Dating bots, future war fiction, humanity's space probes, Hoover-Baldwin, a good thing
1. Dating bots make me … uncomfortable. Do coders really need one more special advantage?
“I realized that when I stormed out of the lab, I’d accidentally left off my search criteria during the auto-browse, and inadvertently discovered an incredibly powerful hack, a way to make the attention pyramid work for me. Over the course of 18 hours, my algorithm – logged in as me – had browsed thousands of active profiles, across all segments of women. These views didn’t pay attention to body type, race, or age, and mostly visited women that had just joined the site, or women that were high matches for me, many of them left wanting for attention by the usual online meat market.”
2. Some very strange wargaming fiction written around the “Future of War” conference.
“In addition, the North Korean tactical commanders knew where the Americans and South Koreans were not located, which enabled them to find gaps and maneuver around and behind the allies. When the U.N. forces tried to counter these maneuvers, they found themselves pinned down by deadly indirect fire. Within 14 days, the allies found themselves holding on to an enclave around the port of Pusan. The situation did not begin to stabilize until the allies began using dogs, detector devices, and even children to find and eliminate the tiny robotic spies. Once again, the adaptability and resourcefulness of American soldiers and Marines compensated for the lack of foresight of their leaders. But a long slog lay ahead if the South was to be re-liberated.”
3. Beautiful little microsite detailing what humanity’s 29 space probes are up to.
“Mangalyaan launched into space on November 5, 2013 and is now 331.61 MILLION km from Earth. Its primary destination is Mars, which it arrived at on September 24, 2014. Wherever Mangalyaan goes, it carries its trusty camera, methane sensor, particle analyzer, photometer, and spectrometer. Mangalyaan often chats with humans from ISRO.”
4. What Hoover’s FBI thought of James Baldwin.
“J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director synonymous with his crime-fighting organization for nearly fifty years, once returned a Bureau memo on James Baldwin with a leering, handwritten challenge. ‘Isn’t Baldwin a well-known pervert?,’ Hoover scrawled in his distinctive blue ink. Despite the career-threatening context, M. A. Jones, an officer of the FBI Crime Records Section, answered Hoover’s marginal question by carefully distinguishing between fictional and personal testimonies.”
5. You don’t hear about this worthy effort by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation very often.
“While attempts to rein in payday lending at the state level have been stymied by a powerful payday lobby, efforts at the city and county level in Silicon Valley – many supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s economic security grantmaking program — have been paying off. Since 2009, SVCF has made more than $2 million in anti-payday lending policy advocacy grants to strengthen consumer protections across the region and the state. By educating communities and elected officials about the ills of predatory payday loans, grantees have secured passage of 12 local ordinances to limit the wide availability and overconcentration of payday lending in poor communities.”
On Fusion: Beer doesn’t splash out of a glass as easily as water does. Here’s why.
Today’s 1957 American English Language Tip
didactic, orig. to instruct (didactic poetry), having the manner of a teacher, has now taken on, in popular use, a pejorative force, ‘inclined to lecture others too much’ : A didactic old lady.
The Credits: 1. theguardian.com / @publicroad 2. foreignpolicy.com 3. spaceprob.es 4. publishersweekly.com / @zeynep 5. cof.org / @ddt
Dogs, Detector Devices, and Even Children