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silveradeptLet's begin with the women Maya softballers who play barefoot and have to deal with machismo culture that says sports aren't for women.
A second malaria vaccine is now being deployed in African nations. Woo-hoo! More effective malaria vaccines is good.
A possible good development for a twice-yearly injectable PrEP drug against HIV, and if it bears out in the rest of the trials, may scale up and be offered as an alternative to the oral daily PrEP currently available.
Actress Shelley Duval, complications of diabetes, 75 years of age. Known primarily for either Faerie Tale Theater or The Shining, from the looks of the obit, but I would have seen her in Time Bandits and Roxanne, so I suppose that says something about my film choices.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, extraordinarily well-known therapst whose frankness about sex and talking about sex made her an instant hit and allowed her to discuss things that might not ever be discussed, at 96 years of age. We need her even more than ever, but hopefully there are plenty of others who have taken up her frankness and good cheer about good sex.
Richard Simmons, often a man thought of in the same general arc as Jane Fonda in workout and fitness videos from the 1980s and 1990s, but also a man who was routinely both comedic and the target of other people's comedy, and not always kindly, at 76 years of age.
Shannen Doherty, actress in 90210, Charmed, Little House on the Prairie, and Heathers, at 53 years of age. Fuck cancer forever. Also, if I recall correctly, very prominent with regard to #metoo and generally okay with being outspoken.
The ways in which The Hunger Games, the movie, is an excellent example of Capitol propaganda, and the way the Capitol would want to portray the Games. Which still doesn't always touch on the myriad ways that an entity like the Capitol would be cruel to its people. Federal immigration agents set up a fake university ostensibly to catch people who want to stay on education visas, but instead they collected all kinds of legitimate students and demanded their deportation. A court has ruled, at least, that those students can sue to get the money the government stole from them in tuitiion for the fake university they set up.
Continuing in the vein of how cruelty comes to say hello for all of us, research and data says that we do not want SARS-CoV-2 infections, and if we are given them, we want as few of them as possible. Those messages are not being promoted in media or government, really, because business has decided they've run out of patience with the disease and therefore they no longer want to have to deal with the consequences of it. Good protection, air cleaning, and disease mitigation measures like being able to work from home or otherwise reduce people contact are the things that help, but that costs money and businesses don't want to spend money they could be hoarding for profits and executive bonuses. Even in situations where it would make more sense to buy the cleaning technologies instead of paying sick leave for someone.
Touching back on the other part of the Capitol's pageantry covering up and providing acceptable distance between the reality of their monstrousness and their belief that they themselves are blameless, a child sexual abuse survivor talking about how there is no separation of art and artist, only the fantasies of those who wish their art and artists to be unproblematic so they themselves can believe they are good people for not having made bad choices in who to like. The essay itself references the story that has finally come to light that Alice Munro's husband sexually assaulted her daughter, Andrea Skinner, that Munroe was told about it, and nothing happened. In the story excerpts, you can see the response that the assaulter made, blaming the nine year-old and saying she was receptive, agressive, and he should be held blameless for what he did. The key is that this was not a secret hidden away until the death of Alice Munro, but something she was aware of, and she chose to stay with the man that sexually abused her daughter. It happened, and people acknowledged it, and nobody did anything about it. The wife went back to the abuser. The children were reconciling before both parents were dead, and that's a good thing, but it still happened, and in both accounts, that it happened was apparently not enough for meaningful change to occur in response. There were too many other things that were more important, apparently, even if the people involved would have denied that framing.
"We have met the enemy," wrote Walt Kelly, "and he is us." The root of the word monster is "something that is a warning." And sometimes the warning is "when confronted by horrors, we will either do nothing at all or find some way to make this about ourselves and our feelings."
Allegations from a Conservative canvasser during the UK election that one of the Liberal Democrat candidates, who has been registered blind for decades at this point, was faking the disability so as to bring people to his side through an awfully cute guide dog. Politics brings the worst out in everyone, it seems. The candidate whose canvasser made the accusations (and who couldn't be bothered to even do performative caring about the accusation) was sent away, along with plenty of other Conservatives, in the election on 4 July that handed Labour a decisive majority in the Parliament. (Labour is already trying to get to the business of undoing the damage of the previous decade and a half of Conservative rule.)
