Friday, May 24, 2024

She Is the Earth

Setbacks prepare you, Comebacks define you.





Christopher Hitchens' epic opening statement - Jan Hus (Must see)


Carlo Acutis Pope Francis to make British boy, who died aged 15, first Millennial saint


WELL:  Pedestrians may be twice as likely to be hit by electric/hybrid cars as petrol/diesel ones.




Scientists Reveal The 2 Best Exercises For Lower Blood Pressure.Static-hold exercises like planks and wall sits better than aerobics? I want to believe that!

Microplastics found in every human testicle in study Guardian Small sample but still…

       Jenny Erpenbeck profile

       At Deutsche Welle Suzanne Cords profiles Jenny Erpenbeck: Germany's least-known famous author.
       Apparently: "Ask your average German who Jenny Erpenbeck is, and they may very well respond, "Jenny who ?"" (Though Cords also notes: "It's not as if Erpenbeck is totally unknown in Germany -- quite the contrary", so I have no idea what the point here is.)


       NSW Premier's Literary Awards

       They've announced the winner's of this year's NSW Premier's Literary Awards, a leading set of Australian literary prizes -- though finding all the winners at the official site is terribly cumbersome, so check out, for example, the Books + Publishing overview
       The Sitter by Angela O'Keeffe took the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, while She Is the Earth, by Ali Cobby Eckermann, won the Indigenous Writers' Prize as well as the overall Book of the Year award.


THE TARGETED ADS THAT DIDN’T BARK IN THE NIGHT:  An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That’s not supposed to happen


Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 18, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. 

On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. 

Four highlights from this week: Google Accidentally Deleted $125 Billion Pension Fund’s Account; Generating Harms: Generative AI’s New & Continued Impacts; What I wish I’d known before my smartphone was snatched; and Mortgage Brokers Sent People’s Estimated Credit, Address, and Veteran Status to Facebook.


ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS THE IDEOLOGY: Watch: Top New York Times reporter caught on hot mic urging reporters NOT to interview prominent Iranian dissident



Slovakia PM attacker ‘may not have been lone wolf’ BBC


Defending Privacy in the Surveillance State and Fragmenting Internet

Governments and private entities are eroding privacy on the internet. Is it possible to safeguard both openness and security in cyberspace?


12 Best Deep Search Engines to Explore the Invisible Web

MakeUseOf: “Key Takeaways

  • The invisible web is vast, including the deep & dark web.
  • Specialist search engines like Ahmia and Torch can access it but use Tor to access individual sites from the search results.
  • Sites like Pipl, Directory of Open Access Journals, The Wayback Machine, Veridian, and Project Gutenberg hold valuable content for different use cases.

Not everything on the web will show up in a list of search results on Google or Bing; there are numerous places that the sites’ web crawlers cannot access. To explore the invisible web, you need to use specialist search engines. Here are our top 12 services to perform a deep internet search.”


5 Ways to Access Onion Sites Without Tor Browser

MakeUseOf: “Key Takeaways

  • Onion sites are unindexed web addresses on the dark web with “.onion” suffixes.
  • Compared to other methods, using the Tor Browser is the safest way to visit onion sites. Accessing onion sites using everyday browsers poses significant security risks.
  • You can use Tor proxies, browser extensions, or Proton VPN to access onion sites on a regular browser. Brave and Firefox have native support for onion sites, albeit with a little bit of tweaking.

If you’ve ever snooped around on the internet, you may have encountered the term “onion sites” or “Tor.” Onion sites are unindexed websites on the dark web that can be accessed using the Tor Browser. That said, using Tor can be a little intimidating, if not technically challenging. If you’d still like to visit onion sites and see what the other side of the internet has to offer, there are alternative ways you can try.”


FastCompany Free AI service upscales grainy photos into digital delights 

: “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got tons of small-size, almost comically fuzzy old photos in my collection. And there’s not a heck of a lot the cutting-edge camera in my current phone can do to help ’em. So what if there were a super-simple tool for sprucing up older images and bringing ’em into reasonably modern resolutions—while also making ’em crisper, clearer, and generally just better all around? My fellow photo-finessing friend, have I got just the tool for you today. 

’Twas a time when trying to take an image and make it both larger and higher in quality was a near-impossible feat. If you somehow managed to pull it off, it’d take tons of time and complex programs to master. Not anymore. An incredibly cool new tool called Upscale makes it easy as can be to—well, upscale any old photo you’ve got in front of you. You’ll only need about 10 seconds to do it…”