in all seriousness, i'm really quite amazed at how much permanence these aspects of american culture seem to have enjoyed
Many religious leaders would like to liven up their services to attract a younger, hipper flock, but few have the necessary background to pull it off in a truly impressive way. Not so for the Japanese Buddhist priest Gyōsen Asakura, who answered the higher calling after a career as a DJ but evidently never lost his feel for the unstoppable pulse of electronic music. Getting behind his decks and donning his headphones once again, he has begun using sound, light, and the original splendor of Fukui City’s Shō-onji temple to hold “techno memorial services.” You can see and hear a bit of one such audiovisual spiritual spectacle in the video just above, shot at a memorial service last fall.
“Buddhism may be approaching something of a crisis point in Japan,” reports Buddhistdoor’s Craig Lewis, “with 27,000 of the country’s 77,000 Buddhist temples forecast to close over the next 25 years, reflecting shrinking populations in small rural communities and a loss of faith in organized religion among the country’s population as a whole.”
He also sites an Asahi Shimbun survey that found 434 temples closed over the past decade and 12,065 Japanese Buddhist temples currently without resident monks. Can this temple in a small city, itself known for its phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the Second World War, do its part to reverse the trend?
Gyōsen Asakura frames his techno memorial services, however incongruous they might at first seem, as in keeping with the traditions of his branch of Pure Land Buddhism. “Originally, golden decorations in the temple are expressions of paradise light,” he told THUMP. “However, the light of a traditional temple has not changed its form from 1000 years ago to use candlelight, even after electricity was invented. I felt doubtful about that, and then I thought about expressing paradise with the latest stage lighting such as 3D mapping.”
After all, as he said to Japankyo, “people used to use the most advanced technologies available to them at the time in order to ornament temples with gold leaf,” so why not harness today’s technology to evoke the Buddhist “world of light” as well? And in any case, ecstatic sensory experiences are nothing new in the realm of faith, though ecstatic sensory experiences of Gyōsen Asakura’s kind do cost money to put together. And so he, in the way of most religious projects the world over, has asked for donations to fund them, using not a bowl but the crowdfunding site Readyfor. Judging by 383,000 yen (more than $3300 U.S. dollars) he’s already raised, quite a few techno-heads have seen the light.
The Nation - Ecuador’s experience shows that much of the rhetoric about how “globalization” restricts the choices of governments to those that please international investors is exaggerated. It turns out that even a relatively small, middle-income developing country can adopt workable alternative policy options—if people can elect a government that is independent and responsible enough to use them.
Ecuador has cut poverty by 38 percent, increased spending on education and healthcare, and raised per capita income.
The results for the decade of left government in Ecuador (2007-16) include a 38 percent reduction in poverty and a 47 percent reduction in extreme poverty. Social spending as a percentage of GDP doubled, including large increases in spending on education and healthcare. Educational enrollment increased sharply for ages 17 and under, and spending on higher education as a percent of GDP became the highest in Latin America. Average annual growth of income per capita was much higher than in the prior 26 years (1.5 versus 0.6 percent), and inequality was considerably reduced.
Public investment as a percent of GDP more than doubled, and the results were widely appreciated in new roads, hospitals, schools, and access to electricity.
Fans across the globe have spoken, and the eight tokens set to “pass GO” in the next generation of the MONOPOLY game are… the Scottie dog, top hat, car, battleship, cat, T-rex, rubber ducky, and penguin tokens!
That means the thimble, boot, and wheelbarrow are being removed from the game.
The new tokens will be in the new version of MONOPOLY arriving this fall.
During the MONOPOLY Token Madness vote, January 10 – 31, fans across 146 countries selected the eight tokens they hoped to see in the next generation of the game from a list of 64 contenders – drawing more than 4.3 million votes. The breakdown of votes is as follows:
The highlighted tokens are those found in the current version of MONOPOLY.
update: urine is only sterile in a healthy bladder. the act of urination adds all sorts of urethra-based flora to the mix
Lifehacker - This month the Journal of the American Chemical Society published a study that estimated there might be as many as 20 gallons of urine in a large swimming pool. To test for pee, scientists measured the concentration of an artificial sweetener that’s commonly found in processed food and able to pass through the body unaltered, the Guardian reported.
They tested 250 samples in 31 different pools. 20 gallons of pee sounds like a lot, but keep in mind, this was in a pool with a volume of about 220,000 gallons. Hot tubs had even larger levels of urine, according to the study. One hotel Jacuzzi they sampled had over three times the amount of sweetener than was found in the worst swimming pool.