In more serious matters, allegations that Reform UK stood candidates for the election that do not exist at all, presumably so they could gain funds and increased spending limits for the party. The Elections Commission currently does not have the authority to investigate, and therefore it falls to others to do so.
Mr. Douglass orates on the nature of the celebration of National Independence for the United States and how the enslaved man, who does not have freedom or independence, and has striven for redress (and been denied), finds little to celebrate on the Fourth of July.
Justice Sotomayor writes in dissent, in which Justices Kagan and Jackson join, against the decision that gives the head of the Executive immunity from the laws that Executive is sworn to faithfully execute, if the act that is against the law is considered to be part of the Executive's "official duties". In this decision, five justices proved themselves unfit for the office they were appointed to. Justice Kagan writes in dissent, with whom Justices Sotomayor and Justice Jackson (in a limited form) join, against the decision in which the Supreme Court arrogates to the judiciary all power over the interpretation of statute, cutting out the Executive and the administrative apparatus of the Executive entirely. In this decision, six justices proved themselves unfit for the office they were appointed to. (Admittedly, since Dobbs, we knew that several were unfit for office, but they're consistent about it.)
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, announced plans to introduce impeachment articles against justices of the United States Supreme Court because of their recent decisions and refusal to recuse themselves as an indication of corruption. It may not go anywhere in a House that hadn't the spine to defy the previous Administrator and move away from him, but it is apparently one of the possible powers or checks a legislature may have if they believe the judiciary has overstepped their boundaries or has become corrupted.
Because the Hertiage Foundation are the people who have a detailed plan to destroy democratic institutions and remake them into the arm of a dictator, and who believe they are engaging in a revolution that can remain bloodless 'if the left allows it to be', (so they're going to commit violence if the left doesn't roll over and let them implement full-on fascism in the United States) in addition to their regular insistence that a very specific brand of Christianity should be given absolute power over everyone, it should come as no surprise that their internal lists of passwords, users, and the associated e-mail addresses and legal names of those users were hacked and posted publicly by a group claiming to be composed mostly of gay furry hackers. I'm sure we'll find all kinds of people who are supposedly on board with liberal causes and who have been supporting Heritage with their dollars and otherwise, because there's plenty of ways to cloak your support in the United States so you never have to actually declare your true politics. (Purchasing Supreme Court justices seems to be a popular one right now.) An executive director of Heritage, after this breach, spewed threats and vitriol at the responsible parties, threatening to expose the hackers and going off at length regarding his personal opinions of furries. (Unsurprisingly, you could probably substitute any minority sexuality in the quoted segments, and it would still probably be true. It's consistency from an organization, at least.)
A shooter attempted to commit mass violence at a Republican rally, killing one person, wounding others, and apparently grazing the Previous Administrator with a bullet. The shooter was killed by the protection around the Previous Administrator, and the investigation into the motive for the shooting is ongoing. The Previous Administrator has been welcoming to people with weapons at his speeches and rallies before, to the point of apparently spouting profanities in demanding the removal of magnetometers and other things that would screen for guns and the like. He did so in the past with the explicit statement that the weapons were not coming for him, and therefore nobody needed to be screened for them. Perhaps in the future, now that there has been an incident where the weapons did touch him, he will be more willing to take his safety, and the safety of his attendees, more seriously.
Republicans immediately began blaming Democrats for the violence and exhorting their own followers to engage in violence against liberals as reprisals. Because, of course, it's not that the violence itself is a problem for Republicans and fascists, it's that violence was directed at them instead of perpetrated by them. So it's entirely unlikely that there will be greater security processes at rallies, excepting, perhaps tighter security around the candidate himself.
Also, one does not shoot fascists if you want fascism to stop. You punch them, you throw milkshakes on them, you make fun of them. Because a punched fascist is alive to contemplate the shame of having fallen so far they get punched and to possibly be embarrassed, either at getting punched or at having beliefs that get you punched. If you shoot fascists, they often die, and they die "fit and seasoned for their passage," secure in the belief that they were shot because they were right. And that kind of martyrdom makes more fascists, not less.
