I'm interested in reading a thoughtful and well-researched article criticizing modern thinking about the merits of Search Engine Optimization. But because SEO is SEO, every time I search for an anti-SEO article, it seems to be pro-SEO click bait disguised behind an anti-SEO headline ("SEO sucks...that's why you should hire our company to do SEO.") I'm not saying I don't believe in SEO, but in our content farm era, I'm interested in whether there is anyone out there criticizing the whole concept?
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Wracking my brain trying to think of a short sci-fi story I read recently, I think in an anthology from within the last couple years. The story was about the relationship arc between a man convinced that technocratic solutions could be found to eliminate the messiness of politics and a woman who was more skeptical. Early in the story the female protagonist rescues a relative of the man's from a near-drowning in California when a computer failure causes his smart-surfboard to fail or something like that. The bulk of the story is set in Washington DC where the woman leads a lobbying effort against broad introduction of further ubiquitous computer controlled systems. Whether or not a computer-controlled traffic system is immune from exploitation was a major feature of the plot. What was it called?!
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In commemoration of the 19th edition of its Colors series, Field Notes brand notebooks offers this video of the Night Sky. Beloved by their adherents, and inspired by the seed book tradition, limited editions of the Colors series have become serious collectors items. "If Moleskine is a notebook with European aspirations, then Field Notes is its polar opposite -- a product with no pretensions and a quintessentially American appeal."
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The Restart Project encourages community engagement in repairing broken electronic equipment. This one year old charity enables "restart parties" which bring together consumers with broken electronic equipment and volunteer repairers, in an attempt to address our modern culture of "passive, flabby consumers of technology". When recycling is the second best option.
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My 2001 Honda Accord and I are about to move 800 miles away. Before I make that 13 hour drive, I took it to the mechanic for a check up. I like my mechanic, but he's saying this is my call: on top of other stuff I need to do, he's recommending - but not saying I need to - replacing the timing belt and water pump which were changed 7 years and 52,000 miles ago (in 2006 at 60,000 miles). I drive it a few thousand miles a year. It's $626.31. Complicating factor: I don't know how long it will take me to find a mechanic I trust in my new location. Should I?
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To kick off each week the staff of NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" posts Sandwich Mondays on The Salt blog, to look at some of the more... unusual sandwich offerings from America's commercial kitchens. This week, they recreate Wendy's nine patty T-Rex burger, which recently went extinct.
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For my new position at work, I'll be putting together a large number of Executive Overviews. This is a new area for me and I'd like to avoid unknowingly committing a spreadsheet faux pas.I've gotten reasonably good at manipulating the data and presenting it in a simple, clean manner. This leaves about 75% of what Excel (2010) COULD do ignored. I suspect that good taste will dictate that I continue to avoid most of these "features" but since I have only a couple of weeks' experience in playing around with the various offerings I'm not really sure I understand enough about what should be considered "off limits" (or whether I've already crossed that line). Bar graphs with drop shadows? Bevelled 3d pie charts? Glow?! The job at hand is to take a month's worth of extensive data and distill it to a couple of tabs that someone way above my pay grade can look at and inside 60 seconds have an idea of what happened in that month. It should look both attractive and "professional". The work I've done so far has been met with praise, but I get itchy fingers seeing all these sliders and options that I haven't tried out yet. What are some style resources to teach an aspiring spreadsheeter what should and shouldn't be used to achieve "professionalism" in my spreadsheets? What layout tips and/or advice does the hivemind have?
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I am in Canada and I've only ever booked flight within, or to-and-from, this country. I'm looking for tips on booking flights from San Francisco to San Salvador, and from San Salvador to Toronto.Two questions: 1) Do you recommend any particular airlines? (For international travel, I've only ever used Air Canada). 2) Anything else I should know about booking those flights whilst I'm in Canada? I am feeling a bit out of my league here and I just want to make sure I don't overlook something that causes me to spend too much on a flight. Any info is greatly appreciated!