While urine is sterile, compounds in urine, including urea, ammonia, and creatinine have been found to react with disinfectants to form byproducts known as DBPs that can lead to eye and respiratory irritation. Long-term exposure to the compounds has been linked to asthma in professional swimmers and pool workers.
NBC Chicago - Although the numbers of deficient bridges have declined in recent years, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association's analysis of transportation department data shows more than 55,000 bridges in the U.S. have been deemed deficient.
ARBTA says deficient bridges are crossed about 185 million times a day. The top 14 most-traveled deficient bridges are located in California.
Bridges labeled structurally deficient aren't necessarily in immediate danger of collapse. The term is applied when spans need rehabilitation or replacement because at least one major component has advanced deterioration or other problems.
Nintendo's Switch is the company's cool new console. Early reviews say they nailed the system design this time, but also that Nintendo just doesn't know how to do online services and is running out of time to figure it out. The triumphant return of the cartridge, however, comes with a bitter edge: their taste.
"Immediately upon touching a Nintendo Switch cartridge one’s tongue is assaulted by a harsh bitterness that spreads like a brush fire through the mouth," writes Kotaku's Mike Fahey. "Having a drink on hand helps, but not completely. The taste and how it spreads suggests some sort of oily residue left on the cartridge. If you’ve ever pinched an orange peel and tasted the oil that oozes from the rind, it’s like that, only without the citrus accents."
It turns out to be deliberate: Nintendo infuses the carts with a bittering agent.
“To avoid the possibility of accidental ingestion, keep the game card away from young children. A bittering agent (Denatonium Benzoate) has also been applied to the game card. This bittering agent is non-toxic.”
Effectively, what these food apps have managed to do is take us one step further away from having a relationship with our food and where it comes from. They have stripped the face of labor from the service industry.
This surge in food-delivery apps seems to be yet another offshoot of the Silicon Valley -- born gig economy, whereby temporary, contracted labor is packaged in fun colors and careful vowel elimination that somehow make exploitation "fun." [...]
And it is a particularly isolated industry at that. The drivers are isolated from one another -- a tactic employers have consistently used throughout modern history to skirt attempts at unionization. Waitresses and cooks never see the consumers. Sometimes I try to imagine what the cute couple who order matching breakfast burritos every Sunday morning looks like, but I'll never know. [...]
As I confirm your orders, I have to wonder why this means of sustenance is so popular. Efficiency and ease? Maybe. It seems more likely, though, that a food app's convenience lies not in its ability to save time but rather in that it demands only minimal communication with those on the other end. It's a choice driven by the desire to limit one's chitchat to only those who also speak the language of code. With food at the tip of the fingers through a heat-activated Plexiglass button, no across-the-counter talk is required.
Trump’s three Mar-a-Lago trips since the inauguration have probably cost the federal treasury about $10 million, based on figures used in an October government report analyzing White House travel, including money for Coast Guard units to patrol the exposed shoreline and other military, security and staffing expenses associated with moving the apparatus of the presidency. Palm Beach County officials plan to ask Washington to reimburse tens of thousands of dollars a day in expenses for deputies handling added security and traffic issues around the cramped Florida island whenever Trump is in town.
Chicago is the poster city for violent crime to President Trump, but he's got some mean streets right in his Florida backyard. The city of West Palm Beach, which sits just across the Intracoastal Waterway from Trump's palatial Mar-a-Lago Resort on exclusive Palm Beach, had a violent crime rate in 2015 that was equal to that of the Windy City, according to federal crime records
Two members – who paid $100,000 to join the beach side club and plunk down $15,000 a year in dues – said they are angry after being told they wouldn't be let in tonight and Saturday night as Trump visits for the third weekend in a row. 'We are pi**ed off to no end,' said one of the Mar-a-Lago members who asked that his name not be used. The 66-year-old businessman said he fears being shunned by Trump if he talks to the press. 'I personally paid $100,000 years ago (the initiation fee was upped to $200,000 last month) to join and I go to dinner at Mar-a-Lago every Saturday."
Click to show full size (1136×640), e.g. for iPhone 5
The pages on Wikimedia Commons which list the winners of the yearly contests [1] contain a feature ‘Watch as Slideshow!’. Works great.
However, wouldn’t it be nice if you could also show these images offline (outside a browser), annotated and resized for minimal footprint?
