You Have Ten Seconds To Comply.

10 months ago
"Thank you for choosing to stay at Le Meriden Essex Chicago. Do not open and/or stand in the guest room windows as it will send an alert of a potential active shooter."

Relatedly:

As Lollapalooza Opens, Activists Threaten Federal Lawsuit Over Chicago's Youth Curfew:

Organizers and lawyers with the groups said the city curfew's "Lollapalooza loophole" allows young people to bypass the 10 p.m. daily curfew if they are coming from a ticketed event. That provision benefits the wealthy, white suburban teens and tourists who flock to events like Lolla, while Black and Brown youth don't get a similar pass, organizers have said. [...]

"The backdrop of Lolla makes it clear who is allowed to be Downtown and who is allowed to move freely through their city without harassment -- and who isn't," said Kara Crutcher, a lawyer representing the organizations. "Black and Brown kids are simply not allowed the same freedom and permission." [...]

"Numerous courts -- including the Seventh Circuit -- have found youth curfews to be unconstitutional because they infringe upon young people's First Amendment activity, violate Equal Protection and can negatively implicate parent's constitutional rights," the groups wrote in their letter.

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Current Music: Metric -- Gimme Sympathy ♬

Big Grandma Energy

10 months ago
Before her death, 99-year-old Catarina Orduña Pérez had one final wish: a giant statue of a dick on top of her grave.

Her family unveiled the completed monument -- a 5-and-a-half-foot-tall cock and balls weighing nearly 600 pounds -- mounted on her tomb at a cemetery in Mexico this past weekend as a "recognition of her love and joy for life." [...]

Mota Limón recalled how his grandmother "saw life with great optimism and that problems shouldn't overwhelm us." She conceptualized that idea to the family with the metaphor of a penis, meaning when you're verga, "one should not give up. When problems arose, you needed to face them head-on." [...]

It took nearly a month and a team of 12 people, including a carpenter, a sander, a sculptor, and a carver, to build the statue. They got particularly delayed on the ballsack when the first attempt was "disfigured" and they had to start the process again of "melting materials to give it the necessary amplitude so that the testicles could be formed."

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Current Music: Wet Leg -- Wet Dream ♬

Hexagonal Pipes

10 months ago
I enjoy this game:

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Massachusetts grants absolution to its last remaining witch

10 months ago
After 329 years -- and thanks to an eighth-grade civics class -- a Salem-era woman has been officially exonerated of devil worship.

In 1693, Elizabeth Johnson was one of 30 people who were convicted as part of the Salem-area witch hysteria but the only one who hadn't later been exonerated by the state Legislature, making her the last person still regarded, as far as the state legal system was concerned, as in league with Satan.

Johnson's cause was championed for three years by Carrie LaPierre, an eighth-grade civics teacher in North Andover where Johnson lived more than three centuries ago. LaPierre led her classes in learning about the witch trials, contacting legislators, helping draft legislation and lobbying state officials. "It's a great way to do civics education, and it has nothing to do with critical race theory, so everyone feels good about it," LaPierre explained. [...]

Even with political backing, however, LaPierre's young charges weren't immediately excited about the prospect of becoming activists for a supposed 17th century necromancer. "Are you kidding? They're eighth graders," La Pierre explained. "It took some of them a month to realize she's dead. [...]

"A bill or resolution can still send an important message even if it's not binding legislation or is a couple of centuries late," he said. "This one might help in a small way to remind people that it's better to make decisions based on evidence as opposed to just believing what Goody Putnam posted about witches on Ye Facebooke." [...]

LaPierre was more reticent to draw contemporary parallels in her classroom. "Current events are not a safe area because people might start talking about Trump," she noted.

No class celebration of the bill-signing has been planned because the students are on summer vacation, "and they don't care as much," La Pierre said. "Maybe in 10 years it will sink in."

Update: Lowering The Bar has more, including coverage of several related cases.

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Space Force: Aliens versus Dragons

10 months ago
Corey Johnson, 29, was arrested Friday at Patrick Space Force Base. "He was told by the president" to warn "the government there was US aliens fighting with Chinese dragons."

Johnson [stole] a Ford F-150 several days prior to arriving at Patrick Space Force Base and he didn't know who the owner was, according to local authorities. He was charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle.

He told authorities the president had also instructed him to take the truck.

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Current Music: Dragonette -- I Get Around ♬

Who Would Jesus Rob?

10 months ago
A showy pastor who was in the middle of delivering his sermon and his wife were robbed at gunpoint of more than $1 million worth of jewelry at a Brooklyn church on Sunday.

