September 10, 2023
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Call me Mister Diamond Hands.”
Government-approved “private detectives” and “private security services”—they have their exams and licenses, and all that crap. That’s gatekeeping meant to distract the sheeple from the power of peer-to-peer, decentralized, distributed knowledge. I didn’t need a stinkin’ badge. Crypto is a private banking system, and I was a private bank guard—that was easy.
Money in the Bank - new fiction from John Kessel and Bruce Sterling.
John Farnham's You’re the Voice song becomes Yes referendum campaign ad
John Farnham's You’re the Voice song becomes Yes referendum campaign ad. The ad looks at several key Australian historical/cultural events from the 1967 Australian referendum onwards to the present day. The upcoming referendum (which this ad is for the Yes campaign) is to ask people to vote Yes or No on A Proposed Law: To alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration? [more inside]
Boats the way the Romans did them
What did the Roman ships, or rather boats, that the Romans used to advance deep into the region along the Rhine and Danube and later used to patrol the river boundaries look like? How were they constructed, by whom and with what materials and methods?
Prof. Dr. Boris Dreyer, an expert in ancient history, has been exploring these questions in a very special way since 2016, when he began reconstructing and testing Roman river boats, taking them as far as the Black Sea.[more inside]
How many studies are faked or flawed?
The journey of your life
All of the 8,291 License Plates in America
States now offer a vast menu of personalized plate options for a dizzying array of organizations, professions, sports teams, causes and other groups. [more inside]
The War on Drugs Has its Roots in White Christian Nationalism
Millions of American schoolchildren grew up in the 1920s and 1930s with “Narcotic Education Week,” using textbooks that emphasized how bad drugs could be for destroying morals, health, and respectability... Although it’s been forgotten about today, Narcotic Education Week was wildly successful by the early 1930s, earning praise from sources as diverse as Franklin Roosevelt, Benito Mussolini, the Vatican, and literary icon Rabindranath Tagore. [more inside]
Are You Ready For Some Football?
Today marks the beginning of the 2023 NFL Season with football every Sunday through to next year. As with all NFL Seasons, there's multi-year chaos, drama and changes - and that's off field. This years biggest change has been in the ownership of the Washington Commanders with the sale of the team by the reviled Dan Snyder to a team lead by private equity investor Josh Harris who already owns or holds stake in the Philadelphia 76ers, the New Jersey Devils and EFL's Crystal Palace F.C. (Warning: Yes, that name is used in a bunch of older news articles) [more inside]
An essay about errors in Ulysses by James Joyce
For students of tone, it’s interesting to see how long the editors can keep a straight face as, soberly and diligently, they write entry after entry, using a printed source for each and acknowledging the help of many named Joyceans. At times, you can almost hear a sigh or muffled laughter. In the Cyclops episode, there is a long, long list of saints, the majority only too real, that includes ‘S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S. Synonymous’. The annotation tells us: ‘Not actually saints.’–Arruginated by Colm Tóibín, with an accompanying podcast discussion.
Next Slide, Please
Dennis Austin, co-creator of PowerPoint, has died. Originally released in 1987, Austin served as PowerPoint’s primary developer from 1985 to 1996. No word yet on what unnecessary animation was used to transition him from this life to the next.
Companies should start annual reporting on burnout
In the future, the most innovative companies will no longer report on just annual profits and losses, or greenhouse gas emissions. They will also publicly disclose general wellness markers. The last thing employees need right now is more tracking software. Yet, stress and burnout are different: Because of the stigma, people are hesitant to discuss early signs or worsening symptoms. Many employees might not even be aware of the initial indicators of burnout risk. That limits the extent to which employers can help.
The employees’ worries around job security are valid; the solution is to focus on objective, nameless data capture. What executives need is anonymized group data on burnout risk: something that protects the individual’s privacy, but is also specific, measurable, and immediate.
These real-time markers could, for example, be heart rate- or heart rate variability-related measures, which indicate stress at the workplace. Or they could be emotion-driven: conversational sentiment analysis tools that, with audio, can discern whether the general feeling in meetings is one of fear, defensiveness, happiness, or some other mode.
And we'll add that to our meat puzzle
There's something satisfying about watching a skilled person practice their craft. When you combine that with education, that's even better. A Visual Guide to the Cuts of Beef: Learn Where Every Cut Comes From! [1h16m] has The Bearded Butchers beginning with a full side of beef, disassembling it piece by piece and explaining how the cuts are released, and then reassembling the side of beef with all the cuts so you can see exactly where they come from. [more inside]
He loves the boxes, but hates the doors.
Meet Leo, who lives at a Home Depot in New Jersey. (Single link WaPo gift article)
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