Elsewhere for August 10, 2019

You should read this for 8/10/2019:

Art and Film

Scientists name new fossil species after Millennium Falcon from Star Wars
H/T Lisa Carnell: In a Powerful Statement, the Baltimore Museum of Art Is Dedicating All of Its 2020 Programming to Female Artists The Baltimore Museum of Art is planning 13 solo shows for women artists including Joan Mitchell, Candice Breitz, and Katharina Grosse in 2020.

The goal for this effort is to rebalance the scales and to acknowledge the ways in which women’s contributions still do not receive the scholarly examination, dialogue, and public acclaim that they deserve,” said Baltimore Museum director Christopher Bedford in statemen

Books, Writing, and Language

CULC, ALA Denounce Macmillan Publishers’ eBook Lending Model

Under the new model, libraries will only be able to purchase a single digital copy of any new title when it is released for sale to the general public and will be forced to wait eight weeks before they are able to buy any additional copies.

From Canadian libraries:

In a recent letter to creators, Macmillan indicated that library lending was “cannibalizing sales” and that “45% of the ebook reads in the US are now being borrowed for free from libraries”. This claim is fundamentally untrue. Libraries purchase copies of licenses for their users to access at a premium, which is often three to four times the cost of a retail copy: these premium prices are ultimately being paid by Canadian library users, whose taxes fund libraries. These licenses can only be used by one user at a time, mirroring the lending of physical materials. Macmillan also noted that the growth in library ebook use is driven by “seamless delivery”. The delivery of ebooks to library users is far from seamless – restrictive lending models often mean that users must sit on waiting lists for several months.

From the ALA:

“Macmillan Publishers’ new model for library ebook lending will make it difficult for libraries to fulfill our central mission: ensuring access to information for all,” said ALA President Wanda Brown. “Limiting access to new titles for libraries means limiting access for patrons most dependent on libraries.
“When a library serving many thousands has only a single copy of a new title in ebook format, it’s the library – not the publisher – that feels the heat. It’s the local library that’s perceived as being unresponsive to community needs.

Are You Making These Common Grammatical Mistakes? I generally hate this kind of post, but this one is useful.

Education

Why Mathematicians Are Hoarding This Special Type of Japanese Chalk
As a T.A. when I had to teach in a classroom with a black board, I used to bring my own chalk. This chalk is less dusty and dissolves the flesh of my hands less.
A Pen Addict’s Assessment of School Supply Shopping” />

The school list alone, without any of the extras, like shoes or the requested classroom donations, runs about $300 a child. Between the two kids and all the gear they need, we can easily top $1200, if we’re not careful. So we have to be very careful. Every year it gets more expensive (separate gym shoes! Calculators!),

While I am in favor of teachers not buying supplies for their schools, and of the more fortunate helping out the less fortunate, I too think 12 red pens, and a wireless mouse as something every child needs is absurd.

Food and Drink

Caprese Salad with Tomatoes, Basil, and Mozzarella This simple salad with fresh tomatoes, basil, and (my prefernce) buffalo Mozzarello, with a drizzle of olive oil ad splash of balsamic vinegar is the essence of summer, especially if you grew the tomatoes and basil yourself (easy to do even on a balcony).

History and Archaeology

The Professor Who Was Ostracized for Claiming the Civil War Was About Slavery – In 1911

An aging letter from 1911 that I found in the Columbia University archive revealed a story that could be in today’s headlines: people in the Jim Crow South tried to capture the memory of the Civil War for political gain.

Trump’s Tariff War Resembles the Confederacy’s Failed Trade Policies

Current efforts by the United States to put tariff pressures on China resemble the Confederacy’s efforts to pressure Great Britain during the American Civil War. In the early 1860s the Confederate leaders’ strategy backfired, damaging the southern economy and weakening the South’s military. Recent developments in the tariff fight with China suggest that President Trump’s strategy could backfire as well. America’s tariff negotiators should consider lessons from the record of Confederate missteps.

Science and Nature

The Light Sail is Working… It’s Working!

After launching on June 25th, then deploying its solar sail system on July 23rd, mission managers have been working with the solar sail to optimize they way LightSail 2 orients itself towards the Sun. Now The Planetary Society reports that the spacecraft has used its solar sail to raise its orbit.

How we proved this tiny rock came from space

Back in February, I spent a few hours crawling around on my hands and knees on a rooftop in Brooklyn, New York. What I was looking for was smaller than the period at the end of this sentence: nearly invisible micrometeorites that may — or may not — have fallen from space. Surprisingly, I actually found some. I think.

Tardigrades may have survived spacecraft crashing on moon “The tardigrade’s secret is the ability to shrivel into a seed-like pod, expelling nearly all of its water and slashing its metabolism.”

Society

Using Restorative Justice To Deal With Internet Trolls And Jackasses
Mourning for Whiteness
Obama urges Americans to reject leaders who stoke hatred

Former US President Barack Obama has called on Americans to reject language from any of their leaders that feeds hatred or normalises racism.

Obama Still Sounds Like a President

There is the sense of consolation that seemed to come naturally to him—in any case, he got horrifically frequent practice at striking this tone during his eight years in office. There’s moral clarity, identifying the problem as “troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy,” and (in contrast to Trump) situating the internet’s role not as a cause but as a catalyst. And there is the call to unity that has been his central political theme since 2004: “But just as important, all of us have to send a clarion call and behave with the values of tolerance and diversity that should be the hallmark of our democracy.”

Here is President Obama’s statement on mass shootings is a message for Republicans, Democrats, and the world

Technology

How to ditch Google Chrome for Firefox

https://512pixels.net/dogcow/

8chan is all the way down—“It’s DNS. It’s always DNS.”

The most important troubleshooting tool for DNS is a command-line utility called dig. Dig allows you to query DNS records directly; it’s sort of like nslookup on steroids. By default, just like nslookup, dig will query whatever your locally configured DNS server is. But you can ask it to query any arbitrary server directly, and you can ask it for exactly the records you want.

Women’s Work

Whitney Cummings—and her sex robot—take on modern womanhood

I never really understood catcalling until Whitney Cummings explained it in front of a live audience.

AOC calls out Mitch McConnell for pic of his supporters groping a cutout of her See also: Ocasio-Cortez confronts McConnell over photo of men choking cutout of her

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Why Stripping U.S. Citizens of Their Passports Is a Precursor to Genocide

It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.
Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.

El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language

While other leaders have expressed concern about border security and the costs of illegal immigration, Mr. Trump has filled his public speeches and Twitter feed with sometimes false, fear-stoking language even as he welcomed to the White House a corps of hard-liners, demonizers and conspiracy theorists shunned by past presidents of both parties. Because of this, Mr. Trump is ill equipped to provide the kind of unifying, healing force that other presidents projected in times of national tragedy.

Trump campaign used word ‘invasion’ in more than 2,000 Facebook ads

The shooting suspect in El Paso, Texas, warned of an “invasion” in a racist internet screed before allegedly killing 22 people.
Another person fond of the term: President Donald Trump, whose re-election campaign published more than 2,000 Facebook ads using the word “invasion” since January, according to the New York Times.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

The rise of ‘ungardening’: how to turn a backyard into a wildlife haven