Weekend link dump for June 29

From the You Keep Using That Word – I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means department.

These are the people you should sit next to if you don’t want to get bitten by mosquitoes.

“If bad behavior—using the nation’s full faith and credit as a hostage to political demands, shutting down the government, attempting to undermine policies that have been lawfully enacted, blocking nominees not on the basis of their qualifications but to nullify the policies they would pursue, using filibusters as weapons of mass obstruction—is to be discouraged or abandoned, those who engage in it have to be held accountable. Saying both sides are equally responsible, insisting on equivalence as the mantra of mainstream journalism, leaves the average voter at sea, unable to identify and vote against those perpetrating the problem.”

“A recent scan of the Google Play market found that Android apps contained thousands of secret authentication keys that could be maliciously used to access private cloud accounts on Amazon or compromise end-user profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and a half-dozen other services.”

Did you know that the US Supreme Court sometimes changes past opinions, without making any public announcements about it? Well, now you can be automatically notified when they do.

“He has been the best president for transgender rights, and nobody else is in second place”.

How to class up those trashy websites you like to visit.

The high value our culture places on two-parent families can be dangerous for domestic violence survivors.

On Samuel Beckett and Andre the Giant and the conversations they might have had.

You still be fired for being gay in most states, even though most people don’t realize that. This is why the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act and local non-discrimination ordinances are so important.

Baby elephants playing soccer. What more do you need?

Looking back on some Kodak moments in the courtroom, five years after the last roll of film was produced and developed.

“The Mormon church excommunicated the founder of a prominent women’s group Monday, a rare move that brings down the harshest punishment available on an adherent who created an organization and staged demonstrations in a push for women to join the faith’s priesthood.”

“In other words, Iraq is like the economy: it doesn’t really matter what the president is doing. If the economy is good, the public approves of his performance. It it’s bad, they disapprove. Likewise, if the world is peaceful, they think the president is doing a great job. If it’s not, they don’t—even if he’s pretty much doing everything they think he should be doing. Basically, we all want the president to wave a magic wand and make everything better. No wand, no approval.”

The Harlem Globetrotters drafted Johnny Manziel and Landon Donovan. Wait, the Globetrotters have a draft? With what other teams?

“It was at that point that the greater existential questions surrounding a Smart Crock-Pot began surfacing: When would I really need this? Is it worth the extra $50? And is it smart enough?”

Meet Jackie Mitchell, the woman who once struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and the woman who may be her spiritual heir some day, Chelsea Baker, a/k/a the Knuckleball Princess.

The Heartbleed vulnerability is still a thing.

When tiger selfies are outlawed, only outlaws will take tiger selfies. Or something like that.

Those lucky duckies sure do have it easy.

“The ruling was such a sweeping embrace of digital privacy that it even reached remotely stored private information that can be reached by a hand-held device — as in the modern-day data storage “cloud.” And it implied that the tracking data that a cellphone may contain about the places that an individual visited also is entitled to the same shield of privacy.”

“In the process of ruling against Aereo, the Supreme Court has created a mess that will take lower courts years to clean up. Online services that are similar to Aereo in some respects and different in others are more likely to face lawsuits, and the lower courts will have to sort out which services are similar enough to Aereo to face copyright liability.”

RIP, Howard Baker, former Senate Majority Leader and Chief of Staff to President Reagan.

“Exactly one year after the Senate passed an immigration reform bill that built a compromise on an exchange of increased enforcement for legalization for the 11 million, Republicans have now officially abandoned any pretense of a willingness to participate in solving the immigration crisis. Instead, they have committed the party to a course premised on two intertwined notions: There are no apparent circumstances under which they can accept legalization of the 11 million; and as a result, the only broad response to the crisis they can countenance is maximum deportations.”

Turns out it’s not so easy now for companies to screw workers out of health insurance and deflect the blame for it.

Andy Murray, Amélie Mauresmo, and sexism at Wimbledon.

The Guardian critically reviews its coverage of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to the start of World War I.

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