Fascinating.
30 May 2020
28 May 2020
Drones document new geoglyphs near Nazca
As reported in The Guardian:
Isla, now Peru’s chief archaeologist for the lines, spent hours poring through archives, before returning to Peru – armed with a drone and a lifetime of local field experience – to find it. After several false starts, it took just two weeks to find the 25-by-65-metre image which had been hiding in plain sight in the hills of Palpa, about 30 miles north of Nazca, in a huge expanse of desert in southern Peru.
The design carved into the hillside depicts a terrifying mythological beast, part orca but with a human arm holding a trophy head and several more heads inside its body.
New research with drones has helped uncover hundreds of such figures carved in the desert near the lines in Nazca but which predate them by as much as 1,500 years. The archaeologists leading the effort now believe that the anthropomorphic orca figure fills in a missing link between hundreds of older geoglyphs and the Nazca culture’s desert etchings.
The smaller forms were etched on hillsides in nearby Palpa by the Paracas and Topará cultures between 500BC and AD200...
“Placing these geoglyphs on the slopes means that, in contrast with the Nazca Lines, you can see them if you are standing in the valley below where life and agriculture is taking place,” he said.
“If the Nazca Lines were made by humans for the gods, these figures were made by humans for humans,” explained Castillo, a former minister of culture for Peru. “They are clearly representations of identifiable people. They are demarcating territories.”
Protective shield for optometry office fashioned as safety glasses
Posted by the person who crafted it, at the DesignPorn subreddit, where he mentions the method used.
Biden: "I'm going to beat Joe Biden"
This latest "senior moment" occurs at the 10:10 mark in this CNBC interview.
Personally, I cannot accept that Donald Trump and Joe Biden represent the two persons most qualified to be President of the United States. It is apparent to me that both parties (party voters and party leadership) have opted to put up the candidate they think is most likely to win, not the candidate who is most qualified to lead this country in a time of major crisis. Tragic.
Addendum: A more sympathetic interpretation is that what he meant to say was "I'm going to BE Joe Biden."
Catfishing man accidentally uploads selfie
I had to look up catfishing:
Catfishing is a deceptive activity where a person creates a sockpuppet presence or fake identity on a social networking service, usually targeting a specific victim for abuse or fraud. Catfishing is often employed for romance scams on dating websites. The practice may be used for financial gain, to compromise a victim in some way, or simply as forms of trolling or wish fulfillment. Catfishing media has been produced, often centering around victims who wish to identify their catfisher. Celebrities have been targeted, which has brought media attention to catfishing practices...
Catfishing is used for multiple reasons. An internet user uses a fake identity to persuade another to believe they are the person they portray. This often is used for relationships, such as the scenario in the movie Catfish. The person catfishing usually uses another real person's photos and life facts to make them appear as a real person. Often, the real person who is being used for the fake identity does not even know that they are having their pictures and name used. They are not aware that their identity was used to create these fake relationships online. The person uses catfishing in order to appear as a better version of themselves by using a fake identity. Their primary reason to appear as a fake person is to befriend the other person for a relationship or other sexual reasons. It can also be used as a way to cyberbully someone online. By using a fake identity, it is easy for the person to get away with bullying on the internet. Since they are using another person's identity or a made up identity, the person will not get in trouble and will not have any consequences. The cyberbullying cannot be traced back to them, which is a big reason why they use a fake identity in the first place. This type of cyberbullying has increased the number of suicides in teens over the past few yearsSome relevant discussion at the Facepalm subreddit.
Looting in a Minneapolis Target store
Dozens of people loot the Target store near Minneapolis Police's 3rd Precinct building in the midst of the George Floyd protest. from r/ActualPublicFreakoutsIt's inexpressably sad to see this happening in my old home town.
27 May 2020
Soliciting input from the neighbors
Legendary blogger John Farrier posted this at Neatorama. It's a thoughtful gesture by the homeowners, and the scannable QR form included other options, including colors not shown and "By checking [this box] you indicate you have no opinion on the color of our house, but you just like doing random surveys."
Apparently the image went viral and the internet was able to access the survey form, resulting in a deluge of comments - which effectively negated the opinions of the neighbors who actually pass by the house.
Fact-checking done correctly
Atlantic fact-checking editor Yvonne Rolzhausen walks us through her fact-checking routine, a process that continues, sometimes for months, until she and her team have confirmed every last line.
