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"We have more tools than ever to prevent the worst outcomes"
The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met yesterday and recommended everyone 6 months or older get an updated mRNA COVID vaccine dose this fall [gift link]. The non-mRNA Novavax vaccine is still under review in the U.S., though it has approval in Europe, with some evidence suggesting that following mRNA doses with Novavax leads to better protection against breakthrough infections. "ACIP Cliff Notes" from Your Local Epidemiologist. Reminder tweet to swab throat, cheeks and nostrils for best results from rapid at-home testing.
“digging its own grave in search for gold.”
Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off [The Verge]
“We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user,” the company shared on its blog. “We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.”Popular video game engine Unity is making big changes to its pricing structure that’s causing confusion and anger among developers. On Tuesday, Unity announced that on January 1st, 2024, it would be implementing a pay-per-download pricing scheme that would charge developers a flat fee any time a game using Unity software is installed.
Painting Wind Turbine Blades Black Helps Birds Avoid Deadly Collisions
Painting Wind Turbine Blades Black Helps Birds Avoid Deadly Collisions. A recent study found the simple intervention reduced bird mortality by 72 percent.
"I decide that it is practical for me to find it attractive"
Silly, fun, or heartwarming scifi stories published this year about robots & AI include "A Guide for Working Breeds" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (author of "Fandom for Robots" (2017), previously), "Custom Options Available" by Amy Griswold, and "Rager in Space" by Charlie Jane Anders.
He loves the boxes, but hates the doors.
Meet Leo, who lives at a Home Depot in New Jersey. (Single link WaPo gift article)
"I found it interesting and rewarding"
Jim Ray riffs on the satirical 2021 tweet about "Don't Create The Torment Nexus" with a short fiction story told as a thread on Mastodon starting: "Like seemingly everyone on this app I have plenty of opinions about the launch of The Torment Nexus, the opening of the Xthonic Gateway, and release of the arch-demon Tzaunh MAY HIS REIGN BE DARK AND ETERNAL, who has begun his foretold 10,000 years of suffering and torment. I figure now is a good time to open up a bit about my experience at the company." The skewerings in the 17 following posts call to my mind The Bug by Ellen Ullman or the Knives Out films. Ray noted, "The Call of PMthulu writes itself".
TECHNO SOUND TURBO
debuglive asks the big question:
an Amiga 500, Stereo Master and handful of $1 records from a 1990 Sunday market: can we make a dance track on a budget home computer?
Solar energy modules may help solve renewable storage issues
These solar energy modules generate enough heat to melt metal. It's hoped they can help solve renewable storage issues. Renewable energy company RayGen has officially opened its $27 million solar and thermal power plant project, in north-west Victoria.
A Mystery That Should Not Exist
Sarah Elizabeth, author of the upcoming book The Art of Fantasy, posted in May that she'd been searching for years for the name of the artist who painted the cover for the 1976 Dell Laurel Leaf edition of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Four months of dead ends from various internet sleuths later, the folks at WBUR's Endless Thread podcast have announced the mystery is solved and described how they did it. (Full transcript available at the link.)
Adam And Kevin Ruin Theme Parks
As part of his Factually podcast, comedian and WGA representative Adam Conover interviews Defunctland's Kevin Perjurer about what drew him to theme parks and their history, how such parks factor into our culture, and how services like YouTube are enabling a new breed of fandom documentarian. (SLYT)
안녕하세요 to Tiny Desk Korea
NPR, in association with LG U+ and Something Special, has launched Tiny Desk Korea. First up is 김창완 밴드 (KIM CHANG WAN BAND). More about the project here, and more about artists to come here.
Free Online Browser tools: Big list of free In Browser, Single Use tools
You need to do a thing - NOW!
For when you need to calculate a thing, or look up a thing, or be able to do the thing in your Browser without any faff.
Most of the tools listed are NOT from https://freetinytools.com/ but I had to put a link in the description....
Hundreds of volunteers are replanting seagrass meadows off Cairns
Life-saving seagrass meadows sprouting in tropical first, a decade after Cyclone Yasi destroyed them. Hundreds of volunteers are replanting seagrass meadows off Cairns and Mourilyan Harbour. Now, it's hoped the dugongs, turtles and other marine animals that once lived there will return.
"[T]he transformation of the internet into this shitty mall."
Ryan Broderick on The Verge writes on the possible end of the Googleverse. Mentioned: Usenet, Altavista, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Myspace, AI, the sameness of recipe sites, Blogger, Google Reader, Perez Hilton and Anil Dash. Not mentioned: Google Plus.
