#The Kentucky Derby 2024

[hindikahani2023]

The Kentucky Derby 2024

Across the pond, amidst the rolling bluegrass hills of Kentucky, lies a spectacle unlike any other read

[silly-fox-in-sox]

The first 10 Kentucky Derby portraits finished for 2024!

Dornoch

Sierra Leone

Catching Freedom

West Saratoga

Track Phantom

Forever Young

Domestic Product

Honor Marie

Fierceness

Endlessly

Resilience

I'm feeling good about this year's experiment with oil paints, though the gold paint I used for the backgrounds did NOT scan well at all, so I had to do some pretty extensive photoshop to get it looking ok.

I have the next 9 paintings done (+1 Deterministic who didn't enter), and just sketched the last 3 entrants today (Encino + the 2 AEs) I plan to pain Encino tomorrow and will wait before painting the other two to see if they'll draw into the field.

[thethirdman8]

It's Mystik Dan! Great race..🐎🐎

In case you missed it..

[virtie333]

The photo finish from the 2024 Kentucky Derby

I have never seen such a close Derby before!

Top to bottom: Mystik Dan (1st), Forever Young (3rd), Sierra Leone (2nd)

[dunglizard]

West Saratoga, Society Man, Mystik Dan, in that order, calling it now

[ginaraemitchell]

Weekly Friday Finds 05-03-2024 | Books ~Author News ~ Recipes ~ Crafts ~ New Trivia Question

The 05-03-2024 Weekly Friday Finds are here with Kentucky Derby fun, plus much more! #KentuckyDerbyRecipes #BourbonBalls #BlackberryMintJuleps #HandWovenTowels #BookRecs #JourneyToAuthor #IndieAuthors #TriviaContest #BlogRoundup Weekly Friday Finds 05-03-2024 | Books ~Author News ~ Recipes ~ Crafts ~ New Trivia Question

Weekly Friday Finds | 05-03-2024 | Books ~Author News ~ Recipes ~ Crafts ~ New Trivia Question Hello and welcome to the 05-03-2024 edition of the weekly Friday Finds. I hope you have had a wonderful week and are ready for a relaxing weekend. Let’s see if I found anything to help you better enjoy the next week. I think today’s post offers a lot of inspiration. Until next week, Peace & Love to…

[ponyconductor]

2024 Kentucky Derby Saturday Key Horses

Please hold the rain off Friday and Saturday pony gods. If the slop comes, then it’s up to us foolish passengers to cap on our own. We don’t need that on racing’s biggest day. Here’s the Conductor’s Kentucky Derby battle card. Skip. Race 5: 5½ Furlongs. (Turf) G2 Twin Spires Turf Sprint *Gullet Shot of the Day #7 Our Shot (10/1) – This gelding drew the 10 post last time in the Shakertown Stakes…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada’s ground-breaking, hamstrung repair and interop laws

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

When the GOP trifecta assumes power in just a few months, they will pass laws, and those laws will be terrible, and they will cast long, long shadows.

This is the story of how another far-right conservative government used its bulletproof majority to pass a wildly unpopular law that continues to stymie progress to this day. It's the story of Canada's Harper Conservative government, and two of its key ministers: Tony Clement and James Moore.

Starting in 1998, the US Trade Rep embarked on a long campaign to force every country in the world to enact a new kind of IP law: an "anticircumvention" law that would criminalize the production and use of tools that allowed people to use their own property in ways that the manufacturer disliked.

This first entered the US statute books with the 1998 passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), whose Section 1201 established a new felony for circumventing an "access control." Crucially, DMCA 1201's prohibition on circumvention did not confine itself to protecting copyright.

Circumventing an access control is a felony, even if you never violate copyright law. For example, if you circumvent the access control on your own printer to disable the processes that check to make sure you're using an official HP cartridge, HP can come after you.