"Every checker has a different system but I’m old-fashioned and still work on paper. I format the piece with wide margins so I can clearly keep track of which source is responsible for which fact. Months later, I need to be able to see the backup for everything. I then underline all the facts that have to be checked in red pencil. Proper names are highlighted. Legal sections are noted in red marker with lots of circled stars to indicate a need for triple-checking. Anything that I have confirmed gets a check mark through it—and, oh, the lovely satisfaction of making a check mark! The checked text disappears into the background, allowing me to focus on the lingering unchecked text. If I’m worried about a detail and want to discuss with the author, I’ll highlight it in yellow, and list possible solutions on a sticky note. After Graeme and I agreed on a change, I circled it with a red pen..."More at The Atlantic. The world needs more of this.
Treasure found in a coal bin
"Funny story is that i sold the 4 tons of coal that was inside to random people that dug it out of the container under no particuliar surveillance but they didnt found it under all the coal dust at the bottom. In french law they should have split it in half with me, if they told me about it anyway. :D"The image below shows the bin. Apparently as he was selling off the coal, he or the customers busted the concrete walls of the bin to be able to access the contents.
The coins are dated 1947.
26 May 2020
Divertimento #180 (gifs)
The Golden Gate "zipper"
World oil production, 1970s to now
Scary as hell dashcam footage. Another one.
"Hamster wheel" for human babies
Lady destroys a child's chalk drawings
"Dragon's breath" ice cream
A young girl learns a Star Wars secret
Carpet cleaner with upholstery attachment used on toy
Magic trick with coin and matchbox
Worldwide child mortality 1900 to present
Switch on a cog railway
Man intentionally pushes a bicyclist off the road into the ditch
Nature and science
Magnets
Controlled burn of black poplar fluff in Spain
Putrefied whale carcass explodes
Bioluminescent mushroom
Magnetic field demonstrated
Coronavirus
"I don't believe your science"
People protesting a closed gym prove they don't need a gym open
Animals
Baby woodcocks learning to lure earthworms. See also flamingoes feeding.
Monitor vs. garden hose
Leaping lynx (I may have posted this before, but it's worth a repeat)
A bobcat performs a similar leap
Hand-feeding a Nautilus
Sand viper conceals itself
Flicker vs. starling
Dolphins stunning fish with a tail flick
Head stabilization of a cheetah
Yet another cute cat video
Brushing the teeth of a hippopotamus
Woodpecker eats a dove's brains
Fails
ASMR vlogger tries to eat an octopus alive. Octopus fights back.
Outboard motor goes to a watery grave
Impressive or clever
Parrot unlocks a safe
Jugglers
How not to get paint on the rim of the can
Table transforms into bench and vice versa
Hammock facilitates dog grooming
A compilation of "dad reflexes"
Machine converts logs into veneer
Man draws a circle. That's all.
Awesome outdoor model railway
Sports and athleticism
"Nailed it!"
Distraction for a basketball free-throw shooter
Humorous or cheerful
Saturday Night Live's "Mother's Day commercials"
"Harry Potter and the Return of the Receipt"
Elderly widower receives a special gift
Girl pranks her mom. Another one.
Thieves break into a house
"Stickman" Halloween costume goes awry
The embedded images are regional flags of Russia, from a large gallery at Radio Free Europe, via the always-has-something-interesting Dark Roasted Blend.
25 May 2020
"Beef rainbows" explained
I eat beef, and see these frequently. Never thought much about them until I encountered an Atlantic article that explains how they are formed:
There's enough speculation over the integrity of rainbow beef that the USDA's website has a section on "Iridescent Color of Roast Beef" near similar topics like "What does 'natural?' mean" and "what is beef?" According to the USDA, "When light hits a slice of meat, it splits into colors like a rainbow." This is something called a "diffraction grating," essentially what happens when light waves bend or spread around a surface and create a pattern. It's the same thing that happens to make rainbows on the surface of a DVD. It's understandable that folks mistake diffracted light as a sign of spoilage...Reposted from 2013 to add this photo of a white-lipped python -
- as another example or iridescence in the natural world.
"This is why the whole concept of tests are not necessarily great"
Backstory:
"Trump administration officials spent the weekend scrambling after two staffers tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the pandemic closer to President Donald Trump even as he works to reopen parts of the country. On Saturday and Sunday, aides attempted to conduct contact tracing for Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary who tested positive for coronavirus last week."
"Plant and pray"
Farmers have always planted and prayed. In the past they prayed for good weather and minimal pests/plant diseases. Now they pray for other farms to fail.
Corn farmers are throwing another government-backed Hail Mary this year, planting more of the crop than in 2019 even though prices are near the bottom of a six-year slump.
