There’s a newly spotted code on a Facebook website, and it suggests that the platform might be preparing to take a leap forward in transparency around how political ads are targeted to its users. Facebook, however, denies this and states that no such change is afoot.

Microtargeting on Facebook allows progressive voting rights groups to show their ads only to racial minorities. Or a pro-nuclear energy group to choose vegans as its target audience. In 2016, Russian operatives attempted to divide the American population by directing Facebook to show racially divisive messages, for instance, only to African-Americans. Such targeting power is built into Facebook’s design. In fact, a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report said Russian meddlers had used the Facebook platform “exactly as it was engineered to be used.”

Yet this information about how each ad is targeted is available only to people who see one and then click on an obscure button. It’s known on the platform as “Why am I seeing this?” or “WAIST,” and Facebook has consistently refused to disclose WAIST info for individual ads to the broader public.

The information, however, appears to be a part of an upcoming redesign of Facebook’s political ad transparency website, at least according to Quartz’s review of the code. But Facebook spokesperson Tom Channik denies this, saying that they are “not considering adding targeting parameters to the ad library at this time.”

But earlier this month, the JavaScript code inside Facebook’s ad library site included several references to a button for WAIST.

Know more about this over at the site.

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(Image Credit: ElisaRiva/ Pixabay)

Art Allen joined the Coast Guard in 1984 as a junior researcher. He spent the next 35 years trying to improve the Coast Guard's ability to save people lost at sea, in large part by studying drifting objects, which had barely been done before. But it wasn't until 2001 that he watched how their rescue operations worked in real time. A storm came in that night, and the Coast Guard was dispatched to multiple rescues, including a sailboat reported missing at the end of the shift. With scant information and a dearth of tools to calculate where the craft might be, the area to search was too large to locate the sailboat quickly.

And so the Coast Guard went looking for something without any real idea of where it was. The helicopters and an 87-foot cutter searched through the night, and found nothing. Not until the following morning did the sailboat appear, upside down, a long way from where the Coast Guard had been searching. A fishing boat spotted it. Two adults were in the water beside the boat, alive. A 42-year-old woman and her 9-year-old daughter, both wearing life vests, were taken off the hull. They’d gone hypothermic. A few hours later, at a local hospital, both were pronounced dead.

Art had stayed late into the night and seen all this unfold, in real time. “I watched this happen,” he said, rising from his dining room table. We’d been sitting there talking for maybe five hours before he’d thought to mention the incident. “These two were the same age as my wife and daughter,” said Art — and suddenly he was fighting back tears.

After that incident, Art Allen threw himself into developing a computer program that many people owe their lives to, even though they don't know it. Read Allen's fascinating story at Bloomberg.  -via Metafilter

At his English boarding school in the 1990s, Christian Jarrett along with his friends would spend hours in roleplaying games. His favorite was Vampire: The Masquerade, and he still remembers how he had a psychological hangover after he spent an afternoon immersed in the character of a merciless, cruel undead villain.

It took a while to shake off the fantasy persona, during which time I had to make a conscious effort to keep my manners and morals in check, so as not to get myself into some realworld trouble.

If immersion in a fantasy character for a few hours can lead to a change in one’s sense of self, “what must it be like for professional actors, and especially so-called method actors, who follow the teachings of the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski and truly embody the parts they play?”

There is certainly anecdotal evidence that actors experience a blending of their real self with their assumed characters. For instance, Benedict Cumberbatch said that, while he enjoyed playing a character as complex as Sherlock Holmes, there is also ‘a kickback. I do get affected by it. There’s a sense of being impatient. My mum says I’m much curter with her when I’m filming Sherlock.’

Mark Seton, a researcher in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, has even coined the provocative term ‘post-dramatic stress disorder’ to describe the sometimes difficult, lasting effects experienced by actors who lose themselves in a role. ‘Actors may often prolong addictive, codependent and, potentially, destructive habits of the characters they have embodied,’ he writes.

Some, however, don’t agree with this kind of view. See more on Aeon.

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(Image Credit: BBC/Hartswood Films/ Aeon)

Home to some 180 species is the Paris Zoological Park. Many of these species would fall in the “standard zoo fare” category, like zebras, giraffes, penguins, toucans, turtles, and other common animals you would see in a zoo. This week, however, would be a surprise for everyone, as the Paris Zoological Park unveils a mysterious creature. It’s not a fungi, nor is it an animal.

Physarum polycephalum is a yellow-hued slime mold, a group of organisms that are not, in spite of their name, fungi. Slime molds also aren’t animals, nor are they plants. Experts have classified them as protists, a label applied to “everything we don't really understand,” Chris Reid, a scientist who has studied slime molds, told Ferris Jabr of Scientific American back in 2012.

