Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,530 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 62 of 153).

Why mosquitoes bite some people and not others — and the surprising non-toxic way to avoid bites

Here’s an insightful read on what attracts (and repels) mosquitoes. Science for the win!

Why are some people so much more attractive to mosquitoes than others? And what can you do about the pesky little bloodsuckers, especially if you don’t want to resort to DEET? (DEET, while effective, is also weakly neurotoxic in humans.)

To start, there are some 150 different species of mosquitoes in the United States, and they differ in biting persistence, habits, ability to transmit disease, and even flying ability.

Source: Why mosquitoes bite some people and not others — and the surprising non-toxic way to avoid bites

Supreme Court On Gay Marriage: ‘Sure, Who Cares’ – The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

Love won today, as the Supreme Court ruled marriage is marriage for everybody. I’m thrilled for my LGBT friends (and everyone, frankly) who are no longer denied the fundamental right to love whom they choose.

It reminded me of this article from the Onion a few years back, which pretty much sums up my thoughts about the whole matter.

WASHINGTON—Ten minutes into oral arguments over whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to marry one another, a visibly confounded Supreme Court stopped legal proceedings Tuesday and ruled that gay marriage was “perfectly fine” and that the court could “care less who marries whom.”

Source: Supreme Court On Gay Marriage: ‘Sure, Who Cares’ – The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

What makes your eyes red in the pool? It’s not the chlorine – TODAY.com

Ewww.

“When we go swimming and we complain that our eyes are red, it’s because swimmers have peed in the water,” says Michele Hlavsa, chief of the CDC’s healthy swimming program. “The nitrogen in the urine combines with the chlorine and it forms what’s known as chloramine and it’s actually chloramine that causes the red eyes. It’s not the chlorine itself. It’s chlorine mixed with poop and sweat and a lot of other things we bring into the water with us.”

Source: What makes your eyes red in the pool? It’s not the chlorine – TODAY.com

William Rivers Pitt | Don’t Believe the Hype: Candidate Clinton’s Sudden Populism

William Rivers Pitt of Truthout compares the donor lists of Hillary Clinton and her would-be Republican challengers and finds little difference.

For reasons some may argue are not entirely fair, the Post article about those preposterous people helped crystallize a few things as I encompassed the rhetoric contained in Secretary Clinton’s big campaign speech this past weekend. Despite her long history of association with these kinds of people, Mrs. Clinton on Saturday deployed the sort of populist bombast that one might have heard at an Occupy Wall Street rally not so long ago.

[…]

Interesting, that … especially the stuff about hedge fund managers and CEOs and billionaires and fair compensation. Heady stuff; she sounded for all the world like Elizabeth Warren, or Bernie Sanders.

Yet a peek at her donor list is revealing. The roll-call of Mrs. Clinton’s top twenty campaign donors is topped by Citibank, and includes Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse Group … basically, a cohort of the worst people in the United States, the ones who gamed the system by buying politicians like her and then proceeded to burn the economy down to dust and ash while making a financial killing in the process.

Source: William Rivers Pitt | Don’t Believe the Hype: Candidate Clinton’s Sudden Populism

Surfing into Adolescence – The New Yorker

The budget for moving our family to Honolulu was tight, judging from the tiny cottage we rented and the rusted-out Ford Fairlane we bought to get around. My brother Kevin and I took turns sleeping on the couch. I was thirteen; he was nine. But the cottage was near the beach—just up a driveway lined with other cottages, on a street called Kulamanu—and the weather, which was warm even in January, when we arrived, felt like wanton luxury.

Source: Surfing into Adolescence – The New Yorker

The Pulitzer Prize In Bullshit FUD Reporting Goes To… The Sunday Times For Its ‘Snowden Expose’ | Techdirt

Rupurt Murdock’s Sunday Times published a whopper on Sunday in an effort to smear Edward Snowden and was promptly shredded by other journalists for its fabrications and shoddy reporting.

Let’s start with this. Soon after Daniel Ellsberg was revealed as the source behind the Pentagon Papers, White House officials started spreading rumors that Ellsberg was actually a Soviet spy and that he’d passed on important secrets to the Russians:None of it was true, but it was part of a concerted effort by administration officials to smear Ellsberg as a “Soviet spy” and a “traitor” when all he really did was blow the whistle on things by sharing documents with reporters.