“They call it plant and pray,” said Al Kluis, a commodities broker in Wayzata. “What you want is a disaster in some other part of the Corn Belt or some other country.”..
The U.S. Department of Agriculture now projects a record corn harvest in 2020... Demand can’t keep up with supply. Corn futures hovered around $3.15 per bushel last week, nearly a dollar less than a year ago...
Farmers came into the spring with a large inventory of corn in storage, and demand for the commodity has been hit on multiple fronts since the onset of coronavirus.
Ethanol plants have shuttered due to decisions by the Trump administration to exempt oil companies from ethanol standards and, more recently, the cratered demand for all types of fuel caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Ethanol production is running about 70% of capacity, Kluis said.
Meanwhile, the shutdown of restaurants and idling of meatpacking plants that have led to farmers euthanizing chickens and hogs means the need for corn to feed livestock will probably drop about 20%...
He acknowledged that the best thing for Minnesota corn farmers would be a weather catastrophe in some other part of the Corn Belt or Brazil or Argentina.
“That’s a disheartening part about production agriculture right now, is you only really have success if some other farmer has a bad year,” he said...
Also, crop insurance, which is 60% taxpayer subsidized, sets guaranteed revenue for corn at $3.88 per bushel this year. “Without crop insurance, there’s not a bank around that would loan any money to a farmer,” Thalmann said.
Fix the dam infrastructure! - updated x2
Thousands of people in the U.S. may be at risk from dams that are rated in poor or unsatisfactory condition. An AP analysis found 1,688 dams in these conditions are high hazard, meaning their failure can cause human death.An Associated Press interactive graphic shows the location of dangerous dams in the United States. My part of the country doesn't have many, but my old stomping grounds back in Kentucky and Indiana are just riddled with them.
Note the graphic is interactive, so not only can you zoom to your area, but you can hover the mouse for the information shown in the top image.
I am so very, very tired of this bullshit. American politicians have been kicking the can down the road for way too many election cycles. Someone has to raise taxes and fix these things. Maybe it will require electing a Socialist to get these problems corrected.
Reposted from just a month ago to add new information and a different perspective. The source I originally cited was picked up by our local Wisconsin State Journal, which then posted an article about the dams at risk in the state of Wisconsin.
We've had significant problems, because in recent years alterations in the climate have resulted in multiple hundred-year flooding events, some of which washed out local dams, exacerbating the flooding damage:
When I wrote this original post for TYWKIWDBI, I concluded with a brief rant about elected officials who are reluctant to increase taxes to pay for upgrades (or basic maintenance) to infrastructure. What I have now learned from the Wisconsin State Journal article is that federal, state, and local governments are not solely to blame, because many of the at-risk dams in Wisconsin were privately built.
Wisconsin has only six dams considered a risk to human safety that are in poor condition, according to data compiled by The Associated Press. Even so, eight dams in the state were washed out by record-setting rainfalls last year...
The association estimates it would take more than $70 billion to repair and modernize the nation’s more than 90,000 dams. But unlike much other infrastructure, most U.S. dams are privately owned. That makes it difficult for regulators to require improvements from operators who are unable or unwilling to pay the steep costs.
“Most people have no clue about the vulnerabilities when they live downstream from these private dams,” said Craig Fugate, a former administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “When they fail, they don’t fail with warning. They just fail, and suddenly you can find yourself in a situation where you have a wall of water and debris racing toward your house with very little time, if any, to get out.”..
All eight dams [Wisconsin dams that failed] were in fair or satisfactory condition, according to the DNR.
“They all failed during extreme rain events,” said Tanya Lourigan, state dam safety engineer for the Wisconsin DNR. “They don’t have a history of being in poor condition and being neglected.”
Micheel said the historic rainfall revealed a design flaw in the dams, which are highest in the center. When spillways can’t keep up and water overtops the dam, that slope focused the rushing water toward one side of the dam, where it quickly ate into the hillside.
Investigations showed that the clay structures themselves held, but the sandstone they were attached to gave way. “They did their job for 50 years,” Micheel said. “Nobody ever envisioned them overtopping. The overtopping showed the weakness.”..Mea culpa for jumping to conclusions (it's one of the few forms of exercise that bloggers get).
One of the goals is to install weather monitoring stations and warning systems. Another is to re-evaluate the 100-year floodplains based on current land use and rainfall patterns and how best to manage them.“We need to change what we’re doing here,” Micheel said. “It isn’t going away.”
Reposted from five months ago to add this video of the devastation caused by the breakage of the dams in Michigan this past week:
Note these were private dams.