You haven't violated any copyright, but the ink-checking code is a copyrighted work, and you had to circumvent a block in order to reach it. Thus, if I provide you a tool to escape HP's ink racket, I commit a felony with penalties of five years in prison and a $500k fine, for a first offense. So it is that HP ink costs more per ounce than the semen of a Kentucky Derby-winning stallion.

This was clearly a bad idea in 1998, though it wasn't clear how bad an idea it was at the time. In 1998, chips were expensive and underpowered. By 2010, a chip that cost less than a dollar could easily implement a DMCA-triggering access control, and manufacturers of all kinds were adding superfluous chips to everything from engine parts to smart lightbulbs whose sole purpose was to transform modification into felonies. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business-model."

So when the Harper government set out to import US-style anticircumvention law to Canada, Canadians were furious. A consultation on the proposal received 6,138 responses opposing the law, and 54 in support:

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2010/04/copycon-final-numbers/

And yet, James Moore and Tony Clement pressed on. When asked how they could advance such an unpopular bill, opposed by experts and the general public alike, Moore told the International Chamber of Commerce that every objector who responded to his consultation was a "radical extremist" with a "babyish" approach to copyright:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/copyright-debate-turns-ugly-1.898216

As is so often the case, history vindicated the babyish radical extremists. The DMCA actually has an official way to keep score on this one. Every three years, the US Copyright Office invites public submissions for exemptions to DMCA 1201, creating a detailed, evidence-backed record of all the legitimate activities that anticircumvention law interferes with.

Unfortunately, "a record" is all we get out of this proceeding. Even though the Copyright Office is allowed to grant "exemptions," these don't mean what you think they mean. The statute is very clear on this: the US Copyright Office is required to grant exemptions for the act of circumvention, but is forbidden from granting exemptions for tools needed to carry out these acts.

This is headspinningly and deliberately obscure, but there's one anecdote from my long crusade against this stupid law that lays it bare. As I mentioned, the US Trade Rep has made the passage of DMCA-like laws in other countries a top priority since the Clinton years. In 2001, the EU adopted the EU Copyright Directive, whose Article 6 copy-pastes the provisions of DMCA 1201.

In 2003, I found myself in Oslo, debating the minister who'd just completed Norway's EUCD implementation. The minister was very proud of his law, boasting that he'd researched the flaws in other countries' anticircumvention laws and addressed them in Norway's law. For example, Norway's law explicitly allowed blind people to bypass access controls on ebooks in order to feed them into text-to-speech engines, Braille printers and other accessibility tools.

I knew where this was going. I asked the minister how this would work in practice. Could someone sell a blind person a tool to break the DRM on their ebooks? Of course not, that's totally illegal. Could a nonprofit blind rights group make such a tool and give it away to blind people? No, that's illegal too. What about hobbyists, could they make the tool for their blind friends? No, not that either.

OK, so how do blind people exercise their right to bypass access controls on ebooks they own so they can actually read them?

Here's how. Each blind person, all by themself, is expected to decompile and reverse-engineer Adobe Reader, locate a vulnerability in the code and write a new program that exploits that vulnerability to extract their ebooks. While blind people are individually empowered to undertake this otherwise prohibited activity, they must do so on their own: they can't share notes with one another on the process. They certainly can't give each other the circumvention program they write in this way:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

That's what a use-only exemption is: the right to individually put a locked down device up on your own workbench, and, laboring in perfect secrecy, figure out how it works and then defeat the locks that stop you from changing those workings so they benefit you instead of the manufacturer. Without a "tools" exemption, a use exemption is basically a decorative ornament.