Most end-of-year vacations I do a hobby project for Wikipedia. This time I worked on a script [2] [3] to make the above happen. The script does the following:
Download all images from Wiki Loves Monuments winners pages [1]
Collect image, author and license info for each image on those winners pages
or if not available there, collect these meta data from the upload pages on Commons
Resize the images so they are exactly the required size
Annotate the image unobtrusively in a matching font size:
contest year, country, title, author, license
Font size used for 2560×1600 image
Prefix the downloaded image for super easy filtering on year and/or country
I pre-rendered several sets with common image sizes, ready for download. You can request an extra set for other common screen sizes [4] [5]:
For instance the 1920×1080 set is ideal for HDTV (e.g. for Appl
e TV screensaver) or large iPhones. On TV the texts are readable by itself, on phone some manual zooming is needed (but unobtrusiveness is key).
[1] 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 [2] The script has been tested on Windows 10.
Prerequisites: curl and ImageMagicks convert (in same folder).
[3] I am actually already rewriting the script, separating it into two scripts, to make it more modular and more generally applicable. First script will extract information from WLM/WLE (WLA?) winners pages and image upload pages, and generate a csv file. Second script will read this csv, download images, resize and annotate them. I will announce the git url here when done.
[4] 4K is a bit too large for easy upload. I may do that later when the script can also run on WMF servers.
[5] Current sets are optimal for e.g. HDTV and new iPhones (again, others may follow):
1920×1080 HDTV and iPhone 6+/7+
1334×750 iPhone 6/6s/7
1136×640 iPhone 5/5s
Just 12 days left to get in your proposal for BAHFest MIT! This year's show is open theme, so you can talk about ANY scientific or technological topic!
On Tuesday, Y Combinator -- the accelerator program known for helping to launch tech giants Uber and Dropbox -- said that it will be supporting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a non-profit civil rights group founded in 1920.
The inclusion of the civil rights group in the latest Y Combinator class comes as a bit of a surprise to some, as notable Trump supporter Peter Thiel is a part-time partner at the accelerator.
(I assume "part-time partner" outranks "board member" in whatever system of heraldry these people use.)
Thiel's investment company, Y Combinator, has refused to sever ties with him because they don't want "politics' (and by "politics" we mean "basic human rights" and "ethics") to in any way impede their ability to make money.
Last Friday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis ordered reviews of both Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and Boeing’s development contract for the Air Force One replacement program. But apparently the DOD and Lockheed were able to fix any problems with the program over the weekend, as President Donald Trump declared the F-35 program was now in “good shape” at a Monday meeting with small business leaders, which was broadcast by CNN.
Speaking of Lockheed, Trump said, “We’re cutting the price of their planes by a lot.”
Trump said that he had been working on the F-35 program since after the election, and “I was able to get $600 million off” the next block of F-35s being built.
My business partner and I were talking a while back about the internet. We’ve been working together now since 1999 in 3 or 4 different web startups. We’ve been really successful together. Grown huge teams. Made decent money and had lots of fun. And it was all based on building things for the web. So it was a big deal when he admitted to me that he sorta hates technology these days. And it was a relief because I got to express my true feelings out loud for the first time.
The internet sucks.
Here is a very partial list of some of the most hate-worthy aspects of the web:
All of the killer apps that the internet has made possible seemed great at first, didn’t they? I can listen to any song I want for free on any number of apps. It’s amazing… except that I miss holding an album cover in my hands and hearing the crackle of a needle on vinyl. I can binge watch entire seasons of a million TV shows or stream one of a billion highly mediocre movies for a low monthly fee. But I really miss finding great movies at a locally owned video store. We had some great ones around here and most are gone. And frankly, binge watching isn’t a good use of the short time we have on this planet.
I miss letters and postcards. I miss newspapers. I miss reading real books. (I know I sound like an old curmudgeon).
I miss going to shopping malls. Nope, I don’t miss that at all. Especially given that before the internet I couldn’t even find size 14 shoes so I just jammed my feet into 13’s. And that’s the thing, I’m sure anybody reading this is thinking of all kinds of amazing things that they love about the internet. I get it. But I hate what this thing has become. I hate the internet giants that are running the networks these days. Companies like Comcast and Verizon and AT&T.
We’re huge advocates of the open web, but even with the open web, people willingly hand over so much of their private information, time, and well being to the internet giants like Google and Facebook. These are advertising companies that can afford to build useful technology by getting you to spend too much and save too little. And now people are installing them in their homes. Hey, I know these guys are recording my conversations and using it to sell me useless crap, but I can just ask Alexa what the weather is going to be tomorrow and it responds. Let’s take a broader perspective on these things people. Technology IS change by definition, but not ALL change is for the better… even when it does offer some niceties.
