Author: Lisa

You should read this for 1/19/2020:

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

Hear Christopher Tolkien (RIP) Read the Work of His Father J.R.R. Tolkien, Which He Tirelessly Worked to Preserve

Education

How College Became a Commodity “Market-based thinking is at the heart of how academe thinks of itself. That’s a travesty.

H/T: YamineTwo States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories.

The books have the same publisher. They credit the same authors. But they are customized for students in different states, and their contents sometimes diverge in ways that reflect the nation’s deepest partisan divides.

Hundreds of differences — some subtle, others extensive — emerged in a New York Times analysis of eight commonly used American history textbooks in California and Texas, two of the nation’s largest markets.

Food and Drink

Easy Homemade Hummus

Homemade hummus only takes 5 minutes, and it’s so much better than store-bought. All you need are a few cans of chickpeas, some tahini, olive oil, some seasonings, and a food processor.

History and Archaeology

From Ancient Scotland to Online Auctions: A Tale of Roman Nails

Science and Nature

Forgotten trove of fossil feathers belonged to tiny polar dinosaurs

Young sea eagle takes up residence among Oxfordshire’s red kites

Technology

Every Mac wallpaper from Cheetah to Catalina, combined into a single image It’s really lovely, and you can download it.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

How ‘Lock Her Up!’ just blew up

And now an investigation authorized by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into potential wrongdoing by Clinton has turned up a total of zero wrongdoing of any sort by either Hillary or Bill Clinton — or anyone associated with the Clinton Foundation.
Now, contrast that with another multi-year probe originating in the Justice Department: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. That inquiry led to 199 criminal counts against 37 people and entities. Seven people pleaded guilty; six were sentenced to prison. And Mueller concluded that not only had Russia engaged in a deep and broad effort to influence the election to help Trump and hurt Clinton but also that Trump himself had engaged in a series of behaviors during the investigation that could have been construed as obstructive.

Trump ‘abused’ and ‘harassed’ Kirstjen Nielsen over border, new book reveals

when the then secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, warned the president that shutting down the border would be illegal, the then attorney general, Jeff Sessions, approved the radical measure – despite it being against the law.

‘Muslim’ Is Not an Insult

In response to the tweet, the White House press secretary told Fox News that the president was “making it clear that Democrats are … almost taking the side of terrorists and those who were out to kill the Americans.” But if the president simply wanted to link Democrats to Iran’s supreme leader, he could have tweeted any number of images that did not include them wearing attire worn by millions of Muslims around the world, none of whom has anything to do with ayatollahs or terrorism.

Trump impeachment: Democrats announce new evidence ahead of vote

Mr Parnas was given updates on the ambassador’s location and mobile phone use by a man named Robert F. Hyde. Mr Hyde is a Republican Congressional candidate in Connecticut and Trump campaign donor.
“She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off,” one message reads. “They will let me know when she’s on the move,” another says.
Ms Yovanovitch has called for an investigation into the messages. “The notion that American citizens and others were monitoring [her] movements… is disturbing,” her lawyer said.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030

By 2030 Microsoft will be carbon negative, and by 2050 Microsoft will remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975.

You should read this for 1/12/2020:

Art and Film

Last week, a post on the r/SaltierThanCrait subreddit — a forum that started as a place for Star Wars fans to pick apart 2017’s The Last Jedi — caused an eruption. Written by a user named egoshoppe, the message claimed director J.J. Abrams’ original cut of The Rise of Skywalker was 40 minutes longer than the film’s two hour, 22-minute theatrical runtime and contained a large chunk of material that would have made some fans happier, including a scene featuring actors Hayden Christensen and Samuel L Jackson, reprising their roles to help fellow Jedi Rey defeat the resurrected Emperor Palpatine.

. . .

The Star Wars fandom is now a nesting doll of speculation, paranoia, and anxiety about corporate overreach — growing more insular and reactionary in the eight years since Disney took over Star Wars.

The Mandalorian – Spaghetti Western Trailer

Books, Writing, Libraries, and Language

Statement by T. S. Eliot on the opening of the Emily Hale letters at Princeton It must have been profoundly difficult for Eliot to write this deeply personal and introspective letter.

Romantic fiction awards cancelled after racism row prompts mass boycott “The 2019 Rita awards for romance writing have been pulled after more than 300 books were withdrawn from competition in protest.”

As of Tuesday morning, more than 300 books had been withdrawn from the contest by authors who were critical of the RWA’s recent decision to discipline romance author Courtney Milan over her public criticism of passages in Kathryn Lynn Davis’s Somewhere Lies the Moon. Milan, a longtime critic of racism in the romance industry, had called Davis’s novel a “racist mess” for its depictions of Chinese women; Davis and her fellow romance novelist Suzan Tisdale responded by filing formal ethics complaints with the RWA, alleging Milan was a “bully” who had hurt their careers.

The RWA’s behavior, and their hypocritical inappropriate response to Courtney Milan is just the final idiocy in a twenty year history of bad behavior.

Chinese Skiers Training In Norway Ask Local Library To Remove ‘Controversial’ Books

The Norway Today site reports on the latest attempt by Chinese citizens to censor material in other countries. It involves a delegation of more than 40 Chinese cross-country skiers, along with 15 coaches and managers, who are in the Norwegian municipality of Meråker to train for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

“They” is the word of the decade

Food and Drink

You Don’t Have To Preheat Your Popcorn Oil

Jane Carnall @eyeedinburgh: On the British and Tea

History and Archaeology

Japan’s Sacred Island

The sheer cliffs of the small island of Okinoshima rise abruptly out of the sea some 40 miles off the coast of the Japanese island of Kyushu. Okinoshima’s sole resident is a Shinto priest who serves as the caretaker of small wooden shrines built among huge boulders on its southern half. For followers of Shintoism, Japan’s indigenous religion, Okinoshima is the sacred home of a trio of goddesses who, among their many responsibilities, ensure the safety of mariners. Fishing communities on the island of Oshima and in the nearby Munakata region on Kyushu still retain beliefs associated with the goddesses that originated perhaps some 2,000 years ago.