Like other slime molds, P. polycephalum is a biological conundrum—and a wonder. It’s a single-celled organism with millions of nuclei that creeps along forest floors in search of bacteria, fungal spores and other microbes. It can detect and digest these substances, but it doesn’t have a mouth or stomach. The Paris Zoological Park grew its organism in petri dishes and fed it oatmeal, which it seemed to like, reports CNN's Julie Zaugg. Zoo staff named the creature the “blob” after a 1958 horror B-movie, in which a gloopy alien lifeform descends upon a Pennsylvania town and devours everything in its path.

More details of this blob over at Smithsonian.com.

(Video Credit: CBS News/ YouTube)

An employee of China’s Guangzhou Central Sports Co. ,Ltd. made a post on the WeChat app. The post contained his love for the some of the Pokemon franchise’s oldest characters, the members of Team Rocket, the organization that hatches plans to profit by dishonest means. Shortly after the employee’s post, the company issued a statement, apologizing for their  employee posting “inappropriate content that adversely affects society.” Can you believe that this harmless post made the company and the employee apologize for it? The post might only look harmless, as SoraNews24 detailed: 

It turns out there’s another wrinkle to the situation, though. In his initial post expressing his love for Team Rocket, the man also included two images. One was of Pokémon characters Jessie, James, and Meowth, but the other was a screen capture of an article about the recent controversy regarding the Chinese government and U.S. professional basketball team the Houston Rockets, which started when Rockets general manager Daryl Morey sent out a tweet expressing support for protesters in Hong Kong. That led to a local media boycott of last week’s exhibition game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets in China, as well as an apology from the U.S.-based National Basketball Association.

In Chinese the names of both Team Rocket and the basketball-playing Rockets are written the same way: 火箭队. “I wasn’t talking about the Houston Rockets,” the man’s signed apology says. “I was talking about Pokémon’s Team Rocket,” but the inclusion of the Houston Rockets article screen capture seems like a deliberate attempt to create a parallel between the two organizations.

image credit: via SoraNews24

There’s this confusion on whether or not people should tip Uber drivers. While most actually don’t leave a taxi without tipping the driver, some hesitate or don’t actually tip app-based drivers. Watch as Vox details the origins of this confusion, the history of app-based hailing apps like Uber, and debunks the Uber myth that tipping is actually part of your pay. Personally, if you want to and have the extra money to tip a driver, why not? If you don’t, that’s also fine! 

We’ve witnessed a lot of trials and issues, especially in today’s political climate. One of the terms that appears in the news and on the Internet is the term “whistleblower.” One might think that they know the word from the amount of times it has been heard on news media, but maybe the full understanding of the term is something one hasn’t comprehended yet. Reader’s Digest details the origin and definition of “whistleblower”:

A whistleblower is someone who exposes information about wrongdoings that companies or organizations don’t want to share. This information is usually about illegal or unethical actions or wrongdoings within a public or private organization. 

Ralph Nader helped re-coin the term “whistleblower” in a positive light, according to Mueller. The “Conference on Professional Responsibility” Nader held in Washington, D.C. in 1972, and the corresponding book, were game changers. Journalists preferred using this instead of “snitch,” which has a negative undertone. In the late 1960s and 1970s, a series of whistleblowers not only spread awareness on various issues, but they popularized the positive use of “whistleblowing.”

image credit: via wikimedia commons

The citizens of Rwanda are dedicated to saving the endangered mountain gorilla. Although parks have now been set aside for the gorillas, the encroachment of humans did plenty of damage in the 20th century, both from poaching and from human-borne disease. At one point, there were only 242 gorillas left in the Virunga Massif volcanic region. Now there are 600, largely due to community involvement in their protection. One way Rwanda promotes gorilla conservation is the traditional baby naming ceremony Kwita Izina, now held every September to name new baby gorillas.    

The custom of hosting a naming ceremony for newborns is one of Rwanda’s oldest cultural traditions, widely believed to date back to the foundation of the monarchy, in the 11th century. A week after a child was born, its parents would invite friends and family from their clan—or ubwoko in Kinyarwanda, the country’s indigenous language—to their home to help choose a name. Women and children would prepare food—typically a one-pot dish combining local produce such as cassava, peas, and peanuts—while the men shared sorghum malt beer.

The ceremony would begin with the presentation of the newborn to the clan, followed by a collective prayer to Imana, the supreme being, to protect the family and endow the parents with many more children. Everyone from the tribe’s youngest members to its elders would suggest a name—typically something with an auspicious connotation.

Once the parents chose from the list of proposed names, the clan mothers would erupt in cheering and applause, known as impundu (“happiness sounds”), and a parting beer made from fermented bananas, called agashinguracumu, would be served to the departing guests. The family would be showered with gifts, such as a cow or new linens, and the baby would be allowed to leave the house, and enter the outside world, for the first time.

This past September, 25 new mountain gorilla babies were named in front of 30,000 people who attended the ceremony in Kinigi, near Volcanoes National Park. Read more of what Rwandans are doing to save their "most treasured animal” at Atlas Obscura.

