Elsewhere for August 2, 2020

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You should read this for 8/2/2020:

Art, Music, and Film

Viacom’s Copyright Bots Take Down ‘Star Trek’ Comic-con Panel Because These Bots Suck Out Loud

The output of this broken system is shown when these bots take down totally legitimate content or when grifters abuse the system to try to take some measure of income away from small third-party streamers. But attempts at machine-based copyright enforcement are truly at their most satisfying when content companies employing these bots commit unintentional copyright seppuku.
This happens way more than you might think, but the latest version of this is Viacom briefly nuking its own Star Trek Comic-Con panel when the copyright borg misfired.

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s eloquence in the face of arrogance is a master class

Ocasio-Cortez’s address was a masterpiece of heartfelt, unadorned plain speech that (consciously or instinctively) employed the tools of the orator, the rhetorician and preacher. What carries us is repetition, rhythm, emphasis, cadence, pronunciation (the congresswoman leans into her Bronx vowels) and a seamless transition from each event or idea to its larger implications.

Authors condemn Saudi Arabia’s bid to host World Science Fiction Convention

Pointing to the fact that homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, its escalating restrictions on freedom of speech, and the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the writers argue that it is unacceptable to stage an international event against this backdrop.

Publisher Decries Damn Libraries Entertaining The Masses Stuck At Home For Free

25% off at Story Supply Company; notebooks for every writer Expires 8/11/2020.

Coronavirus | COVID-19

Coronavirus infects bear cam rangers in remote Alaska bqThe infections, which forced a temporary shutdown of the camp (but not the live cams), underscore how easy it is for this new coronavirus to spread between people anywhere, largely through airborne transmission.
“The primary transmission of COVID-19 is from person-to-person through respiratory droplets,” says the CDC, who notes transmission can happen from “those with mild symptoms or those who do not feel ill.”
Study: Nose appears to be better at spreading COVID-19 than mouth
She needs her license pulled
Via NPR: COVID-19 Hospital Data System That Bypasses CDC Plagued By Delays, Inaccuracies

Earlier this month, when the Trump administration told hospitals to send crucial data about coronavirus cases and intensive care capacity to a new online system, it promised the change would be worth it. The data would be more complete, transparent, and an improvement over the old platform run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, administration officials said.
Instead, the public data hub created under the new system is updated erratically and is rife with inconsistencies and errors, data analysts say.

Education

Beware of Facts Man “Facts Man is less about truth than raising questions. Why can’t Facts Man talk about certain issues in exactly the way he wants to?”

You have met Facts Man before if you have spent any time online in the past half decade or so. He’s inescapable. He podcasts. He makes YouTube videos. He traffics in Medium posts. He burns up Facebook. And he loves—loves!—Twitter.
What does he serve up there? Truth. Facts. The overlooked and the undercovered. The unvarnished and obvious conclusions that the media do not want you to believe. The conclusions that the social-justice warriors and sheeple professors will not let you reach. The conclusions that mere mortals, including lauded subject-matter experts and the people who have actual lived experience of the topic at hand, have not yet grasped.

Food and Drink

How to make hummus – recipe I like the fact that this recipe includes how to make hummus with dried or canned chickpeas/garbanzo beans.
‘Your gut is more than just a mechanism for processing food’: how your diet can affect your mental health
dulce de leche chocoflan This Smitten Kitchen recipe makes me think of my friend Bart.
9 Ways to Make Pesto Straight from the Garden
How to Make Easy Refrigerator Pickles

History and Archaeology

Image of Stonehenge — Stonehenge Image: Gareth Wiscombe

Whence Came Stonehenge’s Stones? Now We Know

Dr. Nash has traced the source of almost all the sarsens to West Woods, on the southern edge of the Downs and several miles closer to Stonehenge. His team analyzed the geochemical fingerprint of the 52 sarsens that remain in situ at the ancient site.

See also: Archaeologists Discover Source Od Stonehenge Giant Sarsen Stones and Stonehenge: Sarsen stones origin mystery solved. According to English Heritage’s Susan Greaney:

“To be able to pinpoint the area that Stonehenge’s builders used to source their materials around 2,500 BC is a real thrill.
“While we had our suspicions that Stonehenge’s sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs, we didn’t know for sure, and with areas of sarsens across Wiltshire, the stones could have come from anywhere.
“They wanted the biggest, most substantial stones they could find and it made sense to get them from as nearby as possible.”
Ms Greaney added the evidence highlights “just how carefully considered and deliberate the building of this phase of Stonehenge was”.

New Roman fort uncovered in Lancashire after years of speculation

A number of internal features have been revealed by geophysical survey including a well-defined eastern gateway with double gate towers, and numerous stone buildings interpreted as granaries or barracks. Limited trial trenching of the latter has revealed the presence of a large stone, buttressed building typical of a Roman granary.

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Science and Nature

Rock from Mars heads home after 600,000 years on Earth “Tiny piece of meteorite from London’s Natural History Museum will be used by rover exploring red planet”

Soon after, members began to notice their comments related to racism and social justice were being deleted. When a Latina entrepreneur, who requested anonymity for this article, posted about migrant kids being released from detention centers — and forcibly separated from their parents — she thought no one cared about the issue because the post got such low traction. Then she realized it had been taken down.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Get Paid to Be a Beekeeper
Read Barack Obama’s Eulogy for John Lewis

We may no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick.
I know this is a celebration of John’s life. There are some who might say we shouldn’t dwell on such things. But that’s why I’m talking about it. John Lewis devoted his time on this Earth fighting the very attacks on democracy and what’s best in America that we’re seeing circulate right now. He knew that every single one of us has a God-given power and that the faith of this democracy depends on how we use it. That democracy isn’t automatic. It has to be nurtured. It has to be tended to. We have to work at it. It’s hard. And so he knew that it depends on whether we summoned a measure, just a measure of John’s moral courage, to question what’s right and what’s wrong. And call things as they are. He said that as long as he had a breath in his body, he would do everything he could to preserve this democracy, and as long as we have breath in our bodies, we had to continue his cause.

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Something Wonderful

Via: @thetzechun: VIdeo with sound (OK to turn off sound): From
海外の万国反応記
 This Free macOS 8 Emulator Lets You Play ‘Oregon Trail’