Yet more keen links one might want to share

[glatt]

Good one. Makes me wish I could type faster.

[Clodfobble]

Got to wave 9. Got screwed a couple of times because initial-letter typos left me "starting" a word I hadn't intended, then I had to look all over trying to figure out what word I had to finish. It was fun.

[BigV]

https://imgur.com/r/DIY/YBLeDlk

make your handwriting a font

[fargon]

Originally Posted by BigV

https://imgur.com/r/DIY/YBLeDlk

make your handwriting a font

Nobody wants my handwriting as a font.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Mine handwriting would be a secret cipher neither the NSA, nor North Korea, could break.

Ever wonder how Washington DC came about? It's pretty interesting.

You probably know that the “D.C.” in Washington, D.C., stands for “District of Columbia” and that the district is not part of any state. But do you know why America’s Founding Fathers placed such importance on creating a capital outside of any state? We owe it all to piles of unpaid bills.

[xoxoxoBruce]

A very interesting article about eyewitness reliability to crimes.

In an excellent new paper, Too Good to Be True, Lachlan J. Gunn et al. show that more evidence can reduce confidence. The basic idea is simple. We expect that in most processes there will normally be some noise so absence of noise suggests a kind of systemic failure. The police are familiar with one type of example. When the eyewitnesses to a crime all report exactly the same story that reduces confidence that the story is true. Eyewitness stories that match too closely suggests not truth but a kind a systemic failure, namely the witnesses have collaborated on telling a lie.

What Gunn et al. show is that the accumulation of consistent (non-noisy) evidence can reverse one’s confidence surprisingly quickly. Consider a police lineup but now consider a more likely cause of systemic failure than witness conspiracy. Suppose that there is a small probability, say 1%, that the police arrange the lineup, either on purpose or by accident, so that the “suspect” is the only one who is close to matching the description of the criminal. Now consider what happens to our rational (Bayesian) probability that the suspect is guilty as the number of eyewitnesses saying “that’s the guy” increases.

The first eyewitness to identify the suspect increases our confidence that the suspect is guilty and our confidence increases when the second and third eyewitness corroborate but when a fourth eyewitness points to the same man our rational confidence should actually decrease. Even though the systemic failure rate is only 1%, that small probability starts to weigh more heavily the more consistent (less noisy) the evidence becomes. The red line in the graph at right shows–using a 1% systemic failure rate and realistic probabilities of eyewitness identification–that after 3 witnesses more evidence decreases our confidence and when more than 10 witnesses identify the same suspect we should be less certain of guilt than when one witness identifies the suspect!

Bold mine.

[Gravdigr]

Man, you can kill an awful lot of time over at HiConsumption, a digital lifestyle magazine.

Be sure to click the three four-bar-menu-thingy (upper left) for more categories.

I want almost everything they show/feature/review.

[BigV]

http://imgur.com/gallery/7Lsjz for the pitchurs.

http://www.voyageoftherascal.com/ for the story

[xoxoxoBruce]

From V's first link...

Lots of folks from the US came to visit me during my time in Mexico. It felt great to be able to share my new life, and the days I spent with friends were some of the richest of the voyage.

So as nice as the freedom before the mast is, hanging with friends is better. Maybe just when you're the center of attention.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Slow Death of Heavy Metal.

Although I read today Detroit has more lead in it's water than Flint, this is about other metals, like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Slayer.

These are strange days for classic heavy metal.
Many godfathers of the movement are in their 60s, some close to 70 years old, including members of Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. Several hard rock and metal luminaries—Ronnie James Dio, A.J. Pero (Twisted Sister), Jeff Hanneman (Slayer), Lemmy and Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor (Mötorhead)—have passed away recently. Concert sales for some acts are still strong, others are waning. OzzFest is long gone, and the final nail in the coffin for the annual Mayhem Fest likely landed this past summer. Music sales overall have declined, and over the past decade the Billboard charts, radio airplay and music award broadcasts have been dominated by anemic pop music and hipster rock.

‘People listen to music differently now. They don’t have time to sit down and put the record on and give it 30 minutes…who will be the next giant metal band, I don’t know.’—Rob Halford

To top it off, Brent Hinds, guitarist for old school-style headbangers Mastodon, told Guitar Player earlier last year that he hates playing heavy metal, while KISS bassist Gene Simmons proclaimed that “rock is dead” two years ago.

Considering that many of the genre’s godfathers, who still inspire younger bands and dominate European festivals, will likely retire in a few years, where do things will go from here? Will we see heavy bands on the superstar level of Metallica and Iron Maiden ever again? Will that classic sound become a nostalgic relic relegated to oldies bins? Or will it mutate into something else?

Damifino?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Europeana Collections

Josh Jones of Open Culture says, "Of all the archives I’ve surveyed, used in my own research, and presented to Open Culture readers, none has seemed to me vaster than Europeana Collections, a portal of '48,796,394 artworks, artefacts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe,' sourced from well over 100 institutions such as The European Library, Europhoto, the National Library of Finland, University College Dublin, Museo Galileo, and many, many more, including contributions from the public at large."

[Gravdigr]

Ooh, that sounds like a site one could kill some serious time in/at/on/wtfe.

I ain't even taking a peek right now.

Bookmarked, though.

[fargon]

Me too.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I have no interest in basketball, amateur, collegiate, or pro, but every once in awhile I read numbers thrown around about sneaker deals that make me shake my head in wonder. This short article explains the types, who gets them, and the strings.

To start, there's a common misconception among casual fans that only star players have shoe deals. When I tweeted out last month that Nick Young was signing a new shoe deal with adidas, the first response was, “Why is adidas giving Nick Young his own shoe?”

The truth is, only 10 players currently have their own signature shoe with a U.S.-based brand, but literally every player in the league has some level of relationship with a footwear brand.

From the brands’ perspective, they have an infrastructure in place to begin scouting and interacting with those players early on, and by the time known prospects turn pro after a year or two of college, they've already been scouted for as much as five years. Brands are spending increasingly more money at the high school level, sponsoring schools and AAU teams alike, to get their products worn by the top players, and in turn get access to a relationship with phenoms who’ll soon be pros.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Join the campaign against sex robots, don't give a fuck.