There’s no question at this point that the Republican Party is Trump’s party. But given his general inability to hire competent staff, I wonder if this is just one more significant step in him taking the party down.
DOJ investigating Boeing after 737 door panel incident
As someone who has experience with the FAA: usually the deal is if you are open about what happened within your company, you will not suffer criminal penalties. For the DOJ to be investigating seems bad.
Sorry for the absence
It’s been quiet here for a week. My father passed away two weeks ago, and much of my time and energy has been directed toward family. Back to it this week, though!
The Challenge of Transcription
Language Log on the challenge of transcribing SCOTUS recordings, and then the challenge that reconstituting recordings from transcripts inevitably removes pauses and transition words.
Isolated for six months, Antarctic scientists develop their own accent
Fascinating to learn about how accents develop. Apparently six months in a small isolated community will get things started.
College vending machine secretly collecting facial-recognition data
An M&M branded vending machine at the University of Waterloo in Canada revealed that it was, unbeknownst to the users, collecting facial recognition data. A student noticed an error message in an app called "Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe", and investigation determined that this was in fact a marketed feature of these vending machines: to record and report the likely age and gender of each person who used the machine.
The company claims that the machine is GDPR compliant, but it’s hard to see how that can be the case if it’s collecting faces without consent. Here’s hoping the Canadian regulators throw the book at them.
Roadkill to be fair game in Virginia
Apparently it was already legal to take and eat animals that you hit while driving in Virginia; now it’s more legal. This article already makes the obvious “Roadkill Cafe” joke, but it lets me make my literarily-themed follow up joke: that the cook’s daily special should be known as “The Remains of the Day”.
Ex-FBI Informant was working with Russian intelligence
The FBI informant who accused President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in a bribery scheme? He’s in jail because he lied about it. And has also now admitted that Russian intelligence agents had a hand in passing along the story. Think that will get reported on Fox News?