Archaeologists find graves of high-status Romans in Somerset

Steve Membery, an archaeologist and member of the South West Heritage Trust, which has overseen the excavations, said: “This site is a significant discovery. The individuals were evidently of some status. Most graves in Roman Britain are pretty much a rectangular cut with someone laid on their back. They’ve actually built these graves. There’s been a lot more care taken over these.”

Via Dr. Caitlin R. Green: A man of possible African ancestry buried in Anglo-Scandinavian York

The aim of the following brief note is to direct attention to a burial from a late ninth- to early eleventh-century cemetery in York. The burials here were originally excavated in 1989–90, but an osteological analysis in 2015 suggested that one of the people buried here was a man of possible African or mixed ancestry.

But this bit is particularly interesting:

In addition to such archaeological parallels, attention can also be drawn to the evidence of the eleventh-century Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, which relates the story of a Viking raid on Morocco (Mauritania) in the mid-ninth century that led to the taking of ‘a great host’ of captives . . . This account was discussed at length in a previous post, and the notion that it reflects real events is supported by Al-Bakrī’s Kitāb al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik, which relates that ‘Majūs [Vikings]—God curse them—landed at Nakūr [Nekor, Morocco], in the year 244 (858–9).

Read the post, and follow Dr. Green’s blog; it’s well worth it.

Science and Nature

H/T Charlie Stross — Nature: Television viewing and cognitive decline in older age: findings from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing “Overall our results provide preliminary data to suggest that television viewing for more than 3.5 hours per day is related to cognitive decline.”

Ditching coal in the US is saving lives, helping crops

Society

The Americans dying because they can’t afford medical care “Millions of Americans – as many as 25% of the population – are delaying getting medical help because of skyrocketing costs”

Despite millions of Americans delaying medical treatment due to the costs, the US still spends the most on healthcare of any developed nation in the world, while covering fewer people and achieving worse overall health outcomes. A 2017 analysis found the United States ranks 24th globally in achieving health goals set by the United Nations. In 2018, $3.65tn was spent on healthcare in the United States, and these costs are projected to grow at an annual rate of 5.5%t over the next decade.

Via NPR: Deceased GOP Strategist’s Daughter Makes Files Public That Republicans Wanted Sealed This has to do with GOP interest in re-districting to support a racist, classist agenda, as well as 💩🔥💰’s desire for a citizenship question on the census, also racially motivated.

Technology and the Net

Turn-by-turntables: How drivers got from point A to point B in the early 1900s

We Get Signal: ‘All Your Base Are Belong to Us’ Is 15 Years Old This piece about the “All your base” meme came out in February of 2016, but I completely missed it.

The One Remaining Use of the Word “Macintosh”

H/T John Gruber: Bruce Schneier on Scaring People into Supporting Backdoors

Which particular horseman is in vogue depends on time and circumstance. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US government has been pushing the terrorist scare story. Recently, it seems to have switched to pedophiles and child exploitation. It began in September, with a long New York Times story on child sex abuse

Women’s Work

Finland’s new prime minister wants her country on a four-day workweek

‘I left parts of my body in Iraq’: Duckworth rips into GOP rep who said Democrats ‘love’ terrorists In case you missed it, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia is a low-life lying coproplite who isn’t interested in anyone or anything but himself.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

The Horror of Trump’s Wounded Knee Tweet

Legal minds clapped right back after Trump’s absurd war tweet

But as Oona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, pointed out, the president’s tweet violates the War Powers Act in a number of ways.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Native American Remains Reinterred in Arizona

“It’s an amazing time, because the relationships between the tribes and the archaeological community are totally different than they were a decade ago,” commented Kim Spurr of the Museum of Northern Arizona. “People are complying with the tribes and understanding why this is important.” </blockquote

You should read this for 1/4/2020:

Art and Film

Roman Statues Weren’t White; They Were Once Painted In Bright Colors: Vox Explores Why History Has Overlooked This

Melinda Snodgrass with thoughtful commentary and SPOILERS: The Rise of Skywalker I am particularly struck by her last full paragraph.

Books, Writing, Libraries, and Language

A Portrait of Public Libraries

Phillip Pullman: The Sound and the Story
Exploring the World of Paradise Lost

The 20 Best Books of a Decade That Unmade Genre Fiction Ignore the title; it’s really about Le Guin and Jemisin.

One of the world’s largest private equity firms just bought one of the world’s largest library ebook companies That “library ebook company” is Overdrive. And the company that bought them is KKR, who, in 2018 acquired RBMedia/RBDigital and Audiobooks.com, “providers of audiobooks and other materials to libraries and consumers.” Given the standard practices of such companies, this is not good news for Overdrive or its users.

Ancient switch to soft food gave us an overbite—and the ability to pronounce ‘f’s and ‘v’s

When humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth. That changed the growth of their jaws, giving adults the overbites normal in children. Within a few thousand years, those slight overbites made it easy for people in farming cultures to fire off sounds like “f” and “v,” opening a world of new words.

Interesting, but we need a lot more research and comparison, including with non-I.E. languages.

When Does Burnout Begin? The Relationship Between Graduate School Employment And Burnout Amongst Librarians. See also The Separation of Work and Study

The 10-Digit ISBN Is Getting Retired Next Year

Education

James Hatch: My semester with the snowflakes~

Michigan charter schools got millions in taxpayer money for schools that never opened

A federal program awarded $7.7 million to charter schools in Michigan that never opened. That’s according to a report from the Network for Public Education. . . . “The most disturbing thing that I found from reviewing the documentation from these grants was that there really appeared to be no prohibition on conflicts of interest,” Ulbrich says.
The report from the Network for Public Education lists several examples from Michigan in which charter school operators paid themselves, or their family members, tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees for schools that never opened.

