reading notes: we are bellingcat

we are bellingcat author: eliot higgins ISBN: 978-1526615756 overview higgins provides a nice and reasonably chronological account of what led to the creation of bellingcat. from his days lurking on the guardian and various message boards while working a standard office job to the creation of his brown moses blog and eventually the creation of the bellingcat project. notable escapades/investigations include: detailing the acquisition of expertise in identifying war crimes during the civil war in syria as well as chemical attacks on the part of the assad regime....

November 14, 2021 · steve ulrich

climate models and precautionary measures

given the density of the news surrounding the IPCC report and the dire implications of a report that leaves little/nothing to question as to the state of things this nugget from NNT, et al was a wry bit of commentary. We have only one planet. This fact radically constrains the kinds of risks that are appropriate to take at a large scale. Even a risk with a very low probability becomes unacceptable when it affects all of us – there is no reversing mistakes of that magnitude....

August 9, 2021 · steve ulrich

minnesota failings

some personally interesting elements from this NY review of books essay by jelani cobb. “In 2019 Minneapolis ranked, according to US News & World Report, among the best places in the US to live, but it was also among the cities with the worst socioeconomic disparities between black and white residents, with a $47,000 gap separating the median household income of the two groups—shocking even for the United States. Seventy-six percent of whites in the area owned their homes; only a quarter of blacks did....

August 8, 2021 · steve ulrich

10 years of RIPE probing

i got this little gem of a reminder from the folks at RIPE this morning. i suspect that actual uptime has been a bit better than noted, but i haven’t been the most rigorous about keeping the lab/monitoring segment online over the years. this covers connectivity through comcast, centurylink/qwest and USI over the past 10 years. it also includes stints at cisco (partially), juniper, palo alto networks and arista. a lot’s happened over the past 10 years....

August 2, 2021 · steve ulrich