Last year, an anti-vaccination activist was awarded a PhD from an Australian University. She conducted her thesis in the School of Law, Humanities and the Arts. Her thesis was titled “A critical analysis of the Australian government’s rationale for its vaccination policy”. In it, she argued th...
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Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts
👓 Conservatism Won't Survive Donald Trump | The Atlantic
As reflexive support for the president redefines their movement, most conservative commentators have caved to pressure, following along.
👓 Republican-led Congress passes sweeping tax bill | NBC
Congress approved a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax bill on Wednesday that slashes rates for corporations, provides new breaks for private businesses and reorganizes the individual tax code.
👓 N.Y. jail program forces families to buy from online vendors that overcharge for basic items sent to inmates | NY Daily News
Reuven Balu (NY Daily News)Infuriating inmate advocates, the state Department of Corrections has launched a pilot program that forces visitors to buy supplies for loved ones behind bars from five online vendors that they say overcharge for simple items.
State officials maintain the vendor system — expected to go statewide by fall 2018 — will reduce contraband being smuggled into facilities.
👓 Google Thinks I’m Dead | New York Times
Rachel Abrams (New York Times)(I know otherwise.)
👓 Google Maps’s Moat | Justin O’Beirne
How far ahead of Apple Maps is Google Maps?
👓 Latest on abc | Peter Woit
I’ve seen reports today (see here and here) that indicate that Mochizui’s IUT papers, which are supposed to contain a proof of the abc conjecture, have been accepted by the journal Publications of the RIMS. Some of the sources for this are in Japanese (e.g. this and this) and Google Translate has its limitations, so perhaps Japanese speaking readers can let us know if this is a misunderstanding.
I’ve seen reports today (see here and here) that indicate that Mochizui’s IUT papers, which are supposed to contain a proof of the abc conjecture, have been accepted by the journal Publications of the RIMS. Some of the sources for this are in Japanese (e.g. this and this) and Google Translate has its limitations, so perhaps Japanese speaking readers can let us know if this is a misunderstanding.
👓 The ABC Conjecture has not been proved | Cathy O’Neil, mathbabe
As I’ve blogged about before, proof is a social construct: it does not constitute a proof if I’ve convinced only myself that something is true. It only constitutes a proof if I can read…
👓 The ABC conjecture has (still) not been proved | Persiflage
Five years ago, Cathy O’Neil laid out a perfectly cogent case for why the (at that point recent) claims by Shinichi Mochizuki should not (yet) …
👓 Investing in Skills | Collin Donnell
I’m pretty comfortable on the command line. I can move about, issue commands, edit my profile, pipe things around, all that. However — and I’m probably supposed to admit this with a little shame — I’ve never really learned how to write shell scripts. Usually I’d write a Python script, a small command line app, or hack something together with Automator. It did the same job, but not being able to write a bash script from scratch felt like kind of a blind spot.
👓 A Critical Analysis of Bob Dylan's 2017 Xmas Lights | Vice
For almost a decade, I have had an unhealthy obsession with the Christmas lights on Bob Dylan's Malibu home. Here's what I learned from this year's display.
👓 Spooled Twitter Thread: OK Third-Party WordPress, We Need To Have A Come-to-Jesus Meeting About Your Accessibility Flare | Amanda Rush
This post originally started as a Twitter thread. Since those can be difficult to read in some circumstances, and since this content is I think valuable for more than just WordPress Twitter, I’m spooling it up and re-sharing as a complete post. I’ve also added a link and a video to this. OK thir...
👓 Excluded from Confoo Speaker Dinner – What Happened and How It Made Me Feel | Part of a Whole
I was an invited speaker at the Confoo YVR conference in December 2017. I gave two talks, both on accessibility. I was the only speaker presenting accessibility-related topics. There was a dinner organized for all the speakers. I was precluded from attending that dinner because the organizers selected a venue on the second floor, with no elevators. There was no way for a wheelchair user to access the venue. I felt embarrassed, and angry.
Wow this was pretty shitty…
👓 Paranoia grips Capitol Hill as harassment scandal spreads | Politico
Lawmakers and aides are consumed by one question: Who's next?
👓 The Propaganda behind Personalised Learning | Long View on Education
“Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who ...