Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
This is amusing.
SmugMug has been slowly disentangling #Flickr from Yahoo over the last few months, and they have planned downtime coming up in a few weeks to finish migrating a gazillion photos and videos from Yahoo’s datacenter to AWS.
The funny part: They’re doing a photo contest where you print out the maintenance notice and “take your photo of the little panda on an adventure somewhere,” then post it after the site comes back.
“Customs officers do not like it when you try to bring a duffel bag full of 40 vacuum-sealed, frozen piranhas into Los Angeles.”
https://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-virgilio-martinez-central-piranhas-lax-peru-20190508-story.html
Perspective: “A life insurer says you should stop eating out (and buy life insurance instead)”
Crazy idea: carbon capture systems need to move a lot of air around. Air conditioning and heating systems already move a lot of air around. Put carbon capture in the HVAC loop!
Could Air-Conditioning Fix Climate Change?
Researchers propose a carbon-neutral “synthetic oil well” on every rooftop
–Scientific American
It gets crazier: they’re talking about converting the captured carbon into synthetic fuel on a per-building or neighborhood scale.
Link: A former corn-syrup lobbyist is drafting new federal dietary rules (seriously)
Researchers have found a biomarker for chronic fatigue syndrome, which can be used for a diagnostic blood test – and potentially to pre-screen drugs for treatment research.
A medical drone delivery service is shipping blood as-needed to hospitals across Rwanda, which has the tech & telecom infrastructure for autonomous drones, but rugged terrain and poor roads that slow down delivery by land.
Better solar cells using coffee.
Wait, what?
It turns out growing certain types of photovoltaic cells with caffeine in the mix results in better crystals that have a higher output *and* last longer.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/java-takes-the-jitters-out-of-solar-cells
Link: The WHO’s new screen time limits aren’t really about screens https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516669/screen-time-limits-who-children-health-physical-activity-sleep-tv-phones
Link: Perhaps more parents would support vaccination if people were still suffering from polio https://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-vaccine-california-polio-measles-doctors-20190428-story.html
An interesting read on trying to revive pre-Colombian Native American agriculture using plant species related to those whose seeds have been found in archaeological sites.
The Promise and Perils of Resurrecting Native Americans’ Lost Crops
Why Your Brain Hates Slowpokes: “The high speed of society has jammed your internal clock.”
“They asked artificial intelligence to create a game. One of its first ideas involved exploding Frisbees.”
The article goes on to describe a less dangerous game that they ended up actually implementing, but there’s something perfect in the exploding Frisbee idea.
“It’s Complicated”
Mozilla has released its annual Internet Health Report, covering “how humanity and the internet intersect.”
Interesting read: Why Google+ Failed
“Google Plus didn’t fail because Facebook is invulnerable. It failed because of deep flaws embedded in it from the very start.”
…
@mjog Yeah. By the time Inbox was introduced, I’d already set up enough custom rules that I wasn’t interested in even trying it, but the analysis makes a lot of sense.
Some great examples of spectacular mirages over the ocean, including the fata morgana, which occurs when different layers of air refract light so that an image – or multiple images – appear above where the object actually is. Named for Morgana le Fay, because it can make distant islands or ships appear as castles in the air.
The Most Interesting, Spectacular Mirages Aren’t in the Desert
The Wikipedia article on the phenomenon also has some great images, and a diagram of how it works.
Interesting: Some California farmers are deliberately growing weeds to capture carbon and add organic matter to the soil.
California Has Farmers Growing Weeds. Why? To Capture Carbon
A fascinating look at historical descriptions and illustrations either known to be, or matching up with, #migraine auras.