Electric Friends of Electric Friends
Electronic pop/dance flourished internationally: Be a Boy, Gina X Performance; Thrash, Cowboys International; Day Breaks, Night Heals, Thomas Leer & Robert Rental; Aurora B., Krisma; Chip 'N' Roll, Silicon Teens; I Need Somebody To Love Tonight, Sylvester; Faites le proton (Inst.), Casino Music; Kameari Pop, P-Model; Margherita (Inst. Hot Edit), Massara; The Visitors (Inst.), Gino Soccio; Alien (12" Disco), Nostromo; Underwater, Harry Thumann. Minimalism too: 1, Galen Herod; Ice Floe, Young Scientist; Have a Good Ride, Pyrolator; Sei Note in Logica, Roberto Cacciapaglia. Trash Theory's Before Are 'Friends' Electric gives a genealogy for high-profile British synth-pop of the year: Electricity (Version II), OMD; Are 'Friends' Electric? Tubeway Army; Cars, Gary Numan. And, technically, it was the year of The New Sound of Music (1979).
The underwater Amazon off Australia's coast
The underwater Amazon off Australia's coast that could help tackle climate change. New research shows the climate benefits of protecting and restoring underwater kelp forests could be equivalent to planting a billion trees.
Big Boat Stuck III
Last month, the Panama Maritime Authority published its final report [pdf] into the 2021 grounding of the Ever Given (MeFi previously). Mike Schuler summarised the findings at gCaptain, noting that:
The report was highly critical of navigation decisions made by the SCA pilots. According to the report, they did not take bad weather conditions into account, gave improper instructions to the helmsman, and did not communicate effectively with the bridge team due to language difficulties. The vessel was also traveling faster than the maximum speed, which the report noted is common.Some lessons clearly remain to be learned though, because today, the 300m LNG carrier BW Lesmes also got itself jammed sideways in the canal, and the Cayman Islands tanker Burri ran into it. This time however, both ships were freed within a few hours.
Nobody wants him. He just stares at the world.
Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule: How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.
The meddling of oligarchs and other monied interests in the fate of nations is not new....But Musk’s influence is more brazen and expansive. There is little precedent for a civilian’s becoming the arbiter of a war between nations in such a granular way, or for the degree of dependency that the U.S. now has on Musk in a variety of fields, from the future of energy and transportation to the exploration of space.
Mick Smiley Made the Best Ghostbusters Song, Then He Disappeared.
You know the scene in Ghostbusters where the power's been shut down, the ghosts have broken containment, and they start to run amok in New York? The distinctive, eerie song- "Magic" by Mick Smiley- that accompanies it exists only in the film and on the soundtrack; it was never released as a single and Smiley never released it himself. But who even is Mick Smiley? In 2016, Josie Riesman tracked him down and got his story.
How the iMac Saved Apple
On August 15, 1998, Apple introduced the iMac.
It's very easy to go all fanboy/fangirl when discussing anything Apple, but it's no exaggeration to say that this 15" Bondi blue, all-in-one computer saved Apple from bankruptcy. The Verge looks back.
more cyberpunk than cyberpunk
After Cyberpunk 2077's rocky launch, it's time to bring back Deus Ex [PC Gamer]
“Currently published by Square Enix, the Deus Ex series has been on hiatus since 2016, after the (mostly good) Mankind Divided failed to match sales expectations. But the huge attention and commercial success Cyberpunk has garnered, combined with its equally significant problems, has opened up a window for the series to return. This would really be things coming full circle. Deus Ex essentially served as the template for Cyberpunk 2077's core, boasting the same blend of fighting, sneaking and hacking. It also shares plenty of themes, like body modification and corporate conspiracies. For all intents and purposes, Deus Ex is a cyberpunk game. [...] Deus Ex's superiority is particularly evident when it comes to the RPG side of things. Putting aside the bugs and the technical issues, Cyberpunk's biggest problem is that its RPG systems are either poorly implemented or simply don't work at all.”
Remember how it improved society somewhat
You might already know that political / reporting / general nonfiction comics outlet The Nib is closing down at the end of August. It was too good to last.
You might not know that The Nib is making all fifteen issues of the magazine free to download as PDFs! Consider kicking back a few bucks to help them preserve the website in the meanwhile.
You might not know that The Nib is making all fifteen issues of the magazine free to download as PDFs! Consider kicking back a few bucks to help them preserve the website in the meanwhile.
Let's say gay!
With Hillsborough County Public Schools only allowing excerpts of Shakespeare's plays in Florida classes due to "Don't Say Gay" and other rightwing laws, I thought it was time for us to loudly say gay and check out some 2023 books with LGBTQ+ themes!
in June 2020, OverDrive was sold to private equity firm KKR
Karawynn Long on looking for the reason why the ability to recommend a book to your library’s buyers disappeared from all OverDrive web portals. On the KKR sale: the ones who (like me, usually) pay no particular attention to the world of “high finance”, don’t recognize the moniker, and so had zero reaction, and the ones like my friend, a NYT business journalist, whose reaction as soon as I said “KKR” was the aural equivalent of the Munch scream emoji. (SL Substack). Bonus: a librarian on their experience purchasing for a single branch library that is part of a state wide consortium.
Ohio votes No on Issue 1, rejecting Republican anti-democracy measure
Ohio voters decisively rejected Issue 1, Tuesday's sole ballot item that sought to make it tougher to amend the state constitution: under 1, constitutional amendments would have required a 60% majority instead of 50%. Ohio will be voting on whether to enshrine the right to abortion in their Constitution in November; 1 was an attempt to prevent that.
