Maggie's Farm

Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

A consulting architect on UCSB’s Design Review Committee has quit his post in protest over the university’s proposed Munger Hall project, calling the massive, mostly-windowless dormitory plan “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.” In his October 25 resignation letter to UCSB Campus Architect Julie Hendricks, Dennis McFadden ― a well-respected Southern California architect with 15 years on the committee ― goes scorched earth on the radical new building concept, which calls for an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms.

A crypt-keeper pal of vulture capitalist Warren Buffet came up with the plan, and the money to build it -- as long as you don't change his plan. From the photos, the rooms would be illegal as prison cells. A dorm room on the oceanfront with no windows. It's genius, I tells ya.

‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’: Peter Yates’ Crime Masterpiece that Chose to Rely on a Completely Different Kind of Spectacle

Despite the fact that Mitchum has been married to his wife, Dorothy, for 32 years, he has the reputation of running through women like a stray dog through tall cane, and sure enough, when Mitchum emerges from his two-room camper, he’s trailed by two pretty admirers—”Girl A and Girl B,” as Peter Boyle snickeringly dubs them. “Gahdamn, man,” Boyle mutters, ogling the two women in a parody of lust. “Ol’ Bob’s entourage is swelling. I had either one of those babies, I’d die of terminal euphoria. Zowie! You know what the 2001 theme is? That’s the sound of Mitchum waking up.”

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a great movie, based on a book from a guy who knew Boston criminals inside and out. It's also the first place I heard this quote: "This life's hard man, but it's harder if you're stupid!"

How to think like a detective

Detectives are often portrayed as misanthropic masterminds. They seem to possess almost mythical personal gifts that the average person can only dream of. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this isn’t entirely true. Not all detectives are masterminds, and you actually don’t need to be a detective to think like one. A few tools and methods can improve your inner detective, help you find facts, and learn to better understand the relationship between them.

A four-year-old with a badge and gun would be the perfect detective. Just keep asking "Why?"

The New Bogeyman

The fact is the threat from China is not really from China but from the pirates that run the economy who like doing business with China. The threat is the Western scientist who are willing to take Chinese money to perform forbidden research. It is the American tech companies willing to sellout the country for the opportunity to make money helping the Chinese communists. China is a symptom of a much graver problem, one that exists in the ruling class of the American empire.

The ZMan is a lively writer and an interesting thinker.

North and West Africa: INTERPOL report highlights human trafficking for organ removal

Organized crime groups are known to be behind trafficking in human beings for organ removal, drawn by the substantial profits that can be made. Information suggests a wide spectrum of actors are involved in organ trafficking in North and West Africa with connections to the medical sector in countries from Africa and beyond, notably in Asia and the Middle East.

See, that's why I drink plenty of whiskey. That way, no one will want my liver or kidneys.

Western Maryland lawmakers ask West Virginia officials to ‘consider adding us’ to their state

Western Maryland lawmakers have periodically raised concerns in the Maryland General Assembly that their part of the state is different from the rest of the state, with a more conservative political outlook, unique economic drivers, a media market based in Pittsburgh and close borders with surrounding states.

Many states could use a reshuffle. Rhode Island shouldn't even be a state. Delaware shouldn't be a state. Vermont should be folded into New Hampshire and stapled to Maine. California should be -- sawn off and pushed out to sea.

The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them

Ms. Fain is old enough to remember when millennials determined what was in vogue: rompers, rose pink, craft beer, Netflix and chill. Now, she gets the foreboding sense from colleagues that her AARP card awaits. Subtly yet undeniably, as generational shifts tend to go, there’s a new crop of employees determining the norms and styles of the workplace. And they have no qualms about questioning not just emoji use but all the antiquated ways of their slightly older managers, from their views on politics in the office to their very obsession with work

We went over this yesterday. Zoomers don't like Millennials much. Never mind that. Try to wrap your head around this New Yoik Toims writer who thinks Millennials have an "obsession with work." That must be why they were all able to pay off their student loans early, huh?

Why AC won the Electricity Wars

Both direct and alternating current could light up a light bulb just fine. And both could be generated easily enough (although the AC generator was more elegant, omitting the brush contacts). DC’s advantage in electric motors was leveled when the brilliant engineer Nikola Tesla invented an AC motor (it depended on “polyphase” AC, that is, multiple alternating currents where the alternations were out of phase with each other). The real, insurmountable difference was in transmission, because here AC could do something that DC could never do, something that would solve the problem of long-distance power lines and establish it as the electrical standard.

The Current War is a terrific movie about this topic, despite being badly written and chaotically directed. Westinghouse was the shizzle.

Responsibility Without Power

In this context, however, PTSD should surely stand for “pre-traumatic stress disorder”; that is to say children are being trained up so that, when they really do suffer from something rather than merely imagine it at some time in the future, having hitherto lived privileged lives by the standards of all previously existing human beings, they will be nice and vulnerable, requiring an army of therapists, counselors, social and auxiliary support workers, etc., to get through the rest of their lives. This is necessary demand management for the professionally compassionate, who need a constant supply of the wretched upon whom to exercise their compassion.

