Greta Thunberg, #FridaysForFuture, Washington, DC. 13 September 2019. CC-BY

Explain Bitcoin to grandpa

@am_anatiala: i still don't get bitcoin

@Theophite: imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin

@SwiftOnSecurity: Wow

@Theophite: where is the lie?

@SwiftOnSecurity: no where [sic]

Thread, rev. howard arson (@Theophite) et al, 17 August 2019, via This Week in Tech 727, 'explain Bitcoin to grandpa' [at 1:43:27]

There's Waldo

Screen grab from There’s Waldo is a robot that finds Waldo, redpepper, 8 August 2018

Built by creative agency redpepper, There’s Waldo zeroes in and finds Waldo with a sniper-like accuracy. The metal robotic arm is a Raspberry Pi-controlled uArm Swift Pro which is equipped with a Vision Camera Kit that allows for facial recognition. The camera takes a photo of the page, which then uses OpenCV to find the possible Waldo faces in the photo. The faces are then sent to be analyzed by Google’s AutoML Vision service, which has been trained on photos of Waldo. If the robot determines a match with 95 percent confidence or higher, it’ll point to all the Waldos it can find on the page.

This robot uses AI to find Waldo, thereby ruining Where’s Waldo, by Dami Lee, The Verge, 8 Aug 2018

“During the last two decades of British agonizing and prevaricating over Heathrow, China has built 100 new airports.”

— Iran Birrell (@ianbirrell), 5 June 2018, citing @c4news

Interviewer: Tell me about your qualifications.

Candidate: I’m very quick at math.

Interviewer: What’s the square root of 700?

Candidate: 4.

Interviewer: That’s not even close.

Candidate: Yeah, but it was quick.

Via Jeremiah Lowin (@jlowin), May 2018

Or suffer the consequences

It’s working… But the question is, is it working fast enough? Paraphrasing the great abolitionist leader Theodore Parker, Martin Luther King Jr. used to regularly end his speeches with the phrase “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” The line was a favorite of Obama’s too, and for all three men it meant the same thing: “This may take a while, but we’re going to win.” For most political fights, it is the simultaneously frustrating and inspiring truth. But not for climate change. The arc of the physical universe appears to be short, and it bends toward heat. Win soon or suffer the consequences. 

Winning Slowly Is the Same as Losing: The technology exists to combat climate change – what will it take to get our leaders to act?, by Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone, 1 December 2017

Day/Night Terminator, September 5, Atlantic Coast

Via Hurricane Dorian at 31.6°N - 79.5°W - NOAA / NESDIS / STAR. Video here

Impossible fantasies

“Dungeons & Dragons allows you to live out impossible fantasies, like that of medical professionals who listen to you when you want healing.

In a scene right now where my disabled wizard talks to @elibyronbaldrsn’s dwarf cleric and honestly it’s the most affirming and validating doctor conversation I’ve ever had.”

Tweet (since deleted, or I can't find it except for a screen grab) from Ana Mardoll (@AnaMardoll), August 5, 2018

The Garden of Eden is no more

“‘I am quite literally from another age,’ Attenborough told an audience of business leaders, politicians and other delegates. ‘I was born during the Holocene – the 12,000 [year] period of climatic stability that allowed humans to settle, farm, and create civilisations.’ […]

‘The Holocene has ended. The Garden of Eden is no more.’”

Sir David Attenborough has warned that “the Garden of Eden is no more”, by Graeme Wearden, reporting from Davos; The Guardian, 21 January 2019.

Turn on the C by GE light bulb

Screen grab from How to: Reset C by GE Light Bulbs

[NARRATOR]

Welcome to C by GE’s smart tips.

We’re going to show you how to reset your C by GE bulbs, which will un-pair your bulb from other devices and apps that it’s connected to.

There are 2 factory reset processes which depend on the generation of bulbs and the firmware you’re running on.

