an entire pack of Boston Dynamics robot dogs It only takes 10 Spotpower (SP) to haul a truck across the Boston Dynamics parking lot (~1 degree uphill, truck in neutral). title via BoingBoing post
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Respect Is ComingRespect World.
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I would like to convert my laundry room into a 2nd bathroom. (I use the laundromat mostly as its more efficient for my situation). My hot water heater is there, as well as hot/cold water pipes and a floor drain. Just wanting to hear from others who have attempted this and what advice they would have for me.
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I've got this 20 yr old mint condition box of this C++ development suite. I'm cleaning house, it's a shame to throw it away but can you think of any organization or type of folk who'd be interested in it?
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My husband really wants to see Jonathan Richman when he's in Northern California in May, but the shows are sold out. Is there any place to buy tickets that are being resold?I've checked the obvious places like Ticketmaster and Stubhub. Are there other secondary markets to check? Are there Jonathan Richman fan communities where folks might post tickets they bought but can't use? Any other ideas? The Oakland show on May 15th would be ideal but we can make the Big Sur dates work too. Here's the tour schedule. Thank you!
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I'm looking for suggestions on how to navigate going to a wedding where I'll have to interact with ex-friends.This July, I'll be going to the out-of-town wedding of a close friend, A. A's best friend is a woman, F. F has a fiancé, M. F, M, and I all live in the same city, and we had been good friends- we spent time together at least weekly, I was included in activities they did with their extended family, they invited me to reserve one of the main cabins for their wedding, etc. This winter, we were both busy with other things so hadn't really seen each other (despite me reaching out to schedule things a few times), and I realized I hadn't gotten their wedding invitation. When I texted F to ask about it, F and M simultaneously group messaged me to essentially say they weren't interested in being friends anymore, without explanation. I was completely blindsided. A was also shocked- M and F hadn't told her. She told me that she was upset that this happened and that she has my back. A's fiancé also reached out to express the same. Nothing like this has ever happened to me in a friendship, and I've racked my brain about things I could have done to offend them, and sincerely came up blank. My best guess is that M made some indication of having feelings for me (although I truly had no idea that this was the case, if so), and F decided to end the friendship. Alternatively, I think it's possible that F decided she didn't like me for some reason. I get that this is just a thing that happens sometimes that isn't necessarily about me. Nevertheless, I grieved the loss of these friendships- they were important to me! I'm really dreading going to A's wedding. F is a bridesmaid, and F and M are really the only guests I know. I think I'll get pretty sad when I see M and F, and I'm not sure how to act towards them. I cry very easily, and I definitely don't want to have a visible emotional reaction, especially if it could risk distracting from the celebration. A is also concerned about whether it'll be stressful for me, but I've avoided asking her for help in navigating this situation generally so that she doesn't have to be in the middle. When this first happened, she said I could bring my boyfriend as a plus one so I wouldn't have to go alone, but he and I recently broke up. I'm considering asking her if I can bring a friend as a plus one, but I don't have any friends who could easily afford the trip, it would be pretty hard for me to cover their flight, and I feel bad about asking A to cover the costs of another guest. I would really love suggestions about how to make this a manageable experience!
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I have many BPAL (Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab) perfume oils that I don't wear enough because the bottles are inconvenient. I also have some cute empty clean rollerball bottles. If I wanted to dilute the perfume oil in the rollerball (because I don't want to decant the whole bottle for safety's sake as many are discontinued), should I use alcohol, or should I use a neutral carrier oil?Bonus points: explain why.
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I need a large box to store a family heirloom. I'm having trouble finding a size and am considering a custom one.We have a cradle made for twins that is over 100 years old. Its wood and I want to put it in our attic, but want it to be protected, so I want to put it in a box. A cardboard box would do. I'm having trouble finding an appropriate size and called a couple custom cardboard box places and there's usually a minimum number ordered. The box would have to be 44 x 27 x 21 inches, but doesn't need to be exact at all because I can just throw in bubble wrap. Any thoughts?