Does that sound familiar? Over the weekend, a big story supposedly broke in the UK’s the Sunday Times, citing anonymous UK officials arguing that the Russians and Chinese got access to all the Snowden documents and it had created all sorts of issues, including forcing the UK to remove undercover “agents” from Russia. That story is behind a paywall, but plenty of people have made the text available if you’d like to read the whole thing.

Source: The Pulitzer Prize In Bullshit FUD Reporting Goes To… The Sunday Times For Its ‘Snowden Expose’ | Techdirt

Why the “biggest government hack ever” got past the feds | Ars Technica

Ars Technica takes an in-depth look at the “biggest government hack ever,” the OPM hack that exposed over 4 million records of federal government employees.

As I posted to Twitter, while the NSA was busy monitoring Grandma’s phone calls, the Chinese made off with 4 million federal government employee records. Tell me again why we are spending billions on the NSA?

n April, federal authorities detected an ongoing remote attack targeting the United States’ Office of Personnel Management (OPM) computer systems. This situation may have gone on for months, possibly even longer, but the White House only made the discovery public last Friday. While the attack was eventually uncovered using the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Einstein—the multibillion-dollar intrusion detection and prevention system that stands guard over much of the federal government’s Internet traffic—it managed to evade this detection entirely until another OPM breach spurred deeper examination.

Source: Why the “biggest government hack ever” got past the feds | Ars Technica

Tom Apodaca: Senate’s enforcer uses muscle, humor to deliver GOP agenda | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer

Nice profile of North Carolina Senate majority leader Tom Apodaca.

In another life, Tom Apodaca chased knife-toting bail jumpers and once found himself in a cheap motel staring into the barrel of a shotgun.
The conservative Republican used to be a Jimmy Carter Democrat. And for a long time, Tom Apodaca wasn’t even Tom Apodaca. But now the Hendersonville Republican is the North Carolina Senate’s enforcer, the muscle for President Pro Tem Phil Berger of Eden.

Along with Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, he’s one of the state’s three most influential lawmakers. As Rules Committee chair, he’s the ultimate gatekeeper. At one point last month, more than 460 House and Senate bills sat parked in his committee. Few measures become law without his blessing.

Source: Tom Apodaca: Senate’s enforcer uses muscle, humor to deliver GOP agenda | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer

A Look Inside Reynolds Renovations | NC State News

Here’s a fun look at the hidden history of Reynolds Coliseum, recently brought to light by the university’s renovation work. Andy Williams! Ermahgerd!

There have been a few surprises. Nothing completely out of the ordinary, of course, though the decades-old box of uneaten peanuts kind of threw the contractors off for a few seconds.Three months into the first major renovation of Reynolds Coliseum since it opened in 1949, everything is on schedule. Ductwork in the hallways of the upper concourse has been removed, prepping for the first permanent air-conditioning system the old building has ever had.

More than 3,000 original seats have been removed from the north end, and are currently on sale as souvenirs through the Wolfpack Club.

There were a few interesting finds in the old air ducts: newspapers from the 1950s, receipts from Ice Capades shows and an Andy Williams concert in the 1960s, a program for a gay and lesbian rally in 1979 and a few more current ROTC brochures.

Source: A Look Inside Reynolds Renovations | NC State News

Stepson of Stuxnet stalked Kaspersky for months, tapped Iran nuke talks | Ars Technica

A fascinating, in-depth account of how security firm Kaspersky was infected by (and later discovered) one of the world’s most powerful hacking tools.

“These guys are so confident to develop their entire platform based on this zero day it means if they get caught and this zero day is patched they probably have another one they can use, which I would say is a pretty scary thought,” he said. “Nobody develops an entire malware platform based on just one simple assumption that this zero day will work forever, because eventually it will be discovered and patched. And when it is patched your malware is not going to work anymore. I think that’s also very scary and quite impressive.”

Source: Stepson of Stuxnet stalked Kaspersky for months, tapped Iran nuke talks | Ars Technica