You should read this for 7/5/2020:
Art, Music, and Film
Experts call for regulation after latest botched art restoration in Spain
A private art collector in Valencia was reportedly charged €1,200 by a furniture restorer to have the picture of the Immaculate Conception cleaned. However, the job did not go as planned and the face of the Virgin Mary was left unrecognisable despite two attempts to restore it to its original state.
When the Beatles Refused to Play Before Segregated Audiences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)
Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language
The best Stephen King books to read depending on your mood
Scots Gaelic could die out within a decade, study finds
Coronavirus | COVID-19
Where The Women Aren’t: On Coronavirus Task Forces
Although research has shown that men appear more likely to suffer more severely or die from COVID-19 than women, the pandemic is, by some measures, taking a greater toll on women.
NPR: Green, Yellow, Orange Or Red? This New Tool Shows COVID-19 Risk In Your County
Education
Screen Share: A College Teacher’s Zoom Journal
ON THE FOURTH day of spring break, our university’s president announces that no one is to return to campus. Two cases of Covid-19 have been reported in our state. All classes will be moving online. Soon afterward, the members of the humanities faculty receive an email from our dean telling us that “the development of a quality online course takes at least two years.” We have 12 days. I feel like a runner with decent times in the 800 meters whose coach says, You still get to go to the track meet, but we’ve switched you to the pole vault!
The dean notes encouragingly that Isaac Newton did his best work when Cambridge University closed during the plague.
Food and Drink
How to Buy and Store Cherries
Homemade Breakfast Sausage Is Completely Worth the Effort
History and Archaeology
Rosetta Stone to be added to British Museum LGBTQ+ tours
Oldest Viking settlement possibly unearthed in Iceland
Archaeologists have unearthed what may be the oldest Viking settlement in Iceland.
The ancient longhouse is thought to be a summer settlement built in the 800s, decades before seafaring refugees are supposed to have settled the island, and was hidden beneath a younger longhouse brimming with treasures, said archaeologist Bjarni Einarsson, who led the excavations. “The younger hall is the richest in Iceland so far,” Einarsson told Live Science. “It is hard not to conclude that it is a chieftain’s house.
. . .
Hidden beneath the treasure-filled longhouse was an even older structure. Chemical and other analysis suggest this buried longhouse was built in the 800s, long before the permanent settlement of Iceland, Einarsson said.
He thinks it was a seasonal settlement or camp, occupied only during the summer and maybe into the fall, by workers in the area.
Science and Nature
Let night owls be night owls: How the pandemic could dethrone the larks
Chronotypes in modern populations “represent a legacy of natural selection acting in the past to reduce the dangers of sleep,” the authors conclude. Translation: It is us night owls who kept the rest of you safe for 99 percent of human evolution, spotting the sabertooth tigers long before they ripped the tribe apart. You’re welcome.
Canadian sparrows ditch their old song for catchier tune See also: The Birdsong That Took Over North America
Society
The dirty secret behind Ben Shapiro’s extraordinary success on Facebook
Cancellation might feel good, but it’s not activism
Technology
New York City Residents Turn City’s Traffic Cameras Into Cop-Watching Tools
The project works like this: NYC Mesh has written a tool that archives an image from every public camera every time the feed gets updated, which can be between one and 30 seconds. The pictures are then uploaded on Google Drive in bundles organized by hourly folders that have a text file containing information about the camera ID, the borough it is in, and its specific location.
Mike Masnick for Techdirt: Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act
Really, this is the simplest, most basic understanding of Section 230: it is about placing the liability for content online on whoever created that content, and not on whoever is hosting it. If you understand that one thing, you’ll understand most of the most important things about Section 230.
Author Of Section 230 Chris Cox Says All The Critics Are Wrong About The History And Intent Of 230
‘EvilQuest’ Mac ransomware spreading through pirated Mac apps
According to the report shared today by Malwarebytes, the new ransomware is called “EvilQuest”, and the primary distribution model is through pirated Mac apps. The latest security threat was initially discovered in a pirated version of the Mac app Little Snitch, which was being shared in a Russian forum.
See also: Malwarebytes discovers first Mac ransomware in four years and OSX.EvilQuest Uncovered
analyzing a new piece of mac ransomware (and more!)
Instagram and WhatsApp are tainted by Facebook’s BS. Delete them.
Women’s Work
The incredible story of New Orleans’ first black female homicide detective
In the 1990s, Jacklean Davis was a policing superstar, hailed as the best crime solver in the city. But a dispute turned into a major federal case against her, brought by a prosecutor whose conduct in other cases was called ‘grotesque
💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰
On the Ground at Trump’s Tulsa Burnout: Pepper Balls, Protesters, and a Failing Conman
THE TWO GREATEST flimflam men in fin de siècle America were Donald J. Trump and Al Sharpton. Trump bankrupted casinos and stirred racial hatred by, among other misdeeds, implicitly calling for the execution of the Central Park Five, a group of black and Latino young men wrongly accused of raping a woman in New York’s Central Park. Trump has refused to apologize for that, stating “You have people on both sides,” when asked about the wrongly convicted defendants last year.
Sharpton bankrupted campaigns, possibly served as an FBI informant, and stirred racial hatred by representing Tawana Brawley after she alleged she had been raped by six white men in New York state. He insinuated that prosecutor Steve Pagones had been involved, and when it was conclusively proven that Brawley’s charges were unfounded, Pagones sued Sharpton for defamation. The minister dodged and weaved before being found guilty of defamation. Still, Sharpton refused to pay the judgment and instead had rich buddies cover his portion of the settlement.
So if you had told me in 2000 that America was going to be a house afire over racial unrest in 2020 and the two main speakers were going to be Al Sharpton and Donald Trump, I would have said we were seriously fucked.
From McSweeney’s LEST WE FORGET THE HORRORS: A CATALOG OF TRUMP’S WORST CRUELTIES, COLLUSIONS, CORRUPTIONS, AND CRIMES McSweeney’s isn’t kidding. This is for reals.
Pay It Forward and Make It Better
Google Founder Sergey Brin Has a Secret Disaster Relief Squad
Shortly after the storm died down, and long before Bahamian government aid arrived, an American disaster assistance response team arrived onboard a high-speed super-yacht. Access crews set to work clearing roads with chainsaws, so that survivors could find their way to the team’s medical staff. Their doctors and paramedics ultimately helped triage or treat nearly one in 10 of the island’s population.
How US K-pop fans became a political force to be reckoned with
Those hoping to hold back the tide of support for Black Lives Matter amid global protests against the police killing of George Floyd could only hover helplessly over their keyboards as K-pop “stans”, slang for obsessive fans, drowned them out by flooding Twitter with video clips and memes of their favourite artists, many accompanied by anti-racist messages.