If you don’t make predictions, you’ll never know what to be surprised by
The Curse of the Long Boom (wired)
Blessed Are The Noisemakers
DJ Food has opened for Art Of Noise twice, once in 2018 and again in 2023. In each occasion, he created a sound collage of work from across the AON spectrum. The individual members are prolific on their own, so while the mixes stray far from AON sources, the journey of each of these mixes is surprising and engaging and remains true to the original group. Blessed Are The Noisemakers - Before, Behind & Beyond The Art of Noise [1h36m, 2018] and Blessed Are The Noisemakers (Diversion 2) [1h34m, 2023] are both posted to Mixcloud.
Helm of Brilliance, 40 Watt
A complete index to the paper issues of Dragon Magazine. That's it. This is just an index; finding the issues themselves is left up to the reader.
Art & ACT -- the remnants of Art Of Noise
In 1985 , after one album using new technology and generating a market-changing single, three-fifths of Art Of Noise departed the ZTT music label for greener pastures. The remaining duo, Trevor Horn and Paul Morley vowed to continue at ZTT but didn't. The Art & ACT project's [Facebook post about history] manifesto remains yet to be found, but Life's A Barrel Of Laughs [YT playlist ~20m, linktree to various sources], the audio component has finally been released. This is mostly of interest to AON completionists, but it is of interest nonetheless.
The Power of Provocative Copywriting
Throughout our conversations over the past year, Runner maintained that neither he nor his businesses ever crossed a legal line. Many people, his attitude projected, want to believe in something magical—be it the power of a weight-loss drug or the power of a psychic. And inherent in that belief is a measure of accepted deceit. If that wasn’t the case, Runner insisted, people would have asked for their money back. from The Greatest Scam Ever Written
Sinéad O’Connor, acclaimed Dublin singer, dies aged 56
Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor has died at the age of 56.
The acclaimed Dublin performer released 10 studio albums, while her song Nothing Compares 2 U was named the number one world single in 1990 by the Billboard Music Awards.
Ms O’Connor was presented with the inaugural award for Classic Irish Album at the RTÉ Choice Music Awards earlier this year.
The singer received a standing ovation as she dedicated the award, for I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, to “each and every member of Ireland’s refugee community”.
Why is the NY Times seemingly so Anti-Trans?
Imara Jones and the Translash Podcast capture the story of a trans former NYT staffer.
"Hunter" joined the New York Times and thought they found their journalistic home. This podcast, part of a series on the Anti-Trans Hate Machine series, captures how the paper of record seems to have made a deliberate choice to actively court right-wing voices, especially those who peddle disinformation about trans people, which came to a head in April.
what it means to be too big, Black, and brilliant for this world
I'm A Virgo [Official Trailer]
“Through its depiction of Cootie — an awkward but endlessly curious and kindhearted young man Jerome inhabits with a boyish charm — and his parents, whose strict rules are a reflection of their love for him, I’m a Virgo is very explicitly telling a tale about what it means to be (or to raise) children whose Blackness and brilliance makes them too “big” for the world. Cootie’s gigantism is the way that Black children are robbed of their childhoods because of how other people perceive them to be older than they actually are and more deserving of punishment. Cootie’s gigantism is the boundless potential for greatness parents see in their Black children knowing full well that the society they’re living in isn’t designed to help them maximize it but, rather, to stifle it. It’s also a rather direct way of unpacking how, even when Black people manage to play the game successfully and reach the upper echelons of fame and fortune, the specter of racism by way of dehumanization is never all that far away.” [via: The Verge]
I’m a Luddite (and So Can You!)
In one of the last long form pieces for The Nib, Tom Humberstone talks about the true nature of the Luddite movement, and how their ideals of machines in service to man continue to resonate today. (SLThe Nib)
How the union dies
Maybe this quiet fading, engineered by a company with time and money to burn, is how the union dies.
A billionaire who doesn’t want to be called a billionaire, who blusters when his company’s service workers get likened to the blue-collar worker who raised him — this is the chasm between our putative national values and our daily reality. We want to believe in a middle-class America where hard work weaves its own safety net. But millions of workers don’t earn enough money to cover basic expenses.
Rick Rubin interviews Trent Reznor
Music Master Rick Rubin interviewed NIN creator Trent Reznor for his podcast Tetragrammaton. [2h10m, audio only] Nine Inch Nails is Rubin's favorite band. Reznor shares a lot, reflecting on his life and career from where he is now. It's a bit like Marc Maron only more about music and much more gentle.
Disabled Creatives in Comics: Interview with Tee Franklin
Funny, smart and far-ranging interview with the creator of Sun-Spider and #BlackComicsMonth and much more on disability (plus!) visibility in comics.
"I’ve always loved comics. Like my villain origin story is me basically blackmailing my older cousin who had his little girlfriend come over, and he was supposed to have been watching me, but since he chose to pay more attention to her, I was like “Give me comics and I won’t snitch.” [laughs], and that’s my introduction into comics." (Podcast available as well, interview by Carolyn Hinds)