Here’s the first process designed for bulbs with this package or for firmware version 2.8 or later.

Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds.

Then turn on the bulb for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 second.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

And then turn it on one last time.

The bulb will flash on and off 3 times to show that the reset was successful. If it doesn’t, your bulb may be running on an older version of firmware and we’ll need to try the second factory reset process, which is designed for C by GE bulbs with this package or for firmware version 2.7 or or earlier.

Ready?

OK.

Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds.

Then, turn on the bulb for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds, and then turn it on one last time.

The bulb will flash on and off 3 times if it has been successfully reset.

For more smart tips about our smart products, go to CbyGE.com.

How to: Reset C by GE Light Bulbs by GE Lighting, 3 January 2019

Make the pie

Dear Carolyn,

My husband's family is really academic, most are in school until their late 20s at least. My husband has a bachelor's degree and I have some college but never finished. His family has always been welcoming and they aren't snobby or anything -- with the exception of Thanksgiving. My in-laws host and make a great meal. My husband's siblings are never asked to contribute because they are in finals and "don't have the time or money" to bring anything. We are always asked to bring a dessert or something.

My husband thinks I'm overreacting and doesn't care, but for some reason this really bugs me. How do I let it go? Or is it worth it to bring it up?

[READER COMMENT] Make the pie. Make it with a loving heart, freely and voluntarily. For all you know, the academics in the family can't cook.

[CAROLYN HAX] This answer is the answer to so many things: Make the pie.

Letter to advice columnist Carolyn Hax, with responses, The Oregonian, 9 November 2018

“The notion that the future of politics might, with the internet, become less rational and more dogmatic was scarcely explored.”

— 25 years of Wired predictions: Why the future never arrives, by Avid Karpf, Wired, 18 September 2018

Less time than voting

“In a few cases, the Voting Village's collection of hacker/researchers discovered that hacking the voting machines took less time than voting.”

Defcon Voting Village report: Bug in one system could “flip Electoral College” by Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica, 27 September 2018

The article continues,

One voting machine could be hacked in two minutes. And another hack, exploiting a flaw in an electronic card used to activate voting terminals, made it possible to reprogram the card wirelessly with a mobile device—allowing the voter to potentially cast as many votes as they like.

Perhaps the most frustrating of the problems documented by the researchers is that flaws, even when reported, don't get fixed. One example is another vulnerability in the ES&S M650 that had been reported more than 10 years ago to the manufacturer—but was still present on systems used for the 2016 election.

The total erosion of meaning itself

The central disappointment of these spaces is not that they are so narcissistic, but rather that they seem to have such a low view of the people who visit them. Observing a work of art or climbing a mountain actually invites us to create meaning in our lives. But in these spaces, the idea of “interacting” with the world is made so slickly transactional that our role is hugely diminished. Stalking through the colorful hallways of New York’s “experiences,” I felt like a shell of a person. It was as if I was witnessing the total erosion of meaning itself. And when I posted a selfie from the Rosé Mansion saying as much, all of my friends liked it.

Critics Notebook: The Existential Void of the Pop-Up ‘Experience’ by Amanda Hess, New York Times, 26 September 2018. The piece is subtitled “I went to as many Instagramable ‘museums’, ‘factories’ and ‘mansions’ as I could. They nearly broke me.”

Mr. Toad in Hell

…“Experience” has emerged as among the defining fads of my generation. […] By classifying these places as experiences, their creators seem to imply that something happens there. But what? Most human experiences don’t have to announce themselves as such. They just do what they do. A film tells a story. A museum facilitates meaning between the viewer and a work of art. Even a basic carnival ride produces pleasing physical sensations. […]

I’m no Disney evangelist, but come on. Disneyland has a ride where you get to experience life as Mr. Toad as he is being sentenced to Hell. To Hell!