About a week ago, redditor wrud4d shared this picture of his grandfather. He said Grandpa wears the same old shirt every time he mows the yard, and this is the result. The post went to reddit's front page, and someone from Yamaha saw it. The company contacted wrud4d and then sent Grandpa a new shirt!

This one has UPF (ultraviolet protection factor) fabric and long sleeves. No more sunburn! However, as an older person myself, I can guess that Grandpa won't want to ruin a brand new shirt by wearing it while mowing his lawn. That's the reason he reserved that old, thinning Yamaha shirt in the first place.    

The poke plant (Phytolacca americana) is toxic. One of the first things Appalachian children are taught is to not eat poke berries, despite their juicy purple color. But the leaves are the main ingredient in poke sallet, which despite the name, is not a "salad" at all, but greens carefully cooked to reduce their toxicity. What toxicity remains acts like a purgative, which can rid the body of worms and other parasites.

This isn't food that's cooked as a dare or to be showy, like say, Japanese fugu, one of the world's most poisonous fish, now served at Michelin-starred Suzuki in New York City. According to Nicole Taylor, chef and author of The Up South Cookbook, poke sallet is a stretch food, and it happened to be the first fresh vegetable to rise from the ground in the earliest days of spring. "When you look at foraging, that's only what they call it now. People who were poor and people who were formerly enslaved—they had to figure out what to cook, and what to eat. You can trace different wild foods back to those folks. People who are looking for food to get by are more likely to eat poke sallet than someone who had means to eat other things."

My parents and grandparents ate poke sallet, and I think about it when the tender young leaves appear in the spring. But considering the difficulty of gathering enough leaves at just the right stage and cooking it three times only to produce a dish with a "vaguely asparagus-meets-spinach flavor" which acts as a laxative, I'd just as soon open a can of something else and wait for the garden greens. Read about poke as a food, medicine, poison, and song inspiration at Saveur.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Stefan.lefnaer)

Melanin is the natural brown pigment that determines the color of our skin, hair, and eyes. Lipochrome is another natural pigment that confers a yellow color. However, there are no natural blue or green pigments in the human body. So why are some eyes blue and some green? Simon Whistler explains what's happening in those eyes. And I found out why my green eyes are sometimes gray. The eye color discussion is only five minutes long. An ad appears at five minutes, then there are bonus eye facts at about six minutes. -via Digg   

In 1818, mathematicians George Camak and James Gaines were tasked with marking the border between Georgia and Tennessee. This was very difficult in an age long before GPS was invented. Atlas Obscura explains:

Without any modern tools or the zenith sector he requested at his disposal, Camak was forced to rely on inaccurate astronomical tables and the stars. Without those tools, Camak marked the 35th parallel about one mile south of its actual location.

A mile might not mean much, but a similar surveying error once resulted in the US building an expensive fort inside the borders of British Canada. Camak suspected that his astronomical tables were inaccurate, so he returned to the task eight years later and moved the marker.

That survey, though, was also wrong, and Camak's work resulted in a border dispute between the three states covering 68 square miles of land:

Over the years, several disputes have broken out among legislatures from Georgia and Tennessee over access to water in the Tennessee River. In 2007, the original stone maker was mysteriously stolen, it has since been replaced, however, it’s unclear what happened to the original marker .

You can visit the stone by following the directions provided by Atlas Obscura.

Photo: Kenj

Blair Hardy was surprised on her wedding day when she was presented with a bouquet of chicken nuggets. The nuggets were provided by the groom, Adam Tyson, to celebrate Blair becoming a “Tyson.” Funnily enough, the nuggets did come from Tyson brand, which posted photos of the wedding of the couple on their social media. Personally, I’d love to receive a bouquet of chicken nuggets for anyday, regardless of occasion. Who wouldn’t want a bunch of chicken nuggets?

(via USA Today)

image credit: via Tyson Brand

Two men were arrested after more than two years of being a part of a long-running cheese theft ring (yes, apparently that is a thing) in several countries. Noticing $50,000 worth of cheese missing, police started their investigation and were led to 24-year old Jairo Maiano Osorio Alvares and 34-year-old Rodrick Domingo Ransom  of Lemoore, California. The stolen cheese was being sold through different means, as Oddee detailed: 

Leprino Foods is the largest producer of mozzarella. The store that was stolen from is in Lemoore, which sits between Fresno and Bakersfield, California. 

Police detectives found that the stolen product was being sold throughout Fresno, Tulare, Kings, and Riverside through social media, door-to-door salesmen, on the street or even flea markets. 

“Leprino employees said that they found their stolen cheese on social media sites. Every part of their cheese, the cheese blocks, is serialized. So they were able to see the serial number on their block cheese,” said Detective Cpl. Osvaldo Maldonado, who is working the case.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Tutushka, a makeup artist from Nikolaev, Ukraine, specializes in lip makeup. She can turn your mouth into a living canvas that speaks of tropical beaches, vibrant fruits, and scenic vistas. Her designs pop out of the screen, drawing you into little stories. You can see more of her work on her Instagram page.