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My autistic cousin's landlord is nice, but really annoying and nosy. What excuse can we give him as to why my cousin needs to the room nearest the bathroom?My cousin is mildly autistic and functions fine on her own as long as she's not in complex social situations. She lives in a building that is similiar to a dorm in that each floor has two bathrooms. Her landlord who is a nice guy, but really annoying with all his tenants. For example he lies often about which of his units are available because there are some rooms that are easier for him to rent than others. So if most people want unit A rather than B, he'll lie and say that Unit A is not available because he wants to see if he can get someone to take unit B. He doesn't seem to realize that all this does is keep Unit A empty and not paying him for a much longer period. He also loses tenants often because they find out eventually. Sometimes he'll put up a poster saying a room is a certain price and then when people go up to rent the room will say something like... "oh that was the old price... it's higher now". Or... he'll say unit A is available when it is not and then someone will come to see it and say... oh that one was taken today, but we have this other one.... Stuff like that. My cousin would often be very confused with communications with the landlord and other tenants so we would go to talk to him. After years of dealing with him we realized, he's actually harmless if you know how to be with him and he's just kinda neurotic and really insecure. Also he's only like this when it comes to moving in. Once someone's already living in a room he's consistent doesn't try to scam with the rent or anything. So my cousin would very much like to move from unit H to unit A (which will become available soon) because it is closest to the bathroom and she has incontinence issues and sometimes wears a diaper. But she doesn't want to tell the landlord about this problem she has which is understandable. The problem is that the landlord is nosy and demands reasons. When she mentions wanting that unit and paying for it just what he asks, he asks why and tries to get her to take other units instead. Lies and says it won't be available. (We know it will in two weeks). and keeps pushing her towards other units that are either less desirable or more expensive. I think that if he understands the others are not an option he'll become more agreeable, but how do we make this clear without sacrificing my cousin's privacy? I was thinking perhaps we could lie to him about why it really needs to be that unit and come up with something less embarrassing than incontinence. It's none of his business anyway so we don't owe him the truth. But we don't want to yell at him and tell him to just give it to her already either because that certainly won't help. We just need to get past this stage and get him to ok the move to unit A because we know from all the tenants (and from our own experience) that these weirdo tendencies of his come out only upon renting an available spot. Once you're in a room there's no shenanigans and it's all smooth from there. Looking for ideas or excuses as to why we could say she really needs the room closest to the bathroom without mentioning incontinence which she has made abundantly clear would be too embarrassing for her. She hates even talking about it with us.
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"I have worn lipstick since long before he was born; every day, for many years. I can't remember, though, when habit became ritual. I feel as though if I could, if I could pin down the moment that commenced a daily ceremony, I might demarcate between girl and woman with clear, metaphoric ease. But when and how do you become a woman? It is a long, raw process that doesn't seem to end." That's Jessica Friedmann, one of a dozen writers included in this round-up from Longreads: When Lips Speak for Themselves: A Reading List on Red Lipstick. The list: * The History of Red Lipstick, From Ancient Egypt to Taylor Swift & Everything In Between (Marlen Komar, November 2016, Bustle) * Someone Called Mother (Marcia Aldrich and Jill Talbot, March 2019, Longreads) * On Blood, Birth, and The Talismanic Power of Red Lipstick (Jessica Friedmann, April 2018, Literary Hub) * Incarnadine, the Bloody Red of Fashionable Cosmetics and Shakespearean Poetics (Katy Kelleher, March 2018, The Paris Review) * Why Wearing Lipstick Is a Small Act of Joyful Resistance (Erika Thorkelson, October 2018, The Walrus) * The Undeniable Power of Red Lipstick (Danielle Decker, March 2018, Medium) * Five Writers Unpack the Power of Red Lipstick (January 2019, Elle)
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Northern Irish journalist Lyra McKee killed by gunfire amid clashes between police and dissident republican forces in Derry. Northern Irish police believe the New IRA are responsible for the killing and have opened a murder investigation. McKee had been a rising journalistic star: She had been named one of Forbes Europe's 30 under 30 in media in 2016 and had a two-book deal with Faber. Her writing focused on, among other things, her own memories of growing up gay in Belfast (which became a short film), the surge in suicide rates in Northern Ireland in the years following the Good Friday Agreement, efforts by families of those killed during the Troubles to find answers, and the still-fragile power-sharing agreement between unionist and republican factions in Northern Ireland. McKee was 29 years old. Tributes to McKee are still coming out. A selection: Belfast Telegraph: She had heart of gold: Tributes for journalist Lyra McKee murdered in Derry disorder Susan McKay in the Guardian: Lyra McKee didn't die in the cause of Irish 'freedom'. She was Irish freedom The Independent (Ireland): Lyra McKee was a 'prodigiously talent journalist, one of the brightest and best of her generation' Martin Doyle in the Irish Times: Lyra McKee: Lost Girl of the Troubles Post title quotes McKee's last tweet before she was killed (no link, as her account has been taken private).
