đ Articles: Thursday 11.Apr.2024 (âItâs a big one, Daddy.â)
NYT: Trina Robbins, Creator and Historian of Comic Books, Dies at 84
Trina Robbins, who as an artist, writer and editor of comics was a pioneering woman in a male-dominated field, and who as a historian specialized in books about women cartoonists, died on Wednesday in San Francisco. She was 84.
Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her longtime partner, the superhero comics inker Steve Leialoha, who said she had recently suffered a stroke.
In 1970, Ms. Robbins was one of the creators of It Ain’t Me Babe Comix, the first comic book made exclusively by women. In 1985, she was the first woman to draw Wonder Woman in her own comic after four decades of male hegemony. In 1994, she was a founder of Friends of Lulu, an advocacy group for female comic-book creators and readers.
NYT: Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on Her New Home and Book
After Doris Kearns Goodwinâs husband died nearly six years ago, the coupleâs home, a 19th-century farmhouse in Concord, Mass., no longer felt right.
âWe were there for 20 years,â said Ms. Kearns Goodwin, 81, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose new book, âAn Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s,â will be published April 16.
âIt was a house we had loved, and a house that in many ways we had built together,â she continued, referring to assorted refinements, including the three-car garage that became a library and the addition of a tower inspired by her husbandâs fascination with Galileo.
Love her writing!
ScienceAlert: Organic Material Detected in Eggshell Fossils Could Unlock Dinosaur Secrets
Organisms reinforce these shells with a type of calcium carbonate mineral called calcite. Unlike the calcium phosphate that makes up bone, calcite can act as a closed system by trapping the products of proteins involved in calcification as they break down, including free amino acids separated from protein sequences. This closed system allowed us to observe the amino acids in our analyses.
Bird eggshell is even among the best materials to find preserved protein sequences in fossils, let alone free amino acids. Demarchi’s team has detected short, intact sequences of amino acids still bound in a chain from bird eggshell at least 6.5 million years old.
NYT: Huey Lewis Lost His Hearing. That Didnât Stop Him From Making a Musical.
After Huey Lewis learned that a syndrome of the inner ear called MĂŠnièreâs disease had caused him significant hearing loss and left him unable to play or hear music, he faced the difficult task of having to tell his friends and peers.
Lewis, whose wry lyrics and rumbling vocals powered Reagan-era pop hits like âI Want a New Drugâ and âIf This Is It,â turned to people like Tico Torres, the longtime Bon Jovi drummer, whom heâd gotten to know on golfing trips. But their conversation proved to be an unexpected source of the pragmatic philosophy that Lewis built his career on.
âŽ
As Lewis, 73, explained, “Zen Buddhists say you need three things: Something to love, something to hope for and something to do.”
NYT: Late Night Mocks Arizonaâs Abortion Law
Stephen Colbert described the abortion ban as âso old that it was passed before women had the right to vote,â adding, âto which the Arizona Supreme Court said, âDonât worry, weâll work on that one next.ââ
CBC: 140 BMO customers say they lost $1.5M in transfer frauds, plan to sue bank
BMO told them they won’t be reimbursed because their passwords were used correctly and, in some cases, one-time codes were sent and entered correctly and the IP addresses matched those of the client, according to emails from the bank.
âŽ
Kenrick Bagnall, a former Toronto police cybercrime investigator who worked in the bank security sector, says he believes the customers’ devices were infected by malware, which harvests digital credentials like passwords and IP addresses from a computer, tablet or phone.
Bagnall says cybercriminals often use social media to gain information about an individual, then send them a targeted phishing email based on their interests and recent activity, which if clicked on, can infect a device.
The malware â which can evade even advanced scanning programs â then bundles the stolen information into a package, which is sold on the dark web for between $50 to $200, depending on several variables, according to Bagnall.
There’s something really fishy here.
CBC: Freeland announces housing affordability measures for first-time buyers, current owners
Freeland announced that effective April 16, the amount first-time home buyers can withdraw from their RRSPs to make a down payment on their first home will rise from a maximum of $35,000 to $60,000.
“This, plus the Tax-Free First Home Savings Account, can be combined, which will give younger Canadians more tools to save what is actually needed,” she said.
The Tax-Free First Home Savings Account program allows Canadians to save up to $8,000 per year toward a home, with a maximum lifetime contribution limit of $40,000.
âŽ
She said first-time home buyers who withdraw money from their RRSPs between Jan. 1 2022 and Dec. 31, 2025 will now have five years to begin repayments, instead of two.
âŽ
She said that beginning Aug. 1, first time home buyers with insured mortgages who purchase a new home will get 30 years to pay that mortgage back so “more younger Canadians can afford to pay that monthly mortgage on a new home.”
Since housing is supply-constrained, increasing the availability of money will only put upward pressure on pricing, not increase availability.
CBC: Submitted for her approval: Danielle Smith’s new jab at Trudeau hits cities, universities too
Earlier this week, the Danielle Smith government performed its latest round of celebrating “red tape reduction.” It pledged to streamline and slash bureaucratic burdens for rural utilities, cannabis vendors and autonomous-vehicle innovators.