Since it is also convention season for the party with the convicted felon at the head, the running mate is a Senator from Ohio who completed his shift from harsh and vocal critic to sufficiently fawning to be selected. He was likely selected to help appeal in Ohio and its Great Lakes counterparts that are usually considered swing states and crucial to winning the presidential election thanks to the Electoral College system that deliberately makes it possible for an unpopular candidate to win. And because he has publicly endorsed several key shibboleths of reality denial regarding the last election, this one, and expressed his willingness to go along with coups should he have the opportunity to assist one.
The judge assigned to the classified documents case against the previous administrator has ruled the case should be dismissed because she believes that the Special Counsel was appointed in violation of the Constitution of the United States. This allows her to sidestep having to rule on the merits of the case, but it also means said Special Counsel can appeal her decision and also request to have her removed from the case and replaced by someone competent. (Or at least less obviously partisan.) The ruling, however, certainly guarantees that the case cannot be resolved by the time of the election, such that there will be no possibility of adding to the felonies that said administrator has been convicted of by then.
The censored photographs of Dorothea Lange, who did excellent work taking pictures of the internment process and the camps where Japanese citizens were taken during World War II, on the premise that all persons of Japanese ancestry or immigrants were more loyal to the Emperor of Japan than to the United States. In an era of xenophobia and heavy anti-immigrant sentiment, we are always at risk that someone else will decide that persons of the currently hated descent are all spies working to undermine and destroy the nation and must be deported or detained. And that policies that do these actions in the cruelest possible way will be the most popular ones, because there is so much latent hate aching for an approved outlet.
Maia Kobabe, for The Nib, on the changing statements of the librarians who come to see em and talk about Gender Queer, because the landscape of the librarians has changed, with governments and boards and local authorities involving themselves in what may and may not be allowed in the library, and what may and may not be said about their efforts to restrict materials. As is noted in many places, if the prevailing opinion of the population was that such things were anathema to the good order and function of these United States and that the population did not want to be associated with people who would ban books because they had characters in them who weren't straight, or white, or men, the matter would be resolved quickly. Unfortunately, it seems the national character is one that, even if it does not fully openly support the efforts of censors, is at least sympathetic enough to them to allow them to do their work. (Modulo the amount of suppression and rigging that has been going on in several of the most ban-happy states to remove the ability of the people to make their will known and instead invest all meaningful power in a selected handful of theocrats.)
Researching the lives of people with intellectual disablities finds them part of their societies in eras before institutionalization and eugenics movements tried to exclude them from living in society. It's not a utopia for them, but neither is it a complete dystopia. They're there, mostly living their lives.
Fertility and sperm donation organizations not talking to each other or keeping stringent tabs has created a situation where one man may have fathered hundreds or thousands of children through artificial insemination. Which doesn't seem like an issue if you're thinking about it in relation to the global population, but it can be if there's a concentration of kids who all share the same father in proximity to each other.
Redbox, a subsidiary of the Chicken Soup for the Soul company, is now in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and the details of how the company was managed already suggests there should be criminal investigations in addition to the bankruptcy, not that the company has enough assets to make good on the things they said they would do for their workers. The way the article frames it, though, it sounds like the workers who have been wronged through this will possibly have no relief at all. I feel like this is the kind of thing where if the exeutive mismanaged the company in the specific ways allleged, the private fortune of that executive (which he presumably has) can be tapped to help make things correct for the workers who were screwed by those decisions.
The appeals of H.P. Lovecraft's themes to people who are the ones who would have been targeted by his racism and xenophobia. Because the themes themselves are familiar to people who have been marginalized and who have been finding themselves as different compared to everyone around them, and those people around them are very interested in conformity or hiding or other such things.
New evidence of very old art found in Indonesia, pushing back the earliest known evidence of art on cave walls, the understanding that hippos can have all four limbs off the ground while moving, which is another one of those reasons why hippos are extremely dangerous, the uncertain fate of the herbarium and the extensive collection of preserved plant specimens at Duke University, wildflower meadow projects for making pleasing things as well as contributing to plant and creature diversity, and a person who was attempting to keep more than 100 live snakes in their pants and get past customs (they failed).
