Nelson's Linkblog 2018-02

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Gates 2018 letter

Bill & Melinda Gates answe their 10 toughest questions

2018-02-25 gates • gatesfoundation • philanthropy

Twitter verified scam

Blue checkmark for a phishing fraud

2018-02-24 cryptocurrency • fraud • scam • twitter • verified

Syrian techno wedding singer

2018-02-24 music • omarsouleyman • syria • via:metafilter

High powered rifle shatters bodies in a way normal handguns don't

2018-02-22 ar15 • guncontrol • guns • medicine • politics

MapBox hillshading

Dynamic hillshading in a style editor; remembering Migurski laboriously doing this by hand with code years ago

2018-02-22 mapbox • maps • migurski • stamen • terrain

America Is Under Attack and the President Doesn't Care

Clearly written editorial

2018-02-22 america • electionhacking • elections • politics • russia • trump

All Star but it's a TED talk

Smash Mouth never sounded so smart

2018-02-22 allstar • funny • music • parody • smashmouth • ted • via:metafilter

Former Jehovah's Witness

Reddit AMA with someone who left the cult

2018-02-21 cult • jehovahswitnesses • reddit • religion

Pennsylvania redistricting

Details on the impact of the new plan

2018-02-21 pennsylvania • planscore • politics • redistricting

Continues to be an excellent offline mode mobile map

2018-02-21 maps • mapsme • mapswithme • openstreetmap • osm

Evolution of notebook computing

2018-02-21 ipython • jupyter • notebook • programming • python

Shit and Needles

A report on San Francisco

2018-02-21 health • homelessness • poverty • sanfrancisco

African-Americans who fought for the British in the War of 1812 and were relocated to Trinidad

2018-02-20 1812 • africanamerican • america • history • merikin • trinidad

Bots vs Al Franken

Sexual harassment allegations amplified with digital propaganda

2018-02-20 alfranken • bots • franken • politics • sexualharassment • twitter

Twitter abuse management

Details about bad leadership possibly being part of Twitter's abuse problem

2018-02-20 abuse • delharvey • jack • jackdorsey • spam • trustandsafety • twitter

Taxes and charitable donations

An economic argument that charitable donations should not be tax deductible

2018-02-20 charity • economics • economist • philanthropy • politics • taxes

Chimerical colors

Fun color illusion; fatigue the eye and it can see impossible colors

2018-02-19 color • impossiblecolor • stygianblue

“Black Panther” and the Invention of “Africa”

Thoughts on colonialism from an African-American perspective

2018-02-19 blackpanther • movies • wakanda

Africans on Black Panther

Some thoughts from Kenya on the American movie

2018-02-18 africa • africanamerican • blackpanther • movies

Killmonger was right

A nice exploration of the central ethical quandry of Black Panther

2018-02-18 africanamerican • black • blackpanther • killmonger • movies

Russian troll protest

Both sides of a Houston protest over nothing was organized by Russian trolls

2018-02-18 facebook • houston • politics • russia • texas • trump

Film Crit Hulk on Black Panther

Very insightful essay

2018-02-18 africanamerican • black • blackpanther • culture • film • movies

Black versions of movies

Cultural history from Hollywood

2018-02-17 africanamericans • black • culture • films • history • movies

Black Panther's importance

Excellent essay on Black pride in America

2018-02-17 africanamerican • black • blackpanther • movies • race

OpenStreetMap critique

Thoughtful list of organizational problems

2018-02-17 emacsen • maps • openstreetmap • osm • serge

Kottke.org at 20

Thoughtful interview with Jason Kottke about old school blogging and Internet media

2018-02-17 blogging • culture • internet • kottke

Space is the Place

Sun Ra's 1974 afrofuturist film

2018-02-17 blackpanther • film • movies • sunra

Trump and Karen McDougal

Detailed account of his affair with yet another woman

2018-02-16 mcdougal • politics • scandal • sex • trump

New Zealand apocalypse prep

Story about the bizarre obsession Thiel and other Silicon Valley people have with New Zealand

2018-02-15 apocalypse • newzealand • tech • thiel • via:metafilter

Random Trump administrator spending public money for a European vacation for him and his wife

2018-02-15 corruption • politics • trump • va • veterans

Challenges of building a login system for Internet software

2018-02-15 django • internet • login • name • security • username

CoinHive - Demo

A web page showing a Javascript cryptocurrency miner (Monero)

2018-02-14 bitcoin • coinhive • cryptocurrency • monero

Blocklists in practice

Study of how lists of accounts to block work for protecting against harassment and implications on free speech