Critics Notebook: The Existential Void of the Pop-Up ‘Experience’ by Amanda Hess, New York Times, 26 September 2018. The piece is subtitled “I went to as many Instagramable ‘museums’, ‘factories’ and ‘mansions’ as I could. They nearly broke me.”

Privacy is hard

“Privacy is Hard, Volume 18283833.

Knowing of 5 downloaded, non-vendor specific apps installed on a device is enough to uniquely identify over 90% of individuals in a sample of a million+ people.”

Privacy researcher and Director of Open Privacy Sarah Jamie Lewis (@SarahJamieLewis), 17 September 2018. Jamie Lewis cites Temporal Limits of Privacy in Human Behavior by Sekara et al, 2018

Jamie Lewis continues, “This result is not surprising but it’s a nice illustration of the how even seemingly ‘useless’/‘unimportant’ information like ‘what apps do you have installed’ can impact total privacy.”

To will another future into being

“This is the dilemma faced by any large organization or cause: how to keep its people moving, if not in lock step, then at least generally in the same direction. Strategy promises a blueprint for doing this, but in the end it is more an art than a science, an all-too-human process of guessing what might work. It can be undertaken with great deliberation, in regularly scheduled planning meetings and off-site conferences. Or it can be seized upon in moments of crisis and uncertainty, as a hedge against despair — an act of faith that it may yet be possible to will another future into being.”

Strategy May Be More Useful to Pawns Than to Kings, by Beverly Gage, New York Times, 3 September 2018. Gage is Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University.

“A hedge against despair” lingers in the mind.

No answer

At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?”

We had no answer.

The Earth is in a death spiral. It will take radical action to save us, by George Monbiot, The Guardian, 14 November 2018

You cannot give instructions to a gigantic inflatable

Screen grab from Inflatable Cobblestones Berlin Part 2 (Vimeo), by Artur (presumably Artúr van Balen), 2012

The video is captioned: On the 25th revolutionary 1st of May demonstration in Berlin-Kreuzberg, protesters were throwing huge inflatable cobblestones, made of silver-reflective foil and tape. The creative intervention was initiated by the art-activist collective “Eclectic Electric Collective” (EEC) and was meant as a celebration of an object which is both a symbol and a material weapon of anti-authoritarian struggle everywhere. It also aimed to bring new strategies of tactical frivolity into the demonstration. http://eclectic-electric-collective.blogspot.de/2012/05/under-pavement-beach-gigantic.html

Our intention was also to subvert the image of the “stone-throwing demonstrator” which the media spectacle around May 1 feeds off so much.
 We are interested in tactical frivolity, in finding new ways of protesting. And we are interested in how the opposition between police and protesters can be subverted. So when we playfully throw an inflatable cube at a police line and they, not knowing what else to do, throw it back, suddenly they are engaged in a game with us and their image as tough riot cops is broken.

There was this funny situation when we threw it towards the police. And there was the spontaneous game when they the police kicked it back, protesters again kicked it to the police, police kicked it back, etc. – and suddenly they realised they were part of a game. So they threw it behind the police line where children found it and began to play with it.

You cannot give instructions to a gigantic inflatable by Joanna Rainer, 31 April 2012. Rainer's article is an interview with Artúr van Balen and Verena Meyer, of the Eclectic Electric Collective, about their work with “inflatable cobblestones” and “tactical frivolity” in mass protests.

My garden is the Third Precinct

“No military force can end terrorism, just as firefighters can’t end fire and cops can’t end crime. But there are ways to build a resilient society. ‘It can’t be on a government contract that says In six months, show us these results,” Skinner said. ‘It has to be I live here. This is my job forever.” He compared his situation to that of Voltaire’s Candide, who, after enduring a litany of absurd horrors in a society plagued by fanaticism and incompetence, concludes that the only truly worthwhile activity is tending his garden. “Except my garden is the Third Precinct,” Skinner said.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, New Yorker, May 7, 2018, by Ben Taub. The article is a profile of Patrick Skinner, a former CIA operative turned local police officer.