Two days later, what happened?
The premier announced legislation declaring that next year any municipality, school or agency that wanted any dollar or any deal with Ottawa would first need provincial civil servants to review, deliberate and give Alberta’s seal of approval.
Seems hypocritical.
MacRumors: DuckDuckGo Launches 3-in-1 ‘Privacy Pro’ Subscription With VPN and Personal Data Removal Tool
Privacy Pro includes a VPN for anonymous browsing and secure connections regardless of location, personal information removal for removing personal data from data broker sites, and identity theft restoration should any DuckDuckGo subscriber suffer from an identity theft situation.
The VPN works on up to five devices simultaneously, so it can be installed and used on a Mac, iPhone, iPad, and other devices at the same time. It is turned on through the DuckDuckGo browser so a second app is not required, and it does filter traffic through all apps and browsers.
âŽ
Privacy Pro from DuckDuckGo is priced at $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, and it is currently only available in the United States. Users will need to ensure they are using the latest version of the DuckDuckGo browser to take advantage of the features.
Ars Technica: Apple will allow reuse of iPhone parts for repairs, with a notable catch
Apple also announced that iPhones’ Parts and Service history will be expanded to show whether each part that has been replaced is a new or used Genuine Apple part. Apple did not mention aftermarket parts but will presumably continue to label those as an “Unknown Part.”
TechCrunch: Walmart will deploy robotic forklifts in its distribution centers
That Florida distribution center is the first of what the company calls its âhigh-tech DC.â These are warehouses where it trials automation and various other technologies, before rolling them out to its wider channel of distribution and fulfillment centers. DC 6020 is the place where Walmart began trials with Symboticâs package sortation and retrieval technologies.
Following that successful trial, Walmart announced plans to roll out the technology to all 42 of its Regional Distribution Centers â that was nearly double the original target of 25. This weekâs news is more modest, targeting four high-tech DCs, but if things go well, the retailer will order more.
TechCrunch: Fordâs hands-free BlueCruise system was active before fatal Texas crash
The driver of a Mustang Mach-E who crashed into a stationary car in Texas in February was using Ford’s hands-free driver assistance system, BlueCruise, according to data obtained by the National Transportation Safety Board.
It’s the first known fatality resulting from a crash involving the use of BlueCruise, which Ford first announced in 2021. The system allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel on pre-mapped highways, and uses eye-tracking to determine whether drivers are paying attention to the road.
âŽ
The February crash happened just outside San Antonio. A 1999 Honda CR-V was stationary in the center lane of Interstate 10 with no lights on at around 9:50 p.m. CT, when the Mustang Mach-E crashed into the back of it. The Honda flipped over and wound up in the left lane. The safety board said Thursday that the Mustang driver âhad been operating the vehicle in BlueCruise mode before the crash.â The 56-year-old driver of the Honda died after being transferred to the San Antonio Military Medical Center, according to the police report, while the driver of the Mustang sustained âminor injuries.â Police found no signs of intoxication in the Mustang driver. The NTSB said another driver missed the Honda moments before the Mustang crashed into it.
Guardian: Varied reactions to OJ Simpsonâs death reflect a complicated life
Usually the death of a celebrity prompts a flood of similar-sounding tributes, remembering the highlights of their lives and keeping a respectful distance on any of the lower moments and controversies.
But for Simpson, that was never going to be the case.
The news that Simpson, the former top American football player who was acquitted of the double murders of his ex-wife and her friend in 1994, had died of cancer sparked an immediate and widespread response. Few of them â aside from his immediate family â were conventionally mourning his passing.
Guardian: Banquet room with preserved frescoes unearthed among Pompeii ruins
âBlack roomâ with frescoes inspired by Trojan war described as one of most striking discoveries ever made at site in southern Italy.
âŽ
The 15-metre-long, six-metre-wide room was found in a former private residence in Via di Nola, which was ancient Pompeiiâs longest road, during excavations in the Regio IX area of the site.
The âblack roomâ, so-called because of the colour of its walls that were probably intended to mask the soot from burning oil lamps, was a ârefined setting for entertaining during convivial momentsâ, experts said.
NYT: Frank Bruni: Republicans Are Fleeing the Stench of a Rotten Congress
Now, its fruits. “Four G.O.P. committee chairs are leaving,” Marianna Sotomayor wrote in a roll call of the Republican refugees in The Washington Post last weekend. “Eight lawmakers are retiring from the coveted Energy and Commerce Committee, and eight subcommittee chairs are leaving.”
Sotomayor quoted Buck as saying: “The populist wave has eroded the conservative values that I had when I came to this place. Now, we’re impeaching people like it’s some kind of carnival, and the Constitution is just a thing of the past to the very same people who were tea party patriots 10 to 12 years ago.”
*Also includes the not-to-be-missed For the Love of Sentences section.*
Last Updated: 11.Apr.2024 23:27 EDT