National Security Council officials have strategically included Trump’s name in “as many paragraphs as we can because he keeps reading if he’s mentioned,” according to one source, who relayed conversations he had with NSC officials.
{ Reuters | Continue reading }
related { How Trump gets his fake news }
U.S., buffoons |
May 17th, 2017
When the National Security Agency began using a new hacking tool called EternalBlue, those entrusted with deploying it marveled at both its uncommon power and the widespread havoc it could wreak if it ever got loose.
Some officials even discussed whether the flaw was so dangerous they should reveal it to Microsoft, the company whose software the government was exploiting, according to former NSA employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the issue.
But for more than five years, the NSA kept using it — through a time period that has seen several serious security breaches — and now the officials’ worst fears have been realized. The malicious code at the heart of the WannaCry virus that hit computer systems globally late last week was apparently stolen from the NSA, repackaged by cybercriminals and unleashed on the world for a cyberattack that now ranks as among the most disruptive in history.
{ Washington Post | Continue reading }
screenshot { Ben Thorp Brown, Drowned World, 2016 }
spy & security |
May 17th, 2017
In a mossy forest in the western Andes of Ecuador, a small, cocoa-brown bird with a red crown sings from a slim perch. […] Three rival birds call back in rapid response. […] They are singing with their wings, and their potential mates seem to find the sound very alluring. […]
This is an evolutionary innovation — a whole new way to sing. But the evolutionary mechanism behind this novelty is not adaptation by natural selection, in which only those who survive pass on their genes, allowing the species to become better adapted to its environment over time. Rather, it is sexual selection by mate choice, in which individuals pass on their genes only if they’re chosen as mates. From the peacock’s tail to the haunting melodies of the wood thrush, mate choice is responsible for much of the beauty in the natural world.
Most biologists believe that these mechanisms always work in concert — that sex appeal is the sign of an objectively better mate, one with better genes or in better condition. But the wing songs of the club-winged manakin provide new insights that contradict this conventional wisdom. Instead of ensuring that organisms are on an inexorable path to self-improvement, mate choice can drive a species into what I call maladaptive decadence — a decline in survival and fecundity of the entire species. It may even lead to extinction.
{ NYT | Continue reading }
art { Cy Twombly, Achilles Mourning the Death of Patroclus, 1962 }
birds, evolution, science |
May 13th, 2017
Keeping the dead buried was a matter of grave concern in 19th-century America. As medical schools proliferated after the Civil War, the field grew increasingly tied to the study of anatomy and practice of dissection. Professors needed bodies for young doctors to carve into and the pool of legally available corpses—executed criminals and body donors—was miniscule. Enter freelance body snatchers, dispatched to do the digging. By the late 1800s, the illicit body trade was flourishing. […]
Inventors got to work. Their solution? Explosives.
Philip. K Clover, a Columbus, Ohio artist, patented an early coffin torpedo in 1878. Clover’s instrument functioned like a small shotgun secured inside the coffin lid in order to “prevent the unauthorized resurrection of dead bodies,” as the inventor put it. If someone tried to remove a buried body, the torpedo would fire out a lethal blast of lead balls when the lid was pried open.
{ Atlas Obscura | Continue reading }
art { Roy Lichtenstein, Mirror #2 (Six Panels), 1970 }
flashback |
April 3rd, 2017
Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, sees Superman as a great example of what not to look for in the search for alien life.
{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }
photo { Melanie Schiff, Spit Rainbow, 2006 }
unrelated { Gilbert Baker, creator of the rainbow flag, has died }
photogs |
April 3rd, 2017
Simulation suggests 68 percent of the universe may not actually exist
According to the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (Lambda-CDM) model, which is the current accepted standard for how the universe began and evolved, the ordinary matter we encounter every day only makes up around five percent of the universe’s density, with dark matter comprising 27 percent, and the remaining 68 percent made up of dark energy, a so-far theoretical force driving the expansion of the universe. But a new study has questioned whether dark energy exists at all, citing computer simulations that found that by accounting for the changing structure of the cosmos, the gap in the theory, which dark energy was proposed to fill, vanishes.
{ New Atlas | Continue reading }
art { Portia Munson, Her Coffin, 2016 }
mystery, space |
March 31st, 2017
How much water goes into a cup of tea? Somewhere around 30 litres of water is required for tea itself, 10 litres for a small dash of milk and a further 6 litres for each teaspoon of sugar. This means that a simple cup of tea with milk and two sugars could actually require 52 litres of water.
{ ResearchGate | Continue reading }
related { A Corpus Study of ‘Cup of [tea]’ and ‘Mug of [tea]’ | PDF }
oil on canvas { Roy Lichtenstein, Bread in Bag, 1961 }
economics, food & drink, water |
March 2nd, 2017
Topless cleaning service owner arrested for underwear theft