Unlike roads and bridges, the majority of the nation’s dams are privately owned, including about 75 percent of the dams in Michigan, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Many private dam owners do not finance regular rehabilitation projects, according to the ASCE. And if dams lose their federal licensing — and thus their power revenue — there often isn’t a clear mechanism to pay for needed repairs and upkeep.
The ASCE gave the nation’s 95,000 dams a D grade in its most recent infrastructure report card. Their average age is 56, and as the population grows, more dams — like the Edenville and Sanford structures that failed in Michigan — are designated “high hazard,” because of the potential for their failure to result in loss of life. The Association of State Dam Safety Officers (ASDSO) has identified 2,000 dams that are in deficient condition and carry a high hazard rating...
Many older dams have lost the purpose for which they were built: generating electricity or running mills. According to an American Rivers database, more than 1,700 such dams have been removed, including five last year in Michigan.And note this:
The company said that it has been working for years to manage the water levels in the lake the dam holds back, but it ended up in a dispute with homeowners in the area who were dismayed when water levels went too low for recreational use — and they sued to keep water levels higher. The state’s attorney general also sued, alleging that the low water levels were having a negative environmental impact.
Boyce said the moves to keep water levels higher were among the main reasons the dams failed this week....
22 May 2020
Loon-on-eagle haliacide
A lake on the outskirts of Portland, Maine, became a highly unusually scene last summer when a kayaker happened upon a dead bald eagle floating face down, pierced through the heart... It’s the first documented case of loon-on-eagle haliacide (Haliaeetus leucocephalus being the Latin name for bald eagles)... The scene also included a dead loon chick...
An autopsy report revealed that the puncture wound in the eagle’s chest was consistent with the size and shape of a loon’s bill... male loons in particular will defend their territory from interlopers by diving below the water and then propelling themselves up to jab at their foes. Loons are often marked with scars from these kinds of attacks...
“We have seen lots of instances where eagles and loons are interacting in this way, [where] an eagle is going after either adults or their chicks, and loons trying to defend themselves or defend their chicks. This is the first instance that we know of where an eagle was actually killed by a loon.”
Loons also aren’t afraid to stand up to people...More details at Gizmodo. Posted for my friends up at Leech Lake.
Your next dental visit will be very different
I've been wondering about this, because of all the aerosols generated by dental instruments. Slate has the story:
Reopened offices will need a sanitation upgrade. Until COVID-19, practices followed protocols that are largely designed to stop the spread of bloodborne illnesses, because they were developed during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. But the way certain dental procedures can make saliva into aerosols makes dentists’ offices a prime environment for dispersing an airborne pathogen like the coronavirus. The coronavirus often infects people via saliva droplets; many dental instruments spray saliva, and the diseased particles can remain suspended in a mist for hours. Fillings, root canals, and other procedures that involve the use of drills and ultrasonic scalers, a cleaning tool that clears away tartar and plaque by vibrating, tend to produce aerosols. Teeth polishing can also result in saliva spray.
Here is how your appointment might go, from the moment you sit in the chair. You’ll likely have two people working on you at a time—a technique known as “four-handed dentistry”—in order to speed up the procedures and control the amount of spit that gets into the air. You may see a high-evacuation suction device, which looks a bit like a vacuum cleaner, near your face; it will draw in air from the general vicinity and remove infectious material. “It has an extension that we put right in front of the patient,” says Melisande Wolff, a dentist in West Palm Beach, Florida, who reopened her practice on May 4. “Any extra aerosol that gets past the suction devices that my assistant is already using will get picked up by that.” You also might spot HEPA air purifiers, which use a very fine mesh to catch particles.
Your dentist might have you wear a rubber dam over the bottom half of your face...
QAnon believer wins Oregon GOP primary
My cousin in Oregon forwarded me this story about local politics:
Related: My father, the QAnon conspiracy theorist.
A QAnon conspiracy theorist won the GOP Senate primary in Oregon on Tuesday, giving a massive electoral stage to the bizarre pro-Trump movement that the FBI considers a potential domestic terror threat. Jo Rae Perkins, an insurance agent and avowed QAnon believer, handily won the contest to take on Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) in the general election. Perkins, who has launched unsuccessful Senate and House bids in the past, beat her nearest Republican primary opponent by nearly 20 percentage points on Tuesday.
To celebrate, Perkins tweeted a video acknowledging the support she had received from QAnon believers. The victory speech included references to QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all,” QAnon followers who call themselves “Anons,” and “Q,” the anonymous person or group whose “clues” make up the basis of QAnon.
