Tadeu

The homeless of London have had the chance to show their artistic chops. The Cafe Art 2016 My London calendar is printed with the photographs they took with free cameras. Cafe Art handed out a hundred disposable Fujifilm cameras to the homeless, and the Royal Photographic society gave lessons. 80 cameras came back, with about 2500 photographs, 12 of which won their place in the calendar.

Cafe Art is a community interest company in London run by Paul Ryan. The aim is to promote the art of artists facinghomelessness, exhibiting it in cafes. The organization has attracted the attention of Christie’s, The Guardian, Fujifilm and others. The 2016 Calendar is currently funded through Kickstarter, and will print 5000 copies. All of the funds earned from sales will go back to funding more homeless art programs!

More info: cafeart.org.uk | facebook | twitter | kickstarter (h/t: petapixel)

“Everything I Own or Bags of Life, Strand” by David Tovey

“Telephone Row, Lincoln’s Inn” by XO

“Left Boot, East London” by Ellen Rostant

“Colour Festival, Olympic Park” by Goska Calik

Photo by ROL, Which Was Voted To Be The Cover

“Past & Present, City of London” by Ioanna Zagkana

“Nature’s Tunnel or Light and the End, Stratford” by Ellen Rostant

“The Artist, Whitechapel” by Michael Crosswaite

“Tyre Break, Hackney” by Desmond Henry

“Tower Bridge PICNIC, Southwark” by Cecie

“West End Bird, Westminster” by Zin

“Shadow of Self, Hyde Park” by Goska Calik

“Royal Geese Sunset, Kensington Gardens” by Maciek Walorski

80 Cameras Returned With Over 2500 Pictures. Voting Determined The Winners

The Kickstarter Pitch And The Importance Of Disposable Cameras:

Related posts:

1. Black and White Portraits of Homeless People by Lee Jeffries
2. Striking Transformation From Homeless Veteran to Potential Business Man
3. Architect Creates Hanging Pod Shelters For Homeless
4. Old City Buses Will Be Turned Into Mobile Homeless Shelters in Hawaii
5. Photographer Shows Homeless In A Literally New Light To Remind Us They’re Also Human

This image was tweeted out by the NASA Europa Mission account the other day:

One of these images is of Europa, Jupiter's icy moon, and the other eight are frying pans. Can you pick Europa out? Hint: frying pans tend not to have impact craters.

Update: The photos of the frying pans were taken by Christopher Jonassen, whose work I featured back in 2011 (which I had totally forgotten about). At the time, I even joked about the pans looking like a Jovian moon. kottke.org is a flat circle. (thx, tony)

Tags: astronomy   Christopher Jonassen   Europa   Jupiter   NASA   space

North Dakota, known for its vast frackable oil reserves and being in a Coen brothers film once, is the first state in the US that will allow its police to fly drones equipped with tasers and other “non-lethal weapons,” The Daily Beast reported.

According to The Daily Beast, the bill, originally proposed by Republican state representative Rick Becker, was actually meant to outlaw the potential for police in the state to add weapons to drones. Amendments to the bill were then suggested by a lobbyist for the North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association (NDPOA), Bruce Burkett, which allowed for weapons like tasers and bean-bag guns to be included in drones used for policing.

Mike Reitan, the president of the NDPOA, told Quartz that, originally, the bill would’ve required police to get a search warrant to fly a drone in a police operation, whereas that’s not required for something like a helicopter. “If you’re walking down the street and you see a handgun in someone’s yard, you’re not prohibited from looking at it,” Reitan said, regarding privacy concerns. He added that the discussion to add non-lethal weaponry into the bill was based around “future developments” in drone technology. He outlined a future scenario where a SWAT team could call for a drone to be sent in that can deploy pepper spray.

As the Daily Beast points out, seemingly non-lethal weapons still have the potential to kill. According to Mic, over 500 people were killed in the US between 2001 and 2013 by stun guns. At a hearing in March, Becker said the depersonalization of someone flying a drone with any sort of weapon on board is something to be wary of. While the bill is not quite suggesting the sorts of drone missions that the US regularly carries out on targets overseas, it leaves open some ethical questions as to when someone should be able to remotely deploy something like a taser on a person. At the hearing, Becker said: “In my opinion there should be a nice, red line: Drones should not be weaponized. Period.”

The legislation also comes at a time when the commercial drone industry is at a crossroads in the US. Earlier this week, California lawmakers passed a bill to potentially outlaw the flying of drones lower than 350 feet over private property, due to privacy concerns, which runs counter to the arguments of Reitan and the North Dakotan bill. Recently, there has been a spate of apparent “near-misses” between commercial jets and drones at US airports. All the while, the industry and consumers are still waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to figure out regulations for personal drones in the public airspace. As the think-tank the Brookings Institute recently put it, it’s the “Wild West” for drones in the US right now.

