It was Raid Night (sunday, 9:00pm) for my World of Warcraft raiding guild, and we had a couple of guests along for the quests. Per usual procedure, we were all collected in audio-chat, logged in to WoW, and most of us had a bottle of wine or some beer open, and as the raid continued – as was our wont – we got merry.
To get to Lavecon, I took the midlands train from London/Euston up toward Birmingham, and got off at Northampton. On the way up, I went past Bletchley, the home of Bletchley Park – where the British code-breakers (including Alan Turing) worked during WWII.
“NASA Scientists Baffled by Mysterious Pit Photographed on Mars” – like a trout to a clickbait fly, I rise and bite at the hook. [huff]
We’ve recently been treated to a round of Sokal-style hoax papers that were declared to invalidate (or at least severely damage) parts of a field, because they were accepted by publications within that field. [pharyngula]
If you like numbers and charts and stuff, you’re going to love FredBlog! [fredblog]
There’s some vague stuff in the news about United airlines cockpit door protocol maybe being partially revealed. Short form: don’t worry.
This is just a quick cross-link, I haven’t got much to add, because it’s already weirder than I can make it. [atlas]
There was some discussion of needles over at Caine’s [affinity] about how needles are made. I’m sure you’ll enjoy this!
When I was in high school I got an old singer sewing machine at the goodwill, managed to adjust it until it worked correctly again, and used it for light leather-work. Sewing machines and rope-making machines have a similar problem: you want to get the thread around the bobbin without moving it – which is a really complicated trick since (for the bobbin to be stable) there has to be some kind of supporting thing that holds the bobbin.
Verizon was ready with new spy tech, to force onto people’s phones when it became legal for them to begin tracking and selling customer data. [boingboing]