“I stand with President Trump, I stand with Q and the team,” Perkins said, holding up a sign with a QAnon slogan on it. “Thank you Anons, thank you patriots.”...
QAnon supporters believe in an elaborate conspiracy theory that posits that Donald Trump is engaged in a secret war against a “cabal” made up pedophile-cannibals in the global elite and Democratic Party. They are also convinced that Trump will soon imprison or execute top Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Despite its bizarre claims, QAnon has won prominent converts, including comedian Roseanne Barr, former baseball player Curt Schilling, and several Instagram influencers. Donald Trump has invited QAnon promoters to the White House, and frequently retweets them.More details at The Daily Beast.
Related: My father, the QAnon conspiracy theorist.
21 May 2020
How to block ads on a smart TV
"YSK if you own a Samsung smart TV that has ads, you can block them by adding ads.samsung.com to your block list on your internet router."Discussion thread in the YouShouldKnow subreddit has lots of details, including info on blocking ads on other devices.
Our house doesn't have a smart TV, so I can't vouch for the validity of the suggestions at the link. Comments from readers are welcome.
Props to Scotland
As reported in The Independent:
"Props" explained.
Scotland has become the latest country to block companies based in tax havens from accessing coronavirus bailout funds, in a move that will increase pressure on Boris Johnson’s government to introduce similar measures.
MSPs approved new rules on Wednesday night that will mean companies that are registered in tax havens, or are a subsidiary of an offshore company, cannot apply for government grants.
France, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Wales and Argentina have applied similar policies to their coronavirus business-support packages...
Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Green Party co-leader, said: “Any company which avoids its responsibility to contribute to society should not be getting handouts when things go wrong. That’s why many European nations and Wales have already made this commitment.
“I’m delighted that ministers finally saw sense on this basic issue of fairness. This move isn’t the final word, but it marks the beginning of a new approach to tackling the companies which shamelessly avoid paying tax, and we will continue to build on what’s been achieved today.”Discussion here indicates doubts the U.K. will follow suit.
"Props" explained.
19 May 2020
Proboscis monkeys
Excerpts from a longread at the always-interesting Hakai Magazine:
Composure aside, the proboscis monkey is most famous for its looks. The female has a sweet face with an upturned nose; bright, wide-open eyes; a pudgy belly. The male is more … striking. A pronounced brow cloaks his eyes and his nose can reach an impressive 17.5 centimeters long—a smidge longer than an iPhone X—a protuberance straight out of a Roald Dahl book. Bulbous. Fleshy. Floppy. His stomach is so Dahlishly pronounced, it’s perhaps the best example ever of the word potbelly. The paunch, the hooded eyes, and the fur piled on his shoulders like loose skin add to the furry–old man look...
Confirmation bias has undermined our understanding of the monkey: researchers assumed the proboscises prefer water because boats were the main method of human travel for most of Borneo’s history. Conveniently, they saw the monkeys in trees on ocean and river shorelines at dawn and dusk, and pushing further into the forest seemed unnecessary...
The Kinabatangan proboscis monkeys are also, so far, the only primate known to chew their cud—they regurgitate a meal to chew it again, like cows.. They found that seeds traveling through a proboscis’s gut were much more likely to germinate than the other seeds. Also, seeds from unripe fruit were more likely to germinate than seeds from ripe fruit. So, given their use of habitat, proboscis monkeys were providing a service: they were dispersing intact seeds far from the parent plant to suitable riverine habitats...
In a group of studies that took over 15 years, Matsuda and others on Team Proboscis found the best evidence yet to explain the big nose: the ladies like it. The bigger the male, the bigger the nose and the bigger the testes.More photos and a couple gifs at the link. And I recommend exploring the rest of the magazine.
Excellent lecture on Monarch biology and ecology
This is a one-hour comprehensive presentation by Karen Oberhauser, currently the Director of the University of Wisconsin's arboretum; she was one of the founders of the nationwide Monarch Joint Venture. The level of discussion is directed toward adults, including the Master Gardeners in south-central Wisconsin.
Hallway tiles optical illusion
"Several articles online state that the design was made to prevent people from running/making loud noises, however turns out that the tile company addressed this matter here. Turns out they "needed to have an entrance that would make our customers really remember their visit to and something that showcased what can be achieved with tiles."(view from the other direction). Via.
Offered without comment
"The Los Angeles County jail inmates had one goal in mind: get infected with the novel coronavirus so they could be released from custody. And they were going to do it together.