In the technological eras, they have made bricks out of meteroite components, as a test to see whether structures could be built out of lunar regolith.
A cogent argument as to why ChatGPT and similar LLMs should be regarded as hard bullshitters, where they intend to represent themselves as human or more human-like, and have no regard for the truthfulness of their statements, both of which qualify for the hard bullshit distinction. At the very least, the paper argues convincingly that we should not use "hallucination" or even "confabulation" to describe the output of those machines, but instead specific and technical definitions of bullshit.
Mississippi had a planned age-verification law blocked by injunction, helping to preserve the ability of all Mississippians to access information without having to verify themselves or fight state-intended censorship.
American Telephone and Telegraph admitted that nearly all of the records relating to customer phone numbers, calling and text records, and location data, had been stolen in a data breach. This is a second data breach for American Telephone and Telegraph, and while it's supposedly only metadata, there's a lot that can be done with metadata.
Affinity, a company with a creative suite that might be appealing to people who want to get away from Adobe's subscription model, is offering a six month free trial, and deals on permanent licenses for their products.
Facebook's parent company likes having unconstitutional and onerous burdens placed on their competitors that are disguised as protecting children online. We know this because Maryland's legislators sent a letter to all of the members of NetChoice asking them not to sue the state, and try to have them use their influence to stop NetChoice from suing the state over the legislation that was modeled on bad legislation. (NetChoice sued them anyway.)
Sony is shutting down the remaining plant that manufactures recordable Blu-Ray discs, which will be bringing the era of using optical discs for data backups to a close. Unfortunately, the optical discs couldn't really defeat flash storage for speed or capacity. Commercial Blu-Ray discs will continue to be produced, so it's not the complete death of physical media, but the era in which we can burn our own backups is soon to end.
Last for this post, A conversation between scholars and guards about the many names of "Stick-Elf", the wizard with excellent pipeweed and fireworks.
And The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure blog, dedicated to popping myths about the family, women's employment, and other social structures in the recent and less recent past.
(Materials viaadrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
A second malaria vaccine is now being deployed in African nations. Woo-hoo! More effective malaria vaccines is good.
A possible good development for a twice-yearly injectable PrEP drug against HIV, and if it bears out in the rest of the trials, may scale up and be offered as an alternative to the oral daily PrEP currently available.
Actress Shelley Duval, complications of diabetes, 75 years of age. Known primarily for either Faerie Tale Theater or The Shining, from the looks of the obit, but I would have seen her in Time Bandits and Roxanne, so I suppose that says something about my film choices.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, extraordinarily well-known therapst whose frankness about sex and talking about sex made her an instant hit and allowed her to discuss things that might not ever be discussed, at 96 years of age. We need her even more than ever, but hopefully there are plenty of others who have taken up her frankness and good cheer about good sex.
Richard Simmons, often a man thought of in the same general arc as Jane Fonda in workout and fitness videos from the 1980s and 1990s, but also a man who was routinely both comedic and the target of other people's comedy, and not always kindly, at 76 years of age.
Shannen Doherty, actress in 90210, Charmed, Little House on the Prairie, and Heathers, at 53 years of age. Fuck cancer forever. Also, if I recall correctly, very prominent with regard to #metoo and generally okay with being outspoken.
The ways in which The Hunger Games, the movie, is an excellent example of Capitol propaganda, and the way the Capitol would want to portray the Games. Which still doesn't always touch on the myriad ways that an entity like the Capitol would be cruel to its people. Federal immigration agents set up a fake university ostensibly to catch people who want to stay on education visas, but instead they collected all kinds of legitimate students and demanded their deportation. A court has ruled, at least, that those students can sue to get the money the government stole from them in tuitiion for the fake university they set up.
Continuing in the vein of how cruelty comes to say hello for all of us, research and data says that we do not want SARS-CoV-2 infections, and if we are given them, we want as few of them as possible. Those messages are not being promoted in media or government, really, because business has decided they've run out of patience with the disease and therefore they no longer want to have to deal with the consequences of it. Good protection, air cleaning, and disease mitigation measures like being able to work from home or otherwise reduce people contact are the things that help, but that costs money and businesses don't want to spend money they could be hoarding for profits and executive bonuses. Even in situations where it would make more sense to buy the cleaning technologies instead of paying sick leave for someone.
