Digilog

My sis Rell (Twitter: Awkward_Duck, Tumblr: swearimnotangry), did some investigative work today and found that Donald Sterling has ties to private prison investments, which led the two of us to an excellent discussion about the private prison industry.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. With contract mandates specifying 90% occupancy rates, private prisons feed directly into our problem with mass incarceration.

The private prison industry has become a lucrative business with some of our financial institutions heavily investing in them (Not to mention the music industry invests in them also, but I wont go there today). 

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) & GEO are the nations leading providers of correctional services. CCA has flourished as a business and has done so well ensuring that states maintain that 90% occupancy rate, that last year their Board of Directors authorized a $675 MILLION dividend to its shareholders. -_____-

I don’t even need to tell you who these prison beds are occupied by as I’m sure you all know the stats and demographics, but feel free to check out the links below.

Financial institutions that invest in private prisons: http://bit.ly/14rfwu9

CCA authorizes $675 million dividend to shareholders: http://yhoo.it/1ml7V4u

Scientists at MIT have developed a new simulation that traces 13 billion years of cosmic evolution. They start the simulation shortly after the big bang with a region of space much smaller than the universe (a mere 350 million light years across).  Still, it’s big enough to follow the forces that helped create the galaxies we see today, and correctly predict the gas and metal content of those galaxies.

At first, we see dark matter clustering due to the force of gravity (first two GIFs). Then we see visible matter — blue for cool clouds of gas where galaxies form, red for more violent explosive galaxies (second two GIFs).

Super massive blackholes form, superheating the material around them, causing bright white explosions that enrich the space between galaxies with warm but sparse gas (fifth GIF).

Different elements (represented by different colors in the sixth GIF) are spread through the universe.

We arrive at a distribution of dark matter that looks similar to the one we see in our universe today (seventh GIF).

The simulation is so complex it would take two thousand years to render on a single desktop. And it’s kinda beautiful.

Poem written by an 11 year old Afghan girl 

This poem was recorded in a NYT magazine article about female underground poetry groups in Afghanistan. An amazing article about the ways in which women are using a traditional two line poetry form to express their resistance to male oppression, their feelings about love (considered blasphemous).

Here’s the link

 [ video ]

Propylene Glycol (toxic only at plasma concentrations of over 1 g/L; but you're inhaling this, not ingesting it)

Vegetable Glycerine (you can often choose the ratio of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine; some people have a poor reaction to propylene glycol and opt for a 100% vegetable glycerine mix. The only downside is it tends to clog up your atomizers sooner)

Various FDA-approved flavoring agents

Nicotine (at your choice of concentrations, typically from 0mg/mL to 24mg/mL)

It's been six months since I've had a combustable analog cigarette.

I credit electronic cigarettes for helping me kick that disgusting habit.

I no longer smell like an ash tray.

I no longer wake up sounding like Don Draper.

I can climb a flight of stairs without wheezing like a broken bagpipe.

Google Self-Driving Car on City Streets

Google yesterday gave a glimpse of how their self-driving cars work, and a glimpse of computer vision in action - video embedded below:

Since our last update, we’ve logged thousands of miles on the streets of our hometown of Mountain View, Calif. A mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of the road in a small area. We’ve improved our software so it can detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously—pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn. A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can’t—and it never gets tired or distracted.