H/T Tim Spaulding: Audrey Watters:
The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

For the past ten years, I have written a lengthy year-end series, documenting some of the dominant narratives and trends in education technology. I think it is worthwhile, as the decade draws to a close, to review those stories and to see how much (or how little) things have changed. You can read the series here: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.
I thought for a good long while about how best to summarize this decade, and inspired by the folks at The Verge, who published a list of “The 84 biggest flops, fails, and dead dreams of the decade in tech,” I decided to do something similar: chronicle for you a decade of ed-tech failures and fuck-ups and flawed ideas.

Food and Drink

White Chicken Chili This works for people who can’t eat beef, or tomatoes. I’ve also made it with pork, which I like even better. Serve it with some Guacamole.

History and Archaeology

The Names of 1.8 Million Emancipated Slaves Are Now Searchable in the World’s Largest Genealogical Database, Helping African Americans Find Lost Ancestors

Science and Nature

Six Eclipses, Four Supermoons and A Rare ‘Great Solstice Appulse’: A Skywatcher’s Guide To 2020

Gavin Evans: The unwelcome revival of ‘race science’ “Its defenders claim to be standing up for uncomfortable truths, but race science is still as bogus as ever”

Although race science has been repeatedly debunked by scholarly research, in recent years it has made a comeback. Many of the keenest promoters of race science today are stars of the “alt-right”, who like to use pseudoscience to lend intellectual justification to ethno-nationalist politics. If you believe that poor people are poor because they are inherently less intelligent, then it is easy to leap to the conclusion that liberal remedies, such as affirmative action or foreign aid, are doomed to fail.

Via NPR: The True Story Of A Man-Eating Tiger’s ‘Vengeance’

“The story of the tiger that in 1997 was wounded by a poacher who also stole part of its kill: the tiger found the poacher’s cabin, destroyed his belongings, waited at least half a day for him to return, then killed and ate him

Society

The Old Internet Died And We Watched And Did Nothing

The internet of the 2010s will be defined by social media’s role in the 2016 election, the rise of extremism, and the fallout from privacy scandals like Cambridge Analytica. But there’s another, more minor theme to the decade: the gradual dismantling and dissolution of an older internet culture.

Here Are the 207 Members of Congress Who Just Asked SCOTUS to Consider Overruling Roe v. Wade

Technology

H/T Eric Meyer: Matt Holt:

Women’s Work

H/T Lisa Carnell: Once-Suppressed Dorothea Lange Photos Capture Wartime Paranoia

Soon after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, paving the way for the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) inexplicably hired Lange to photograph the removal proceedings and detentions. It’s possible the WRA was inspired by her powerful Depression-era documentation for the Farm Security Administration. . . . Perhaps predictably, the WRA saw subversion in even Lange’s most innocuous-looking photographs and suppressed her work during the war.

Hillary Clinton appointed chancellor of Queen’s University, Belfast “She is the university’s 11th chancellor and first woman to take up the post.”

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

U.S. government ‘retires’ (read removes) detailed pollution map from internet “The National Library of Medicine’s Toxmap application shed light on pollution nationwide. It’s no longer available to the public.NLM”

Constitution expert: By trying to out Ukraine whistleblower, Trump “has violated yet another law” “Trump has used his Twitter account to post the name of a man believed to be the Ukraine scandal whistleblower”

“The Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 (ICWPA) outlaws actions by government officials or agencies that directly or indirectly encourage retaliatory actions against employees who legitimately perform a whistleblower role in the intelligence community, as the whistleblower in this case clearly did regarding a matter of urgent concern, as determined by the Inspector General.”

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Brent Simmons: My New Year’s Resolution Is to Focus My Anger

You should read this for 12/20/2019:

Art and Film

Hello, my name is Kristin and I have never seen a single Star War.

After learning some incredible facts about moisture farming from
@jowrotethis
I’ve decided to watch every movie over the span of one week beginning with the original trilogy.

Patrick Stewart on Revisiting Two Lifelong Roles, in A Christmas Carol and Star Trek: Picard

Books, Writing, and Language

A ‘Mic Drop’ on a Theory of Language Evolution “Linguists now think our ancestors might have been chattering away for ages longer than they previously believed.”

The Lost Books of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas review – how Austen’s reputation has been warped “Cheap books create canonical authors. Jane Austen, it turns out, was popular for longer with more readers than previously thought”

Food and Drink

Dutch Stroop Wafels You’ll need a Pizelle iron.

History and Archaeology

In Tulsa, an investigation finds possible evidence of mass graves from 1921 race massacre

After nearly a century, Tulsa may be closer to finally answering whether bodies of black people killed in the 1921 race massacre were dumped into mass graves after one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history.

Science and Nature

H/T Yasmin: Granny killer whales pass along wisdom—and extra fish—to their grandchildren

Fish recorded singing dawn chorus on reefs just like birds

Sound plays an important role in various fish behaviours such as reproduction, feeding and territorial disputes. Nocturnal predatory fish use calls to stay together to hunt, while fish that are active during the day use sound to defend their territory. “You get the dusk and dawn choruses like you would with the birds in the forest,” says Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter, UK.

Society

Queer Like Pete “Buttigieg is getting slammed for being a type of gay man America doesn’t understand.”

H/T Benedict Evans: Vox We asked 2020 Democratic candidates 7 key questions on technology

H/T Joshua Nudell @jpnudell: There is a petition to stop a statue of Ceres from returning to the top of the Missouri statehouse on the grounds that it is a false idol. Seriously. See: Petition created to halt ‘Ceres’ from returning back to Capitol building

Technology

Microsoft to finally shut down to do list app Wunderlist on May 6, 2020 Wunderlist was a great app, one that did one thing but did it really, really well. I used it for all kinds of lists, including shared lists for To Dos and shopping. Wunderlist has a blog post about the shutdown.

H/T Riggins: hoakley on Time Machine: How it works, or fails to This is a series of in-depth well-written articles about macOS Time Machine, how it works, and how to cope with (and solve) problems.

