In my desire to use org-mode, I got sucked into the abyss and have come out a believer.
I was an emacs user before I found org-mode, but it has become my go-to means of quickly managing thoughts, notes, numbers or anything else across all my devices on way or another, and in plain-text that can be reused across myriad other tools with minimal friction.
My dream is finding a way to use org-mode in any text-field in macOS, iOS, and iPadOS so I can leverage the power with all the other secret sauce the Apple ecosystem adds.
The Pointer Sisters sang Sesame Street's funky pinball counting song | Boing Boing
How am I just finding out that it was *The Pointer Sisters* that sang the vocals for the pinball counting song on Sesame Street?! I'm shook! [Someone please revoke my Gen-X card, thank you.] I also just learned that the "Pinball Number Count" (its proper name) has 11 different animated segments. And that number one was skipped, it goes right into two through 12.
A link from the song’s Wikipedia page led me to even more info. The following is a letter written in 2003 by Walter Kraemer, the song’s composer and producer:
Facebook Rolls Out News Feed Change That Blocks Watchdogs from Gathering Data – The Markup
The Markup has found evidence that Facebook is adding changes to its website code that foils automated data collection of news feed posts—a technique that groups like NYU’s Ad Observatory, The Markup, and other researchers and journalists use to audit what’s happening on the platform on a large scale.
The changes, which attach junk code to HTML features meant to improve accessibility for visually impaired users, also impact browser-based ad blocking services on the platform. The new code risks damaging the user experience for people who are visually impaired, a group that has struggled to use the platform in the past.
Being the DRI of Your Career – Accidentally in Code
What does it mean to be the DRI of your career? To me, 5 things:
Expect less from your job and more from your career.
Learn from feedback.
Own your professional development.
Distinguish what your employer rents versus what they buy.
Build your support system.
Like many people, I am finding it hard to muster the empathy these stories try to elicit because other images are so fresh in my mind. The maskless rallies, the red-faced anti-maskers screaming at grocery store workers, the protesters hurling invectives at the schoolteachers who are begging for masks so that schoolchildren can return to school — those images fill me and crowd out my empathy.
Macro-photography, at it’s best, reveals the alien landscapes right in front of our eyes in enlightening ways… Every one of the winners here does exactly that.
My suspicion is that, given how much Apple has been trying to flush-out leaks, that these were designs with A/B access internally to see which things made it to the press…
Killian Bell, writing at Cult of Mac:
Apple Watch Series 7 is not the upgrade most of us expected to see
from Tuesday’s Apple event. The new model doesn’t sport the big
design refresh multiple sources said was coming. It doesn’t even
pack a new chip.
Is this the upgrade Apple wanted to deliver this year? Or is it
a last-minute substitution that Cupertino had to settle on
because the refresh it really wanted to deliver just wasn’t
ready to roll out?
Based on the evidence, we’re going to say it’s the latter.
The only way this could be funnier is if Bell included the theory that perhaps Apple changed the hardware at the last minute because the flat-edge designs leaked.
This is not how hardware works. These designs are set long in advance. In fact, from what I’ve heard, the flat-edge watch designs might be legitimate leaks, but they’re next year’s designs. That’s how far in advance Apple works on hardware — they were already in the advanced stages of designing the 2022 Apple Watches months ago. (Aesthetically, I am not sold on a flat-edge design for the watch. The round edges are iconic and organic.)
You can argue that Series 7 is a marginal upgrade over Series 6, but with an all-new screen (brighter and bigger), all-new crystal (more durable), and 33 percent faster charging, there are upgrades, and none of them could be slapped together.
I wish things like this were better covered in real-time rather than being a retrospective… I think if more of us realized how toxic Blizz was already starting to be way back when, it could have been steered to better outcomes.
“The Activision Blizzard disclosures this week have left me disgusted and repulsed — but not at all surprised,” Strain writes. “I joined a very early stage Blizzard as a game programmer in 1996 when there were several dozen employees.”
Strain recounts how in 1998 “after a cataclysmic meeting with one of the founders over our objections to dismembered and impaled female body parts in the beta version of Diablo, my wife and I began planning to leave Blizzard. Ultimately, I joined with a few like-minded colleagues and moved a thousand miles away from the Blizzard sphere of influence to start an independent studio.”
FDA decision Thursday could reshape vaping industy
In the years since I switched from smoking to vaping, I have noticed significant improvements in my health. I breath easier when walking, for example.
The people trying to destroy vaping as a replacement to smoking are going to create a new generation of smokers… And if I can’t have access to the kind of nicotine salts that have replaced my smoking, I’ll likely go back to smoking.