Lamor M. Whitehead, 44, a bishop at the Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in the southeastern Brooklyn neighborhood of Canarsie, [called] it an example of "how the devil moves."

"The devil don't care; he sent them," Mr. Whitehead said. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment. [...]

He described lying on the ground with a gun pointed at him and subsequently being stripped of belongings, including his watch, multiple chains, wedding band and bishop's cross. He said the assailants wrenched off his clergy collar to reach his necklaces. Jewelry was also taken from Mr. Whitehead's 38-year-old wife, the police said, adding that neither of the victims was injured. [...]

Mr. Whitehead also responded to criticism calling him "flashy" for his accessories and his Rolls-Royce. "It's about me purchasing what I want to purchase," Mr. Whitehead said. "It's my prerogative to purchase what I want to purchase if I worked hard for it."

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Current Music: The The -- Giant ♬

Wildfires Are Setting Off 100-Year-Old Bombs on WWI Battlefields

10 months ago
There are so many explosions due to the raging fire that officials have stopped counting them, local news reported.

"The problem is that because of the unexploded ordnance firefighting units cannot penetrate into the fire but can only act on its edges. This is why the fire is being intensively fought from the air as well," Slovenian defense minister Marjan Šarec told the press.

The area where the fire rages was the site of 12 battles during World War I. More than 200,000 people died and untold numbers of explosives were used. [...]

Finding and disposing of that material is deadly work. In France, the remnants of the first World War are called the récolte de fer or Iron Harvest. Since the end of World War II, 630 bomb disposal officers have died in France alone. [...] It's estimated that clearing Europe of munitions from the World Wars will take another 100 years.

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Current Music: Jaguar Jonze -- Loud ♬

Miso Cards

10 months ago
"This Card is an Abortion," read a handful of business cards distributed by Mixl Laufer, a DIY biohacker, at a hacking conference in Queens Friday.

Embedded in the cards are three doses of misoprostol, a medication that safely and effectively induces an abortion when properly used.

"This is a breakthrough that we had," Laufer said, explaining that having a paper card makes it possible to mail it undetected, as well as distributed in public places or semi-public places like a school's toilet. The card has the logo of the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, a DIY medical collective that Laufer has been a key part of for years, as well as a QR code with directions on how to use it.

"Miso Cards are misoprostol abortion pills, delivered in a card format, because it's easier to send by mail. In use since the mid-1980s, it is 85 percent effective when used alone. It is one of the most effective drugs for terminating pregnancies in the first and second trimesters," the website says.

The website also has instructions for taking each dose, what to expect, and what to do if something goes wrong. Since Roe v. Wade fell, Four Thieves Vinegar Collective has been working on ways to distribute information about how to make DIY misoprostol to the masses. [...]

"Organizations like mine should not exist, we should not exist," Laufer told Motherboard after the talk. "There's nothing reasonable about this being a thing -- it shouldn't be. Makes no sense."

Update: The talk is finally online. The bit about these cards begins at around 40 minutes in.


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CO2 Sensors

10 months ago
Violet reviews the Vitalight and Aranet4 CO2 sensors:

The rates went up fast. But instead of lagging, the Vitalight overtook the Aranet immediately, the number racing up in real time. When the Aranet refreshed, it was catching up to the Vitalight but still behind it. The Vitalight was telling me this was bad now, while I was waiting on the Aranet to give me the reading.

The Vitalight's alarm went off at 800 (beeping twice) as its arrow moved from green to yellow. The Vitalight number raced higher and the Aranet refreshed again -- now closer to the Vitalight. The Vitalight's two-beep alarm went off again as its risk category arrow moved to Orange. I was ready to flee but waited for the Aranet to refresh -- and then it did, at a higher number than the Vitalight, having overtaken it.

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ImageMagick font insanity

10 months ago
After ImageMagick 7.0.8-14, this no longer works:

    convert -pointsize 100 -font ocrabold.ttf label:'A B C' out.jpg
    convert: no pixels defined in cache `A B C[0]' @ error/cache.c/SetPixelCacheNexusPixels/5052.

It works without spaces, or with different TTF files, or with a slightly different point size!

The "label" command doesn't even word-wrap (that's "caption") so I can't guess why it hates spaces now. And only with some fonts and sizes. No amount of backslashing helps.

"Just keep using 7.0.8-14 forever" had been my plan (even though that particular version, conveniently, is no longer on their web site), but as of recently, that no longer compiles. ("no member named 'FlashEC' in 'libraw_imgother_t'").

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