Linkee-poo, Christmas in paradise under the Cow Key Bridge

Tobias Buckell on how to find focus to write. Pointed to here so I can finish reading it over the weekend. Ironic, but true.

They have always fought. Photo of "Women from India, Japan, and Syria who completed their education as physicians in Philadelphia, 1885" (Grokked from Annalee Flower Horne)

The world's largest billboard designed in MS Paint. O. M. G. That thing is hideous, and not the kind of hideous that turns it around to make it somewhat adorable. This is one of those times that the phrase, "My kid could do better than that" is actually apropos. (Grokked form Dan)

The Magdala Stone which may have been an early altar stone. Some interesting cultural information in there and some good world building material. Except for the recurring "Jesus may have been there" angle, which is mostly done to pique the interest of Western Culture (and really, in this context, is nothing more than a red herring which, IMHO, does not add anything to the story).

"While the autonomous vehicles aren't at fault in these crashes, their relative unpredictability on the road are nonetheless leading to more accidents than expected." Meaning that because the engineers programed the cars to follow the law, the rest of us are hitting them, because we don't expect drivers to follow the law. Hell, my guess is mostly these accidents are from merging into traffic because nobody knows how to do it properly (from from the continuous traffic and the person trying to merge). But what is really the question here is don't these engineers drive? Shouldn't they know this? (Grokked from Dan)

"A central Virginia school district has cancelled classes Friday after concerns over the 'tone and content' of calls and emails received about a lesson in Arabic calligraphy." Look, Arabic calligraphy is fucking amazing. No, really, there are things you can do with it that you can't do with most other written languages. It is beautiful, and the masters of the craft are jaw-dropping awe-inspiring. As a professional designer, it's just amazing what can be done with it. So it is a legitimate subject of study, especially for a class exploring the world's cultures. But people are just freaking the fuck out over anything that has to do with the Middle East (or really anything not Western Culture derived).

"After the Paris terrorist attacks, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) wrote in a letter to President Obama that he would direct the state Department of Human Services to refuse to help with the resettlement of Syrian refugees… Christie never issued an order to the Department of Human services beyond his letter to the President." I would say that that is because he just said it to appear "tough" and he's smart enough to realize he has practically zero influence on where refugees are settled. But it's because that's not his style of hit. See, Christie is used to just saying, "It would be nice to get back at the asshole mayor" in a meeting and have his flunkies do the dirty work for him.

At least he's a leader. Let that be your final battlefield.

The Sanders campaign manager explains they only accessed and copied the data to prove that the DNC voter files were breached. Uh, yea, Bob. Hey, there's this thing called a "phone" which one would have thought to pick up and say, "OMFG, the voter data files have been breached, this needs to be fixed." Instead of "'want(ing) to document and understand the scope of the problem so that we could report it accurately'" so keeping quiet and letting the voter records remain open to hacking.