In Ohio, "S.B. 264 enacted a sales tax holiday to occur only in 2016. The holiday starts on Friday, August 5, 2016 at 12:00 a.m. and ends on Sunday, August 7, 2016 at 11:59 p.m."
"Science fiction publishing has a major race problem, new report shows." The Fireside Fiction commissioned report. "Fundamentally, the genre publishing world… has a demonstrable track record of under-publishing black science fiction authors, who have gone out to establish their own outlets and means to get their stories out." (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
Six marketing tactics for authors to use when launching a book. No bookmarks?! Sacré bleu! (Grokked from Hannah Bowman)
"Now, the Copyright Office (one of the most thoroughly captured agencies in the federal government) has jumped into the fray (over video boxes), taking the legally nonsensical -- and drastically anti-public-interest -- position that copyright gives the rightsholder the power to minutely control the public's conduct while they are in the presence of a copyrighted work." Say, not liking that the video box in your living room is sharing a stream with the TV in your bedroom, or allowing you to pause indefinitely. Why? Because some content providers and ISP/cable companies believe is something is valuable to you, you should be charged for it. The logic is so ridiculous that to accept their position is to accept (among other things pointed out in the article) that if you happen to like a show or content more than another piece of entertainment, the content provider should be able to charge you more or block your access to that content. Imagine what would happen if the nerds/geeks couldn't see their Sherlock this Fall (or next years last season of Game of Thrones) without pony upping more cash?
Paging Dr. Moreau. "The federal government announced plans Thursday to lift a moratorium on funding of certain controversial experiments that use human stem cells to create animal embryos that are partly human." Also pointed to so you can see why it's important for most science to believe than animals neither have feelings or conscious/human-level thought. I'm being snarky here, but I do support this research. Right now our reliance on "the animal model" is showing its inherent problems. While animals can be "close" to us, especially for certain systems, many therapies and research fail when they transfer from the animal model to human models because organisms need to be thought of as pieces but also holistically. It is believed there have been many exceedingly promising treatments (drugs, surgery, etc) that were adjusted to survive the animal model, and then those modifications make them fail in the human model. And for the most part researchers can't adjust back to their original plans to make it work for humans. And while most speculation will be about weird animal human hybrids, actually using animals to grow (more human-like) transplantable organs, in my opinion, would be a plus. To say that is ghoulish misses the point that we're already using animals for transplants (heart valves and the like not to mention that we have rats growing human ears on their backs). Someone will do this research. We can lead the way (and have an actual ethics process while doing it), or we can let someone else do it.
To point to an example, "As the biotech revolution accelerates globally, the US could be getting left behind on key technological advances: namely, human genetic modification." (Grokked from Paolo Bacigalupi)
"If you’re a climate scientist, what happens when your dire predictions start coming true? The ongoing anthrax outbreak in Siberia is offering us a preview: What was once considered a future theoretical possibility — a re-animated deadly bacterium emerging from the permafrost — is now a reality." And anthrax (or this specific strain) isn't the only thing waiting in the ice. That sounds so dreadfully The Thing-ish. But it's true. This also isn't mentioning how diseases, some restrained in the tropics because of their vectors being unable to live elsewhere, are now migrating to more "temperate" climes because their vectors are migrating (dengue, yellow fever, ebola, etc). Plus how the survivability of other diseases are enhanced (like the various strains of flu). (Grokked from Paolo Bacigalupi)
So after four months of breathlessness about the jobs report, today they announce 255,000 created in July (75,000 more than expectations, and revised June - wow - and May - the apocalyptic month - upwards as well) and it's mostly been crickets.
Apparently George Zimmerman wasn't getting enough attention, so someone punched him in the face. "Witnesses gave differing versions of events." Irony, eh?
Hey, you know all those reports about what it's like at Trump rallies? I mean, surely they can't be like that. :: Goes to the video :: Yeah, it's the counter-protestors who are the problem.
And today in idiot racist supports of the Trumpster's news, "Carl Paladino, Donald Trump's New York co-chair, on Thursday said that President Obama is not a Christian, arguing that the President's foreign policy proves he's a Muslim."
And more illegalities form the Trumpster's past. This time involving an report given with Access Hollywood where here tried to vote, in several places (because they couldn't find his name, so basically he didn't know how to vote), ends up using a provisional ballot, but then fills it out in his limo. You're not allowed to remove ballots from the polling station. Also pointed to because he calls himself the "Trumpster" in the piece. I know he's using it differently than I am, but I may have to re-think that nickname.
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