Surviving cyclist in satisfactory condition in hospital as official says bikers tried to scare the mountain lion and then hit it
A good reminder of how to react to some wildlife encounters while mountain biking or hiking.
Links
👓 The Coming Wave of Murders Solved by Genealogy | The Atlantic
The same DNA analysis used to find the alleged Golden State Killer has led to the arrest of a second alleged murderer. It’ll likely lead to more.
I can see this going to the Supreme Court sooner than later on privacy related underpinning. I can’t help but recall the words of Jed Bartlett in The West Wing when he was saying in season one that privacy would be one of the most pressing issues for the Supreme Court in the coming century.
👓 Is America on the Verge of a Constitutional Crisis? | The Atlantic
As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.
Some great definitions and structure laid out for something that may be more necessary in the near future.
👓 Scandal after scandal focuses scrutiny on USC leadership, culture | LA Times
How USC handled the case of a campus gynecologist allowed to practice for years despite complaints of misconduct has sparked outrage and demands for change in the university’s leadership and management culture. To some, it is part of a troubling pattern.
If I were a journalist, I would just start tracking people leaving posts and then dig into what the scandal must surely be. USC is definitely stinking from the head and needs to begin digging itself out of an ever-deepening hole.
👓 Electric Scooter Charger Culture Is Out of Control | The Atlantic
“Bird hunting” has become a pastime and a side hustle for teens and young professionals, but for some it’s a cutthroat business.
👓 How heavy use of social media is linked to mental illness | The Economist
Youngsters report problems with anxiety, depression, sleep and “FoMO”
👓 A New Theory Linking Sleep and Creativity | The Atlantic
The two main phases of sleep might work together to boost creative problem-solving.
👓 Columbia Law professor who coined ‘net neutrality’ term mulling run for attorney general | NY Daily News
Tim Wu, a Columbia Law professor credited with coining the term "net neutrality," is considering a run for state attorney general.
👓 How to Join Our Podcast Club | New York Times
Samantha Henig (nytimes.com)It’s like a book club, but for on-demand audio.
This ironic quote from the piece sticks out to me:
Podcast listening can be harder to crack. There are so many shows! How do you find the ones you’ll like? And once you’ve found a show, where do you start: with the most recent episode? At the beginning? Some specific gem of an episode buried deep in the back catalog?
Perhaps the New York Times could simply start with making the RSS feeds for their podcasts easily discover-able?! Why are they hiding this simple piece of functionality? I just spent 20 minutes doing some reasonably serious web gymnastics to extract the RSS feed for Caliphate out of the iTunes feed using a JSON request tactic. Why can’t the podcast’s main page have or advertise the raw RSS feed?!
Corey Doctorow complained of this type of growing issue on the web recently in a short tweetstorm as well:
I really despair for people trying to figure out how to write the web today, given how obfuscated the referents to files on the web have become; for example, I’m about to fold a podcast that I appeared in to my own podcast feed
— Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) April 14, 2018
How hard is it to add the following simple line to the header of their generally beautiful and functional Caliphate page?
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Caliphate" href="https://rss.art19.com/caliphate” />
They’ve got so many advanced resources, yet somehow they’re missing some of the simplest and best supported web technology that goes back more than a decade.
By the way, that link https://rss.art19.com/caliphate is the correct one for the RSS feed of the show by the way, in case others are searching for it.
If anyone needs a one-click button to subscribe to the series in their favorite feed reader, I’ve set up a SubToMe button on the follow post I made for the podcast.
Following Caliphate
A new audio series following Rukmini Callimachi as she reports on the Islamic State and the fall of Mosul. This series includes disturbing language and scenes of graphic violence.
I’ve sampled several episodes via The Daily, so I’m officially subscribing so I can get the rest of the episodes.
👓 The Future of Publishing | LitFest Pasadena
The Future of Publishing
May 19 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Six small presses with a wide range of specialties—fiction, children’s books, literature in translation, poetry, cookbooks—talk about the challenges and opportunities in book publishing in the near future, and how they’re looking to innovate and look beyond the corporate Big Five publishing model.
Featured Guests: Neela Banerjee, Kaya Press; Ariana Stein, Lil Libros; Ross Ufberg, New Vessel; Tobi Harper, Red Hen Press; Julia Callahan, Rare Bird Books; Colleen Dunn Bates, Prospect Park – Moderator
Wishing I hadn’t gotten myself committed on Saturday to go to Knott’s Berry Farm so I could attend this in the afternoon.
Following Michael Levin
Investigating information storage and processing in biological systems
We work on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation. We use techniques of molecular genetics, biophysics, and computational modeling to address large-scale control of growth and form. We work in whole frogs and flatworms, and sometimes zebrafish and human tissues in culture. Our projects span regeneration, embryogenesis, cancer, and learning plasticity – all examples of how cellular networks process information. In all of these efforts, our goal is not only to understand the molecular mechanisms necessary for morphogenesis, but also to uncover and exploit the cooperative signaling dynamics that enable complex bodies to build and remodel themselves toward a correct structure. Our major goal is to understand how individual cell behaviors are orchestrated towards appropriate large-scale outcomes despite unpredictable environmental perturbations.
🔖 An Introduction to APIs | Zapier
APIs (application programming interfaces) are a big part of the web. In 2013 there were over 10,000 APIs published by companies for open consumption 1. That is quadruple the number available in 2010 2. With so many companies investing in this new area of business, possessing a working understanding of APIs becomes increasingly relevant to careers in the software industry. Through this course, we hope to give you that knowledge by building up from the very basics. In this chapter, we start by looking at some fundamental concepts around APIs. We define what an API is, where it lives, and give a high level picture of how one is used.
I found this downloadable e-book a while back at Zapier’s resource page, which has some other interesting things, but this overview and layout of APIs seemed fairly simple but powerful for folks interested in the topic.
👓 What Communities Are We Building? A Discussion With Drs. Jessie Daniels and David Golumbia | Tressie McMillan Cottom
This semester our sociology honor society, Alpha Kappa Delta, had the great fortune to hear from Dr. Jessie Daniels. Jessie is a…
Sadly, like the prior article I read, there just isn’t much here in the way of content.
👓 Whose Speech? More From Our Chat With Jessie Daniels | Tressie McMillan Cottom
As previously mentioned, the Sociology students at VCU recently benefitted from a chance to hear from Jessie Daniels. Our informal…
This post was so sparse in information I’m not quite sure what Dr. Cottom was trying to communicate here. The post does have some well produced (and very short) snippets from the talk, but other than knowing that a talk occurred and vaguely what it was about, all the value stemming from it seems to be missing to me in this post.