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A Brief History of Cooties, courtesy of the Smithsonian Why a 100-year-old game is still spreading across our playgrounds. (Reading this article reminded me I actually had this game when I was a kid. How odd.)
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I'm looking for your favorite sources for awesome birthday/thank you/holiday cards — witty, quirky, smart, funny, and creative. Bonus points for indie sources. (Super extra bonus points for interesting paper choices.)
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Why are authors still sniffy about sci-fi? Ian McEwan's latest novel, Machines Like Me, is a fiction about science – specifically, artificial intelligence. It is set in an alternative reality where Alan Turing does not kill himself but invents the internet instead; where JFK is never assassinated and Margaret Thatcher's premiership ends with the beginning of the Falklands war. The near future of the real world becomes the present of the novel, giving McEwan the space to explore prescient what-ifs: what if a robot could think like a human, or human intelligence could not tell the difference between itself and AI? Machines Like Me is not, however, science fiction, at least according to its author. "There could be an opening of a mental space for novelists to explore this future," McEwan said in a recent interview, "not in terms of travelling at 10 times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots, but in actually looking at the human dilemmas." There is, as many readers noticed, a whiff of genre snobbery here, with McEwan drawing an impermeable boundary between literary fiction and science fiction, and placing himself firmly on the respectable side of the line.
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I suddenly developed problems swallowing. I have an appointment with my primary care doctor next week. How do I shut up the endless worst-case scenarios running through my head?I'm terrified this is cancer. (I've had issues with heartburn in the past, which can increase the likelihood of developing esophageal cancer). Every meal reminds me of my symptoms, which sends me into a spiral of catastrophic thoughts. I don't know enough to know if there are non-cancerous causes for my symptoms, and I know searching the internet is a bad idea. I don't currently have a therapist and it's unlikely that I'd be able to see one prior to my doctor's appointment. Any strategies for dealing with the thoughts would be helpful.
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Looking for a therapist in greater Portland. Probably CBT, but open to other modalities if folks have suggestions that aren't CBT. Primarily for working on negative thinking cycles and obsessing about past actions and interpersonal interactions. Think anxiety, but after the fact.