2018-02-14 blocklists • censorship • socialmedia • twitter

KotakuInAction study

Acacdemic work looking at the GamerGate community on Reddit

2018-02-14 community • feminism • freespeech • gamergate • hategroups • kotakuinaction • reddit

Evolving a Decompiler

A sort of insane project in generating algorithms

2018-02-14 ai • computing • decompiling • evolution • geneticalgorithms • machinelearning

Chinese government investing heavily in AI research

2018-02-13 ai • america • china • computerscience • politics • trump • unitedstates

The Bittersweet Beauty of Adam Rippon

Sweet essay on what it means to have an out gay athlete in the Olympics

2018-02-13 comingout • gay • lgbt • olympics

New data journalism website about partisan gerrymandering

2018-02-13 data • gerrymandering • journalism • migurski • politics

matplotlib.pyplot.xkcd

Give your Python plots a hand-drawn feel

2018-02-13 funny • matplotlib • python • visualization • xkcd

Alternatives to censorship

EFF's ideas for fighting hate speech on the Internet. Not sure I agree with this position any more, but it's thoughtful

2018-02-13 censorship • eff • freespeech • politics • twitter

Erlang racism in package name

Stupid debate about whether to name a package after a racist slur

2018-02-13 erland • racism • software • tirefire

Out LGBT Olympians

Medal results so far for openly LGBT athletes

2018-02-12 gay • lgbt • olympics • sports

Genderbending Overwatch cosplay

Fun set of fan photos

2018-02-12 cosplay • games • genderbending • lgbt • overwatch • transgender • via:reddit

Intersections of San Francisco

Fun selection of odd angles

2018-02-12 intersections • maps • sanfrancisco • streets

Harassment of women developer

Young woman publishes a crypto app; hideous misogynists try to tear her down

2018-02-11 crypto • programming • reddit • sexism • toxicmasculinity

Gullah Geechee origins of a folk song / spiritual

2018-02-10 blackhistory • geechee • gullah • kumbaya • music

California state police working with Nazi groups to pursue Antifa

2018-02-09 antifa • california • facism • nazis • police

The Alt-Right is Killing People

Details of how Internet hate culture leads to murders

2018-02-09 altright • misogyny • murder • nazis • pepe • racism • trump • via:metafilter

Russian probing voter lists

This story continues to be muddled; how much did Russian espionage target US election systems?

2018-02-08 badtech • elections • politics • russia • trump • votingrights

Photos from Assassin’s Creed Origins

Nice travelogue from an astonishingly beautiful videogame

2018-02-07 assassinscreed • egypt • games • screenshots

Coining "open source"

Etymology of the phrase that changed an entire industry

2018-02-07 freesoftware • opensource • software • timoreilly

FEMA Puerto Rico failures

Republicans aren't very good at hurricane relief

2018-02-07 fema • hurricane • politics • puertorico • trump

Details on Peter Thiel's New Zealand citizenship

2018-02-07 billionaires • newzealand • peterthiel • wealth

New hillshading map

MapBox releases client-side hill shaded relief / terrain maps

2018-02-06 hillshading • mapbox • maps • relief • terrain

"Reply-To" Munging Still Considered Harmful

A very old debate about mailing lists and spam

2018-02-05 email • mail • replyall • replyto • rfc2822 • rfc822

Gerrymandering and the courts

The long difficult legal road for having fair elections in the US

2018-02-05 courts • gerrymandering • politics • supremecourt • votingrights

#ReleaseTheMemo propaganda campaign

Details on how information warfare works on Twitter

2018-02-04 politics • propaganda • releasethememo • trump • twitter

"What Time Does The Super Bowl Start?"

A roundup of when websites started spamming the popular query

2018-02-04 funny • google • seo • superbowl

Chrome adblocking

Details on the new feature Feb 15; will default to on

2018-02-03 ads • blocking • browser • google

Deep learning math

All the multivariable calculus required for neural networks. Truthfully you can hack the code without understanding this stuff

2018-02-03 ai • machinelearning • math • matrix • programming

Art smuggled on Apollo 12 to the moon. Includes a Warhol scribble of a p enis

2018-02-02 art • funny • moon • nasa • warhol

4chan's cryptocurrency

Ponzi scheme riddled with bugs, all the money stolen

2018-02-01 4chan • bitcoin • blockchain • ponzi

Python library that lets you access many resources as if they were a filesystem

2018-02-01 filesystem • ftp • fuse • python • sshfs

The Bayeux Tapestry

A silly but engaging tour of the famous 11th century graphic novel

2018-02-01 1066 • bayeux • bayeuxtapestry • hastings • history • tapestry