H/T anildash From 2012: The Web We Lost
See also: “Link In Bio” is a slow knife

Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy

It originated from a location data company, one of dozens quietly collecting precise movements using software slipped onto mobile phone apps. You’ve probably never heard of most of the companies — and yet to anyone who has access to this data, your life is an open book. They can see the places you go every moment of the day, whom you meet with or spend the night with, where you pray, whether you visit a methadone clinic, a psychiatrist’s office or a massage parlor.

Freaked Out? 3 Steps to Protect Your Phone

The Biggest Social Media Operation You’ve Never Heard of Is Run Out of Cyprus by Russians

It is run by Russian nationals and based in and managed from Cyprus, with U.S. operations housed in a shared work space in New York. It funds itself with ad revenues from YouTube and Google worth tens of millions of dollars. And in 2018, it purchased a small suite of Facebook advertisements targeting U.S. citizens on political issues—and it made those purchases in rubles.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Trump’s team photoshops his face over Greta Thunberg’s on Time Person of the Year cover

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

LEGO is Now Offering to Pay For You to Ship Your Unused Bricks to Children in Need

The world’s first 3D-printed neighborhood now has its first houses “A giant 3D printer is currently squeezing out new homes in rural Mexico. Each one takes 24 hours and lets local families upgrade from a shack to a two-bedroom house. Could this be part of the global housing solution?”

You should read this for 12/8/2019:

Art, Music, and Film

H/T TidBITS: Amazon Music gives the gift of free streaming

H/T: Anna: How To Make Star Wars Paper Snowflakes

Snow Brawl

Snowbrawl is a fun short film of a children’s snowball fight shot as if it were a John Wick or Mission Impossible action sequence. David Leitch, the uncredited co-director of John Wick and director of Deadpool 2, shot the whole thing for Apple on an iPhone 11 Pro.

Books, Writing, and Language

Small bookstores are booming after nearly being wiped out

Dane Neller, the owner of Shakespeare & Co. in New York City, just opened his third indie bookstore, and he’s proving the naysayers wrong.
“Bookstores are back and they’re back in a big way,” he said. “I’m not giving to to hyperbole — it was record-breaking for us.”

Education

The New Humanities Once-robust fields are being broken up and stripped for parts.

Food and Drink

H/T John Scalzi: A Conversation With the Team That Made Bread With Ancient Egyptian Yeast

Mulling Over Mulled Wine

History and Archaeology

George Will Confirms Nixon’s Vietnam Treason

Nixon’s newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them to refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson.
Nixon’s interference with these negotiations violated President John Adams’s 1797 Logan Act, banning private citizens from intruding into official government negotiations with a foreign nation.

Science and Nature

H/T Yasmine: Measles makes body ‘forget’ how to fight infection

Measles has a devastating impact on the body’s immune system that could make it harder to fight infections for years, a pair of studies show.
The virus can cause “immune amnesia” – meaning the body forgets how to fight bugs it once knew how to beat.
Measles also resets the immune system to a “baby-like” state, compromising its ability to devise ways of tackling new infections.
Experts said the findings showed the importance of vaccination.

Society

Waiting for Obama

Technology

That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

The purpose of the Tyra account, we believe, was not to spread heartwarming messages to Americans. Rather, the tweet about Warrick Dunn was really a Trojan horse to gain followers in a larger plan by a foreign adversary. We think this because we believe @IamTyraJackson was an account operated by the successors to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted the IRA for waging a massive information war during the 2016 U.S. election. Since then, the IRA seems to have been subsumed into Russia’s Federal News Agency, but its work continues. In the case of @IamTyraJackson, the IRA’s goal was two-fold: Grow an audience in part through heartwarming, inspiring messages, and use that following to spread messages promoting division, distrust, and doubt.

Women’s Work

H/T Kira Cee: First she saved my life. Then she rescued me again with a Thanksgiving invitation

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Naomi Shihab Nye Gate A-4

H/T Kira Cee: Oldest Person In Australia Likes To Knit Mini Sweaters For Injured Penguins

What would happen if we randomly gave $1,000 to poor families? Now we know.

“Cash transfers benefited the entire local economy, not just direct recipients. As money made its way through the area, both families who did and did not receive cash ended up substantially better off.”

You should read this for 6/22/2019:

Art and Film

The Mandalorian: Everything we know about the new Star Wars show on Disney Plus

Books, Writing, and Language

H/T Ari:

Eradicating the e-Word: Musings on Myaamia Language Reclamation

A significant part of my professional work involves challenging the e-word and naysayers of language reclamation like Dr. Baking Soda. This partly occurs by my pointing out that even if a language has no living speakers, it can be brought back into use so long as it is documented and claimed by people who want to learn it. This is an attested process: many Miami adults now speak myaamia. Some children acquire myaamia at home, alongside English. Community members increasingly locate themselves as Miamis by introducing themselves in myaamia, as I did for this essay. Some Miamis tweet in myaamia.

H/T Brent Simmons: You’re probably using the wrong dictionary

Education

What’s Lost When Black Children Are Socialized Into a White World

Behaviors that many black parents might consider annoying but developmentally appropriate, such as an ill-timed joke or talking back to an adult, are treated by school staff as cause for suspension. From there, students are pushed out of classrooms, lose learning time, and can end up in the school-to-prison pipeline. “It’s a totally different environment, a totally different culture,” Black said when we spoke in July 2018.

From the office of the Provost at Indiana University Bloomington: On the First Amendment

Moreover, in my view, students who are women, gay, or of color could reasonably be concerned that someone with Professor Rasmusen’s expressed prejudices and biases would not give them a fair shake in his classes, and that his expressed biases would infect his perceptions of their work. Given the strength and longstanding nature of his views, these concerns are reasonable.
Therefore, the Kelley School is taking a number of steps to ensure that students not add the baggage of bigotry to their learning experience:
* No student will be forced to take a class from Professor Rasmusen. The Kelley School will provide alternatives to Professor Rasmusen’s classes;
* Professor Rasmusen will use double-blind grading on assignments; if there are components of grading that cannot be subject to a double-blind procedure, the Kelley School will have another faculty member ensure that the grades are not subject to Professor Rasmusen’s prejudices.
If other steps are needed to protect our students or colleagues from bigoted actions, Indiana University will take them.

