Linkdump: Robotic newspaper archive, NY cop vs teen snowball fight; Dune coloring book; LOVEINT; Canada's PATRIOT Act & more more more


This is the stuff that I woke up to today. Can you believe it?

☣ Airtight and Run By Robots: British Library's National Newspaper Building opens [Construction Manager]

Massive, robot-filled, climate-controlled, dark newspaper archive tending ancient, crumbling pressed vegetable pulp — run by the private sector, who'll no doubt charge the public who paid for it all for future access, in a weird parody of free-market economics.

☣ New York Cop Pulls Gun on Teens Having Snowball Fight [Photography Is Not a Crime]

The cop claims he pointed a gun at unarmed teens and shouted "Don't fucking move guys" because someone called 911 and claimed there was a teen with a gun, but that teen was nowhere in evidence.

☣ 7 Things To Love About reddit's First Transparency Report [EFF]

Timely and thorough, Reddit's report shows that the company never gives in to warrantless requests, tells its users about government requests, requires that emergency requests be put in writing, won't do takedowns for "defamation" — and they've got a strong warrant canary! AAA+++ WOULD DO BUSINESS AGAIN!!!ONE

☣ How to Make a Reverse Boiled Egg [Neatorama]

You make a centrifuge out of a sock, whirl the egg in it until the yolk and the white reverse position, then boil it, yielding an egg with the yolk on the outside and the white in the middle.

☣ Mitch McConnell is Already Changing the Senate Schedule to Raise Money [Everyvoice]

What's more important than ramming through the Keystone XL pipeline? Taking calls from plutocrats who're lining up to finance your next election campaign, less than a month after winning the previous one.

☣ Records: Unarmed Man Killed By Cops Said "I Don't Want To Die Today" [Concourse]

Worse: the cops stonewalled on producing records showing the man was killed while calmly holding his hands over his head in his own doorway for over a year, until public pressure grew too great, then they dumped 11,000 pages of records on the man's grieving family. "It's the opposite of transparency, disguised as transparency."

☣ 1984 Dune Movie Coloring Book Pages

☣ No one knows what happened to NSA staffers who snooped on their lovers [Ars Technica]

The LOVEINT fun-loving criminals bent the massive, globe-spanning NSA surveillance apparatus to spy on their ex-girlfriends, but the NSA won't say what punishment they faced (with one exception)

☣ Terrorist Creep. [Peter Watts]

Canada's PATRIOT Act-inspired anti-terror laws create several categories of thoughtcrime, establishing criminal penalties for believing unpleasant things. Stephen Harper will commemorate those who gave their lives for freedom by taking away the freedoms of those who survived. How long until Canada can fire its Tories, and will there be anything left by the time they do?

☣ Where not to toke: a look at marijuana citations across the US [Muckrock]

"Even after controlling for population, Florida still surpasses the rest of the states by far, handing out tickets to one in 294 people in 2011."

☣ Chris Christie Supports Parents Who Choose Not to Vaccinate Their Kids [Slate]

If Obama likes it, Chris Christie hates it, even if "It" is a vital, basic public health program that will keep your children from being killed, blinded or rendered infertile by preventable diseases from the 19th century.

☣ The Trip Treatment [Michael Pollan/New Yorker]

After decades of witch-hunt suppression, research into psychedelics as a treatment for addiction disorders and other mental health issues is making a huge comeback, with the incredible results from the 1950s being replicated and surpassed. Another part of Richard Nixon's legacy.

☣ Notice: Travellers From the Future [Miguel Marquez Outside]