Dedicated to Kristina T. – happy birthday to you!!

And here’s another valuable cat lesson.

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Jacob’s Well - Wimberley, Texas

hey kids let’s all go jump into the pits of hell

This is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.

People have actually died in Jacob’s Well, but not just from jumping, you’re too buoyant to really go down far.

But Jacob’s Well draws a lot of scuba divers, and some of them have gotten lost and run out of air. Some of the bodies have never even been found, because the underground river that feeds Jacob’s Well is so complex. I find that terrifying.

I’ve been there. You have to be careful because coming back up from too far and you get stuck under rocks trying to find the surface.

Wow look at that giant hole of NOPE.

by @uaiHebert

Trump and what he means.

iONiUM sends news that Mayo Clinic cancer researchers have developed a technique to reprogram cancer cells in a lab, essentially "turning off" their excessive cell growth. That code was unraveled by the discovery that adhesion proteins — the glue that keeps cells together — interact with the microprocessor, a key player in the production of molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs). The miRNAs orchestrate whole cellular programs by simultaneously regulating expression of a group of genes (abstract). The investigators found that when normal cells come in contact with each other, a specific subset of miRNAs suppresses genes that promote cell growth. However, when adhesion is disrupted in cancer cells, these miRNAs are misregulated and cells grow out of control. The investigators showed, in laboratory experiments, that restoring the normal miRNA levels in cancer cells can reverse that aberrant cell growth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the release of Windows 95:

On Aug. 24, 1995, Windows 95 arrived. And if you were around then, you may remember the song that accompanied the commercial introducing it: “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this release, download the classic song for free until 11:59 p.m. PST from the Windows Store.

I humbly suggest a more apt song to mark the occasion.

Stephen Hawking announced during a lecture at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden on Tuesday that he has potentially solved the Information Paradox. The paradox a conflict between the quantum mechanics and general relativity...

This is a fascinating story from author Neil Gaiman:

I was in China in 2007, and it was the first ever state-sponsored, Party-approved science-fiction convention. They brought in some people from the west and I was one of them, and I was talking to a number of the older science-fiction writers in China, who told me about how science fiction was not just looked down on, but seen as suspicious and counter-revolutionary, because you could write a story set in a giant ant colony in the future, when people were becoming ants, but nobody was quite sure: was this really a commentary on the state? As such, it was very, very dodgy.

I took aside one of the Party organisers, and said, "OK. Why are you now in 2007 endorsing a science-fiction convention?" And his reply was that the Party had been concerned that while China historically has been a culture of magical and radical invention, right now, they weren’t inventing things. They were making things incredibly well but they weren’t inventing. And they’d gone to America and interviewed the people at Google and Apple and Microsoft, and talked to the inventors, and discovered that in each case, when young, they’d read science fiction. That was why the Chinese had decided that they were going to officially now approve of science fiction and fantasy.

The anecdote comes from a wonderful conversation Gaimain had with Kazuo Ishiguro about genre fiction. It's very much worth reading in full.

Have you seen people drinking coffee pulled from a tap this summer? That's nitro coffee, and it's currently all the rage.

We've already seen how the bubbles-and-coffee combination makes people go crazy with the popularity of espresso tonics, so it's no surprise that this slightly effervescent cold drink would be a big hit. Nitro coffee uses the same concept behind draft beer, which allows coffee companies to make big batches of cold brew and store them for an extended period of time (while still maintaining freshness).

READ MORE »

Hovertext: All telepaths are now employed by high-speed trading firms.

New comic!
Today's News:

 Over half of general admission tickets for BAHFest East have sold out already! You geeks are the best :)

v3rgEz writes: The FBI followed Ray Bradbury's career very closely, in part because an informant warned them that his writing was not enjoyable fantasy, but rather tantamount to psychological warfare. "The general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria," the informant warned. "Which would make it very possible to conduct a Third World War in which the American people would believe could not be won since their morale had seriously been destroyed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Crystal Math

vertigoheadspace:

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (1931-2015) was a scientist, aeronautical engineer, writer, and the 11th President of India, serving from 2002-2007. During his decorated 40-year scientific career, Kalam pioneered India’s space, missile and nuclear programs, earning him the nickname “Missile man of India”. Some of the posts he held include director of India’s first satellite launch vehicle, chief of the guided missile development program and chief scientific advisor to the Prime Minister.