One by one last month, groups of inmates inside the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, Calif., drank from the same hot-water bottle and sniffed out of one face mask before passing it to the next guy for his turn, according to surveillance footage released Monday by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department..."The story continues at The Washington Post.
18 May 2020
The tomb of Ramesses VI
Via. Better yet, here a link to a high definition walk-through of the tomb. Use your mouse to turn left and right - and remember to look up at the ceiling. Awesome.
This awesome bourbon collection
The discussion thread indicates that some of these bottles are outrageously expensive, but I note that the owner doesn't have a bottle of my favorite Evan Williams bourbon, which he could find at his local Target store.
And I bet he would disapprove of my mixing the Evan Williams with Diet Coke.
Coronavirus conspiracy poster
Who the fuck creates crap like this??? Seriously.
I totally understand that there are individuals who are ignorant or deluded into fearing vaccinations. And religious zealots who long for or anticipate the end times. And there are technophobes who fear 5G and RFID and Bill Gates as elements of a deep state.
But who creates this "sum of all fears" poster?
Then there's the work and the expense and the time to assemble this into a poster to be mounted in public places. Somebody or some entities believe they can potentially benefit from stirring irrational fears in the public.
The YouTube link in the poster goes to a 2014 video.
Is this just a prank by someone mocking the fears? Is it part of a Russian disinformation campaign to foment unrest in American society?
I don't know who to be mad at.
Is this just a prank by someone mocking the fears? Is it part of a Russian disinformation campaign to foment unrest in American society?
I don't know who to be mad at.
Image via the Facepalm subreddit, where the discussion wanders all over the place.
Treating burned animals with fish (tilapia) skins
Photo via Reddit. I had to Google to find a mainstream story in People.
When it became clear that Archer [the burn victim dog] would need more help to heal than she could provide, Dr. Oakley reached out to Dr. Jamie Peyton, a burn specialist at The University of California, Davis, for advice. The specialist recommended a newer treatment, where the skins from tilapia are placed on burns to promote healing, and even came up to the Archer’s hometown to show Dr. Oakley how the treatment worked...The Chicago Tribune reported in January that Dr. Oakley was headed to Australia to help out with treatment of animals burned in the wildfires there.
Stairway lighting
Artistic or photographic credit to Skurk.
This one resonated with me because in my junior year at college 50+ years ago, my term paper for Bio10b was entitled "Visual Adaptations of Deep-Sea Teleosts," an in-depth analysis of retinal adaptations (rod/cone elongation, transmutation, concentration, summation), tapeta, sighting grooves etc etc. It was the type of paper for which one spends literally hundreds of hours mastering subject matter that will never have even a smidgeon of relevance to one's future career, but that one can still look back at with a measure of satisfaction.
For those interested: more on anglerfish.
"Obamagate" explained
A more detailed explanation is available in an editorial at The Washington Post:
IN THE 2016 presidential race, then-candidate Donald Trump often deflected questions about his shortcomings by hyping those of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. The point was to make his behavior seem no more abhorrent than his rival’s.
Mr. Trump is trying the same tactic against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, latching onto a new diversion: “Obamagate.” This one is totally untethered from reality, despite the credulous or cynical efforts of senior Republicans and conservative media to advance it.
Mr. Trump’s precise allegation is hazy. But the apparent accusation is that, following Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory, Obama officials plotted to ensnare the incoming Trump administration in a Russia scandal...And in an article at The Bulwark.
16 May 2020
Newborns stranded by coronavirus
"A nurse cares for newborn babies at the Venice hotel [Kyiv, Ukraine]. More than 100 babies born to surrogate mothers have been stranded in Ukraine because their foreign parents are unable collect them as a result of border closures imposed during the coronavirus pandemic."One of the photographs of the week at The Guardian. Credit: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Image.
Coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents
The dark spot in central Minnesota is the site of a meat-packing plant. Discussed at the DataIsBeautiful subreddit.
LinkWithin has disappeared
Many years ago I added a feature onto TYWKIWDBI, created by LinkWithin. It added several images at the bottom of each post linking to previous content on the blog. I thought it was a useful feature, and from the metrics I was able to monitor, it seemed to be used extensively by readers to explore random old posts.
Now it seems to have disappeared - without warning or explanation. So this question for other bloggers: is this feature available outside the Blogger system under a different name, or are there other equivalent add-ons I could add to my blog's template?
Now it seems to have disappeared - without warning or explanation. So this question for other bloggers: is this feature available outside the Blogger system under a different name, or are there other equivalent add-ons I could add to my blog's template?