So the many use exemptions that the US Copyright Office has granted since 1998 really amount to nothing more than a list of defects in the DMCA that the Copyright Office has painstaking verified but is powerless to fix. We could probably save everyone a lot of time by scrapping the triennial exemptions process and replacing it with an permanent sign over the doors of the Library of Congress reading "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

All of this was well understood by 2010, when Moore and Clement were working on the Canadian version of the DMCA. All of this was explained in eye-watering detail to Moore and Clement, but was roundly ignored. I even had a go at it, publicly picking a fight with Moore on Twitter:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130407101911if_/http://eaves.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/Conversations%20between%20@doctorow%20and%20@mpjamesmoore.jpg

Moore and Clement rammed their proposal through in the next session of Parliament, passing it as Bill C-11 in 2012:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Modernization_Act

This was something of a grand finale for the pair. Today, Moore is a faceless corporate lawyer, while Clement was last seen grifting covid PPE (Clement's political career ended abruptly when he sent dick pics to a young woman who turned out to be a pair of sextortionists from Cote D'Ivoire, and was revealed as a serial sex-pest in the ensuing scandal:)

https://globalnews.ca/news/4646287/tony-clement-instagram-women/

Even though Moore and Clement are long gone from public life, their signature achievement remains a Canadian disgrace, an anchor chain tied around the Canadian economy's throat, and an impediment to Canadian progress.

This week, two excellent new Canadian laws received royal assent: Bill C-244 is a broad, national Right to Repair law; and Bill C-294 is a broad, national interoperability law. Both laws establish the right to circumvent access controls for the purpose of fixing and improving things, something Canadians deserve and need.

But neither law contains a tools exemption. Like the blind people of Norway, a Canadian farmer who wants to attach a made-in-Canada Honeybee tool to their John Deere tractor is required to personally, individually reverse-engineer the John Deere tractor and modify it to talk to the Honeybee accessory, laboring in total secrecy:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/12/canada_right_to_repair/

Likewise the Canadian repair tech who fixes a smart speaker or a busted smartphone – they are legally permitted to circumvent in order to torture the device's repair codes out of it or force it to recognize a replacement part, but each technician must personally figure out how to get the device firmware to do this, without discussing it with anyone else.

Thus do Moore and Clement stand athwart Canadian self-reliance and economic development, shouting "STOP!" though both men have been out of politics for years.

There has never been a better time to hit Clement and Moore's political legacy over the head with a shovel and bury it in a shallow grave. Canadian technologists could be making a fortune creating circumvention devices that repair and improve devices marketed by foreign companies.

They could make circumvention tools to allow owners of consoles to play games by Canadian studios that are directly sold to Canadian gamers, bypassing the stores operated by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and the 30% commissions they charge. Canadian technologists could be making diagnostic tools that allow every auto-mechanic in Canada to fix any car manufactured anywhere in the world.

Canadian cloud servers could power devices long after their US-based manufacturers discontinue support for them, providing income to Canadian cloud companies and continued enjoyment for Canadian owners of these otherwise bricked gadgets.

Canada's gigantic auto-parts sector could clone the security chips that foreign auto manufacturers use to block the use of third party parts, and every Canadian could enjoy a steep discount every time they fix their cars. Every farmer could avail themselves of third party parts for their tractors, which they could install themselves, bypassing the $200 service call from a John Deere technician who does nothing more than look over the farmer's own repair and then types an unlock code into the tractor's console.

Every Canadian who prints out a shopping list or their kid's homework could use third party ink that sells for pennies per liter, rather than HP's official colored water that cost more than vintage Veuve Cliquot.

A Canadian e-waste dump generates five low-paid jobs per ton of waste, and that waste itself will poison the land and water for centuries to come. A circumvention-enabled Canadian repair sector could generate 150 skilled, high-paid community jobs that saves gadgets and the Earth, all while saving Canadians millions.

Canadians could enjoy the resliency that comes of having a domestic tech and repair sector, and could count on it through pandemics and Trumpian trade-war.

All of that and more could be ours, except for the cowardice and greed of Tony Clement and James Moore and the Harper Tories who voted C-11 into law in 2012.

Everything the "radical extremists" warned them of has come true. It's long past time Canadians tore up anticircumvention law and put the interests of the Canadian public and Canadian tech businesses ahead of the rent-seeking enshittification of American Big Tech.

