Good Things Friday (271) and Link Love
May 3, 2024
1. When I returned some things from our most recent Chewy order, they sent us a vase of flowers for Sera. I’m not very big on flowers but it was a kind gesture and they’re pretty to look at.
Challenges this week: Every day this week was a slog.
This is an old post but I had no idea that there was such controversy and history around Narita airport: One Man Lives – And Farms – In The Middle Of Tokyo Narita Airport
This is boggling. I’m seeing (not yet personally verified) that 37 other states have similar laws on the books and I can’t understand how this is not foreign interference with our laws even if it were only one state. Ohio State University says it legally can’t divest from Israel – here’s the law behind that: “Divestment is one third of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement that calls for boycotting Israeli companies and international companies that support Israel, disinvesting from similar organizations, and for governments to issue economic sanctions on Israel.
Ohio is one of 38 states that have similar anti-BDS laws on the books, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.”
I did not know this was a thing we knew back in 2018: Verizon and AT&T will stop selling your phone’s location to data brokers
Carriers forced to make changes after leak of real-time phone location data.
Cats suffer H5N1 brain infections, blindness, death after drinking raw milk
I knew that ebooks were more expensive for libraries, they’re my primary preferred form of reading so I donate a big chunk to our local library to support my habit, but I didn’t realize it was THIS much more expensive: Digital reading soars in Seattle, creating problems for local libraries
Wounded orangutan seen using plant as medicine
This is funnier because I follow these people on Twitter/Bluesky: ‘Lol, No’ Is The Perfect Response To LAPD’s Nonsense ‘IP’ Threat Letter Over ‘Fuck The LAPD’ Shirt
While I disagree strongly with the principle of the anti-BDS laws ( though see here for a well known legal scholar’s explanation for why they’re probably constitutional: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/06/25/the-first-amendment-and-refusals-to-deal/). But my state also has a policy where state buyers are required to preferentially deal with businesses which are technically at least 50% woman/minority owned, which I find problematic and which creates a zillion perverse incentives. When I worked for a public college they were required to buy their pens from the prison workshop too. In other words, the way states set laws around government contracts seems inherently very problematic to me.
Yeah even though I understand what they’re trying to do with that policy, making that a policy requirement does lend itself to other weird abuses.