E-Cigarette vaporizer components and products are displayed at Smoke and Gift Shop on June 25, 2019 in San Francisco, Calif.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
A monumental set of decisions is expected Thursday from the Food and Drug Administration that could reshape the tobacco industry for years to come by limiting, or altogether blocking, the sale of millions of e-cigarette products.
Though the FDA has long regulated the marketing and sale of traditional tobacco products like cigarettes, the agency had long not required the same scrutiny of vapes, allowing a market to flourish.
The imminent decisions by the FDA could impact almost all of that. About 6.5 million products made by more than 500 companies are under evaluation about whether they are “appropriate for the protection of public health.”
If the agency finds that they are not, companies could be required to pull their products — including rechargeable vape pens, disposable e-cigarettes and the liquids that fill them — from the market.
“I’m guessing that the decisions over the next couple of days will result in a fundamental change in the e-cigarette market,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
The FDA is looking closely at the health effects of e-cigarettes
E-cigarette companies, including Juul, argue that their products are safer than traditional tobacco products like cigarettes.
Though vaping allows users to avoid some of the harmful carcinogens caused by smoking traditional cigarettes, studies have found that e-cigarettes are still harmful.
Additionally, virtually all e-cigarette products contain nicotine, some in very high levels — including Juul’s 5% pods, each of which contains as much nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes. Nicotine affects prenatal and adolescent brain development, making it dangerous for both teenagers and pregnant people to vape.
“If any e-cigarette could actually help a smoker quit, they would apply to be a drug through other pathways that the FDA [has], and they would demonstrate that they are safe and effective in helping smokers quit,” said Erika Sward of the American Lung Association, which has advocated for the denial of all applications to the FDA for any flavored tobacco product.
“Instead, what we’ve seen is another generation of kids addicted and a whole situation where we have millions of smokers — who might otherwise try to end their addiction — try to use this product,” she said.
The FDA's decisions are due Thursday, but it's not clear yet what they'll decide
In 2019, a federal judge ordered e-cigarette manufacturers to submit applications to the FDA by 2020. Their products would be allowed to remain on the market for one year while the agency reviewed them. That year-long deadline is up Thursday.
The agency may not respond to every application by Thursday’s deadline. It has said it will prioritize based on market share, meaning companies like like Juul, along with British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands, which respectively own the brands Vype and blu, may face decisions as soon as Thursday.
Possibilities range from a major crackdown on virtually all vape products to a more targeted approach, perhaps blocking the sale of flavored products or disposable e-cigarettes, or creating marketing rules similar to those that govern traditional cigarettes.
“If they approve any of these, they definitely will have restrictions on both marketing and some of the product design that will be [intended] to reduce youth initiation and use,” said Kathleen Hoke, a professor of public health law at the University of Maryland.
Last month, the agency made its first set of marketing denials for some 55,000 flavored vape products from three companies, ordering them to pull their products from the market. It has also denied applications for companies marketing flavors designed to appeal to kids such as Apple Crumble and Cinnamon Toast Cereal.
Regulators said the applications from its first set of denials “lacked sufficient evidence” that any benefit to adult smokers outweighed “the public health threat posed by the well-documented, alarming levels of youth use of such products.”
Some researchers worry that a major crackdown on Juul and other manufacturers will simply send teenagers reaching for traditional cigarettes instead.
“I think it would be a public health disaster,” said Dr. Michael Siegel, a researcher at Tufts University who studies youth tobacco and alcohol use. “Vaping is not causing a culture of smoking. It’s actually replacing that culture.”
Youth smoking rates have fallen dramatically in recent years as vaping has exploded in popularity. But other researchers are skeptical the trend would reverse.
“Whether those people chose to choose to go back to a cigarette that tastes like a cigarette or a vape product that tastes like a cigarette, I think is anyone’s guess,” said Hoke.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit [www.npr.org.](https://www.npr.org.)
The right to bear arms!
The right to bear arms!:
Just look at those guns. This is certainly what the founding fathers intended.
Stephanie Sammann of Real Science (previously) takes a look at the remarkable biology of the dragonfly that makes them incredibly agile in pursuing prey and evading predators.
Then one day, someone smart built a new technology that didn't require people to sign away their information. Now, people could meet anyone they wanted and talk about whatever they wanted, not just what Facebook or its competitors said was okay. People felt more relaxed, too, because even though there were ads, people could meet up in Cyberspace without every single action they took being used to fuel an advertising machine.