The Middle Ages Have Been Misused by the Far Right. Here’s Why It’s So Important to Get Medieval History Right

The European Middle Ages seem to be having a moment. Although it’s true that, essentially since the time they ended, the period has been used to justify the shape of an author’s contemporary world, the appropriation of the Middle Ages by white supremacists in the last few years has been particularly notable. These white nationalists have used the Middle Ages as the source of their own “Lost Cause,” referencing, for example, the medieval Crusades as a great defensive struggle in which a unified, white Europe defended itself from a hostile, non-white, Islamic invader—even though this understanding is a myth.

‘It’s all white people’: Allegations of white supremacy are tearing apart a prestigious medieval studies group

Facing several hundred people in an auditorium in downtown Washington this month, Rambaran-Olm spoke for less than a minute: The International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS) was encouraging and emboldening white supremacists, she said, an attitude typified by its refusal to change its name. Rambaran-Olm, a woman of color, was stepping down as the group’s second vice president, effective immediately.

Food and Drink

Cook Fresh Corn on the Cob in Your Microwave

Spiced Mulled Wine

History and Archaeology

The Middle Ages Have Been Misused by the Far Right. Here’s Why It’s So Important to Get Medieval History Right

Society

The great American labor paradox: Plentiful jobs, most of them bad

The numbers tell one story. Unemployment in the US is the lowest it’s been in 50 years. More Americans have jobs than ever before. Wage growth keeps climbing.
People tell a different story. Long job hunts. Trouble finding work with decent pay. A lack of predictable hours.

Federal Judge Asks DEA To Explain Why All 179 Of Its Stash House Sting Targets Are Minorities

The twist is the drug stash house is fake. There are no drugs. There are no armed guards protecting the drugs. Once the mark arrives with a weapon and a plan of attack, the ATF arrests the person for thinking about robbing a fake stash house to steal nonexistent drugs.
The other twist is the prosecution. Since the drugs never existed, the ATF is free to claim the targeted stash was large enough to trigger mandatory minimum sentences.

Technology

Michael Tsaihas a great roundup of commentary regarding 1Password’s recent influx of investor capital

I agree in principle, but I would like to see a list of top-quality consumer apps developed by software companies that took lots of VC money. I don’t see any in my Dock.

—Michael Tsai. See also Om Malik Some thoughts on iPassword funding + How to do strong passwords

Nikki Haley lost her password, so she sent confidential info over unclassified system “Former US Ambassador to the UN was responding to North Korea nuke testing.”

Women’s Work

Men still earn more than women—even after they’re dead

Marie Kondo Goes Full Goop “The tidying guru helped America clean out its closets. Now she wants to fill them back up.”

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

‘His beliefs are appalling’: email scandal sparks calls for Stephen Miller to resign

The communications had revealed the top aide’s obsessive focus on injecting white nationalist-style talking points on immigration, race and crime into the far-right website Breitbart, both during and after Donald 💩🔥💰’s successful bid for the White House.

. . .

Miller, one of the few people to remain in the administration since 💩🔥💰 took office in January 2017, is understood to be the architect behind hardline immigration policies including family separation and the Muslim ban.

Devin Nunes Is Living in a Fantasyland “The representative’s claims about stories reporting on the Trump administration are part of a universe of untruth.”

At Fox News, on talk radio, and on the web, American conservatives have built a communications system that effectively consolidates in-group identity. Much of the time, the talkers and listeners do not themselves understand what they are saying. They use key words and phrases as gang signs: badges of identity that are recognized without necessarily being understood.

💩🔥💰 War on Expertise Is Only Intensifying

💩🔥💰 has repeatedly denigrated law-enforcement officials at the FBI, moved to evict scientists from the policy-making process, excluded the Central Command general with direct responsibility for the region from his abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from Syria, and even sparred with meteorologists over his mistaken insistence that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama in September.

You should read this for 11/16/2019:

Art, music, and Film

H/T John Gruber: Disney+ Version of Star Wars: A New Hope Alters Greedo Scene Yet Again For a better history see The version of Star Wars on Disney+ changes the canon once again

The Internet Archive Is Digitizing & Preserving Over 100,000 Vinyl Records: Hear 750 Full Albums Now Vinyl recordings preserved and available for download.

Books, Writing, and Language

Giant Publisher Macmillan Goes To War Against Libraries

We’ve seen this before. Publishers have massively jacked up the prices of lendable ebooks (note the $60 price above), they’ve built in “expiring” licenses so that those expensive purchases can only be loaned out a limited number of times. And now they’re limiting how many licenses can be purchased by a single library.
This is an attack on libraries for no good reason, other than publishers hating the concept of “free” access to books.

Via BoingBoingDog has learned to “speak” with a soundboard: “Outside. Come now.”

Education

The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education See also this Twitter thread

Food and Drink

Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp and Parmesan Lemon Cream Sauce I added some capers.

History and Archaeology

Many imperial Romans had roots in the Middle East, genetic history shows

Two thousand years ago, the streets of Rome bustled with people from all over the ancient world. The empire’s trade routes stretched from North Africa to Asia, and new immigrants poured in every day, both by choice and by force. Now, an ancient DNA study has shown those far-flung connections were written in the genomes of the Romans.
People from the city’s earliest eras and from after the Western empire’s decline in the fourth century C.E. genetically resembled other Western Europeans. But during the imperial period most sampled residents had Eastern Mediterranean or Middle Eastern ancestry. At that time, “Rome was like New York City … a concentration of people of different origins joining together,” says Guido Barbujani, a population geneticist at the University of Ferrara in Italy who wasn’t involved in the study. “This is the kind of cutting-edge work that’s starting to fill in the details [of history],” adds Kyle Harper, a Roman historian at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Skeletons found in Leicester could be the earliest examples of African people living in the famously diverse city.