I’m nostalgic for the early days of the internet. When you could find information quickly, but without somebody watching over everything you searched and read. When you could communicate with people, but without somebody listening. I’m nostalgic for the days when the internet didn’t suck.
Thanks to the election last November, San Jose is getting a legitimate subway system consisting of three stations: Downtown San Jose, Diridon Station, and Alum Rock. Construction is coming sooner than you think. Shovels should hit the ground in late 2018 and continue until 2023. The $4 billion subway is slated to begin service in 2026.
While the idea of a BART subway in our city is very exciting, it will mean epic construction projects, street closures, and all sorts of temporary inconveniences. Currently there are two potential options for building the subway, a single bore (photo below) or twin bore. The SVBJ lists the pros and cons of each, but there is no way around the fact that streets will completely be torn up to build the stations. The tunnels themselves will be deep enough underground to not have a huge impact on the surface.
Other areas up for discussion are whether to build the Downtown San Jose station in the East between Third and Fifth Street (closer to City Hall and SJSU) or in the West between Market and Third Street (closer to the Downtown core). Either option should attract the same number of riders and will permanently change the face of Santa Clara street.
There are obviously a lot of big questions and decisions, but it will certainly be a very exciting decade for South Bay transportation improvements.
San Jose is just one year away from finally being connected to BART. Below is the latest update from the VTA, which is responsible for the extension to Silicon Valley. Both the Milpitas and San Jose stations should be open in late 2017. Watch the short video below for construction photos and details.
Fortunately, the VTA logo isn't the only thing that is changing about our transit system. There are significant route changes in the works to coincide with the arrival BART in the fall that sound very promising. In general, VTA is planning to reduce or eliminate routes with very low usage and re-utilizing that budget in highly trafficked corridors.
The proposed changes are too numerous to mention (list over here), but below you can see what the travel times from Downtown San Jose would look like before and after the changes. The area you will be able to get to within 30 minutes of Downtown will roughly double in size. However, your mileage may vary. If you live in the suburbs, say deep in Evergreen or Almaden, then your coverage area will likely shrink. To see exactly how you may be impacted, you can do your own simulation over here.
Current VTA Travel Times from Downtown San Jose
Proposed VTA Travel Times from Downtown San Jose
Our Light Rail system will get a major overhaul as well. The lines will finally be named after colors like most other metro systems in the world and a brand new line will be added that will run from the Alum Rock to Mountain View. Here are the proposed changes:
Green Line (902)
Northern end would become Old Ironsides
Increase frequency from 30min to 15min during the weekday, all day long
Yellow Line (Commuter Express)
Northern end would become St. James Park
Double frequency from 3 trips per peak period to 6 trips
Orange Line (NEW)
New line between Alum Rock and Mountain View that would connect Light Rail to BART
Would run every 15min during the weekday and 30min during the weekend
Potential express service is under review
Blue Line (901)
No changes
Purple Line (900)
No changes
If all of these changes get implemented that means Light Rail will run every 7.5 minutes (not including express trains) all day long during the workweek throughout all Downtown, Milpitas, Santa Clara, North San Jose, and East San Jose Stations. That would be a significant increase in service.
When a flatbed pickup truck carrying a large box of red Skittles spilled its contents on a Wisconsin road last week, it brought to light a bigger issue -- the candy's destination.
On Tuesday, January 17, the Dodge County Sheriff's Office posted on Facebook that they found hundreds of thousands of red Skittles covering a county highway. Mars, the candy's parent company, confirmed that the Skittles were not going to be packaged and sold because they were missing the classic letter 'S' marking each piece of candy.
Instead, the sheriff's office said the candy was going to be added to feed for cattle, a practice that Eater says has been going on for decades.
Whisk yourself back to the days of bulky devices, outmoded physical media, and painfully obvious visual puns with these 1990s high-tech stock photos. Literal surfing and literal webs! Large format high resolution only $399 on some stock sites! (more…)
don’t risk pulling something, you gotta warm up first. read a couple “only 90s kids will remember” articles before you start in on any heavy duty wistfulness
Fans across the globe have spoken, and the eight tokens set to “pass GO” in the next generation of the MONOPOLY game are… the Scottie dog, top hat, car, battleship, cat, T-rex, rubber ducky, and penguin tokens!
#DeleteUberEATS
There, I fixed that headline for you.
Red Skittles Spilling Onto Wisconsin Highway Were Headed for Cattle Feed. The candy leaking out of a collapsing box on the back of a truck was being used as an alternative to corn.