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There is a joke here somewhere about Bears, Rights, Arms, the Right to Bear Arms, Bears Arms and holy crap camera work. SLYT Cats and dogs are cute, but how about a black bear? Cute bear climbs tree to see what the heck the hunter is doing on the blind in the tree. Notice how the hunter maintains character by only mouthing words after bear gets in his grill. I think by that point he could actually say Holy Sh*t!
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Picture this. You're one of the 3 million-ish users of Duolingo, doing online Italian lessons so you can talk to your Italian boyfriend in his own language. Halfway through one of your daily lessons, you're given the sentence "Lui ti ama" to translate. "He loves you" -- cute coincidence. But then it starts getting stranger.
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The Council of the European Union recently released a proposal to amend the General Data Protection Regulation. Scaling back from becoming the most strict privacy regulation in the world, the amendment greatly favors corporate interests while reducing the rights of data subjects. Under EU law, personal data can only be collected under strict guidelines and for a legitimate purpose. The Data Protection Directive of 1995 and the e-Privacy Directive of 2002 specify, among other things, that people have rights over their data, that data can only be processed or transferred to 3rd parties if the subject has unambiguously given consent, and requires that governments create agencies to police these standards. This differs from the US where privacy policies instead target specific types of information (health care, financial data, etc.) when considered necessary. The European Commission has proposed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which would unify data protection policies within the EU, making it easier for non-European companies to comply with the law across geographies. It would establish the world's strictest data protection law, and violations would come with severe penalties of up to 2% of worldwide turnover. Global tech companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google are lobbying to avoid the additional layer of heavy regulation which they fear could stifle innovation . The GDPR had critics outside of the tech giants. The regulation had a clause exempting "anonymous" data from regulation. This has some computer scientists worried because it has been shown that so-called anonymized data can be fairly accurately "deanonymized" using very few additional data points. But last month, the Council of the European Union released its proposals to amend the draft GDPR. In a surprise move, the proposed draft compromise text falls in line with the recommendations of industry lobbyists. Instead of creating more stringent guidelines, the proposal allows the industry to police itself, eliminating the role of a supervising commission, and giving flexibility to data controllers to decide what constitutes a privacy risk. The amendment applies a reactionary risk-based approach instead of establishing prescriptive standards. Scaling back the rights that individuals have over their data, the amendment clarifies "the right to data protection as a qualified right, highlighting the principle of proportionality and importance of other competing fundamental rights, including the freedom to conduct a business." In addition, the requirement to obtain explicit consent has been revised such that data controllers need only demonstrate that consent (informed or otherwise) was somehow obtained. Also, the timeframe within which breaches of personal data must be reported has been extended and is only required when the breach may result in significant harm (as opposed to the previous standard of disclosing all breaches). And finally, the amendment exempts all social networking from the regulation.