I'm always worried I'll run out of things to worry about. Thank heavens for social media.

Microsoft Becomes World’s Most Valuable Stock as Apple Slumps

Doesn't matter. Next year is the year for Linux on the desktop. Just like last year was.

Zillow’s Zeal to Outbid for Homes Backfires in Flipping Fumble

The shift has been on display in places such as Atlanta and Phoenix, two markets where home prices have been surging. Zillow’s roughly 250 active listings in Phoenix are currently priced at 6% less, on average, than what the company paid for the homes.

I remember when fixing dilapidated homes was a job for regular people and first time home buyers, not page thirteen on some arsehole's slidedeck pitch to venture capitalists for a javascript empire. I hope Zillow chokes on it.

Enjoy your weekend, folks!

Scientists recreated classic origin-of-life experiment and made a new discovery

This finding supports the authors' original hypothesis. Corrosion on the surface of the glass (due to the hot and caustic water circulating through it) plays a key role, since this releases silicon-dioxide molecules into the solution. This in turn acts as a catalyst to speed up the chemical reactions between the nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen atoms that ultimately create organic molecules.

No, this finding supports my hypothesis that the glass was dirty. You know, with organic molecules. Scientists haven't been very scientific for a long time now.

Why do dogs tilt their heads? New study offers clues

A quick internet search turned up plenty of speculative results positing that dogs tilt their heads to hear better, to listen for specific words or tones, or to see past their snouts. Sommese found one poster hypothesizing that shelter dogs do it more often because they know on some level that humans find it irresistible.

Well, pit bulls tilt their heads to make them more irresistible to humans, and to make it easier to get the toddler's head in their mouths. Duh.

Remote-first work is taking over the rich world

One possibility is that they can more easily focus on tasks than in an office, where the temptation to gossip with a co-worker looms large. Commuting, moreover, is tiring. Another factor relates to technology. Remote workers, by necessity, rely more on tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. This may allow bosses to co-ordinate teams more effectively, if the alternative in the office was word-of-mouth instructions that could easily be forgotten or misinterpreted.

So, "That meeting should have been an email" was right on the money, and at least fifteen years ago at that.

HTTP 419 Never Gonna Give You Up

I get tired of error reporting services, like Rollbar, blowing up when a bot scans my websites for URLs like the infamous /wp-admin.php so why not rickroll them? It won’t do much except make website owners feel better, but I’d say that’s worth it.

A website error message that Rickrolls the bot. Like most coder things, it's almost clever, but not quite. It's also childish, kinda pointless, and the name of the object of the exercise (Rick Astley) is spelled wrong.

Troll A – The Tallest Structure Ever Moved by Mankind

Located about 80 km off the west coast of Norway is Troll A, a colossal natural gas platform and the tallest structure ever moved by mankind. It’s construction is regarded as one of the largest and most complex engineering projects in history.

"It is construction"? Man, noone can spell anymore. They're's mispellings everywere.

Practical Time Machines

Your computer can travel to the future even more easily than a DeLorean. The UI isn’t quite as cool, but it doesn’t require plutonium. Simply open your system control panel, turn off the “Set time automatically” option, and click the button to adjust the system date/time to your target.

Isn't that supposed to be spelled "Time Masheen"? Oh well. It's an interesting idea about checking software reliability. Of course a much more useful tool is to set your computer's clock backwards in time. You can use timestamped software trials forever that way. You didn't hear that from me.

Neuroscientist argues the left side of our brains have taken over our minds

"The left hemisphere's goal is to enable us to manipulate things, whereas the goal of the right hemisphere is to relate to things and understand them as a whole. Two ways of thinking that are both needed, but are fundamentally at the same time incompatible."

Nope. I've seen Twitter. The spleen has taken over our minds.

‘Astounding’ Roman statues unearthed at Norman church ruins on route of HS2

More than 1,000 archaeologists have worked at more than 60 sites along the HS2 route between London and the West Midlands over the past three years. At Saint James’s Garden near Euston station in central London, more than 50,000 skeletons were exhumed from a burial ground. In Birmingham, more than 6,500 skeletons were uncovered from an 18th-century cemetery.

A new railway built on bulldozed graveyards. I think I've seen that movie.

Elon Musk wants to start a university in Texas that will have epic merch

Tesla & SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has just posted on Twitter that he wants to start a new University in Texas. He wants to name it “Texas Institute of Technology & Science (TITS)”.

I've seen college bookstores. There aren't any books in there, so worrying about the college themed merchandise before founding the college isn't that dumb. Infantile, but not dumb, which is what Musk should have on his business card.

Feds cuff Russian said to be developer of 'Trickbot' ransomware

Indictment reveals org behind banking trojan even had nifty jobs titles like 'Malware Manager'

I still prefer "infantile but not dumb."

For the Price of a Tesla Model S, You Can Buy a Flying Car That Doesn’t Require a License

For that price, you will get a half assembled kit, which includes an aluminum space frame, motor controllers, propellers and motors, as well as an assembly guide. Weighing only 40 kilograms (88 pounds) when empty, Jetson One is categorized as an ultralight aircraft in the U.S., which doesn’t require a pilot license to fly.