Touching back on the other part of the Capitol's pageantry covering up and providing acceptable distance between the reality of their monstrousness and their belief that they themselves are blameless, a child sexual abuse survivor talking about how there is no separation of art and artist, only the fantasies of those who wish their art and artists to be unproblematic so they themselves can believe they are good people for not having made bad choices in who to like. The essay itself references the story that has finally come to light that Alice Munro's husband sexually assaulted her daughter, Andrea Skinner, that Munroe was told about it, and nothing happened. In the story excerpts, you can see the response that the assaulter made, blaming the nine year-old and saying she was receptive, agressive, and he should be held blameless for what he did. The key is that this was not a secret hidden away until the death of Alice Munro, but something she was aware of, and she chose to stay with the man that sexually abused her daughter. It happened, and people acknowledged it, and nobody did anything about it. The wife went back to the abuser. The children were reconciling before both parents were dead, and that's a good thing, but it still happened, and in both accounts, that it happened was apparently not enough for meaningful change to occur in response. There were too many other things that were more important, apparently, even if the people involved would have denied that framing.
"We have met the enemy," wrote Walt Kelly, "and he is us." The root of the word monster is "something that is a warning." And sometimes the warning is "when confronted by horrors, we will either do nothing at all or find some way to make this about ourselves and our feelings."
Allegations from a Conservative canvasser during the UK election that one of the Liberal Democrat candidates, who has been registered blind for decades at this point, was faking the disability so as to bring people to his side through an awfully cute guide dog. Politics brings the worst out in everyone, it seems. The candidate whose canvasser made the accusations (and who couldn't be bothered to even do performative caring about the accusation) was sent away, along with plenty of other Conservatives, in the election on 4 July that handed Labour a decisive majority in the Parliament. (Labour is already trying to get to the business of undoing the damage of the previous decade and a half of Conservative rule.)
In more serious matters, allegations that Reform UK stood candidates for the election that do not exist at all, presumably so they could gain funds and increased spending limits for the party. The Elections Commission currently does not have the authority to investigate, and therefore it falls to others to do so.
Mr. Douglass orates on the nature of the celebration of National Independence for the United States and how the enslaved man, who does not have freedom or independence, and has striven for redress (and been denied), finds little to celebrate on the Fourth of July.
Justice Sotomayor writes in dissent, in which Justices Kagan and Jackson join, against the decision that gives the head of the Executive immunity from the laws that Executive is sworn to faithfully execute, if the act that is against the law is considered to be part of the Executive's "official duties". In this decision, five justices proved themselves unfit for the office they were appointed to. Justice Kagan writes in dissent, with whom Justices Sotomayor and Justice Jackson (in a limited form) join, against the decision in which the Supreme Court arrogates to the judiciary all power over the interpretation of statute, cutting out the Executive and the administrative apparatus of the Executive entirely. In this decision, six justices proved themselves unfit for the office they were appointed to. (Admittedly, since Dobbs, we knew that several were unfit for office, but they're consistent about it.)
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, announced plans to introduce impeachment articles against justices of the United States Supreme Court because of their recent decisions and refusal to recuse themselves as an indication of corruption. It may not go anywhere in a House that hadn't the spine to defy the previous Administrator and move away from him, but it is apparently one of the possible powers or checks a legislature may have if they believe the judiciary has overstepped their boundaries or has become corrupted.