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Contemplating taking the plunge and decorating my virgin skin. Specifics about what may be wise/doable inside. Involves detail and musical notation.I'm 48, a blank canvas and about as Caucasian as they come. In Toronto area. A tattoo has always held some appeal but not a burning one. The concept I am considering is essentially a particular clip of sheet music. 3 bars to be precise. obviously it would require dome "design". The music has meaning to me (the title is also the name of my beloved mutt) I had an idea that pleases me - take the "strip" of music and turn it into a Möbius strip (wiki) I did some rudimentary arts and crafts and came up with this. Walked into a well-rated (I don't have any personal endorsements) shop and had a quick chat with a guy. Upon seeing the actual music he was a bit leery due to fine parallel lines etc. He actually felt my idea of a 2-D representation of the Mobius strip would be easier. He wasn't totally confident in reproducing the image in perfect musical notation but stressed he could at least capture the "idea" of it. I would be willing to increase scale such that tat would be maybe 5x3". Let's say on shoulder blade to ensure smooth canvas. For music readers - can you identify the song in pic? It is a well-known "rock" classic. The first seven notes should be a giveaway. To reinforce the "infinite" concept, should I add a coda before it "resolves" back to start? I want the end result to be such that someone who can read music and play guitar could look at it, play the intro notes and identify it. It would be a mystery to non-music readers (conversation piece) For tat affficiondos, do you think it could be reliably reproduced? I have heard the stories of people getting, say, Chinese lettering but one wrong squiggle changes the entire meaning. Any ideas to further "art" it up a bit without getting too ornate? I have considered possibly working in image of dawg but don't see a non-cheesy/sentimental way to do it. Fading/retouching may be tricky but I'm probably ancient enough for it to hold up for a decade or two (not five)? I have an appointment on Monday to see what he can come up with, on paper at least. If your answer is "stupid idea, don't do it" that is an acceptable answer but specific reason would be welcome of course.
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We're looking for a vacation rental on Islay some time later in the summer - what's the best way to find one?I think I'm looking for a "self-cater" rental (is that the right term?) for 6-8 people. Is there a site other than AirBnB that's commonly used to find those kinds of rentals in the UK? I've never tried to find a rental place outside the US before, so I'm not really sure where I should be looking or what terms to be searching for.
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I have a bunch of PDFs and Word documents that are relevant to my work. Some of the PDFS are quite large, fwiw. I'd like to keep them on my iPad so that I have them accessible if I need them during the day—and I'd like a good way of both annotating them and keeping a separate notes document as my own gloss/aide memoire. Is there a good unified solution for this?For me this is for work, but I think this would be relevant for anyone working with multiple sources for a research project/thesis. The PDFs are a mix of text and slide decks; the word docs are only text. It would be great if the solution allowed me to search across resources simultaneously. This would be a lot more intuitive to me if I were doing it on my MacBook—I'd just like to find a way to do it on the iPad because I don't carry the laptop all the time. Extra points if the solution were shareable across devices (iPad and Mac), but since my work blocks sharing apps from the network, I'd need an offline mode for most of the day. Thanks!
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A Cyberpunk Ninja Game Where You Manipulate Time [Kotaku] "Katana Zero, a 2D action-platformer out today for Switch and PC, revolves around a time-manipulation idea that cleverly envelops both the story and the way you play. You play as a bathrobe-clothed samurai in a grimly pessimistic future city, a contract killer dependent on a drug dispensed by a sympathetic-seeming psychiatrist. The drug gives you the power to see forwards and backwards in time, letting you rewind after every death and slow down time to deflect bullets, but also prompts distressing hallucinations." [YouTube][Game Trailer] • Katana Zero: a game about death, death, death, and life [Polygon] "A single success is often built upon countless failures" is hard to conceptualize in real life, but is obvious in the world of a video game. Numerous botched attempts through a stage can lead to the knowledge (or just simply precognition) required for survival. Most games are built upon this cycle, but few call attention to it. And for good reason. Acknowledging failure would spoil tension in a game's story. What threat is a band of pirates to Nathan Drake if he's immortal? Katana Zero is a game about