Interesting reads
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Amid a surging opiate crisis, the maker of the anti-addiction drug Vivitrol skirted the usual sales channels. It found a captive market for its once-a-month injection in the criminal justice system.
The Last Shot
Amid a surging opiate crisis, the maker of the anti-addiction drug Vivitrol skirted the usual sales channels. It found a captive market for its once-a-month injection in the criminal justice system.
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Did a Glowing Sea Creature Help Push the U.S. Into the Vietnam War?
A marine biologist might have a clue to who—or what—was responsible for one of America’s most infamous war mysteries.
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Very short, but thought this might be the best place for it.
Not much fun in here, but still interesting to see how best to individually fight climate change - assuming you believe in it
The most effective individual steps to tackle climate change aren't being discussed
Governments and schools are not communicating the most effective ways for individuals to reduce their carbon footprints, according to new research.
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Don't fuck with the Killdozer
The Wrath of the Killdozer • Damn Interesting
Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado was a profoundly frustrated muffler repair man. In 2004 he took drastic measures.
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A despot in disguise: one man’s mission to rip up democracy | George Monbiot
James McGill Buchanan’s vision of totalitarian capitalism has infected public policy in the US. Now it’s being exported • George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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How a Marvel Comic Hero Became the Icon of the Fight Against ISIS
The creator of The Punisher says he is 'flabbergasted' by the appropriation of his image by Iraqi fighters
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My German Grandpa's First Ride In A World War II Jeep Since 1945 Was Truly Magical - Jalopnik
In 1945, an American soldier gave my Grandpa—who was then an eight-year-old living in Southern Germany—a ride in a World War II Jeep. That short trip changed my grandpa’s life forever, beginning a chain of events that led him to vow never to drive an automobile for as long as he lives.
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First one of vws engineers sentenced
VW Dieselgate Engineer Sentenced To 40 Months In American Prison - Jalopnik
James Robert Liang—one of the engineers who helped design the defeat device that fooled U.S. emissions regulators into thinking VW TDIs were cleaner than they really were—is the first VW employee to be sentenced in the U.S. for participating in Dieselgate. And boy is he going to pay dearly.
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Horrible but interesting read about one of the worst tragedies within the 2011 earthquake. Drove through thidS town last week - they have signs all up the coast showing where the water stopped. It's so surprisingly high that even that changed my mind about tsunamis and tsunami warnings, which until now I'd almost always ignored.
The school beneath the wave: the unimaginable tragedy of Japan’s tsunami
The long read: In 2011 a tsunami engulfed Japan’s north-east coast. More than 18,000 people were killed. Six years later, in one community, survivors are still tormented by a catastrophic split-second decision
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@gt12 I remember watching it unfold in real time on tv. Just ridiculous power that swept up everything in its path. I read about places similar to that village where there are stone markers that indicated where the water got to during previous tsunamis. Terrible that these warnings are forgotten over time and similar mistakes are repeated
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87 years ago today Marx Brothers surreal classic Animal Crackers was released into cinemas
Pulling Focus: Animal Crackers (1930)
"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." – Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho Marx) Animal Cracke
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Their next movie was Monkey Business (still with fourth brother Zeppo).
At the beginning of the movie they are each in a barrel (stowaways on a ship) and are singing Sweet Adeline.
The great mystery is - is there four voices singing or three? If it's four - that means Harpo was singing, although not seen.
And if you're a Marx brothers fan, you just have to rewatch the mirror scene in Duck Soup.
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1992 Secondary schools team - those who didn't become ABs. From the sounds of it, we missed Todd Miller's best.
The greatest rugby team you never saw the nearly men – NZ Herald
A rugby team only diehard rugby fans ever saw play but had All Black legends Jonah Lomu and Jeff Wilson. 25 years on, its legacy is poignant and enduring – NZ Herald exclusive feature.
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Long read w/ several reviews from recent London Review of Books...
You are the product
Excerpt:
[...]
Facebook already had a huge amount of information about people and their social networks and their professed likes and dislikes. After waking up to the importance of monetisation, they added to their own data a huge new store of data about offline, real-world behaviour, acquired through partnerships with big companies such as Experian, which have been monitoring consumer purchases for decades via their relationships with direct marketing firms, credit card companies, and retailers. There doesn’t seem to be a one-word description of these firms: ‘consumer credit agencies’ or something similar about sums it up. Their reach is much broader than that makes it sound, though. Experian says its data is based on more than 850 million records and claims to have information on 49.7 million UK adults living in 25.2 million households in 1.73 million postcodes. These firms know all there is to know about your name and address, your income and level of education, your relationship status, plus everywhere you’ve ever paid for anything with a card. Facebook could now put your identity together with the unique device identifier on your phone.
That was crucial to Facebook’s new profitability. On mobiles, people tend to prefer the internet to apps, which corral the information they gather and don’t share it with other companies. A game app on your phone is unlikely to know anything about you except the level you’ve got to on that particular game. But because everyone in the world is on Facebook, the company knows everyone’s phone identifier. It was now able to set up an ad server delivering far better targeted mobile ads than anyone else could manage, and it did so in a more elegant and well-integrated form than anyone else had managed.
So Facebook knows your phone ID and can add it to your Facebook ID. It puts that together with the rest of your online activity: not just every site you’ve ever visited, but every click you’ve ever made – the Facebook button tracks every Facebook user, whether they click on it or not. Since the Facebook button is pretty much ubiquitous on the net, this means that Facebook sees you, everywhere. Now, thanks to its partnerships with the old-school credit firms, Facebook knew who everybody was, where they lived, and everything they’d ever bought with plastic in a real-world offline shop. All this information is used for a purpose which is, in the final analysis, profoundly bathetic. It is to sell you things via online ads.
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John Lanchester · You Are the Product: It Zucks!
I am scared of Facebook. The company’s ambition, its ruthlessness, and its lack of a moral compass scare me...
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@Salacious-Crumb said in Interesting reads:
Long read w/ several reviews from recent London Review of Books...
John Lanchester · You Are the Product: It Zucks!
I am scared of Facebook. The company’s ambition, its ruthlessness, and its lack of a moral compass scare me...
"...What this means is that even more than it is in the advertising business, Facebook is in the surveillance business. Facebook, in fact, is the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind. It knows far, far more about you than the most intrusive government has ever known about its citizens. It’s amazing that people haven’t really understood this about the company. ..."
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@Salacious-Crumb That's an excellent read. Thanks for sharing.
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@Salacious-Crumb Yep - that took up a decent chunk of the work day.
Cheers.
Deadspin | The Fallout From Sportswriting's Filthiest Fuck-Up