15 May 2020
Regarding your web-browsing history...
"Mitch McConnell is pushing the Senate to pass a measure that would let the FBI collect Americans' web-browsing history without a warrant"That's the title of an article at Business Insider.
The McConnell amendment would let Department of Justice officials — overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr — look through anyone's browsing history without the approval of a judge if they deem the browsing history relevant to an investigation. It blocks the FBI from accessing the "content" of people's web-browsing history but would let the FBI access records detailing which sites and search terms people entered.I've read elsewhere that the proposed amendment would make exceptions for elected politicians, whose web-browsing history would remain private.
Addendum: The Senate has approved this measure.
The US Senate yesterday voted – by a single vote – to allow government agencies like the FBI and CIA to access your browsing history without a warrant. This means they would not need to show probable cause for believing you have committed a crime before requiring your ISP to hand over its records on your web browsing and search histories.
Congratulations to Slovakia
In the face of the claim that the United States is "leading the way" in coronavirus management, I'll post this summary of the response by Slovakia:
In March, when the severity of the coronavirus pandemic was becoming clear but many of the world’s leading nations had yet to formulate a response to it, one country was springing into action. Within 10 days of identifying its first case, it went into lockdown: Its borders were sealed, schools and restaurants were closed, and face masks were made mandatory in public places, with some of the country’s most visible public figures, including its president and prime minister, sporting them to set an example.
Today, life there is slowly returning to its usual rhythm. Small shops are reopening and hotels, restaurant terraces, and hairdressers have been invited to join them. Should its infection rate continue to slow, schools and sporting events won’t be far behind. The remarkable thing is, this isn’t an especially rich country with a strong national health system, nor was it regarded as particularly well equipped to handle a pandemic in the first place.
The country in question? Slovakia, the nation with the lowest per-capita death rate in all of Europe, and the one that on Friday recorded its first day of no new cases since March...
Three key factors helped it. The first, and perhaps the most fundamental, was its national leadership. The country’s president, Zuzana Čaputová, and its nascent government administration, which came to power amid the pandemic, were among the first to model best practices for how to handle the outbreak—most notably by wearing protective masks and gloves for the government’s swearing-in ceremony. Their efforts played a crucial role in normalizing the use of face masks across the country...
That signal from the top in Slovakia helped set the tone for the second factor: the widespread adoption of face masks. Despite often-conflicting advice about the efficacy of masks, Slovakia was among the first countries worldwide (and the second in Europe, after the Czech Republic) to make them mandatory in public spaces...
The third and final factor that contributed to Slovakia’s success was its decision to impose a nationwide lockdown when it did. Although it wasn’t among the first countries to face the coronavirus on its soil, it behaved as though it were: Ten days after reporting its first case, the country mobilized.Common sense, following standard scientific principles. It's not that hard when you have intelligent leadership. The story continues at The Atlantic.
Notice the neon sign on the wall...
Yesterday the conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated the Democratic governor's "Stay at Home" order. Throughout this famous-for-beer-and-cheese state, patrons flocked to bars to socialize.
The photo is a screencap from a CBS News broadcast, via BoingBoing.
13 May 2020
A folded carbonate flysch (France)
Photo credit Thibault Cavailhes, via GeologyIn, via Reddit.
New word for me:
Flysch is a sequence of sedimentary rock layers that progress from deep-water and turbidity flow deposits to shallow-water shales and sandstones. It is deposited when a deep basin forms rapidly on the continental side of a mountain building episode. Examples are found near the North American Cordillera, the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Carpathians.
The name comes from the German word fliessen, which means to flow, because Studer thought flysch was deposited by rivers. The insight that flysch is actually a deep marine sediment typical for a particular plate tectonic setting came only much later.
The U.S. does not have military superiority over China
Excerpts from a thought-provoking article at The Washington Post:
“Over the past decade, in U.S. war games against China, the United States has a nearly perfect record: We have lost almost every single time.”
That’s a quote from a new book called “The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare,” the most provocative critique of U.S. defense policy I’ve read in years. It’s written by Christian Brose, former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a close adviser to late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.). The book isn’t just a wake-up call, it’s a fire alarm in the night...
Brose explains a terrible truth about war with China: Our spy and communications satellites would immediately be disabled; our forward bases in Guam and Japan would be “inundated” by precise missiles; our aircraft carriers would have to sail away from China to escape attack; our F-35 fighter jets couldn’t reach their targets because the refueling tankers they need would be shot down...
