—Charles Simic ("Charles the Obscure")
Sydney totally covered in devilish smoke as bushfires continue to cause chaos in nsw
'Where is Australia?' China makes a bold play for the south Pacific's 'Treasure Islands'
China is on the front foot across the south Pacific, as allegations of bribery emerge in the Solomon Islands and a leader on Bougainville reveals a Chinese “masterplan”.
BOB CARR. Erratic US Pacific policy is leaving Australia stranded (Australian Financial Review 8-11-19)
The Canberra hawks hope that our tough stance on China will encourage US resolve. But that underestimates the flightiness of Donald Trump. Continue reading
The online voting system used by NSW was vulnerable to a flaw that potentially allowed undetectable voter fraud to take place in the 2019 state election, despite reassurances from the NSW Electoral Commission that the system was unaffected. That's the key take away in a new report [pdf] from renowned cryptographic researcher Dr Vanessa Teague that says iVote is susceptible to a previously identified flaw in its verification process that could allow the verification of votes to be tricked, resulting in an incorrect count.
This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama) reviews Eric D. Chason (William & Mary), A Tax on the Clones: The Strange Case of Bitcoin Cash, 39 Va. Tax Rev. __ (2019)
“Lotto lout Michael Carroll reveals he is ‘happier now’ working seven days a week as a £10-an-hour coalman after blowing £10m jackpot on drink, drugs and brothels (and claims he slept with 4,000 women).” Link here.
Thousands of card holders are stung every year at the ATM, ripped off by skimmers but the tables have now turned. The big banks are teaming up with police using new technology to catch the fraudsters before they can even leave with your money. 7NEWS.com.au #7NEWS
Evidence based policy research project: 20 case studies 2019
CYBERCRIME: A Hacker Wants About $5 Million in Ransom From Pemex By End of November.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Artificial intelligence uses electrocardiograms to predict arrhythmia.
"Manipulating cards, like manipulating objects, is more that just a matter of simple dexterity. The real skill of a magician is the ability to influence minds. Performing a magic trick successfully means creating a reality. An alternative reality where you're the one who makes the rules."
Says Daily Overview of the shot:
This particular shot is made possible due to the focal length of the camera in this satellite that is roughly 32 times longer than that of a standard DSLR camera.
I don’t know what practical value low-angle satellite photos have, but they sure are beautiful.
Shelter cat put in solitary confinement for ‘repeatedly’ letting other cats out The Mirror. Good kitty!
The New York Times: Four-figure price tags. Destination auctions. Yearslong wait-lists. Rare plant collectors aren’t messing around. “…Countless articles have attempted to unspool millennial motivations for loving plants: They’re a replacement for kids, a respite from urban cityscapes, a totem of climate anxiety, a life preserver to which one can cling in uncertain times, a kind ofself-care. Versions of all of these sentiments were echoed at the aroid show. “It puts me in a really good head space,” said Chelsea Grace, 32, who owns a Seattle plant shop called Cultivate Propagate. “And,” she added, “as dorky as it sounds, when things put out a new leaf, it feels really constructive.” There’s also the unavoidable underbelly of any consumer bubble: hubris and hoarding, grifts and theft. There are shady sellers shilling questionable “seeds” online, rabid collectors swiping cuttings from botanical gardens and poachers ripping rare specimens out of their habitats without permits.
‘Carpetbaggers’ Keeping Aboriginal Australian Artists In ‘Modern-Day Slavery’, Say Advocates
The artists’ collective APY has warned the Australian federal and South Australian state governments that certain outside art dealers, referred to as “carpetbaggers,” have been manipulating some artists’ family members into debt and then taking those artists away from their families and homes and forcing them to make paintings to pay off that debt. – The Guardian
NextGov – Ongoing stress—like constant alerts and notifications—can lead to health problems and shorter lives. “In the past decade, smartphones have gone from being a status item to an indispensable part of our everyday lives. And we spend a lot of time on them, around four hours a day on average. There’s an increasing body of research that shows smartphones can interfere with our sleep, productivity, mental health and impulse control. Even having asmartphone within reach can reduce available cognitive capacity. But it’s recently been suggested we should be more concerned with the potential for smartphones to shorten our lives by chronically raising our levels of cortisol, one of the body’s main stress hormones. Cortisol is often mislabelled as the primary fight-or-flight hormone that springs us into action when we are facing a threat (it is actually adrenaline that does this). Cortisol is produced when we are under stress, but its role is to keep the body on high alert, by increasing blood sugar levels and suppressing the immune system. This serves us well when dealing with an immediate physical threat that resolves quickly. But when we’re faced with ongoing emotional stressors (like 24/7 work emails) chronically elevated cortisol levels can lead to all sorts of health problems including diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and depression. The long term risks for disease, heart attack, stroke and dementia are also increased, all of which can lead to premature death.