The University of Leicester found 83 skeletons in a Roman graveyard dating back as early as the 2nd Century.
Six with possible African ancestry is the first evidence of migrants from the continent in the city, experts said.

Again, despite what some ahistoric newts want you to believe, Europe in the Middle Ages was not White People Land. It just wasn’t. We know there were people of African descent in Roman Britain

Science and Nature

A “mouse-deer,” seen once in the last century, has now been caught on film

Sasquatch or Wendigo? Mysterious howls in Canadian wilderness spark confusion

Technology

Via John Gruber: @jelenawoehr on Twitter: Every Horse Emoji, Ranked

Women’s Work

Why Trump Attacked Marie Yovanovitch He can’t help but go after women, even when doing so hurts his cause.

It was almost as if the president found himself triggered by Yovanovitch, the 61-year-old career diplomat. But why was the president’s response so different to witnesses that were roughly saying the same thing? What was the big difference between Kent and Taylor and Yovanovitch? All three are career diplomats, all three are Ivy League graduates, all three have worked in the state department, all three are experts in Ukraine. But only one of them is a woman. Could that be why the president singled out Yovanovich? It’s almost as if the president is unable to control his rage against women. It’s almost as if the president thinks he can bully women and silence them.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Who is Rudy Giuliani’s friend “Charles”? An accidental text may have outed his identity

Two days after publication, on the evening he attended a Yankees playoff game with Alan Dershowitz, Giuliani — President Donald Trump’s 75-year-old informal cybersecurity adviser — accidentally texted me what appeared to be a password: Eight characters, beginning with the name of a networking company and including a capital letter, a special character, and a number. Multiple IT experts confirmed it could be nothing else, and, given the iPhone’s messaging setup, impossible to type with your butt or in any other unwitting way.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Why You Should Keep Old Blankets and Coats in Your Car

H/T Kira Cee: Villagers knit jumpers for Indian elephants to protect the large mammals from near-freezing temperatures

Elephants in India are sporting colourful woollen jumpers after villagers knitted the super-size garments to protect the animals from near-freezing temperatures.

You should read this for 11/09/2019:

Art , Music and Film

H/T Dawno: Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson + Astronaut Cady Coleman flute duet in space

Books, Writing, Language and Libraries

Troubling Copyright Bill Goes to the US Senate

With the top penalty set at $30,000 ($15,000 for unregistered works), it’s easy to imagine copyright trolls lining up to file cases. That amount needs to come down—no small-time creator is being damaged to that extent, and any content company who was being so hurt would file a lawsuit anyway.

Rural Library Adds Charging Station And Horse-Shelter/

Florida county denies its libraries funding for New York Times digital subscriptions, calling it “fake news”

Commissioner Jeff Kinnard: “I don’t feel like the county is obligated to subscribe to every major newspaper or every point of view. At some point, you draw the line.” (The Chronicle reported that Citrus County’s library system had no subscriptions to any newspaper.)

The library would have paid about o.4 cents per library card for a digital subscription to the New York Times.

Education

Why the middle class can’t afford life in America anymore

“Teachers are killing themselves,” Barry says in the new book, “Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America” (Ecco), out Tuesday. “I shouldn’t be having to drive Uber at eight o’clock at night on a weekday. I just shut down from the mental toll: grading papers between rides, thinking of what I could be doing instead of driving — like creating a curriculum.”

Food and Drink

Easy Tuscan Bean Soup Canned (or dried and soaked) cannellini beans, carrots, celery, garlic, and baby spinach or kale.

H/T Lisa Carnell: Celtic apple crumble with Irish whiskey cream sauce recipe “Tart apples, Irish whiskey, and Kerrygold butter this is a perfectly decadent, Irish treat Irish food expert and cookbook authors vouch for.”

Via the WSJ: The Food That Helps Battle Depression

So what should we eat? The research points to a Mediterranean-style diet made up primarily of fruits and vegetables, extra-virgin olive oil, yogurt and cheese, legumes, nuts, seafood, whole grains and small portions of red meat. The complexity of this diet will provide the nutrition our brain needs, regulate our inflammatory response and support the good bacteria in our gut,

Chicken Tikka Masala

This dish is made with chicken that gets marinated in a spicy curry sauce with plain yogurt and cooked with tomatoes, spices, and more plain yogurt. You can use breasts or thighs, and it’s great served with rice.

History and Archaeology

Hoard of golden treasure stumbled upon by metal detectorist revealed to be most important Anglo-Saxon find in history

Instead, the study demonstrates that the material is almost exclusively military in nature. Even one of the small number of ecclesiastical objects in the hoard appears to have been of a potentially military character.

The hoard was made up of golden fittings from up to 150 swords, gold and garnet elements of a very high status seax (fighting knife), a spectacular gilded silver helmet, an impressive 30cm-long golden cross, a beautiful gold and garnet pectoral cross, a probable bishop’s headdress – and parts of what is likely to have been a portable battlefield shrine or reliquary.

See also the accompanying image and text database about the 700-odd items in the Staffordshire Hoard.

Science and Nature

John Hames Audubon’s Birds of America

John James Audubon’s Birds of America is a portal into the natural world. Printed between 1827 and 1838, it contains 435 life-size watercolors of North American birds (Havell edition), all reproduced from hand-engraved plates, and is considered to be the archetype of wildlife illustration. Nearly 200 years later, the Audubon prints are coming to life once again, thanks to our vibrant digital library. Roam around below and enjoy one of the most treasured pieces of Audubon’s grand and wild legacy. Each print is also available as a free high-resolution download.