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I've recently run into the situation in which I'm trying to gather responses from dozens of respondents in my section typically via Doodle Poll or Google Forms and numerous people simply send me their response rather than entering it into the form. Can you help me with a script for politely responding to these folks?Generally these emails will be because I'm trying to schedule a call about a topic, or because I need people to tell me what X they'd like and where they'd like it positioned. Most of the time people who email me back will say something like "thought I'd email you rather than respond to the survey", sometimes they reply with no explanation, and occasionally they tell me the link won't work. Neither I nor my admin have time (and I won't ask her to) to sort through 75 responses to decide when the best time is going to be for six dozen people to talk about widgets when replying to the Doodle poll literally takes 10 seconds to fill out. I also don't want to encourage this behavior, because I work in an area in which habits become quickly entrenched, particularly in employees that have been in my department for a long time. So far, I generally just reply back with "Great! If you can enter that in the survey, that would be helpful" but then I get some inevitable "But I already told you" emails. Also, I really don't have any ideas for how to respond to "The doodle poll link doesn't work on my computer". When I've tested this out in person (e.g. walked over to the person's desk and clicked on the link on their computer) it has always worked with no problems, and I always test these surveys on all the browsers our office has. Advice? Thanks
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Getting married in a few months, which means I want to start any facial/beauty regimens now. I don't usually do this stuff, so am entranced by the field of options. However, I know that this field contains the biggest BS factor of any out there. Please give me your best ideas of things that are scientifically proven to work, or that there is at least some data about why it works or would or wouldn't work. Please also tell me which of the things I'm considering looking at are drecht or dangerous crazytown. Help me not waste my money or wind up maimed.I have skin issues - prone to acne/blackheads, with slight dark "acne scarring" - ie not actual pocks, but dark places where acne used to be. I have ridiculously long hair: prone to split ends and breakage at the ends. I also am carrying more weight than I would like to be for the wedding itself. Things I'm considering: 1. Facials. Is this worthwhile at all? Any particular ones? 2. Microdermabrasion 3. Chemical Peels 4. Lipotropic Injections 5. Lipo laser? 6. Any use in these hair treatments to make it smoother overall? Bonus question: What am I not considering that I really should?
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India to send world's last telegram Mr. Ram once learned the Morse code technology for telegraphy, but today oversees staff who type out and send telegrams over a Web software. He tries to put up a spirited defense of the obsolete technology in the age of the smartphone, arguing that mobile penetration is much lower than it is hyped to be. Mobile penetration is indeed a dismal 26 percent, but even in the remotest village, at least someone has a phone.
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Do you know of any videos that feature dead on imitations of foreign accents? I'm looking for things along the lines of this one, but not necessarily part of a stand up comedy routine. Not interested in anything that is mean-spirited. Also interested to know how people can nail a foreign accent so accurately (whether for comedy, making a movie, etc.).
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The neck pain I've been having is clearly not going away on it's own, so I think I need to see a chiropractor. Anyone have recommendations for chiropractors in Philadelphia? I'm in Queen Village and would love to see one in the neighborhood if possible.I went to one chiropractor a few years ago who wanted to get me on a long-term program of multiple visits per week, which is not what I'm interested in. I know it will take more than one visit, but I got the feeling he was giving me his standard sales pitch, not a treatment plan.
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What Daleks, xenomorphs and slasher movies tell us about palaeoart. Bonus cartoon: Therizinosaurus, packing heat.
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In English we have grouping units like dozen (12), gross (144), score (20) and a few others. Though no one uses them for counting (eg: 18, 19, score, 21...). What are similar words in other languages? If there's a cultural or historic reason that particular number has a special word, all the better.
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I have a good idea for a web application, but I'm worried it might incur the wrath of a few specific larger companies. Would it be a good idea to create a business entity to protect myself from any personal liability I might be exposed to?As a personal project I'm interested in building a web application that I think would be pretty cool. Because I'm still in the early stages and I think its a great idea I really don't want to describe it in detail. The most I will say is that it involves a lot of linking to content on a few specific websites. I'm worried some of these websites might get upset about my application and take legal action. I also think that this fear might be a bit extreme. My application would not be distributing or even copying copyrighted content - just linking to it (and not stuff like mp3s, videos, or porn). At the most, enough to "annoy" these larger institutions, and nothing illegal that I can think of. My understanding is that if I created this application under the umbrella of some business entity (LLC?) it would incur all liability that could otherwise be applied to me. My question is this: Is it "sensible" to spend the time to register an LLC or other business entity just to protect myself from liability? Location is Virginia. In case it is not obvious, I'm a tech person with very little knowledge of business/legal matters. I'm planning on posting the finished application on MeFi Projects when I'm finished (and maybe the best plan is to have people evaluate it there). AA
