therandomtexan
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Jeez, it’s like it’s all a giant scam or something
Michael Moore has turned his documentary gaze towards alternative energy, and–surprise, surprise!–found that it’s not the Save the Planet Panacea everyone says it is. “It turned out the wakeup call was about our own side,” [Moore’s film director] Gibbs said in a phone interview. “It was kind of crushing to discover that the things I Read more
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College is Vastly Overrated
Charles Cook thinks College Does Not Make You a Better Person. In a 1780 letter to Abigail, John Adams wrote that he “must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy,” while his “sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order Read more
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The Urban
ChickenSicken MovementSalmonella anyone? Looks like the country’s largest source of salmonella infections comes from personal poultry. From tainted pre-cut melons to pig-ear dog treats, there’s been a slew of recalls this year due to outbreaks of salmonella infections. Yet by far the biggest source of the bacteria hasn’t involved a recall at all. It stems from Read more
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Spicing Up the Kitchen
Ellen Bennett is the Marie Kondo of kitchen organization. She has lots of clever ideas, my favorite one is this: I found a good quick-drying paint marker at my favorite art supply store yesterday, and started labeling. It works! Update (30 July 2019): Two caveats: (1) them little bottles ain’t cheap, so it’ll take a Read more
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Dust Yourself Off
Phylagen, a San Francisco biotech company, has developed a technique for tracking previous locations of objects based on the composition of dust the object has collected. In another experiment, the sampling technology allowed researchers to determine where a person had walked within 1 kilometer in San Francisco, because of the microbes picked up by their Read more
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A Man Draws a Gun
I took pistol training because one day it dawned on me that if I ever actually needed a gun it would be too late to shop. Read more
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The Cyberfascism Bulleting #3: Spring Cleaning Edition
BIG BIZ Uh, oh. The punditry is starting to wise up. Here’s 4 Reasons Why Big Tech is Hazardous to Our Lives. Google AI Ethics Council is Falling Apart. Part artistic ethical differences, part Googloid mau-mauing. Only the truly clueless would use “Google” and “ethics” in the same sentence. Time for a ‘Third-Party Audit’ of Read more
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Caught in the Draft
In December of 1969, the Selective Service held a lottery to determine the order in which young men would be called up for the Draft. My number was a low 53, and that set the course for much of my adult life. Turns out, the odds were against me. A nice description of what happened. Read more
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News Flash! Men and Women are Different…
..despite the fact that some folks wish is wasn’t so Neurosexism: the myth that men and women have different brains https://t.co/OOtJaICQ0t — Gina Rippon (@ginarippon1) February 27, 2019 In fact, the National Institute of Health requires that sex be included as a variable in all studies: Sex can influence health & disease in many ways, Read more
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The Cyberfascism Bulletin #2: April Fool’s Edition
I wish I was foolin’. All this stuff’s real, so the joke’s on us. BIG BIZ An oldie but goodie: Kim DuToit discovers that the Weather Channel app is selling his location data in near real time. He is not amused. Heck, I didn’t even realize that drunken online shopping was a thing. How naive Read more
The Random Texan 