I’ve posted some very amateur recordings of a red fox barking

Society

The Many Voices of Journalism

Technology

Bill Gates’s Fortune Isn’t Going Anywhere

vAs I write this, Bill Gates is worth about $106.8 billion (just so you can compare that figure with your own bank balance more easily, it’s $106,800,000,000). Recall Gates’s retort: “When you say I should pay $100 billion, then I’m starting to do a little math over what I have left over.” This is a duplicitous way to talk about Warren’s proposal, because taxing $100 billion out of $106.8 billion would amount to a 94 percent tax; Warren has proposed an annual 3 percent wealth tax on assets over $1 billion. A 3 percent tax on $100 billion in wealth is $3 billion.

Women’s Work

H/T Yasmin: Birth canals are different all over the world, countering a long-held evolutionary theory

Via
@Tash_Stanton Friends at conferences – please do not assume that the people that you talk to do not know anything. I just got told that I should read what Stanton et al found about pain.

I. Am. Stanton.

Via @ ShannonDowney: A story… (in proper thread form)

I go estate sale shopping regularly and whenever I find an unfinished embroidery project I buy it and finish it bc there’s no way that soul is resting with an unfinished project left behind. One day I found this stunner for $5.

The Washington Post’s union finds that women and people of color in the newsroom make less than white men

Japan ‘glasses ban’ for women at work sparks backlash

In big step forward, tampons in Germany won’t be taxed as luxury items

A vote on Thursday in German parliament changes the tax rate for menstrual hygiene products like tampons or pads from their current designation as “luxury items” to that of “daily necessities.”

As of January 1,2020, this means a tax cut from 19 percent to 7 percent, and a big win for those who advocated for the change.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

It Was a Corrupt Quid Pro Quo

Newly released testimony in the House impeachment inquiry shows in new detail how the Trump administration’s demands for a quid pro quo from the Ukrainian government operated. . . . And other testimony and communications show that the statement had to specifically mention President Donald Trump’s personal political obsessions.

Here’s Sondland’s testimony and here’s Volker’s testimony.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Tim Cook: The Power of Diversity

I was getting notes from kids who were struggling with their sexual orientation. They were depressed. Some said [they] had suicidal thoughts. Some had been banished by their own parents and family. It weighed on me in terms of what I could do. Obviously I couldn’t talk to each one individually that reached out, but you always know if you have people reaching out to you that there’s many more that don’t, that are just out there wondering whether they have a future or not, wondering whether life gets better … From there I really decided. There’s been a lot of people that came before me that made it possible for me to sit here today, and I needed to do something to help those people that were in a younger generation. It probably took a year between getting the words exactly like I wanted and picking the right time for the company, because I didn’t want it to be a distraction and so forth. I have not regretted it for one minute. Not at all.

Rap star Nelly has been quietly sending 2 kids to college every year for a decade

Jay Inslee Isn’t Going Away “The Washington governor may be out of the 2020 race, but his ideas are shaping the future of climate policy”

His six-part climate plan is by far the most ambitious and thoughtful road map to solving the crisis that has ever been put forward by a presidential candidate. It not only forced other Democrats to up their climate game, but large parts of it were immediately borrowed by other candidates, including Elizabeth Warren. So even if Inslee’s presidential campaign was a failure, his larger campaign to push U.S. climate politics to a new level of sophistication and ambition was a raging success, providing the policy DNA for the next generation of climate leaders.

You should read this for 10/19/2019:

Books, Writing, and Language

From Jennifer Cochran Biederman : The Future of Field Notes

Paging through my father’s field notebooks after he passed away, I discovered a deeply meaningful archive of memories. While he had used these pages to publish dozens of articles related to the natural history of fish, herpetological, and invertebrate fauna, here and there among the Latin names and GPS coordinates were brief notes that documented the happy days that my family had tagged along with my father in the field. Bookmarks in time – these passages are a gift and reminder that, for some, the duality of being a field scientist and parent/spouse/companion are best when intertwined.

Education

Exclusive: Turf War Blocked CFPB From Helping Fix Student Loan Forgiveness Program

The nation’s most powerful consumer protection agency sent examiners into companies that run student loan call centers to try to fix a troubled loan forgiveness program. But the Department of Education blocked the bureau from getting the information it needed, NPR has learned.

Food and Drink

Classic Bolognese Sauce You can use canned or fresh tomatoes, but you’ll need ground beef, ground pork, ground Italian sausage, and a little pancetta.

Researchers Find Dietary Changes That Help Treat Inflammatory Bowel Disease

A History of Chop Suey “A dish which arrived with the Gold Rush, spread with the railway and endured prohibition was Chinese by origin, but claimed by America.”

chicken tikka masala

History and Archaeology

Archaeologists unearth a Bronze Age warrior’s personal toolkit The finds were associated with one person, one of many who died in a fairly large battle along Germany’s Tollense River, c. between 1380 and 1250 BCE.

The ancient kit contained a bronze knife with a curved blade, an awl decorated with ladders and rows of triangles, and a bronze chisel, along with an assortment of bronze scraps and small ingots. Wear marks on the chisel suggest that someone probably used it to cut bronze fragments like the ones in the kit. The curved blade of the bronze knife, with structural reinforcement on the back side, looks as if someone recycled a sickle to make it. There were also a few tubes made of rolled bronze.

Science and Nature

Cats High On Catnip

Society

For the first time ever, taxes on the 400 richest Americans were lower than taxes on everyone else

In 2018, for the first time in recorded US history, the 400 richest American households paid a lower rate of tax than any other group of American taxpayers: 23%, down from 70% in 1950 and 47% in 1980.

Women’s Work

How Susan Kare Designed User-Friendly Icons for the First Macintosh

If it wasn’t for needlepoint, the computer graphics we have come to know and love today might have looked a lot different. Pioneering designer Susan Kare was taught by her mother how to do counted-thread embroidery, which gave her the basic knowledge she needed to create the first icons for the Apple Macintosh 35 years ago.
“It just so happened that I had small black and white grids to work with,” she says. “The process reminded me of working needlepoint, knitting patterns or mosaics. I was lucky to have had a mother who enjoyed crafts.”

