November 19, 2020
Kim Ng: a Baseball First, at Last
Kim Ng's Hiring Could Be The Start Of Something Special In Miami - "Long-overdue baseball history was made late last week when the Miami Marlins announced they had hired Kim Ng as general manager. Ng is MLB's first female GM, as well as the sport's first Asian American GM, and she is also the first woman to serve as general manager in any major North American men's league." [more inside]
A 32-year-old man marrying a barely 20-year-old woman isn’t a fairy-tale
This season of The Crown highlights how very young Diana was during all of this — and it’s uncomfortable to look at that through a modern lens [more inside]
The free dataset in the maw of FAANG
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is now at the center of an unholy alliance of the world’s largest and wealthiest technology companies. The most valuable companies in the world are treating OSM as critical infrastructure for some of the most-used software ever written. [more inside]
How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps
How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps "Through public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis, Motherboard uncovered two separate, parallel data streams that the U.S. military uses, or has used, to obtain location data. One relies on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate X. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and special reconnaissance, bought access to Locate X to assist on overseas special forces operations. The other stream is through a company called X-Mode, which obtains location data directly from apps, then sells that data to contractors, and by extension, the military."
What we think is worth knowing
"Actress Gardner (3)" or "Director DuVernay (3)"? The Pudding dives into the data on minority representation in crossword puzzles, and explains why the USA Today puzzle is more current and diverse than any other major crossword. [more inside]
Someday/Maybe
In The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done (The New Yorker), Cal Newport examines David Allen’s productivity system, but focuses a deeper question: why do we leave office workers to figure out on their own how to get things done? Cal adds context on his blog.
"They drop a bomb on the headquarters, I say it's unimportant"
The Fifth Seal [SLTYT] is an award winning Hungarian movie (with subtitles) from 1976 by Zoltán Fábri. The central question of the movie is how to act ethically under oppression - a problem American viewers may find surprisingly relevant. [more inside]
Meat Clown
The meat clown isn’t the ghoulish nightmare the internet would have you believe. [MEL] [more inside]
Call them in, with love
Radical Black feminist scholar Loretta J. Ross, "an unlikely figure in the culture wars," is profiled in the NY Times: "What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In?"
Arecibo Observatory to be decomissioned
The National Science Foundation has announced that Arecibo Observatory will be decommissioned. The 305 m (1000 ft) diameter radio telescope, located in Puerto Rico, was damaged by Hurricane Maria. In August of 2020, a support cable snapped, cutting a gash through the dish. Then, on November 7, a second cable snapped, raising the danger of a possible cascading failure. Having found no way to repair the telescope without endangering workers, the NSF will decommission the telescope, concluding with a controlled disassembly. [more inside]
Mission Control's Big Display
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