this cycle, weaving the notion that "mastery that comes from defeat" into a gory tale of revenge and redemption. [...] The gameplay itself is well-executed but can't quite live up to the presentational highs in Katana Zero. Combat sequences feel limited by a small number of variables, from enemy types to environments to interactive elements. The challenge increases in later levels, but generally this manifests as more enemies to kill or fewer projectiles to use. It begins to feel less like an open-ended action game with infinite possibilities and more like a puzzle game with just one or two ways of making it through each room." • Katana Zero: the cutting edge [Shack News] "Crafting a master assassin means giving the player the tools to live that idea out. Katana Zero does this in spades. One-hit-kills are the name of the game, with the Dragon able to dispatch enemies in a single sword slash or a single thrown object. There are typical tough guy thugs, knife-wielders with pompadours, and shotgun-wielding weirdos to start. As the game goes on, the Dragon's adversaries gradually get more heavily-armed and slightly tougher to dispatch. Sure, one hit still does them in, but players have to memorize how to get the drop on them or how to get around their defenses. Success in Katana Zero is not about killing everyone in a berzerker rage. To succeed, especially in the later levels, players need to lay out a distinct pattern of which enemies to take out, where to use their dodge rolls, and how to use the surrounding environment to their advantage. And of course, they need to anticipate any surprises, because there are a couple of rooms where something can pop up out of the blue and force you to start the whole thing over again. It's a difficult game and it's not going to be for everyone, but Katana Zero does evoke that Hotline Miami spirit, in that it's entirely doable and it feels invigorating when it's done." • Katana Zero: A much-needed shot in the arm for sidescrollers [Nintendo Life] "Though the gripping narrative is an enormous part of the overall experience, much of your playtime will be spent in side-scrolling action portions that end up feeling like a cross between the style of The Messenger and Hotline Miami. Every level is comprised of multiple screens, and before you can move onto the next screen, you have to kill everyone on the current one. You do this by doling out cold vengeance with the edge of your blade, but your samurai is far from invincible; he's the very definition of a glass cannon. In just about every case, if you get hit once, you have to do the entire screen over again from the start, constantly trying new tactics and approaches until you get it perfect. Given the number of enemies you face, and the fact that most of them are armed to the teeth, this single-minded focus on perfection would seem to be too tall an order, but it's perfectly balanced out by the Chronos pumping through the samurai's veins. A big plot point throughout the narrative is how Chronos grants its users the gift of precognition, so every level you're playing is actually the samurai gazing forward through time and planning out the perfect murder route through scores of guards."
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What sort of musical degrees are available for hobbyists who studied something completely unrelated in undergrad? My interests are: music theory, singing, sight reading. If I want to study music, would I be starting over with another undergrad (bachelors) degree? Are masters programs available without a musical bachelors? Thanks!
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I've got a photo exhibit coming up. Nothing major, the walls of a local coffee shop. But you know, I want it to look good. What are my options for ordering affordable prints online, hopefully with a matte option? Everything from 8X10 to 20X30.Bonus points for shipping flat, as opposed to curled up like a poster. I'm hoping for some optimal mix of quality and value. Love you!
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I've got some irreplaceable family films from the 1960's and 1970's that I'd like to transfer to high-quality digital files -- or at least as high quality as one can reasonably get out of the 8 mm, Super 8, and Super 8 Ektasound formats. Looking for a reliable film transfer house in New York City that can do the job with minimal chance of loss or damage to the films. Big bonus points for answers from anyone with direct experience of similar transfers from old films. I'm limiting to New York City since I'm so worried about these films that I don't want to trust them to shipping. Googling came up with DiJiFi in Brooklyn -- their web site reassures me on the technical side with talk of options for ProRes formats, 60 GB/hour bit rates, and per-scene color and contrast adjustments. That is great to hear about, but I'm also looking for reassurance on the reputation and reliability side. This 2010 Ask question has the style of recommendation I'm looking for, and would help more if not for the Bay Area and its-been-a-long-time-since-2010 aspects.
