Chinese government influences Canadian Chinese-language newspapers

The New York Times has an article about how the Chinese government works to influence reporters and reporting at Chinese language newspapers in Canada.

via a friend

The myth of the volunteer kamikaze

The Economist has an article (actually a book review from 2006) that dispels the idea that Japanese pilots lined up to become kamikazes.

She reveals that the tokkotai (“special attack force”, which is how the kamikaze are referred to in Japan) had no volunteers when it was formed in October 1944. Instead, new recruits were either assigned by their superiors or forced to sign up using pressure tactics. No senior officer offered his life for this mission; instead the “volunteer” corps comprised newly enlisted boy-soldiers barely of age and student conscripts from the nation's top universities.

Video: Putting on a duvet cover

You wouldn't think there would be much room for advancement in the area of putting covers on duvets but here is a video showing the "burrito method" which seems to involve a lot less effort than how I've always done this before.

This strikes me as the sort of thing we should have leaned in math class while studying topology.

2016 - A good year

An article on Medium gives 99 Reasons Why 2016 Was a Good Year.

Ottawa tourism in 2017

There seems to have been a bit of a surge in interest in tourism to Ottawa recently.  Possibly related to Canada's 150th anniversary.  The New York Times made the news here with its article 36 Hours in Ottawa.  The Ottawa Citizen follows up with several places the NYT may have missed.

And on Medium we have A hipster weekend in Ottawa.

Perhaps it is worth a visit.

Play Lode Runner in your browser

Those of a similar age to me will be thrilled to learn that there is an HTML5 version of the classic game Lode Runner that you can play in your browser.  I spent many hours playing this game on my Apple ][.

via Kottke.org

TED: Kevin Kelly on the coming Industrial Revolution

An interesting 13 minute TED talk from Kevin Kelly basically about how AI and humans working in teams with AI are going to lead to another industrial revolution.  There's nothing really ground-breaking in the talk but it provides a nice overview.

via Boing Boing