I'm sure lots of you are celebrating by reading all of the emails in your inbox with titles like "We changed our privacy policy".  Or you're getting emails like "we're going to assume you continue to give consent to use your email" which are, lol, not going to help with GDPR compliance.  Personally, I'm celebrating by rushing to implement new privacy features, and attempting to educate my project managers about the scope of the law.  I expect to continue to celebrate through the whole "holiday weekend".

Hope you enjoy the updates to the Privacy Policy I wrote for Miraheze!

Doors Open Toronto is this weekend.

Doors Open Ottawa is next weekend.

I'm not saying "come to Canada just for Doors Open", but if you're here anyway...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mi...-1.4677404

Three people seriously injured, 12 with minor injuries.

Two suspects on the loose.

Fucking hell.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/...631627002/

Quote:A documentary from the PBS program "Frontline" said that the federal government has actually released some of the minors to human traffickers.

Imagine that.

An American president has casually suggested deporting/expelling Americans who refuse to not just stand for forcible patriotic displays, but do so “proudly.” Should they wear identical smiles to denote “pride?” Who will police the pride level to ensure compliance?

Trump says NFL players who kneel during national anthem 'maybe shouldn't be in the country'

Okay, now I know some if not most of the folks here know by now the observation that H.L. Mencken made a century ago in one of his newspaper columns, which ends

Quote:As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Starting a new thread as I don't see the old one. I'm pretty sure there used to be a What-If thread, but my search attempts didn't find it.

Sometime in the last week a new What-If appeared on the xkcd site, Earth-Moon Fire Pole, which asks what would happen if you built a fire pole stretching from the surface of the Moon to the surface of the Earth. As many might expect the answer is, Very Bad Things. But has that ever stopped Randall from exploring a question? "But let's ignore those problems! What if we had a magical pole that dangled from the Moon down to just above the Earth's surface, expanding and contracting so it never quite touched the ground? How long would it take to slide down from the Moon?" Yeah, didn't think that had ever stopped him from answering a question. :}

Other choice quotes:

"...and that's not how sliding works."
'Unfortunately for you, space is big, so "pretty close" is still a long way.'
"At worst, your hands and the surface of the pole will both be converted into exciting new forms of matter, and then you'll be flung away and plummet to your death."

and best of all the image alt text: "DO NOT USE THIS GRAPH FOR PLANNING PURPOSES. It's not that it isn't accurate, it's just that any kind of plan that involves this type of data is probably a bad one."

CBC News: Researchers working on new kind of green beer — with cannabis

Who needs barley? Not these college students. At the moment, they're using hemp as a replacement for barley, but they plan to switch to cannabis once it becomes legal, possibly later this year.

"Kramp hasn't tried cannabis beer herself, but said industry researchers claim it'll have a nutty flavour."

Looks interesting...

Google Quietly Removes "Don't Be Evil" Preface From Code of Conduct

By sheerest coincidence, Chrome on my Android phone kept insisting this was a dangerous, untrusted site.

Old thread is here.