual. Once I explained what had been happening, he said that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard and set up a meeting for the two of us with the head of HR for the next day (I asked John if he wanted to come and he said he’d rather not and he trusted me to take care of it). The head of HR agreed that this was outrageous and that HR should never have tolerated it. A week later, Lizzy got fired. Then the HR rep who had said this wasn’t explicitly transphobic got fired about about a week and a half later, Lizzy’s boss had to go through some pretty extensive management training and there’s talk that he may transfer into a position without any direct reports, the entire HR department did training on LGBT issues and what is now required of them because of Bostock v Clayton County, the entire company got an anonymous survey asking if we had ever been harassed or felt that we were the victim of discrimination in the workplace, and the head of HR personally apologized to John for the first HR rep’s mishandling of the case and encouraged him to come to her if he ever felt harassed based on his gender identity.

I also sent John the link to my original letter, and he told me to thank everyone for all your supportive comments. And of course I want to thank you all as well, for giving me the confidence to escalate this situation the way I should have from the beginning. It’s seeming more and more like Lizzy, her boss, and the first HR rep were problems, but that the company as a whole really is the good place to work that I’d always thought it was.

update: my employee keeps getting deadnamed by a coworker was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

2021 Calendar



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On the other hand, once there's enough orbital debris, we can go back to saying the sky's the limit.

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Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) episode 186: Taito Legends. These Taito compilations are for the PlayStation 2 and include 68 games total. (Volume 1 came with 29 games and Volume 2 has a bunch more, with 39 games.) Extra features include interviews with some of the game designers, original sales flyers, and arcade cabinet art, but most of those are in Volume 1. Some of the collection includes: Space Invaders, The Newzealand Story, Bubble Bobble, Jungle Hunt, and a ton of Taito's shooters, fighters, platformers, and puzzle games.

James Rolfe's Twitter: https://twitter.com/cinemassacre
Mike Matei Live Streams: https://www.twitch.tv/mikemateilive

Crew: Justin Silverman and Kieran Fallon
http://justysilverman.com
https://twitter.com/Kieeeeern

Opening animation by Exit 73 Studios
http://www.exit73studios.com
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