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Never-Before-Seen 💩🔥💰 Tax Documents Show Major Inconsistencies

Donald Trump’s businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender — and less profitable to the officials who set the buildings’ property tax.

The Turkish president apparently threw 💩🔥💰’s ridiculous letter in the trash

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

How the U.S. Could Have an All-Renewable Energy Grid

You should read this for 10/11/2019:

Art and Film

Star Trek: Picard Trailer I am ridiculously hopeful about this new CBS All Access series starting January 23, 2020, riffing off of Star Trek: Next Generation and starring Patrick Stewart.

Books, Writing, and Language

Publishers’ e-book restrictions and pricing hurt library users in Seattle, King County and beyond

On Nov. 1, Macmillan Publishing, one of the country’s biggest publishers, is launching a library e-book embargo, meaning that for the first eight weeks after publication, public libraries — no matter their size — may purchase just one copy of a new e-book.

The Secret to Shopping in Used Bookstores “I’ve learned to treat a visit to a used bookstore less like a treasure hunt and more like a nature walk, with plenty of chances to enjoy myself along the way.”

The radical power of “Jane Eyre,” according to 57 translations from across the world

Food and Drink

The Manhattan “A classic Manhattan—made with whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters—is rich, warming, slightly sweet. It’s a great cocktail to sip on as the weather cools down.”

BUtternut Squash Soup “This butternut squash soup has a secret ingredient—a tart green apple. It adds just the right balance for the squash. Ready in an hour and freezes well.”

History and Archaeology

Inscription Reveals Final Years of Life in Pompeii Before the City Was Buried in Ash

The inscription describes a massive coming-of-age party for a wealthy young man. who reaches the age of an adult citizen. According to the inscription, he threw a massive party that included a banquet serving 6,840 people and a show in which 416 gladiators fought over several days.

Archaeologists explore Shakespearean-era Whitechapel playhouse site ‘The Boar’s Head was converted from an inn to a playhouse in 1598, but there are references to open air performances on the site as early as 1557.”

Science and Nature

NASA’s scheme to resurrect the drill on its Mars probe

NASA blasted the InSight lander to Mars with the aim of drilling some 16 feet into the Martian ground.
But the drill, also called the “mole” or “self-hammering heat probe,” only burrowed 14 inches into the soil before getting stuck. The space agency hasn’t been able to move the heat-detecting probe since February.
But NASA has a plan. And the people behind that plan appear confident.

Via BoingBoing: Studies suggest dyslexia could be caused by having less brain plasticity

Two studies point to diminished brain plasticity — the ability to adapt thinking and memory to new information — as the cause behind dyslexia. People with dyslexia appear to have less brain plasticity than average, according to the studies, which were conducted at Hebrew University of Israel and MIT.

Meh. Color me unconvinced.

Society

My land of make believe: life after The Sims
“Feeling increasingly anxious and lost, Liv Siddall found herself retreating to the comfort and security of video games – often playing for hours at a time. Here, she reveals how she finally escaped back to reality”

A Baby Step in the Marathonic Journey of Mental Wellness

Cancel Billionaires

A growing body of economic and political-science research demonstrates that Gilded Age–type inequality does not just mean having too many with too little. It is warping the very social fabric of the country, stifling mobility, innovation, investment, and growth, and putting the country at political risk.

Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions “New data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers”

Saudi Aramco 59.26
Chevron 43.35
Gazprom 43.23
ExxonMobil 41.90
National Iranian Oil Co 35.66
BP 34.02
Royal Dutch Shell 31.95

We no longer share a common lived experience<

But it is hard to see how we can bring about enduring improvement in the nation’s condition without addressing the needs of the tens of millions of Americans who live in places that are failing to catch up with the rest of our country.

Technology

Google finally gives Reader the respect it deserves with an actual gravestone

Google Reader has been dead for over six years, and the internet hasn’t been the same since. I still haven’t found a replacement that I enjoy quite as much as my memories of Reader, and I mourn its death every day. But now, we may finally have a place where we can pay respects to the beloved RSS app.

Via Om Malik:

Social Media, Propaganda and War

Women’s Work

On a psychological level, criticism can sting even when you expect it. But it’s far more upsetting when the criticism seems to come out of left field—and because women face social pressure to come across as sensitive and undemanding, a stern word or two from a female boss can provoke a disproportionately big reaction

While both men and women bristled at the criticism from female bosses, there was at least one key difference between workers of different genders: Men also demonstrated a tendency to dismiss the validity of criticism from women, judging their feedback as less accurate. “By contrast, female workers’ perception of feedback does not vary by manager gender,” Abel finds.

I was harassed at an In-N-Out bathroom for being a black trans woman

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

The GOP will follow Trump anywhere — except out of a foreign war

Trump splits Republican voters as friends and family clash: ‘We don’t speak’

“Behind the scenes they know who they’re going to vote for but people don’t want to say that they’re for Trump. They’re embarrassed to.”

Via the BBC: Viewpoint: White House letter is self-inflicted wound “An eight-page letter from White House lawyers to Democratic leaders in the House decries the impeachment inquiry as “baseless” and “constitutionally invalid”. They don’t have a case, says legal scholar Jonathan Turley.”

Yet the constitution does not expressly require anything other than a vote of the House on impeachment itself and a majority threshold for any referral of the matter to the Senate for trial.
This is a constitutional function of the highest order for Congress. There is a legitimate basis for congressional investigation under both its oversight and impeachment authority.
If proven, these allegations of self-dealing could be a basis for articles of impeachment.

Via NPR: How Former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Became a Target in Ukraine

Yovanovitch focused on understanding and promoting civil society — journalists, activists and citizens’ groups whose work is considered vital to democracy.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Rick Steves is putting a $1 million “self-imposed carbon tax” on his travel company

Thieves apologize profusely and return stolen Indigenous artwork