Thursday Wrap Up

A mere belief in there being a threat against the President or any other protected person is now sufficient for the U.S. Secret Service to use cell-site simulators (commonly known as "stingrays").

 In certain "exceptional circumstances," the stingeays can be used without a judge-signed warrant and even without probable cause.

 When asked whether this essentially granted a blanket exception for the Secret Service, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Seth Stodder said the exemption would not be used in routine criminal probes, such as a counterfeiting investigation.

 I suppose, the personal verbal assurance of an executive-branch government employee should put all fears of the citizenry to rest.

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 In a gleaming research lab in Germany's northeastern corner, researchers are preparing to switch on a fusion device called a stellarator, the largest ever built. The €1-billion machine, known as Wendelstein 7-X looks a bit like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, towed in for repairs after a run-in with the Imperial fleet. 

Stellarators have long been dark horses in fusion energy research but the Dali-esque devices have many attributes that could make them much better prospects for a commercial fusion power plant than the more popular tokamaks:
 
Once started, stellarators naturally purr along in a steady state and they are not prone to the potentially metal-bending magnetic disruptions that plague tokamaks. Unfortunately they are devilishly hard to build.

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Sen. Ron Wyden has led the fight against the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), which the Senate advanced on Thursday in a 84-14 vote. In a new interview with the Daily Dot, Wyden explains why privacy advocates call CISA a "surveillance bill," and discusses why an amendment from Sen. Whitehouse could make CISA more problematic for Internet users' civil liberties.

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A Righteous Man or just paying it forward?

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Today is an excellent day.

 Today, Bob Ross's YouTube channel uploaded the very first episode of "The Joy Of Painting."

Everything is "Almighty" LOL.



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This tree is deadly

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Cut And Cover

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October happiness:

THE CURSED HISTORY OF THE LEMP FAMILY MANSION

t was 1856 when two stonemasons, the Russian, Ivan Reznikoff, and the Greek, Paul Diabolos, were hired to carve the delicate reliefs of University College, the Norman Romanesque building at the heart of the University of Toronto.

 Reznikoff was an enormous and imposing man, coarse and rugged. Diabolos, a slight and pale fellow, was described as “young, handsome, and of a subtle nature” by Douglas Richardson in “A Not Unsightly Building: University College and Its History.” 

 Following a request from MuckRock's Inkoo Kang for files on the "Master of Suspense" Alfred Hitchcock, the FBI released 18 pages of responsive documents, the vast majority of which concerned their portrayal in his eponymous show, rather than Hitchcock directly. 

 In most major cities around the world, communities of ordinary people — nurses, bar staff, secretaries — are drinking human blood on a regular basis. The question is, why?

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Honestly we are really trying to understand?