Made way, way too much oatmeal today.

[conuly]

I want to start packing breakfast and lunch for my mother, but she's hopeless when it comes to bringing back containers. I need more disposables for her, I think, things I don't mind losing. I should hit up friends and freecycle for used Chinese food containers, the plastic type. Wash, and you can use them again.

~~~~~~~

As subway homeless population grows, new $6M outreach effort by city and MTA to launch in July

http://nydn.us/1biSwBk

Jewish associations expect 3.5 million Sephardic Jews to apply for Spanish citizenship after Spain's Justice Ministry approved a draft law which will allow them to return to the country their ancestors were kicked out of more than 500 years ago.

http://bit.ly/Nsrb4T

Delhi’s Air Has Become a Lethal Hazard and Nobody Seems to Know What to Do About It

http://world.time.com/2014/02/10/smog-in-new-delhi/

French Jews Migrate To Israel Citing Rising Anti-Semitism

http://huff.to/1npmeEs

China spending more than Europe on science and technology as GDP percentage, new figures reveal

http://bit.ly/1iFLXYZ

Americans eat too much sugar, and our collective sweet tooth is killing us.

http://bit.ly/1oam7zK

Todd Starnes, whoever he is, is really, really annoyed that neither the NFL nor the Olympics are currently advancing his cultural agenda. That's not how he put it, but that's absolutely what he meant, so let's just say it.

http://on.fb.me/1glRm5o

It sounds radical, but the ‘guaranteed basic income’ almost became law in the United States—and it’s having a revival now, with some surprising supporters.

http://b.globe.com/1f2HbAw

Report: Iran sending warships toward U.S. maritime borders

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/08/world/meast/iran-navy/index.html

Why global water shortages pose threat of terror and war

http://bit.ly/1iJfvV5

Washington Republican wants to weaken minimum wage law

http://bit.ly/1eht3m1

Sugar is key ingredient to evolutionary success of ants, researchers find

http://bit.ly/1lVpEDr

150+ Household Uses for Vinegar

http://www.rd.com/home/150-household-uses-for-vinegar/

Using 3-D printing to treat children's heart defects

http://bit.ly/1h3GwWu

The Sochi scandal no one’s talking about: How Russia is silencing its environmentalists

http://bit.ly/1loO5Wm

Charles Halton reads Melissa Mohr’s Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing and questions modern Bible translations

http://themarginaliareview.com/archives/3156

Attack on electric grid raises alarm

http://lat.ms/NbFhr7

Estonia: The Little Country That Cloud

http://www.bhorowitz.com/estonia_the_little_country_that_cloud

Is Your Brain Truly Ready for Junk Food, Porn, or the Internet?

http://www.sparringmind.com/supernormal-stimuli/

Comments

[waterfall8484]

Thank you! I'm looking at links 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 19. :~)

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

Hi, friend of a friend here. In case you didn't notice, your morning link roundup posted about a dozen times today with differing numbers of links in each version.

And by the way, I often do find something interesting each morning, so thank you for that.

[conuly]

Fuck, I know what happened. I'll fix it now.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I love Estonia. The first time I visited it had only been an EU member for a few months and it was my first time behind the former iron curtain. We came in by boat from Finland (where I was living at the time), arriving at the imposing and thoroughly Soviet looking port. On first impressions it utterly conformed to my expectations of a former Soviet city. We made our first stop the city's railway station because my dad - he's into trains - wanted a look. he quickly declared that they looked the worst condition trains he'd seen anywhere in the world, including India. So far, so stereotypical.

But then, just round the corner from the station, we saw something remarkable and unexpected. Something which was a sign of things to come in this marvellous country. A small park with a sign offering free wifi. This was the first time I had ever seen free public wifi, and open-air too, and it was behind the iron curtain. It seemed so incongruous in this natural little space, surrounded by the stark concrete reminders of tyranny. It was like they were saying "we have known secrecy and and we have known oppression, never again; now openness reigns".

We went on to discover many wonderful things about Tallinn - it's beautiful city - and my husband and I returned last summer for our honeymoon and discovered even more. (And by now, wifi.ee signs are all over the country.) But I think there'll never be another image which more perfectly sums up Estonia in my mind.

As for the digital ID. Shortly before arriving in Estonia, we were watching a documentary about the Baltic states (our honeymoon took us around all of them). It was given to us as a wedding present by my husband's cousins, who work in telly in Germany and happened to have made this doco. One of the stories they told within it was about the digital ID and how much you could do with it - down to paying your kid's bus fare. I admired it for its simplicity, but my husband sounded a note of caution - he wouldn't like to have one single thing which is so powerful because of the risk of losing it. But I really don't see that it's so different from a German citizen losing their wallet containing not just their credit cards but their ID card. I'm not sure that's any less risky. (It's one of the reasons I don't like the idea of being forced to carry ID. I'd rather keep my ID locked away safely at home thanks!)