2019 archive
Phone Spurs 0
This is weirdly disturbing and disturbingly weird. SeattlePI reports:
The result is a hook or hornlike feature jutting out from the skull, just above the neck.
X-rays at the link.
QOTD 0
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada:
Only in the United States could you believe that people could be changed by information.
Big Data Has Its Bluetooth in You 2
The New York Times reports on how stores use bluetooth beacons to track your every move. A snippet (emphasis added):
So a hidden industry of third-party location-marketing firms has proliferated in response. These companies take their beacon tracking code and bundle it into a toolkit developers can use.
The makers of many popular apps, such as those for news or weather updates, insert these toolkits into their apps. They might be paid by the beacon companies or receive other benefits, like detailed reports on their users.
A Bumble of Contradictions 0
Dana Milbank examines the dialectic of Trumpery.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Trump’s ability to function is a matter of much dispute, but if the ability to hold opposing thoughts in mind is a measure of intelligence, Trump is a very stable genius indeed. Nobody contradicts himself as forcefully, fluently and frequently.
The Entitlement Society 0
Thomas Chatterton Williams points out that not being hate-full is not a high hurdle to surmount.
Poolside Particulars 0
Mark Anthony Neal reflects on the pool of racism as reflected in one public pool’s banning of clothing and hairstyles favored by not-white persons. A snippet (emphasis added):
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness takes practice.
According to the Alice Echo News-Journal, a family friend was removing the magazine from a high powered rifle when it went off. Authorities believe the shooting was purely accidental.
Why was this “responsible gun owner” allowing the gun to point at another person living creature while he was mucking about with the magazine? One more time, “accidental” is not a synonym for “negligent.”