Sunday, March 31, 2024
Hilary Mantel's novel about the French Revolution, "A Place of Greater Safety" is $1.99 right now
at Amazon. (The Guardian called it "enthralling.")
Harvard's Caselaw Access Project is making all U.S. case law freely available online
Hundreds of years of opinions.
I know what you're wondering, do they even have Stone v. Boreman, the oldest case on Westlaw, from 1658?https://t.co/plXDLuZVPG
— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) March 21, 2024
Saturday, March 30, 2024
Here's the latest Super Punch newsletter
Featuring 10 stories I excavated from the first year of my site, my new favorite music, and the best toy I bought this month. I'll pick a subscriber in the next few days to send stickers to.
New Humble Bundle featuring pop culture-inspired cookbooks
Starts with four for $1, including the Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of Willy Wonka
"A fertilizer spill in Iowa this month wiped out much of the aquatic life across a 60-mile stretch of rivers in two states"
"The latest die-off started, Iowa officials said, when a valve was left open over a weekend on a storage tank at ... an agricultural business"
(The article is a choose-your-own adventure with an early quote calling it "the big one," and a later paragraph saying, "But the biomass affected is likely pretty low as the kill was mostly minnow and chub species.")
Netflix needs to make a series about the murder of the billionaire that wanted to produce The Three-Body Problem Netflix series
I didn’t make this up, I had ChatGPT summarize a Chinese article on this, but here is the English coverage. And yeah Xu was sentenced just a week ago, on 3/22 in China pretty much at the same time as the 3/21 premiere in US. Justice finally. RIPhttps://t.co/ExWS9GMHfs
— Rui Ma 马睿 (@ruima) March 29, 2024
Friday, March 29, 2024
"What You Are Looking For Is in the Library: A Novel" is $2.99
It sounds extremely charming in this NYTimes review.
Caltrans workers accused of building themselves secret mini-apartments inside train stations
reportedly featured a kitchen, shower, plumbing and security cameras. Prosecutors said the two defendants worked together to keep the invoices for the work below $3,000 each to avoid scrutiny and skirt procedures meant to discourage such fraud.
(Sounds like they cleared out the apartments after they were discovered instead of turning them into airbnbs.)
ARG featuring interdimensional doors
Photo of door in Toronto. QR leads to https://t.co/w4kDQIuNvU
— Eric (@yankeewhite) March 29, 2024
Other cites are Phoenix AZ, Charlotte NC, Tierra Del Mar OR & Vancouver BC pic.twitter.com/0CqQn9wMaR
A news write-up and subreddit.
Links to read some of the 2024 Hugo Award Finalists for free
Not a lot of crossover in these categories with the Nebula nominees.
Best Novelette
“Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition”, Gu Shi
"Ivy, Angelica, Bay” by C.L. Polk
“On the Fox Roads” by Nghi Vo
“One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker
Best Short Story
“How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark
“The Mausoleum’s Children” by Aliette de Bodard
Green Knight figurine
表面をシボ加工(?)ぽくしてみたら結構いい感じかも。表面の傷目立ちにくくなるし、光の反射も柔らかくなって透け具合も面白い見え方。触り心地も良い🙆
— taichi＠WF2024w_1-22-05 (@ichiichi04) March 21, 2024
良い🙆 pic.twitter.com/KM1iHvEkhp
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Really good shark man
Wayne Reynolds may have drawn the most perfect shark head shape ever here pic.twitter.com/8Uz00wkoGq
— Boris 🦖 (@Vosk___) March 27, 2024
Funny way to depict the Invisible Woman in a simple sculpture
— Jon Hartman (@jorkmantheking) March 28, 2024
(He takes commissions and has posted many similar sculptures.)
New Humble Bundle features the Shogun audiobook
Various books by James Clavell, Shogun is $1. (Read most of these when I was very young because they were easily available, and even then thought, "this guy seems really weird about women")
Hoodie is a "cross between an isolation tank and a bed"
Vollebak's "Alien Hoodie":
- A sculpted 3D hoodie made from multi-dimensional material- Designed by computers and built by robots- Zip-up hood with mesh visor and antibacterial liningIf you’re a human interested in buying the hoodie, it’s a cross between an isolation tank and a bed. Built by the machines that build beds, it’s a double-layered, weighted, 3D-knitted hoodie with a padded sculptural texture based on the sand dunes on Mars. It also comes with a big black visor that you can see out through, but no-one can see in – making it perfect for long-haul flights or escaping from the world for a few hours.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Some good details in this lengthy interview about recruiting Iraqi scientists after 9/11
Even getting things like cars from Halliburton was difficult: they had a rule at the time that you had to drive around white unarmoured Suburbans with Texas plates that had to be washed every week. And that was just insane because that was the surest way to get killed. So we went out to the open car market.
...
We bought a car and decorated with local style. We put on stickers that said, “I love Iraq,” put on the air freshener with the plastic half pulled off, and started working on figuring out who the scientists were and who we were supposed to work with.
...
I was flying back to the embassy in Kuwait, filling up a backpack with $20, $30, $50 thousand in cash, signing for it personally, and then flying to Iraq and running this $2 million program, entirely in cash.
...
I found out that a group of female librarians actually put their lives at stake to defend this library and prevent the looters from going in and destroying and carting off the books.
Some clever bureaucratic jujitsu described, too.
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