Hello Internet! In This Episode: Erin and Weer’d discuss the recent spree killing in Canada, and the conspicuous lack of information on it; David talks about gun parts that are great to have around; Weer’d interviews Logan Metesh of High … Continue reading →

In the days of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), we are seeing a reduction in overall traffic volumes and crash-related injuries and fatalities. What are the nuances of this situation, and what lessons can we learn to advance transportation safety research and practice? TRB is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, May 20, 2020, from 1:00 to 2:30 PM Eastern that will explore the impacts of COVID-19 on traffic crashes and overall highway safety conditions. This webinar is cosponsored by the Pacific Southwest Regio...

By early May, more than 270,000 people have died around the world from the disease attributed to the new coronavirus. First identified in Wuhan, China in December, the virus has infected nearly four million worldwide, including well over a million in the U.S., which now lays claim to one in every four deaths.

Poor, dim-witted humanity. We used to think we were the center of everything. That wasn’t that long ago, and even though we’ve made tremendous advancements in our understanding of our situation here in space, we still have huge blind spots. For one, we’re only now waking up to the reality of interstellar objects passing through …

Continue reading "A Cool Idea to Catch Up With an Interstellar Visitor"

The post A Cool Idea to Catch Up With an Interstellar Visitor appeared first on Universe Today.

„Angguruk–Wamena–Angguruk!“ křičí do vysílačky mladík z kmene Jaliů v odletové hale pralesního letiště ve vesničce Angguruk, v srdci Západní Papuy, indonéské části Nové Guiney. Pravda, termín odletová hala je pro malou boudu s váhou, na níž se v Česku váží brambory, se stolem, židlí a jedinou vysílačkou poněkud nadnesený, ale tady, mezi Papuánci, není asi nic normální.

Will Smith, Will Ferrell, Wanda Sykes, Stephen Colbert and Colin Quinn are among the latest additions.

[I am happy to turn this space over to my former colleague and (I trust) lifelong friend Romans Pancs, who offers what he describes as a polemical essay. It has no references and no confidence intervals. It has question marks. It makes a narrow point and does not weigh pros and cons. It is an […]

Senator Richard Burr's potential insider trading issues, for which he's being investigated, may have gotten quite a bit worse this week. A new report notes that on the same day Burr sold off a "significant percentage" of his stock holdings (while also telling the public not to worry about COVID-19), it turns out his brother-in-law just coincidentally decided to dump a bunch of stock too. Amazing!

Sen. Richard Burr was not the only member of his family to sell off a significant portion of his stock holdings in February, ahead of the market crash spurred by coronavirus fears. On the same day Burr sold, his brother-in-law also dumped tens of thousands of dollars worth of shares. The market fell by more than 30% in the subsequent month.

Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, who has a post on the National Mediation Board, sold between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of shares in six companies — including several that have been hit particularly hard in the market swoon and economic downturn.

Could this actually be a coincidence? Sure. Maybe. But the timing (the very same day...) does seem notable. As the ProPublica report notes, Fauth "is not a frequent stock trader." Burr insists that his sales were based on public information, though it's difficult to see how he could simply ignore the classified briefings he got concerning the rising pandemic issues, and base decisions entirely on public information. Indeed, this is why government officials should be required to hand off any equities like this to a blind trust where they have no visibility into how it's traded.

Even if this is all legal (which is not certain either way yet...), it again reinforces the belief that the powerful live by different rules and are able to game the system for personal advantage, even as they're supposed to be serving the public interest.

In Matthew 7:15-19, Jesus tells His disciples how to tell good teachers from bad teachers. He tells them to look at the fruit. Is Jesus telling people to look at the lives of other teachers to see if they have good works? No! Not at all. Listen to the study to see what Jesus IS teaching and why this is important for properly understanding the gospel.

Hibiscus tea mixed with tequila, lime, jalapeno, and pineapple makes this one delicious cocktail!

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

Australia bit barn outfit NEXTDC adds classic film reference to usual mix of resilience, connectivity and security

Australian serial entrepreneur Bevan Slattery has revealed that he told the architects of a data centre he funded to make it resemble the sets used in classic submarine flick The Hunt for Red October.…

One has the vulns, the other has the brass neck to pull off heists. Right?

Russia might begin carrying out cyber attacks against Britain's 5G networks "at the behest of China", the chairman of a Parliamentary Select Committee has ventured.…

The message is Zoom and gloom!

Immunosuppression continues to be a necessary component of transplantation, despite its association with a multitude of adverse effects. Numerous efforts have been made to circumvent the need for immunosuppression by using various techniques to achieve donor hyporesponsiveness. In this issue of the JCI, Morath et al. take this endeavor forward. Prior to transplantation, the researchers infused recipients with donor-modified immune cells and achieved immunologic hyporesponsiveness. This successful phase I trial also provides a possible avenue for achieving transplantation without the requisite immunosuppression.

While the pandemic has been chipping away at the furry convention scene, other furs have stepped forward to try and give those in the community events to look forward to over the now dormant weekends. This had started with a group of Furnal Equinox members creating a digital replacement for their late March convention called Keep Calm and Carry Con - Furnal Isolation. More have started to spring up this spring.

They can have internet dealers dens, streaming dance competitions, and other staples that conventions are known for. Accessible from the safety of your own home.

Below is a comprehensive list of conventions. Last updated May 2nd, 2020 12:18 ET.

Please feel free to place any not listed here in the comments below and we will look into adding it if it appears legitimate.