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A Regulatory Framework for the Internet - "There are, in Internet parlance, three types of 'free'... Facebook and YouTube offer 'free as in speech' in conjunction with 'free as in beer': content can be created and proliferated without any responsibility, including cost. Might it be better if content that society deemed problematic were still 'free as in speech', but also 'free as in puppy' — that is, with costs to the supplier that aligned with the costs to society?" Start with this precept: the Internet ought to be available to anyone without any restriction. This means banning content blocking or throttling at the ISP level with regulation designed for the Internet. It also means that platform providers generally speaking should continue to not be liable for content posted on their services (platform providers include everything from AWS to Azure to shared hosts, and everything in-between); these platform providers can, though, choose to not host content suppliers they do not want to, whether because of their own corporate values or because they fear boycott from other customers. I think, though, that platform providers that primarily monetize through advertising should be in their own category: as I noted above, because these platform providers separate monetization from content supply and consumption, there is no price or payment mechanism to incentivize them to be concerned with problematic content; in fact, the incentives of an advertising business drive them to focus on engagement, i.e. giving users what they want, no matter how noxious... "Free as in speech" is guaranteed at the infrastructure level, the market polices platform providers generally (i.e. "free as in puppy"), while regulation is narrowly limited to businesses that are primarily monetized through advertising (i.e. "free as in beer") and thus impervious to traditional content marketplace pressures. This framework, to be clear, leaves many unanswered questions: what regulations, for example, are appropriate for companies like YouTube and Facebook? Are they even constitutional in the United States? Should we be concerned about the lack of competition in these regulated categories, or encouraged that there will now be a significant incentive to build competitive services that do not rely on advertising? What about VC-funded companies that have not yet specified their business models? Free-speech issues in the context of privately operated platforms - "If someone is already operating a platform that makes editorial decisions, asking them to make such decisions with the same magnitude but with more pro-social criteria seems like a very reasonable thing to do." Online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube already engage in active selection through algorithms that influence what people are more likely to be recommended. Typically, they do this for selfish reasons, setting up their algorithms to maximize "engagement" with their platform, often with unintended byproducts like promoting flat earth conspiracy theories. So given that these platforms are already engaging in (automated) selective presentation, it seems eminently reasonable to criticize them for not directing these same levers toward more pro-social objectives, or at the least pro-social objectives that all major reasonable political tribes agree on (eg. quality intellectual discourse). also btw... The Privacy Project - "Companies and governments are gaining new powers to follow people across the internet and around the world, and even to peer into their genomes. The benefits of such advances have been apparent for years; the costs — in anonymity, even autonomy — are now becoming clearer. The boundaries of privacy are in dispute, and its future is in doubt. Citizens, politicians and business leaders are asking if societies are making the wisest tradeoffs. The Times is embarking on this monthslong project to explore the technology and where it's taking us, and to convene debate about how it can best help realize human potential." Like It Or Not Facial Recognition Is Already Here. These Are The Industries It Will Transform First - "From screening patients for clinical trials to assessing the emotional state of drivers, we dive in to how facial recognition technology is shaping the future." Feeling Safe in the Surveillance State - "In China, facial recognition cameras are celebrated, and many citizens believe the rest of the world is dangerous without them." One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority - "In a major ethical leap for the tech world, Chinese start-ups have built algorithms that the government uses to track members of a largely Muslim minority group." The U.S. Is Losing a Major Front to China in the New Cold War - "A swathe of the world is adopting China's vision for a tightly controlled internet over the unfettered American approach, a stunning ideological coup for Beijing that would have been unthinkable less than a decade ago." This is an opportunistic infection - "When megacorps ate the pluralist internet, it became untenable for nation-states not to respond. The US wouldn't tolerate WeChat intermediating most economic activity between Americans, regardless of technical excellence. Why should others?" Understanding China's AI Strategy - "Like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, China today is engaged in an extensive campaign to harvest technological and scientific information from the rest of the world, using both legal and illegal means. Unlike the Soviet Union, China's efforts have prioritized using such access to build industries that are competitive in global markets and research institutions that lead the world in strategic fields." Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police - "The tech giant records people's locations worldwide. Now, investigators are using it to find suspects and witnesses near crimes, running the risk of snaring the innocent." What is it [decentralization] good for? Decentralization is valuable as a buzzword because it signifies other things, other virtues. First and foremost in my mind, the "decentralized technology" movement aspires (however much it fails), to react against the leeching away of human agency that is the signal social fact of an increasingly large scale, technologically mediated world. "Decentralized" systems claim to be "open" and "permissionless". What that means, or ought to mean in my view, is that human beings — as generally as possible, not just some special technosophisticate caste — should be able to use this technology to act in ways that are socially and economically meaningful for themselves and their own communities, and that are not restricted to patterns and templates sketched out by distant "tech entrepreneurs" or by anyone else. We are very, very far from that world. A whole industry of "blockchain skeptics" has emerged, quite reasonably, to point that out. And yet this problem, that we are building a world in which, however paradoxically, the great power unlocked by advancing technology and large scale specialization and trade leaves most of us feeling ever less powerful, ever more at the mercy of distant and inchoate forces with respect to the circumstances of our own lives and families, is dire. You come to the counterrevolution with the technologies that you have, not those that you might wish to have. The current generation of overhyped, overspeculated, underdeveloped "decentralized tech" is close to the only game in town, from a human agency perspective. We've watched the internet itself, which was supposed to be a great equalizer, become a space more rapidly and efficiently consolidated, more disempowering from an economic perspective, than almost any sphere in the predigital world. It seems unlikely that we will undo the internet's great achievement of stitching a naturally pluralistic world into a single gigantic economy ripe for domination. To restore some hope for human agency, we'll need tools that let humans create and defend their own spaces, which must be economic as well as creative if they are to be sustainable. more, etc. Getting over Privacy - "My admittedly controversial view that privacy is incompatible with technological progress. We need strategies other than privacy to remain free in the digital age." World After Capital: Getting over Privacy (Intro) - "While I understand that we have a lot of work to do to create a world in which broad public sharing of health information is compatible with freedom, this is the direction we should be embarking on." World After Capital: Getting Over Privacy (Cont'd) - "We can't really protect privacy without handing control of technology into the hands of a few and conversely decentralized innovation requires reduced privacy. So what should we do? The answer, I think, is to embrace a post-privacy world. We should work to protect people and their freedom, instead of protecting data and privacy. In other words allowing more information to become public but strengthening individual freedom to stand against the potential consequences." World After Capital: Getting Over Privacy (Finish) - "Much of the fear about private information being revealed results from potential economic consequences. For instance, if you are worried that you might lose your job and not be able to pay your rent if your employer finds out that you wrote a blog post about struggling with depression, you are much less likely to do so... Here the economic freedom conferred by a Universal Basic Income would protect you from going destitute because of discrimination, and by tightening the labor market, it would also make it harder for employers to decide to systematically refuse to hire certain groups of people. Further, we could enact laws that require sufficient transparency on the part of organizations, so that we could better track how decisions have been made and detect more easily if it appears that discrimination is taking place."
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Critical Role, a 4 year old web series airing 7pm PDT Thursday nights in which a bunch of nerdy ass voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons, launched a Kickstarter on March 4th to fund an animated special. If you're familiar with McCree in Overwatch, Jaina in World of Warcraft, Roy Mustang in Full Metal Alchemist, Ellie in The Last of Us, Akihiko Sanada in Persona 3, Phoenix Wright in Ace Attorney, Margaret in Persona 4, and the little blonde kid in Mr. Mom (to name a few of a few thousand credits among them) you know these actors. Critical Role's Kickstarter goal was $750,000, but they did not reckon with the passion of their fans, known as Critters. The Critters hit that goal in 40 minutes, crossed the $1,000,000 mark within an hour, and before their Q&A/Kickstarter hype livecast came on that night, had blown through all 5 stretch goals. In the past 45 days, as the Kickstarter continued to blow past goals, the special expanded to become a two-parter, and then added 8 more episodes (complete with theme song) based on their first campaign. This is the top funded TV/Film Kickstarter of all time, beating the MST3K reboot (previously) and the Veronica Mars movie (previously). They are also the 5th most funded Kickstarter of all time in any category and the 5th most backed Kickstarter of all time in any category. In the end, they raised over 11 million dollars and had almost 90,000 backers.
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