…and of course today a flyer came in plugging one of the 12 propositions on the ballot.
Category: Wandering.Shop
Link: How Writers Map Their Imaginary Worlds
uspol/campaign mailings oddity
Normally by this point in an election cycle we’re inundated with mailings for every major candidate, several recommended slates from various groups, and half the ballot propositions.
This time? A bunch of mailings from *one* state legislator.
And nothing else.
We’re both still registered, and we got the voter guide & both sample ballots.
Maybe they figure anyone voting in the midterm has already made up their minds? Or they’re focusing online or on TV?
PCH Blvd???
Got an email promoting something on “PCH Blvd.” PCH is short for Pacific Coast Highway. Which would make it Pacific Coast Highway Boulevard.
The footer says it was sent from New York, so I guess that’s at least sort of understandable…
I’m still fond of this comic strip
@kemonine I’m still fond of this comic strip: World’s Most Elusive Human Being
@DialMforMara Better than the CW app. I was watching a show on it last night, …
@DialMforMara Better than the CW app. I was watching a show on it last night, and at one point it put an ad about 30 seconds before the show’s commercial break.
Second full workday with reading glasses. I’d forgotten how much more pixelated the desktop monitors …
Second full workday with reading glasses. I’d forgotten how much more pixelated the desktop monitors at home and work look compared to my mobile devices.
I know I don’t need it, but I’m tempted to look for a new monitor just to get better DPI now that it’s noticeable again!
Gotta do something with them, I suppose: a 5-meter dome made entirely out of bicycle wheels…
Gotta do something with them, I suppose: a 5-meter dome made entirely out of bicycle wheels in Whitehorse, Yukon. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bicycle-wheel-dome
China Miéville described “mainstream” literature as a genre with a successful multi-decade campaign to convince people that it wasn’t a genre.
@bridgebury @auntiekiki @rhiannonrevolts I was at a Comic-Con panel once on which China Miéville described “mainstream” literature as a genre with a successful multi-decade campaign to convince people that it wasn’t a genre. I thought it was a good description.
Link: Biosphere 2: A Once Troubled Social Experiment is Transformed
Biosphere 2: A Once Troubled Social Experiment is Transformed
That means researchers from the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada don’t have to worry about harming the environment while studying how plants in the tiny rainforest adjust their water consumption.
The rain picked up again and has been going for about 2 hours! Not heavy, …
The rain picked up again and has been going for about 2 hours! Not heavy, but continuing! 👍
And now I need to sleep..
Rain! I was literally about to hit the send button on this when it started: …
Rain! I was literally about to hit the send button on this when it started: No rain here, unless you count a smattering of drops that have already evaporated from the windshield, but clouds in the distance are lighting up with occasional flashes of lightning.
Downside: I’m in the laundry room, starting a load of laundry.
Kiddo came out with an umbrella. Then wanted to walk in the rain. (It’s southern California, we haven’t had any rain since spring.) The lighting was far enough away that I agreed, and as it turned out the rain stopped by the time we reached the corner.
But we were able to find a halfway decent vantage point to watch the lightning off in the hills.
Cool collection of then-and-now space images. #space
Cool collection of then-and-now space images. https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasa-60-years
“You’re receiving this email because you participated in past crowdfunding campaigns.” But not yours…
“You’re receiving this email because you participated in past crowdfunding campaigns.”
But not yours, which means you have no business spamming me.
*plonk*
Using the Google+ news to make a point about attack surface: Your old online accounts …
Using the Google+ news to make a point about attack surface: Your old online accounts can put you at risk even if you’re not using them anymore.
Laughing at Google+ bug? You’re making a big mistake.
The popularity of Google+ is a distraction when you’re thinking about Google+ as part of a consumer’s broader “attack surface”…The more accounts you have, the bigger your digital footprint and the wider your attack surface.
Taking it a bit further:
Does the account still have access to anything else? Unlink it!
Do you use the same password anywhere else? Change those passwords!
Does it have private information on it that could be used to impersonate you on another account? Think about whether you still want to keep it around.
LIDAR survey reveals ancient Maya civilization had much bigger cities than we once thought.
LIDAR survey reveals ancient Maya civilization had much bigger cities than we once thought.
This major discovery upends long-held theories about the Maya civilization
In the autumn of 1929, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her husband Charles flew across the Yucatán Peninsula. With Charles at the controls, Anne snapped photographs of the jungles just below. She wrote in her journal of Maya structures obscured by large humps of vegetation.
Map of the most common surname in each country in Europe, color coded by whether it translates as Smith, Miller, Priest, etc.
Map of the most common surname in each country in Europe, color coded by whether it translates as Smith, Miller, Priest, etc.
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/most-popular-last-name-europe
Boosting brion@mastodon.technology: Found them! Five photos, taken in fading dusk light after panickingly searching for my camera …
Found them! Five photos, taken in fading dusk light after panickingly searching for my camera during what I sincerely hoped was a _test_ missile. 😉
This was the October 3, 1999 antiballistic missile system test described here http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/03/news/mn-18259
Files scanned October 14, 1999, and sat around for aaaaages. 🙂
Exhaust and exploding missile debris
KelsonV shared a status by brion:
The milky-way-like blob from exhaust and exploding missile debris makes for lovely formations in the fading high-altitude sunlight, which were quite the rorschach test for my friends.
I recall I thought one photo looked like the starship Enterprise; the lady at the photo shop (before good digital cameras!) said it looked like an angel; my classmate said it looked like a dog. 🙂
—
I might actually have a copy of at least one of those pictures. I’ll take a look.
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I found this one. No EXIF, and the text file only notes that you took it, but the files are timestamped Oct. 4, 2003.
And now it’s even more distributed!
I’ll email you the original(?) file, since Mastodon seems to have resampled it even though it didn’t need to resize it.
That always bugged me as unnecessary. When we see him in Return of the Jedi…
@Gargron That always bugged me as unnecessary. When we see him in Return of the Jedi, he’s 20 years older anyway and probably using the Dark Side to prolong his life like the One Ring and Gollum.
But I guess Lucas wanted to go with the thematic revealing-his-true-face thing.