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If you were to Google the definition of a comedian you would see it defined by Dictionary.com as an entertainer whose act is designed to make an audience laugh. Likewise the New York Times has a comedy critic, Jason Zinoman, who defines comedy in a moment of reflecting on his own career of analyzing them.

This often dictates the form of my column, since while the goal of comedy is to make you laugh, what’s fascinating about the art form — especially these days, when it’s so fragmented and aesthetically diverse — is that there are many ways artists accomplish that goal.

However, if you were to ask one furry who considers himself one, 2 Gryphon, you’d find an entirely different etymology of the word, and what the job of a comic is.

It's the JOB of the comic to bring forth uncomfortable things and question them in a way that makes people think about them.Since that has become "wrong", expect that the Western world will not be laughing as much. https://t.co/EIExUX5W2h— 2, The Ranting Gryphon (@2_gryphon) June 9, 2019

It is this quote that we are going to be over-analysing today. I have broken this down into three main points as to why this definition of the job of a comedian is not only a fundamental misunderstanding of the role, but also a resignation of the foundational principles of comedy.

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we know how politics works in the United States. Whoever—whatever political party gets into government is going to merge with the bureaucracy pretty damn fast. It will be in a position where it has some levers in its hand. And so, as a result, corporate lobbyists will move in to help control those levers. So it doesn’t make much difference in the end. What does make a difference is political accountability, a general deterrence set to stop political organizations behaving in a corrupt manner. Continue reading →

Media falls for "Petri dish" as its go-to cliché.

Ad revenue forecasts slashed as regional news become the first media casualties of COVID-19.

IBM has been recognized as a storage software Leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions1. In its Magic Quadrants’, Gartner analysts evaluate technology and solutions with an ‘Ability to Execute’ and a ‘Completeness of Vision’.

IBM today unveiled a number of major additions to its Flex System portfolio. The offerings combine the latest server technology with new virtualization, networking and management tools, allowing clients to consolidate their existing IT infrastructures and reduce operating costs. This will help clients use smaller data center environments to quickly deploy, manage and secure increasingly larger clouds.

Today, Allianz and IBM concluded an agreement in Munich regarding support for the operation of Allianz's data centers. IBM will be acting as the global provider of IT operation services for Allianz in effect from April 1, 2014, supporting the transformation of the company's global IT infrastructure.

China Construction Bank (Asia) Corporation Limited (“CCB (Asia)”) and IBM today announced the development of the first blockchain-enabled bancassurance project in Hong Kong. Built on the IBM Blockchain Platform, the solution is designed to streamline CCB (Asia)’s bancassurance process and greatly enhance customer experience and the quality of services delivered through faster transaction processing time and increased transparency.

IBM today announced a research collaboratory in Singapore, where researchers from IBM intend to collaborate with scientists and engineers from public agencies in Singapore to improve the quality of its urban services. The focus of this research effort will be to use sensor networks to more effectively model, predict and manage the use of natural and physical infrastructure resources – water, transport and energy.  

• Con vigencia de 10 años, Banorte e IBM firman alianza estratégica que permitirá establecer las bases de un nuevo modelo de banca enfocado al cliente, y mejorar sustancialmente sus índices de eficiencia para alcanzar niveles cercanos al 40%, así como retornos sobre capital superiores al 20%. El acuerdo incluye servicios de consultoría y de tecnología, investigación y desarrollo. • “Estamos plenamente satisfechos con el acuerdo logrado, pues este suma el mejor talento humano, tanto de IBM, como de Banorte Ixe, y está en línea con nuestra búsqueda de herramientas tecnológicas para servir a nuestros clientes de manera individualizada”: Alejandro Valenzuela.

IBM anunció hoy que un 40% de los principales bancos e instituciones financieras en el país cuentan con protección de fraudes en línea que se sustentan en la solución Trusteer de IBM, con la cual la seguridad de los clientes está respaldada al realizar transacciones electrónicas.

El actual entorno tecnológico impulsa a las empresas a transformar sus modelos de negocio en un escenario en donde, según la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE), el 25% de la economía mundial será digital en los próximos cinco años. De esta forma, el uso de nuevas tecnologías se vuelve la pieza clave para asegurar tanto competitividad, como su alto desempeño.

IBM anunció hoy la primera plataforma de servicios basada en IBM Watson y construida en IBM Cloud para aumentar la inteligencia humana y ayudar a mejorar las operaciones de los proveedores de servicios a través de tecnologías cognitivas.

Científicos de IBM (NYSE: IBM) desarrollaron un nuevo enfoque para simular moléculas en una computadora cuántica, lo que podrá un día ayudar a revolucionar la química y la ciencia de los materiales. Los científicos utilizaron con éxito un procesador cuántico de siete bits para abordar el problema de la estructura molecular del hidruro de berilio (BeH2), la molécula más grande simulada en una computadora cuántica hasta la fecha. Los resultados muestran una ruta de exploración para los sistemas cuánticos a corto plazo para realzar nuestra comprensión de las reacciones químicas complejas que podrían conducir a aplicaciones prácticas.

IBM fue reconocido como líder de software de almacenamiento en el Cuadrante Mágico de Gartner para Software de Recuperación y Respaldo en Centro de Datos1. En sus “cuadrantes mágicos”, los analistas de Gartner evalúan tecnología y soluciones con la “capacidad de ejecución” y una “visión completa”.

AXA Seguros anunció que sus ventas digitales en México aumentaron 208% en los últimos tres años, gracias a la tecnología de eCommerce IBM Marketing Cloud, lo que permite a la compañía de origen francés maximizar la atención a sus potenciales compradores y ofrecer ofertas personalizadas.