Because the Hertiage Foundation are the people who have a detailed plan to destroy democratic institutions and remake them into the arm of a dictator, and who believe they are engaging in a revolution that can remain bloodless 'if the left allows it to be', (so they're going to commit violence if the left doesn't roll over and let them implement full-on fascism in the United States) in addition to their regular insistence that a very specific brand of Christianity should be given absolute power over everyone, it should come as no surprise that their internal lists of passwords, users, and the associated e-mail addresses and legal names of those users were hacked and posted publicly by a group claiming to be composed mostly of gay furry hackers. I'm sure we'll find all kinds of people who are supposedly on board with liberal causes and who have been supporting Heritage with their dollars and otherwise, because there's plenty of ways to cloak your support in the United States so you never have to actually declare your true politics. (Purchasing Supreme Court justices seems to be a popular one right now.) An executive director of Heritage, after this breach, spewed threats and vitriol at the responsible parties, threatening to expose the hackers and going off at length regarding his personal opinions of furries. (Unsurprisingly, you could probably substitute any minority sexuality in the quoted segments, and it would still probably be true. It's consistency from an organization, at least.)
A shooter attempted to commit mass violence at a Republican rally, killing one person, wounding others, and apparently grazing the Previous Administrator with a bullet. The shooter was killed by the protection around the Previous Administrator, and the investigation into the motive for the shooting is ongoing. The Previous Administrator has been welcoming to people with weapons at his speeches and rallies before, to the point of apparently spouting profanities in demanding the removal of magnetometers and other things that would screen for guns and the like. He did so in the past with the explicit statement that the weapons were not coming for him, and therefore nobody needed to be screened for them. Perhaps in the future, now that there has been an incident where the weapons did touch him, he will be more willing to take his safety, and the safety of his attendees, more seriously.
Republicans immediately began blaming Democrats for the violence and exhorting their own followers to engage in violence against liberals as reprisals. Because, of course, it's not that the violence itself is a problem for Republicans and fascists, it's that violence was directed at them instead of perpetrated by them. So it's entirely unlikely that there will be greater security processes at rallies, excepting, perhaps tighter security around the candidate himself.
Also, one does not shoot fascists if you want fascism to stop. You punch them, you throw milkshakes on them, you make fun of them. Because a punched fascist is alive to contemplate the shame of having fallen so far they get punched and to possibly be embarrassed, either at getting punched or at having beliefs that get you punched. If you shoot fascists, they often die, and they die "fit and seasoned for their passage," secure in the belief that they were shot because they were right. And that kind of martyrdom makes more fascists, not less.
Since it is also convention season for the party with the convicted felon at the head, the running mate is a Senator from Ohio who completed his shift from harsh and vocal critic to sufficiently fawning to be selected. He was likely selected to help appeal in Ohio and its Great Lakes counterparts that are usually considered swing states and crucial to winning the presidential election thanks to the Electoral College system that deliberately makes it possible for an unpopular candidate to win. And because he has publicly endorsed several key shibboleths of reality denial regarding the last election, this one, and expressed his willingness to go along with coups should he have the opportunity to assist one.
The judge assigned to the classified documents case against the previous administrator has ruled the case should be dismissed because she believes that the Special Counsel was appointed in violation of the Constitution of the United States. This allows her to sidestep having to rule on the merits of the case, but it also means said Special Counsel can appeal her decision and also request to have her removed from the case and replaced by someone competent. (Or at least less obviously partisan.) The ruling, however, certainly guarantees that the case cannot be resolved by the time of the election, such that there will be no possibility of adding to the felonies that said administrator has been convicted of by then.
The censored photographs of Dorothea Lange, who did excellent work taking pictures of the internment process and the camps where Japanese citizens were taken during World War II, on the premise that all persons of Japanese ancestry or immigrants were more loyal to the Emperor of Japan than to the United States. In an era of xenophobia and heavy anti-immigrant sentiment, we are always at risk that someone else will decide that persons of the currently hated descent are all spies working to undermine and destroy the nation and must be deported or detained. And that policies that do these actions in the cruelest possible way will be the most popular ones, because there is so much latent hate aching for an approved outlet.
Maia Kobabe, for The Nib, on the changing statements of the librarians who come to see em and talk about Gender Queer, because the landscape of the librarians has changed, with governments and boards and local authorities involving themselves in what may and may not be allowed in the library, and what may and may not be said about their efforts to restrict materials. As is noted in many places, if the prevailing opinion of the population was that such things were anathema to the good order and function of these United States and that the population did not want to be associated with people who would ban books because they had characters in them who weren't straight, or white, or men, the matter would be resolved quickly. Unfortunately, it seems the national character is one that, even if it does not fully openly support the efforts of censors, is at least sympathetic enough to them to allow them to do their work. (Modulo the amount of suppression and rigging that has been going on in several of the most ban-happy states to remove the ability of the people to make their will known and instead invest all meaningful power in a selected handful of theocrats.)