How did this happen? It wasn’t an intelligence failure, or a malign Pentagon and Congress, or lack of money, or insufficient technological prowess. No, it was simply bureaucratic inertia compounded by entrenched interests. The Pentagon is good at doing what it did yesterday, and Congress insists on precisely that. We have been so busy buffing our legacy systems that, as Brose writes, “the United States got ambushed by the future.”
A new world will emerge after the global coronavirus pandemic, one in which China is clearly determined to challenge the United States as a global power. The propaganda wars over the origin of the novel virus that causes covid-19 are just a warm-up for the tests that are ahead...
China’s military isn’t focused on projecting power, as ours is, but instead on preventing U.S. domination. Rather than match our fleets of carriers and squadrons of jets around the world, Beijing developed precision weapons to prevent the United States from mobilizing these forces...
And Congress demands adherence to this status quo. When then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and then-Navy Secretary Richard Spencer tried to retire an aircraft carrier in 2019, Congress refused. Expensive fighter jets have a lobby, too. As Brose notes: “There is a reason why parts of the F-35 are built in every state in America. . . . It is political expediency.”Continue reading at the link.
A grinder built into the stock of a carbine
As reported by Guns.com:
During the Civil War, an enterprising cavalry colonel attached to the Springfield Armory came up with the idea to put a mill in the stock of a Sharps Carbine to grind feed and the rest is fakery legend.
The idea was that the mill would be enclosed in the stock itself with a detachable crank on the right-hand side. The horse trooper would dump wheat or oats in the opening at the bottom and grind them up for horse feed while on the move if needed... Historians with the National Park Service attempted to grind coffee beans with one of the rifles in their collection and found that it was unsuitable...
As for the guns themselves, it's believed that fewer than 100 were ever converted and only 12 are believed to be around today. In fact, so few verified “coffee grinder” Sharps are in circulation, that Springfield Armory specifically mentions them as an example of one of the more commonly faked relic firearms of the 19th Century.
More photos at the link.
12 May 2020
It's called a "Tapeworm shot"
Something to drink while reading the post below this one. Ingredients: vodka, mayonnaise, black pepper, and dash of tabasco.
If you want to worry about something other than coronavirus...
A longread at Politico lists other threats that intelligence experts are concerned about.
You might feel blindsided by the coronavirus, but warnings about a looming pandemic have been there for decades... What other catastrophes are coming that we aren’t planning for, but that could disrupt our lives, homes, jobs or our broader society in the next few years or decades?... What follows is POLITICO Magazine’s “Domestic Threat Assessment”— a list of the most significant events that might impact the United States over the next 30 to 50 years. These are threats that seem rare, but that over a given period are almost guaranteed to occur...1) The Globalization of White Supremacy
... if you ask national security officials about the top near-term terrorism threat on their radar, they almost universally point to the rising problem of white nationalist violence and the insidious way that groups that formerly existed locally have been knitting themselves together into a global web of white supremacism... While white supremacist violence has a centuries-old history in the U.S. and overseas, the current moment particularly worries intelligence and law enforcement officials because they see violence erupting globally, empowered by social media, and lone actors referencing each other...2) Attacks on Trust and Truth: Deepfakes, Manufactured Election Results or Other Data Manipulation Attacks
... cyber experts are warning that the next new threat online will almost certainly involve attempts by adversaries to manipulate or delete data or otherwise raise public doubts about whether reported reality is real reality... For example, changing Wall Street trading records to make brokers unsure of the real price of a stock or whether they’d actually purchased it at all. Or manipulating bank records so consumers wonder whether their deposits are safe...
Security experts have been warning of all manner of data manipulation attacks that could lead to ongoing or permanent questions about the accuracy of election results. While actually altering votes at scale would prove challenging, it could be comparatively easy to alter the reported vote totals...
... "deepfakes,” doctored audio or video driven by artificial intelligence that could literally put words in people’s mouths or place them in physical locations where they never were. Simpler “dumbfakes” or “cheap fakes” have proven effective... [imagine] grainy fake video or audio of Joe Biden admitting to assaulting Tara Reade; grainy video of Trump saying he plans to nuke Iran in one hour; or even Anthony Fauci saying that he’s doctoring the Covid death tolls...3) Biosecurity: Terrorists, Mad Scientists, Lab Accidents and Biological Warfare
[This is getting too depressing. Go to Politico and read the details for yourselves]4) Massive Technological Disruption: Downed Power Grids, GPS Outages and Solar Flares
5) Nukes
6) Climate change
7) Covid-19's next-level impact
8) Catastrophic Earthquakes
9) The Unknown Unknowns
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