With reference to an earlier post about playing football from six feet away, here's some interesting stuff from Miami coach Manny Diaz, as reported by ESPN
"There's a perception that a practice is two hours with 22 guys in a pile. That's really not the case," Diaz said. "What it comes down to is your bubble is a lot smaller on the field than people think."
…more than 1,000 feet of pipe, containers of drilling fluid totaling more than 6,000 gallons, and other equipment languishing on the ocean floor since late April. The company reportedly has no plans to retrieve any of it.
And anti-vaxxers have taken to social media to spread lies about the future coronavirus vaccine. Some include claims it contains monkey brains or that it's a CIA plot to take over the world. Others allege the vaccine will include an invisible trackable tattoo or it will disfigure those who take it.
From the (paywalled) Washington Post…
“Do you really want your stars wearing masks because that’s what characters would do? Do you want to have people engaging with each other in groups no larger than six? Do you want to write stories where everyone is at a safe distance?”
It's going to be a great year for Movies With No Kissing.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a plan this month dubbed the “Clean Network” that lists five main areas where the administration wants to block out any connection to China.…
“Building a clean fortress around our citizens’ data will ensure all of our nations’ security,” the plan states.
To counter China's Great Firewall we will build a Clean Fortress and split the world. And the internet will no longer be, well, inter. And everyone will lose.
Or maybe I'm just being gloomy. It's a nice, sunny day, so let's go with that.
What if you didn't need to install the app? What if earthquake detection was just built in to the operating system? That's the question Google is going to answer, with today's announcement of the "Android Earthquake Alerts System." Google is going to build what it calls "the world’s largest earthquake detection network" by rolling earthquake detection out to nearly every Google Play Android phone.
Is it any more or less surveillance than, say, COVID tracking or facial recognition geofencing reminders or traffic reporting or…
Well. It's getting complicated, that's all.
From the Washington Post:
American tech companies compete bitterly with TikTok, but observers are watching to see if they will throw their powerful legal and policy resources behind the company in opposition to the Trump administration's heavy-handed approach to Internet regulation. [Emphasis mine.]
Does this mean light-handed regulation would be OK, and what would light-handed regulation look like, anyway? Or does it mean somebody else's heavy-handed regulation would be fine, just not Trump's?
Or is it, you know, freaking nonsense? Me, I'm guessing that.
For the record, this fuss about TikTok is multi-faceted and the resolution is difficult at best. My default position favors an unrestricted, open Internet—but I gotta tell you, that's dangerous. So hold on tight.
While it might sound surprising that 3.5-inch floppy disks are still in use on airplanes today, many of Boeing’s 737s have also been using floppy disks to load avionics software for years. The databases housed on these floppy discs are increasingly getting bigger, according to a 2015 report from Aviation Today. Some airlines have been moving away from the use of floppy discs, but others are stuck with engineers visiting each month to sit and load eight floppies with updates to airports, flight paths, runways, and more.
OK, I never actually used a quill pen but they really do look cool, don't they? I did use the kind of pen you have to dip in an inkwell when I was a kid, which is probably why my cursive writing sucks to this day. But they were cool too, especially if the girl who sat at the next desk in front of you had pigtails; you could dip them in your inkwell and wasn't that fun?
(Fourth graders in the 1940's were exempt from all rules. We're all much better behaved today. Mostly.)
The soldier tried to drive off “but was apparently not prepared for the Mercedes’ transmission"…
This maid that o’ershines the envious moon
(Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That Juliet be far more fair than she),
The silly dope came out without a mask.
Were she to sneeze or, worse still, blow her nose…
A recent study estimates that by 2050, the amount of land that can sustain coffee will have fallen by 50 percent.
In the meantime, how about one crisis at a time, OK?
Hundreds More Sickened as Salmonella Outbreak Spreads to 43 States
"If you don't know where your onions are from, don't eat, serve, or sell them or any food prepared with them," the CDC said Friday.
I eat a lot of onions but I cook them; I think that makes them safe (I really have no idea, I'm just saying).
But really, onions? Why onions?
2020. Right.
…we are awash in hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Who could ask for anything else?
Well, except possibly peaches. I haven't seen a good peach all summer. I have two sitting in a bowl trying to get good, but the matter is not resolved.
And how about a decent summer-replacement TV show? Just one. Right now my life is full of cop shows imported from some British place where nobody speaks intelligible English and everybody is a Detective Chief Inspector Constable Something and I am totally confused.