Researching the lives of people with intellectual disablities finds them part of their societies in eras before institutionalization and eugenics movements tried to exclude them from living in society. It's not a utopia for them, but neither is it a complete dystopia. They're there, mostly living their lives.
Fertility and sperm donation organizations not talking to each other or keeping stringent tabs has created a situation where one man may have fathered hundreds or thousands of children through artificial insemination. Which doesn't seem like an issue if you're thinking about it in relation to the global population, but it can be if there's a concentration of kids who all share the same father in proximity to each other.
Redbox, a subsidiary of the Chicken Soup for the Soul company, is now in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and the details of how the company was managed already suggests there should be criminal investigations in addition to the bankruptcy, not that the company has enough assets to make good on the things they said they would do for their workers. The way the article frames it, though, it sounds like the workers who have been wronged through this will possibly have no relief at all. I feel like this is the kind of thing where if the exeutive mismanaged the company in the specific ways allleged, the private fortune of that executive (which he presumably has) can be tapped to help make things correct for the workers who were screwed by those decisions.
The appeals of H.P. Lovecraft's themes to people who are the ones who would have been targeted by his racism and xenophobia. Because the themes themselves are familiar to people who have been marginalized and who have been finding themselves as different compared to everyone around them, and those people around them are very interested in conformity or hiding or other such things.
New evidence of very old art found in Indonesia, pushing back the earliest known evidence of art on cave walls, the understanding that hippos can have all four limbs off the ground while moving, which is another one of those reasons why hippos are extremely dangerous, the uncertain fate of the herbarium and the extensive collection of preserved plant specimens at Duke University, wildflower meadow projects for making pleasing things as well as contributing to plant and creature diversity, and a person who was attempting to keep more than 100 live snakes in their pants and get past customs (they failed).
In the technological eras, they have made bricks out of meteroite components, as a test to see whether structures could be built out of lunar regolith.
A cogent argument as to why ChatGPT and similar LLMs should be regarded as hard bullshitters, where they intend to represent themselves as human or more human-like, and have no regard for the truthfulness of their statements, both of which qualify for the hard bullshit distinction. At the very least, the paper argues convincingly that we should not use "hallucination" or even "confabulation" to describe the output of those machines, but instead specific and technical definitions of bullshit.
Mississippi had a planned age-verification law blocked by injunction, helping to preserve the ability of all Mississippians to access information without having to verify themselves or fight state-intended censorship.
American Telephone and Telegraph admitted that nearly all of the records relating to customer phone numbers, calling and text records, and location data, had been stolen in a data breach. This is a second data breach for American Telephone and Telegraph, and while it's supposedly only metadata, there's a lot that can be done with metadata.
Affinity, a company with a creative suite that might be appealing to people who want to get away from Adobe's subscription model, is offering a six month free trial, and deals on permanent licenses for their products.
Facebook's parent company likes having unconstitutional and onerous burdens placed on their competitors that are disguised as protecting children online. We know this because Maryland's legislators sent a letter to all of the members of NetChoice asking them not to sue the state, and try to have them use their influence to stop NetChoice from suing the state over the legislation that was modeled on bad legislation. (NetChoice sued them anyway.)
Sony is shutting down the remaining plant that manufactures recordable Blu-Ray discs, which will be bringing the era of using optical discs for data backups to a close. Unfortunately, the optical discs couldn't really defeat flash storage for speed or capacity. Commercial Blu-Ray discs will continue to be produced, so it's not the complete death of physical media, but the era in which we can burn our own backups is soon to end.
Last for this post, A conversation between scholars and guards about the many names of "Stick-Elf", the wizard with excellent pipeweed and fireworks.
And The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure blog, dedicated to popping myths about the family, women's employment, and other social structures in the recent and less recent past.
(Materials via
adrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