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My Dad remembers a song he used to sing when he was a kid. The chorus, if his memory serves well, goes something like this: Dear John, I think the world of you, But I'm in love with someone new. I could marry one but I can't marry two, So farewell to you, dear John. I've included the complete song below. Anyway, I'm wondering if this was every sung by a famous or notable singer? Are there any notable recordings? Can anyone provide any more information about it? Many thanks in advance!Here's the complete song, as best as he remembers it: I was to be wed to a redhead named Red, But I had to go away. To Red I was true and I thought she was too, Til she wrote me this letter one day, Chorus: Dear John, I think the world of you, But I'm in love with someone new. I could marry one but I can't marry two, So farewell to you, dear John. When sweet Leilani showed Hawaii to me, I fell for her native charm. "Give me something," said I, "to remember you by," And she carved this tattoo on my arm, (Chorus) In Paris I met a brunette named Yvette. I called her my Sweet Cherie. The wedding was set,but Yvette I regret Sent the following letter to me: (Chorus) In Spain my amor was a girl matador; The wedding was set for Spring. My love it was full as she vanquished the bull; Then she threw me this note from the ring, (Chorus) Now Hilda was Swiss and a muscular miss From punching the holes in cheese. I asked her to wed, but she yodeled instead, And this message came down in the breeze, (Chorus) And now I'm with Sal, just a hillbilly gal; She's ugly, she's fat, she's dumb. She knows how to fight, but she ain't learned to write, So I reckon no letter will come
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Feathers, photographed and scanned. [via mefi projects] See also.
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Hello, I'd be interested to hear people's opinions on whether or not the Hot Chip song "The Floor" was inspired by part of Paul McKenna's book "I Can Make You Rich", in which PM says he once advised an investment banker to "focus on the benefits."I can't remember where exactly it says that, but I remember thinking it seemed to be contrasting ideas of being on welfare with aspirations to become an investment banker. I've not heard the Hot Chip song, but I know it came out at about the same time as PM's book. The theme seemed to be continued again in Michael Neil's CD course, Effortless Success, where he mentions a client who was "an investment banker in the Far East". Is this part of the same series of memes?
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I'm going into my senior year college and have relied on a fraternity meal plan and eating out often. What should I be buying at the grocery store regularly, and what are some quick and healthy meals to make regularly?I'm a college student interning in Washington, D.C., and am trying to survive on a smallish budget. I'm lucky enough to have a paid internship, but I've learned that eating out for lunch/dinner daily can add up quick. In college, I've been on my fraternity's meal plan, and even when my dorm room had a kitchen, I pretty much stopped and started with scrambled eggs. I know D.C. has great restaurants and I'm not opposed to eating out once or twice a week - but it's starting to get taxing, especially if there's any other things I want to do while I'm here. The house I'm living in has a kitchen and my landlord will occasionally offer me leftovers, but I don't want to be dependent. I'm a bit overweight, so I'd like to focus on healthy recipes - ideally paleo - but frankly any home-cooking is better for me than restaurant food or fast food on a daily basis. I know there's been threads on AskMeFi about this before, but most seem to have a specific angle that doesn't apply to me (veganism, cooking for a family), and I'm more interested on starting from square one, especially being on a budget. Any help's appreciated, thanks hive mind!
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We're heading to northern Spain for one week (20 June - 28 June). From your experience, what would you do with a week in the north, and why?We'll land in Madrid and spend a couple days there. From there we'll head to Barcelona. We know we want to visit Bilbao as well. Asturias and Burgos have been suggested (we know nothing about those places (can you enlighten me?). We'll have from the 23rd or 24th through the 27th to visit Bilbao and other places up north, if that helps. General advice pertinent to traveling in Northern Spain is appreciated.
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I have a one day mediation set for next week. I have a great attorney and the chosen mediator seems a great choice. What do you wish you'd known, asked for, given in on? All suggestions are welcome. It's been fairly amicable thus far, but the money is causing strife. I'm in Washington, so 50/50 is typical. I was a stay at home mom for 18 years. Separated two years, went back to work as a temp. Kids are over 18, college is paid for already.
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