This thought terrifies Facebook, but they already have the backup plan where they’re the Cyberspace that noone can escape… Where they’re the app store, the advertising, the provider of everything… They’re building it through their Oculus Quest products and there’s really little on the horizon that is attempting to compete there… And the “platforms” that are closest to competing are Fortnite and Roblox, both horrendous in their own rights.
Online Trolls Also Jerks in Real Life: Aarhus University Study
Instead, their data pointed to online interactions largely mirroring offline behavior, with people predisposed to aggressive, status-seeking behavior just as unpleasant in person as behind a veil of online anonymity, and choosing to be jerks as part of a deliberate strategy rather than as a consequence of the format involved.
A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps | Ars Technica
I have tried nearly every stage of this, hoping to see Google bring back something like the “golden age” of federated, open-standards communication of it’s original Google Talk (RIP). I don’t think Google is capable of that thinking anymore, and it poisons every interaction I have with their products.
The Google Talk saga is a case in point. It feels like it's for a company that doesn't exist today. When Google Talk launched, there was an assumption that Google would dominate messaging, because back then, Google was seen as a disrupter and a company that put effort behind the new markets it entered. Today, no one assumes Google will be successful in a new market. And it's because of what we outlined here, a list of so many low-effort projects.
Blizzard will rename Overwatch's McCree, who was named after fired employee | Rock Paper Shotgun
Overwatch character McCree is going to be renamed, the game's development team have announced. The change comes after the character's namesake, Blizzard developer Jesse McCree, left the studio amidst a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard by the State Of California which alleges workplace sexual harassment and discrimination at the developer.
“We built the Overwatch universe around the idea that inclusivity, equity, and hope are the building blocks of a better future,” begins the statement released through the official Overwatch Twitter account. “We believe it’s necessary to change the name of the hero currently known as McCree to something that better represents what Overwatch stands for."
This is a start, but it’s cosmetic for all intents and purposes. Until devs themselves say that they’re satisfied with changes, I don’t see how the gaming public can support them.
7 hurt after 2 people exchange gunfire in Minneapolis
I think I have figured out what all shootings have in common: guns.
And places that have fewer guns have fewer shootings (without a proportional increase in non-gun killings).
Seven people were injured, including one critically, after two people began shooting at each other outside a business in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood early Thursday, police said.
Police said the shootout happened at about 12:30 a.m. Thursday on the 3000 block of Lyndale Avenue South, a prominent thoroughfare in the city.
Police arrived to find what they called “a very chaotic scene." Three people at the scene had gunshot wounds. Officers were told that three others had been taken to an area hospital before police arrived, and a fourth person showed up at another hospital with gunshot wounds. All seven are expected to survive.
Investigators are working to determine if the injured people were suspects, intended targets or innocent bystanders. Police did not say what might have motivated the shooting.
Activision Blizzard have allegedly shredded documents related to their ongoing harassment lawsuit | Rock Paper Shotgun
"DFEH is also informed and aware that documents and records have not been maintained as required by law of the DFEH's Document Retention Notice," the lawsuit alleges. "Including but not limited to documents related to investigations and complaints were shredded by human resource personnel and emails are deleted thirty days after an employee's separation."
They further claim that, due to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), employees must talk to the company before coming forward to the DFEH. They also criticise Activision Blizzard for calling in the third-party legal firm WilmerHale to conduct their own “confidential” investigation, saying this “directly interferes with DFEH’s statutory mandate to investigate, prosecute, and remedy workplace discrimination and harassment violations."
Despite listing a number of actions they've taken to make Activision Blizzard more "welcoming", the employee group A Better ABK say that none of their demands for a better workplace have actually been met.
Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics Of Magic Windows
The paper alleged the report had not been shared because of fears that it would "look bad for the company".
The most-viewed link was an article published by a mainstream US newspaper reporting that a doctor had died two weeks after getting a Covid-19 vaccine. The link attracted nearly 54 million views.
The first quarter report also revealed that the 19th most popular page on the platform belonged to the Epoch Times, which has been accused of spreading right-wing conspiracy theories.
New Jeopardy host Mike Richards quits after podcast with sexist and antisemitic jokes surfaces | Boing Boing
Because when it was too cold to jihad, that IED still got planted. When they had 30-year-old AK-47s and we had $100 million war planes, they kept fighting. When we left a village, they took it back. No matter what we did, where we went, or how many of them we killed, they came back.
9 Thrilling Last Stands in Genre Fiction | Tor.com
“Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.”
This is one of my favorite moments, in one of my favorite shows… But Babylon 5 actually has quite a few of my favorite moments of TV ever.
