Number of people in this photo: zero. Via @Earth_Pics, retweeted by @rickygervais.
Brilliant campaign against child abuse
So, how do you publish a hotline phone number that kids can call for help, when they’re likely to be accompanied by their abused when they see it?
Print the poster so only children can read it.
I hope someone in the US steals this.
That federalism thing is working out great
There’s too stupid to legislate, and then there’s too stupid to live.
Kentucky Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Bill Prohibiting Federal Gun Laws
Even better, it passed 34-3.
Supercell thunderstorm over Montana
Nature, you are impressive. From Astronomy Picture of the Day, original here:
Twentysomething Jeff on JATO rockets
Watching the 10th anniversary episode of Mythbusters, and in honor of that landmark I’m reposting what I had to say about the JATO rocket urban myth in The Twentysomething Guide to Creative Self-Employment, eight years pre-Mythbusters:
A story was going around the Internet a while ago about some total schmuck in Arizona who had no idea what he was getting himself into. Apparently, this Einstein decided that he wanted to drive really fast. So he somehow laid his hands on a solid-fuel Jet-Assist Takeoff (JATO) booster rocket, which he then soldered onto the underside of his Chevy. Then he found himself a really long, straight road, and set the rocket off.
Now, this guy was smart enough to smuggle military hardware. He was smart enough to attach the rocket to his car so that it didn’t blow apart the car when it went off. And he knew to do this out in Arizona, which is basically just long expanses of sand broken up by the occasional retirement community—the inhabitants of which must have been very amused to see a Chevy blow by at three hundred miles per hour.
This guy was clueless, however, on two key factors. One, the JATO rocket has no off switch. Two, Chevys aren’t supposed to go much over sixty, and their brakes and steering wheels tend to fail at ICBM cruising velocities. Which is why the guy was scraped off the side of a small hill with a putty knife.
The moral of the story? Hell, it doesn’t really need one. But if I had to say, it’s a case of classic half-assed burnout.”
I’m realizing that after a few modifications to this site, I haven’t checked to see if any of the PDF links to The Twentysomething Guide still work. So if you want to read the whole book, here it is again (8.5 megabyte PDF).
Not being Elmo
It made news that a man who’s won 23 Daytime Emmy Awards was nominated for another one.
It’s impossible to watch Being Elmo and not be heartbroken that the man isn’t still on the job. I’m genuinely torn on this one—on one hand, I think it’s utterly bizarre that we make such strong distinctions between 17 and 18 in terms of evaluating people for their choices in sexual partners. On the other, there’s something reprehensible about middle-aged people with people not old enough to drink.
And on the third hand, I’m wondering just why I find that reprehensible, when I’m generally of the opinion that what happens in the bedroom isn’t any of my business for any reason. There are plenty of reprehensible ways that can happen, but is that a universal truth? I think I’d have been pretty pissed at 18 if someone had told me I wasn’t old enough to make my own choices.
Macworld reviews Prizmo 2
OCR software that recognizes text from iPhone photos. Sounds interesting to me, especially if it works with a panoramic photostitched iPhone 5 pic. But at $50, it’s too pricey for a “buy it in case I need it” purchase; would definitely reconsider at a lower price point, or if it shows up in a future bundle.
Also wondering, for occasional OCR needs, whether Evernote wouldn’t fit the bill. Haven’t played with that feature enough.
Macworld Review: Get scanner-like features for any camera with Prizmo 2
Existence proof #4,387 that the universe is weird
Never mind that a “time crystal” sounds like what happens if you crash a TARDIS into the Enterprise engine room. This theory about atomic perpetual motion machines is still melting my brain.
[T]ime crystals derive their movement not from stored energy but from a break in the symmetry of time, enabling a special form of perpetual motion. [Physicists] plan to build a time crystal, not in the hope that this perpetuum mobile will generate an endless supply of energy (as inventors have striven in vain to do for more than a thousand years) but that it will yield a better theory of time itself.
The Internet is a surveillance state
Bruce Schneier declares that the privacy war is over, and the panopticon won.
Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell’s identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product.
This isn’t something the free market can fix. We consumers have no choice in the matter. All the major companies that provide us with Internet services are interested in tracking us.
Personally, I think that there are two ways we need to address this. The first is to understand the massive distinctions between the panopticons created by government, for-profit businesses, and individuals. These have different effects and different benefits, but we tend to sweep them all under the same rug.
Second, it seems utterly bizarre to me that I own the copyright of this post for 70 years after my death (although that’s completely unenforceable, as I’m not a millionaire), but I have no ownership over data about me. We need to formalize the unspoken right to data that is implicit in signing a TOS with Google and Facebook, because so many entities simply take this information and provide nothing in return.
How to shoot your child in the head
Apropos my earlier post about Crickett rifles, here’s the promotional video that shows how your child can walk in front of its muzzle while you’re distracted doing something else:
The money shot, in case this video happens to get taken down for some reason:
Kickstarter project for Dr. Demento documentary
Attention, Michael Weinmayr:
“UNDER THE SMOGBERRY TREES: The True Story of Dr. Demento”
$3,585 left to go in the next 40 hours.
