I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Linkee-poo for a Thursday Tuesday

Alligator report, up to armpits again.

Paul Allen has passed. Paul had his faults, but "(h)e also founded Seattle's Experience Music Project, or EMP, which was originally a museum devoted to his hero Jimi Hendrix. Allen also started the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, in the same building as the EMP. The two have since been combined into the Museum of Pop Culture." Paul Allen ask helped fund the company that eventually became Virgin Galactic and continued to help progress the idea of air launched orbital rockets. And so it goes. (Grokked from Wesley Chu)

If you don't follow author twitter, this probably won't make a lot of sense. But it's evidence that the "dark side" of twitter arguments (coughComicsGatecough) have become more organized and developed targeting strategies. The arms race is in full swing. "Friday @ChuckWendig lost his contract with @Marvel/@starwars because of his Twitter. His mistake was to attract sketchy Twitter, probably via @EthanVanSciver. This graph is tweets to/from/re Wendig before/after his “civility” tweets on 10/6 (http://goo.gl/Tri9eM )." (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)

"Morgan Knutson on Twitter: 'Now that Google+ has been shuttered, I should air my dirty laundry on how awful the project and exec team was.'" The TL;DR version. Here's the full twitter rant. (Grokked from Dan)

The Planet Money podcast on the slow destruction of the CFPB. "As the student loan ombudsman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Seth Frotman watched as the Department of Education became one of the biggest banks in the country. It has lent out more than a trillion dollars to student borrowers. The problem is, the Department of Education wasn't really built to be a bank."

"The Trump administration is considering using military bases to accommodate export facilities for coal or natural gas, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has told The Associated Press." The rules against creating such West Coast ports for exporting LNG (liquified natural gas) and coal are apparently hampering out efforts at energy independence or something. (Grokked from Jim Wright)

"Cradling an AK-47 and sucking a lollipop, the former American Green Beret bumped along in the back of an armored SUV as it wound through the darkened streets of Aden. Two other commandos on the mission were former Navy SEALs… But now they were working for… a private US company that had been hired by the United Arab Emirates… On that night, December 29, 2015, their job was to carry out an assassination." And this is reason 465 of why you don't hire, encourage, or allow mercenaries to operate in your country. We used to have laws against them. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)

"CNN reported Monday afternoon that Saudi Arabia are preparing a report that admits journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in an interrogation gone wrong. CNN, citing two sources, cautioned that the report was still in a preliminary phase." (Grokked from Dan)

Trump's approval ratings are trending upward, giving Republicans how they won't lose too badly in November. "Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. Weekly results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults, with a margin of error is ±3 percentage points." Get out and vote. If Democrats lose this fall, voting in 2020 will be even harder. (Grokked from Amy Walter)

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