Thursday, December 29, 2016

The Nib: Jack Chick Goes to Heaven

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Jack Chick Goes to Heaven
by The Nib. Posted October 27th, 2016

The Christian cartoonist who tried to save us all from the fires of hell died Sunday. Here's our send off in the style of his famous comic tracts.

Although the news is from October, I just heard about it now. I would never wish death on someone, but I'm very glad Jack Chick will never write another of his hate-tracts. All throughout college, various Christian fundamentalists would distribute "Chick Tracts" across campus. These comics accuse everybody and everything of being in league with Satan. They attack Jews, Muslims, Catholics, pagans, video games, rock music, role-playing games, pop culture, politicians (of all parties) and even other evangelical Christian groups. Anyone not 100% into his insane paranoid theology is declared evil and must be harassed ('scuze me, "witnessed") into submission - all for his own good, of course.

As someone who was frequently harassed by missionaries, who were using these comics as "proof" of their moral obligation to be offensive, I'm glad he's gone. Hopefully the rest of his organization will also go away.

The send-off by The Nib is a good parody of these comics and is an appropriate memorial.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Nerdist: All of ROGUE ONE’s Many STAR WARS Easter Eggs

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All of ROGUE ONE’s Many STAR WARS Easter Eggs
Posted by Joan Ford on December 19, 2016

Warning: The following contains a few significant spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Despite being billed as a "standalone" Star Wars story Rogue One turned out to be anything but. The movie had so many connections to the originals, the prequels, and even the cartoons, that viewers might feel the need to crack open a Wookieepedia to fully understand everything that’s going on. Luckily we’ve done a lot of the homework for you, and have taken it upon ourselves to break down some of Rogue One's best Easter eggs right here.

A great summary of references to other Star Wars productions, but please don't read the whole article or watch its accompanying video until after you've seen the movie, since it is packed full of spoilers.

And for those of you unfamiliar with the reference, Wookiepedia is a real web site dedicated to archiving all that can be known about the Star Wars universe.

Monday, December 19, 2016

New York Times: The Great A.I. Awakening

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The Great A.I. Awakening
By Gideon Lewis-Kraus.

How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.

A great article about Google's recent AI research and how it is now driving their Translate service.

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Washington Post: Mobsters ran a fake U.S. Embassy in Ghana for 10 years, flying the flag and issuing visas for $6,000

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Mobsters ran a fake U.S. Embassy in Ghana for 10 years, flying the flag and issuing visas for $6,000
By Katie Mettler December 5

For a decade, an American flag flew outside a battered pink building in Ghana’s capital city, welcoming out-of-town visitors who, once inside, found a photo of President Obama hanging on the wall. Signs confirmed to travelers — who had been bused in from the most remote parts of West Africa — that they had arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Accra.

The "consular officers" working there were not Americans, but they spoke English and Dutch and issued official-looking visas and identification papers. They charged their customers $6,000.

Incredible. Both for the sheer audacity of Turkish mobsters to run a fake embassy, and for the fact that they were able to operate for 10 years without the US government finding out.

How many people actually came in to the US with these fake visas and passports? The article doesn't say, but one can assume that it was a high percentage because even the most incompetent immigration system would start to get a hint if they were rejecting hundreds of fake visas all coming from Ghana.

More disturbing is that this gang was apparently issuing legitimate, but fraudulently-obtained, US visas. Sounds like some people in the real US embassy were in on the scam.

Read the whole article from The Washington Post and the original article from Ghana Business News for more details.