The Offline Report

A human and robot hugging will not evoke the heart symbol unless the person who created the robot makes a strong enough impression in the broader culture and is associated with that robot. Still, it's doubtful circuit boards and transistors will ever suffice for one half of the heart symbol. I once had a very rational therapist who advised me to take time away, even consider moving away, from people in my life who were not respecting my boundaries. I asked wasn't life about shared experiences? He replied "you shouldn't need other people in your life. You have yourself." It was shortly after that I entertained the idea of God for the first time. I wasn't a "believer" but I chose to consider the God concept, if only to supply myself with received love and a route to reciprocation. At some point after launching this blog I became fascinated with the heart symbol. Where did it come from, was it cross-cultural? It dates back to Greek and Roman time...

Socially distanced patrons, eleven months into a pandemic, were lined up for two blocks to pick up traditional Lunar New Year dishes from Ming's restaurant on Taraval. Roast duck, fried pork and "noodles for longevity" were cited to a street reporter as dishes of choice. In the foreground, the subway L streetcar line is still out of service nearly from the beginning of shelter-in-place as workers reinforce the tracks' foundation. The tracks were originally built atop sand dunes. Asian Americans have been targeted with hate crimes in the Bay Area this month. It seems to be originating from online memes and manifesting in meat space. This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

Feb. 9, 2021 Maine Startup Aims To Pull Carbon Out Of The Atmosphere By Growing — And Then Sinking — Kelp Farms:     mainepublic.org Coronavirus pandemic leaves China’s over-35s with uncertain job prospects     scmp.com "Four of the top 10 search results for "vaccine" on Facebook-owned Instagram were for anti-vaccination accounts, including "vaccinetruth," "vaccinefreedom," "antivaxxknowthefacts," and "cv19vaccinereactions," according to a series of searches conducted by CNN Business from multiple different Instagram handles beginning two weeks ago."    cnn.com    🐤 Virus Variant First Found in Britain Now Spreading Rapidly in U.S.:     nytimes.com "Why aren’t they being fixed? Most of the security teams working at software companies have limited time and resources, she suggests— and if their priorities and incentives are flawed, they only check that they’ve fixed the very specific vulnerability in fr...

My office mates complained that wafts of microwaving brocolli distracted them, but that tension was a small tradeoff for the benefits in concentration this food gave me. Drizzled and olive oil, lightly salted, cooked brocolli kept the oxygen flowing. I ate so much broccoli my freezer was filled with bags of florets. I moved out of one apartment because it had such a small freezer. Sometimes if I needed to finish a paid writing assignment, I splurged on these fresh, organic "baby" broccoli bunches which seem to fast-track the oxygen effect. But I ran into a problem. It was too starchy of a vegetable, much like squash, and lost its affect. I needed to diversify my vegetables. Uncooked watery produce like carrots and lettuce seemed to bind to something in my digestive tract and push it through even more. It was as if the broccoli-only diet gave a boost to the effects of jicama, carrots and watercress. This is a mid-level flexitarian knowledge base I'm building. I don't...

Today news broke of the first anti-trust lawsuit focused on news publishing against tech platforms . This development builds on a story from last month in which ten state attorneys general sued Google and Facebook for secretly conspiring to stay dominant in the ad market. Facebook's culture is known for highly manipulative tactics . Google's is less so, which makes it surprising they allowed themselves to get entagled with Facebook on a deal for ad pricing. Had they never read "Where Are You Going, Where Are You From?" close enough to identify the false hook as a manipulation tactic? Much more spin emanating from Facebook has been documented than from Google, for some reason. And they employ a tactic of "levelling" or spreading blame. This dilutes a target strictly on Facebook, by spreading ire to "big tech" in general. Roger MacNamee, an early investor-turned critic, author of the less-than-flattering, yet meandering book "Zucked" has...