Throughout his career as a scientist, one of Kalam’s goals was to inspire and motivate the youth of India to get excited about science and knowledge. For instance, after his position as chief scientific advisor ended in 1999, Kalam announced he would personally meet at least 100,000 students in a two year period to help spread the word of science. Kalam’s fame grew even more during this time, as his first autobiography Wings of Fire was released (the quote used in the comic is taken from the book). In it, Kalam recounted how a poor country boy from the small town of Rameswaram went on to study physics, work his way through the ranks of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and then the Indian Space Research Organisation, visit NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Centre in the United States during the height of the space race, play a large part in India’s technological advancement and become India’s most-famous scientist. All of this BEFORE Kalam became the President of India in 2002, in which he gained another nickname, the “people’s president” for continuing to connect with the youth of India and allowing the public to visit the presidential palace in New Delhi.

It’s crazy to think that Kalam didn’t even want to be a scientist, he just wanted to fly. Dreaming of becoming a pilot, Kalam studied aeronautical engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology: “What fascinated me the most at MIT was the sight of two decommissioned aircraft displayed there. I felt a strange attraction towards them, and would sit near them long after other students had gone back to the hostel, admiring man’s will to fly free in the sky, like a bird. … The goal was very clear in my mind, I was going to fly aircraft. I was convinced of this.” After graduating, Kalam landed two job interviews. One was for his dream gig of joining the Air Force, the other a technical role at the Ministry of Defence. At the selection board, only the best eight candidates out of 25 would be selected to join the Air Force. Kalam finished 9th. He was devastated, but picked himself up and accepted the new path of his life and went to work for the Ministry of Defence. Turned out to be a pretty good Plan B.

Kalam was a deeply spiritual man and practised what he preached, shunning material possessions and rewards. The only material goods Kalam coveted were books, owning over 2500 of them. His only other possessions were a watch, six shirts, four pants, three suits and a pair of shoes. He did not own any property, a fridge, TV, car or air conditioner. From Kalam’s former media advisor, “He would never accept a gift, save a book, and whenever somebody brought him a packed gift and tried to pass it off as a book, he insisted on examining what was inside. Anything other than the book was politely returned.”

Kalam died last month after suffering a heart attack while giving a speech titled “Creating a liveable planet Earth”. Over 350,000 people attended his funeral in his home town of Rameswaram.

RELATED COMICS: Jiddu Khrishnamurti. Rabindranath Tagore. Bill Watterson. Howard Thurman. Alan Watts.

– Sigh, if only more great scientists would become politicians the world might be a better place. Fun fact – the most famous scientist of them all, Albert Einstein, was asked to be the President of Israel in 1952. He humbly declined.
– Thanks to the many readers who suggested I do a quote from Kalam.
– CREDIT: This comic, based on the passage from the book Wings of Fire, An Autobiography, A P J Abdul Kalam with Arun Tiwari, is published with the permission of Universities Press (India) Private Limited.

BA DUM TSSSSSS

O diretor de arte português João Rocha, conhecido como "Inoffensive", criou o 2 Kinds of People, um blog dedicado às ilustrações que separam a população na metade e mostram os hábitos de cada um. Podemos encontrar pessoas que dobram para o canto das páginas ou os que usam um marcador, os que colocam três alarmes sucessivos no celular e aqueles que organizam seus apps em pastas. A ideia, além de ser verdade, é muito engraçada. Confira abaixo.
Portuguese art director João Rocha, known as “Inoffensive”, created the 2 Kinds of People, a blog dedicated to illustrations that separate the population in half and show the habits of each one. We can find people who turn down the corner of the pages or the ones who use a bookmark, the ones who put 3 successive alarm clocks and those who line up their applications in files. It's really funny and also true. Check out below.

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times has a lengthy exposé on the working conditions within Jeff Bezos's Amazon. "Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable." Over 100 current and former employees were interviewed for the article, and they painted a picture of a demanding and punishing workplace that people tolerate in exchange for the ability to create. "In contrast to companies where declarations about their philosophy amount to vague platitudes, Amazon has rules that are part of its daily language and rituals, used in hiring, cited at meetings and quoted in food-truck lines at lunchtime. Some Amazonians say they teach them to their children." Of course, this attitude causes problems for people whose lives don't allow them extreme levels of effort: "The mother of the stillborn child soon left Amazon. 'I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life,' the woman recalled via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored 'to make sure my focus stayed on my job.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hovertext: There's a lot of networking to be done on the Dark Side.

New comic!
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Hovertext: The way poison works in Hamlet is TOTALLY unrealistic. I just couldn't get past that.

New comic!
Today's News:

Hey, MIT students! Want to help make prizes for BAHFest? We will give you money!