👓 Is it possible to draw Serena Williams without being racist? | The Spectator

Read Is it possible to draw Serena Williams without being racist? by Rod Liddle (The Spectator)
I have spent the morning trying to draw a cartoon of a black person without it being racist. It’s bloody difficult. Especially the lips. Make them too big and anti-racist people will accuse you of being a white supremacist peddling, in their words, the old ‘sambo’ myth. But too small and they don’t look like the lips of very many black people. It’s the same with the colour. At first, on my cartoon, I used a black felt-tip pen and so the figure came out very black indeed. ‘Sambo’ territory again, especially when I added big red lips and very white teeth. In the end I used cross-hatching with a pencil but this was, to my mind, unsatisfactory.

👓 What are our ethical obligations to future AI simulations? | Philip Ball | Aeon Essays

Read What are our ethical obligations to future AI simulations? by Philip Ball (Aeon)
Say you could make a thousand digital replicas of yourself – should you? What happens when you want to get rid of them?

👓 What English Would Sound Like If It Was Pronounced Phonetically | Open Culture

Read What English Would Sound Like If It Was Pronounced Phonetically (Open Culture)
The English language presents itself to students and non-native speakers as an almost cruelly capricious entity, its irregularities of spelling and conjugation impossible to explain without an advanced degree.

👓 How David Lynch Got Creative Inspiration? By Drinking a Milkshake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Single Day, for Seven Straight Years | Open Culture

Read How David Lynch Got Creative Inspiration? By Drinking a Milkshake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Single Day, for Seven Straight Years (Open Culture)
"It is no secret that David Lynch, the writer-director-composer-painter, has an unusual relationship with Bob's Big Boy," begins a 1999 Los Angeles Times article on the auteur of films like Eraserhead and Blue Velvet. "For seven years in the 1980s he ate lunch there every day, ordering cup after cup of over-sweetened coffee and a single chocolate milkshake while scribbling notes on Bob's little square napkins." He took pains, notes reporter Amy Wallace, "to arrive at Bob's at precisely 2:30 p.m. each day. The reason: It increased the odds that he would encounter perfection."

👓 The Hobo Code: An Introduction to the Hieroglyphic Language of Early 1900s Train-Hoppers | Open Culture

Read The Hobo Code: An Introduction to the Hieroglyphic Language of Early 1900s Train-Hoppers (Open Culture)
Many of us now use the word hobo to refer to any homeless individual, but back in the America of the late 19th and early 20th century, to be a hobo meant something more.

👓 Don’t Call 911 If You See a Coyote, Unless It’s Carrying ACME-Branded Products: The Office of Sheriff, Monroe County, New York | Open Culture

Read Don’t Call 911 If You See a Coyote, Unless It’s Carrying ACME-Branded Products: The Office of Sheriff, Monroe County, New York (Open Culture)
Someone in the Office of Sheriff, in Monroe County, New York, has a good sense of humor. And if you're from the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies generation, you will get a good laugh. In other news, Warner Bros. just announced that it's developing an animated Wile E.
I see so many urban coyotes this is even funnier to me.

👓 MIT Students Solve the Spaghetti Breaking Mystery That Stumped Richard Feynman | Open Culture

Read MIT Students Solve the Spaghetti Breaking Mystery That Stumped Richard Feynman (Open Culture)
Even thirty years after his death, Richard Feynman remains one of the most beloved minds in physics in part because of how much attention he paid to things other than physics: drawing and painting, cracking safes, playing the bongos, breaking spaghetti.

👓 Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” Slowed Down to 33RPM Sounds Great and Takes on New, Unexpected Meanings | Open Culture

Read Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” Slowed Down to 33RPM Sounds Great and Takes on New, Unexpected Meanings (Open Culture)
The Walrus is… Dolly Parton? Not every record yields gold when played backwards or spun more slowly than recommended, but a 45 of Parton’s 1973 hit “Jolene” played at 33RPM not only sounds wonderful, it also manages to reframe the narrative.

👓 Jocelyn Bell Burnell Discovered Radio Pulsars in 1974, But the Credit Went to Her Advisor; In 2018, She Gets Her Due, Winning a $3 Million Physics Prize | Open Culture

Read Jocelyn Bell Burnell Discovered Radio Pulsars in 1974, But the Credit Went to Her Advisor; In 2018, She Gets Her Due, Winning a $3 Million Physics Prize (Open Culture)
Say you made a Nobel-worthy scientific discovery and the prize went to your thesis supervisor instead. How would you take it?

👓 New court ruling could force Uber, Lyft to convert drivers to employees | Ars Technica

Read New court ruling could force Uber, Lyft to convert drivers to employees (Ars Technica)
California Supreme Court: It'll be tougher for firms to not have bona fide employees.

👓 Limo firm to Uber: You misclassify your drivers as contractors, which is unfair | Ars Technica

Read Limo firm to Uber: You misclassify your drivers as contractors, which is unfair (Ars Technica)
Diva Limousine sues Uber, claims its reliance on contractors is illegal.
I wonder what percentage of their valuation is built upon screwing their employees out of benefits by calling them independent contractors?

👓 Sorry, Sony Music, you don’t own the rights to Bach’s music on Facebook | Ars Technica

Read Sorry, Sony Music, you don’t own the rights to Bach’s music on Facebook (Ars Technica)
Public shaming forces publisher to abandon ridiculous claim to classical music.
When is the industry going to finally fix this issue of false positives like this. Surely in the case of Bach, it should be even easier?

👓 Using Medieval DNA to track the barbarian spread into Italy | Ars Technica

Read Using Medieval DNA to track the barbarian spread into Italy (Ars Technica)
Cemeteries from the Longobard spread into Italy tell tales of migration and mixing.

👓 Top cancer expert forgot to mention $3.5M industry ties—he just resigned | Ars Technica

Read Top cancer expert forgot to mention $3.5M industry ties—he just resigned (Ars Technica)
For years, José Baselga didn’t mention industry links in dozens of top medical pubs.

👓 Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals | New York Times

Read Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals (New York Times)
A senior official at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has received millions of dollars in payments from companies that are involved in medical research.
This makes me think that researchers should have a page on their websites (like impressum, about, or other similar pages) that lists all of their potential research conflicts? What to call it? A Disclosure page, a Financial Ties page? It could have a list of current as well as past affiliations, along with dates, and potentially the value amounts paid (which are apparently available publicly in separate filings). In addition to posting their potential conflicts and disclosures on their own websites, researchers could easily cut and paste them into their publications (or at least their students, post docs, fellow researchers, or secretaries could do this when they’re apparently too busy to make a modicum of bother to do it themselves.)

I’m kind of shocked that major publishers like Elsevier are continually saying they add so much value to the chain of publishing they do, yet somehow, in all the major profits they (and others) are making that they don’t do these sorts of checks as a matter of course.