John Denver acutely unavailable for comment.

Facebook’s lost generation

At the same time, a rising crop of younger social networks has continued growing in popularity with young people — a phenomenon Facebook has closely tracked with its own research. In an internal presentation earlier this year, employees estimated that teens spend 2–3x more time on TikTok than on Instagram and that Snapchat is the preferred method of communicating with best friends for young people.

Zoomers ain't Boomers. Sorry to break it to dullard Millennials who think Zoomers are going to help them smother Boomers with a pillow, but Zoomers don't like Millennials much, either.

Have a great Friday, everyone!

Hackers steal $130 million from Cream Finance; the company’s 3rd hack this year

The attackers are believed to have found a vulnerability in the platform’s lending system —called flash loaning— and used it to steal all of Cream’s assets and tokens running on the Ethereum blockchain, according to blockchain security firm BlockSec, which also posted an explanation of the security flaw on Twitter earlier today.

People prepping for the end of the world love cryptocurrency. You know, money that only works if everything on the internet does. Good luck with that.

Forget “Best” or “Sincerely,” This Email Closing Gets the Most Replies

The first shall be last and the last shall be first and "Best" shall be last.

Why the U.S. Navy Never Built Titanium Submarines Like Russia

There was simply no conceivable supply chain in place to make the serial production of titanium even remotely cost-efficient. The Papa-class prototype cost an astonishing 1 percent of the Soviet Union’s entire 1968 GDP, and that doesn’t factor in titanium’s unique maintenance and component degradation costs.

Yeah, but titanium submarines sure helped the Russians beat the Afghan navy pretty quick. Anyway, the US Defense department also seems to be based solely on the "money is no object" procurement plan. Wait until we're totally soviet to find out what that really means. You won't have to wait long.

Hardy Kruger Would Approve

This guy literally makes a working miniature Airbus RC airplane right in front of you. It turns out that Hardy Kruger in the Flight of the Phoenix was right all along.

The original Flight of the Phoenix was a great movie. The remake, not so much.

China limits construction of 'super high-rise buildings'

"Every building aims to be a landmark, and the developers and city planners try to achieve this goal by going extreme in novelty and strangeness."

That's the 21st century in a nutshell.

The Great Competition to Give Away Money

The word people are most comfortable using to describe the current moment right now is “froth.” But some people are willing to go further in describing what, to a cynic, can seem like irrational exuberance. “The VCs are reacting rationally to the environment that they're in,” said Martin Kenney, a UC Davis professor who studies the venture capital industry. “But the environment could be irrational.”

The headline describes venture capital investment as "giving away money." That's the 21st century in a nutshell.

Why The Metaverse will be Bigger than Facebook and Google Combined

Metaverse is a collection of various virtual worlds, game worlds if you want, capable of possible cooperation. This means that these worlds and the games they are represented in them will be connected at some point in the future. But it doesn't stop with the games. In the metaverse, you can virtually check an NFT gallery of famous real-world artists, play a game on your mobile while your friends play the same game from XBOX or PS5, you can then check a new musical artist in his recent virtual streamed performance, and finally to perform almost every programmable simulation of a situation from our lives, such as learning to drive a car, plane, a rocketship, and so one.[sic]

I'm sure guaranteed basic income and phony empty box refund claims from Amazon will make this wonderful new world possible.

Solid-State Batteries Rev Up Electric Cars, Boost Grid Storage

In tests, a laboratory prototype delivered 500 charge and discharge cycles with 80% capacity retention at room temperature. In contrast, previous studies with silicon anodes usually only achieved roughly 100 stable cycles.

Not really a battery per se. It's a (super)capacitor. Supercapacitors are the only thing that will make electric cars really viable. They'll figure it out eventually, and think of all the money you can make running a superfund recycling site for Tesla batteries when they do.

The fluoride wars rage on

Some toxicologists and epidemiologists are now questioning whether even low doses of fluoride can have systemic effects, including causing a dip in IQ in children who were exposed to it in utero. The first indications of this came from studies that compared unfluoridated villages and communities with fluoridated ones (where fluoride is either naturally occurring or added to water), followed by better-controlled studies that measured fluoride in individuals.

I once heard someone whose medical coverage didn't cover dental work describe teeth as "luxury bones."

Home Values Soared in 2020 -- but So Did Property Taxes

The average property tax bill for a single-family home rose from $3,561 in 2019 to $3,719 in 2020, according to ATTOM Data Solutions. All told, property taxes for single-family homes increased $323 billion last year, or 5.4%, from the year before.

I'm sure towns and cities will use this extra money wisely, by investing in the additional police officers needed to arrest all the citizens who attend school board meetings, for instance.

Unvaccinated people are set to be BANNED from Berlin’s Christmas market after officials approved shutting them out in latest example of two-tier post-Covid society

That's truly the Christmas spirit, isn't it? I suggest Germans follow Groucho Marx's advice in these matters: Don't join any group willing to have you as a member.