So about that kid who killed his sister…
Somehow I had gotten it into my head that the rifle a five-year-old used to accidentally shoot his two-year-old sister must’ve been a BB gun or something. I mean, not that you should leave a kid alone with a BB gun, but it had to be a gun out of a 1950s comic book, right?
This Mother Jones article made me realize that I had made that assumption. So I continued onward to the Crickett rifle website. If you haven’t checked it out yourself, you really must. This goes double for any of my international readers, because it’s probably been hours since you had another proof that the United States is clinically insane.
Now, I’m the first to say that I don’t know shit about firearms. (When I say “comic book BB gun”, it’s with a vague understanding that BB guns are generally only suitable for killing squirrels and the family pet, and that it takes really bad luck to kill a human with one.) But it seems that a .22 rifle is actually a real gun. It’s the one the Boy Scouts use because it hurts less to use (lower recoil), but here’s the Wikipedia picture of suitable ammo for My First Rifle:
Mother Jones also informs me that there’s a booming business in bulletproof clothing and backpacks for children. Because, you know, gun rights.
Obama affirms belief in existence of the magical uterus
You know, it’s not so much that I’m surprised to find that I’m to the left of the Obama administration again. It’s that he’s going out of his way to meddle in this when both the FDA and the courts provide plenty of political cover for a decision to leave this the hell alone.
This is the decision of someone who believes that the government has a moral obligation to ensure that any 13-year-old who gets raped, assaulted by family, drunk, or drugged, and then gets knocked up, has to go through with an abortion or bearing a child. Because, you know, otherwise she might sleep around too much.
Couldn’t happen to nicer people
The Australian Christian Lobby neglected to renew their domain. Then this happened.
Oooo, that looks like a worm. Ignore the shiny bits.
The problem with protecting against phishing: everyone’s a guppy.
Crowning moment of 8-bit awesome
Who needs graphics when all you need is Post-It notes and the patience of Ray Harryhausen?
Quite the day
Thanks to The Awl for making me realize that the anniversary of the OBL killing also happens to be the anniversary of “Mission Accomplished”. I think that escaped my notice before.
The E-ticket ride is a shotgun to the face
Spit-take funny Onion article.
Dick Cheney Vice Presidential Library Opens In Pitch-Dark, Sulfurous Underground Cave
[T]he subterranean library will include more than 2.7 million photographs, thousands of razor-sharp stalactites, 4 million documents offering a legal basis for torture, scalding-hot green smoke wafting out of the cave walls, an original manuscript of the Patriot Act, hundreds of sick and hungry cave bears, and 15,000 audio recordings from Cheney’s private meetings.
A NL hand post-mortem
Wherein Our Hero attempts to add a no-limit game to his cash game poker repertoire
Sat down at a 1-1 NL table at Bally’s ($50-$150 buy-in, $2 to call the $1 blind preflop) with $100 I won at Jacks or Better, and was felted on the first hand I played, around two orbits in. Here’s how it went down.
A loose-aggressive player opened for $10 in middle position. $10 is his standard open, which is mathematically insane at a 1-1 table, but as he typically got a few calls this isn’t a bad plan in this case. A loose caller to my right calls. I’m in the cutoff seat and peek to see AKo in the hole.
I’ve got just under $100; the raiser has $330 and has me stacked. He’s also talked loudly about locking in the $300 and playing with the rest.
My decision process: can I fold? Hell no.
Should I raise? Hell yes. I raise to $30. He calls, everyone else folds.
Flop comes AQT two-suited and he checks to me. I’ve got him on anything from a middle pair to a crappy Ace, and the main thing I’m worried about is that he’s hit his kicker for two pair.
I go to bet, and I’m reminded why I hate no limit. There’s $70 in the pot. My normal bet of $35 leaves me pot-committed; I can’t fold to a check-raise because a) he’s aggressive; b) it’s a heavy drawing board, and c) he might think his A-x is good. So I bet the pot and go all-in.
He flips over K-J and takes it with the straight.
Post-mortem:
Should I have raised to something other than $30? My mistake here is that I didn’t think about it—I forgot my observation about his calling cap. Raise to $40 and there’s a chance that he folds preflop, especially with KJo. On the other hand, as it went down I got my money in good, and he called as a 3-1 dog.
Should I have called preflop? The mistake here is that I didn’t consider it. In retrospect, this was my last chance to control the size of the pot; after my raise, I’m going all-in on a favorable flop, and that hadn’t quite occurred to me.
Again on the other hand, calling here would given me top-pair, top-kicker on a draw-heavy board against two undefined opponents. As it stands, I’m kicking myself for giving myself no chance to get away from a cooler; with a call, I’d be kicking myself for not defining the flop better.
So I’m thinking I played this right, except for one real problem: I’m forced to go all-in on the flop, but I’m only getting called if I’m beat. I don’t see a way around this with a short stack, but instinctively I feel like this isn’t the way to play a cash game.
That sounds about right
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