Until we do that, we can keep on passing all the repair and interop laws we want, but each one will be hamstrung by Moore and Clement's "felony contempt of business model" law, and the contempt it showed for the Canadian people.

Image: JeffJ (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tony_Clement_-_2007-06-30_in_Kearney,_Ontario.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

--

Jorge Franganillo (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duga_radar_system-_wreckage_of_electronic_devices_(37885984654).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[itszonez]

SHERYL LEE RALPH | 2024 Kentucky Derby

[blueiscoool]

Kentucky Derby 2024 (Full Race)

Mystik Dan Wins in a Dramatic Photo Finish at 150th Kentucky Derby

Mystik Dan has won the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby in a dramatic photo finish at Churchill Downs on Saturday in Louisville.

Photo finishes are rare at the Derby

Entering the race at 18-1 odds, Mystik Dan edged out Sierra Leone and Forever Young in a dramatic three-horse photo finish to capture the first leg of the Triple Crown. Sierra Leone finished in second place, while Forever Young finished in third place.

It was the 10th time in the race’s history a horse has won by a nose and the first since Grindstone in 1996, according to the NBC broadcast.

“This is unbelievable. That was longest few minutes I’ve ever felt in my life waiting for them to hang that number above us,” said jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. after the race.

“It was exciting when we hit the wire but I wasn’t sure if we won so it was quite a rush to sit here and wait for it.”

The victory is the first for Hernandez Jr. and trainer Kenny McPeek at the Kentucky Derby.

By Homero De la Fuente and Ben Church.

[silly-fox-in-sox]

The last 10 Kentucky Derby portraits finished for 2024!

Resilience

Just Steel

Stronghold

Society Man

Mystic Dan

Grand Mo the First

Just A Touch

T O Password

Catalytic

Epic Ride

And with that, each of the individual paintings is finished, scanned and cleaned up. Now to stitch them together into 1 big poster.

[smarty-jones]

West Saratoga trains for the 2024 Kentucky Derby

(x)

[seeminglyranch87]

Taylor & Travis Timeline

May 2024 - Part 1

May 1 - Taylor joined Travis in KC

May 3 - Taylor flies to Paris, France in preparation for the European leg of the Eras Tour

May 4 - Travis attends the Kentucky Derby

Travis purchased a Horseshoe necklace and sipper at the Derby for Taylor - confirmed by the Jeweller on their IG story May 12

May 5 - Travis attends the Miami Grand Prix F1 race as an investor in the Alpine F1 Team

May 8 - Travis on set filming Grotesquerie (x x)

May 9 - Travis shows support as Taylor's guitarist Paul Sidoti looks forward to The Eras Tour European leg beginning...

The Eras Tour, Paris La Defense Arena, Paris France N1

Taylor launches a new look for The Era's Tour including:

Adding "The Tortured Poets Department" to the introduction

New costumes for most eras including Lover, Fearless, Red, Speak Now, Folklore/Evermore, 1989, Midnights,

Altered order of Eras: Lover, Fearless, Red, Speak Now, Reputation, Folklore & Evermore amalgamated, 1989, TTPD, Midnights

Songs have been cut from the set: The Archer, Long Live, The One, The Last Great American Dynasty, Seven, Tis The Damn Season.

The Tortured Poets Department era was added! songs added to the set list: But Daddy I Love Him, So High School, Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? Down Bad, Fortnight, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.

Surprise songs: Paris (guitar), loml (piano)

It is later revealed that Travis was watching a livestream of The Eras Tour supporting Taylor whilst filming in L.A. (x) Oct. 2024

May 10 - The Eras Tour, Paris La Defense Arena, Paris France N2

Is it Over Now? x Out of the Woods (guitar), My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys (piano)

Travis likes Louboutin's IG post featuring his girl (x)

May 11 - The Eras Tour, Paris La Defense Arena, Paris France N3

Hey Stephen (guitar) & Maroon (piano)

Taylor Nation post to IG stories commenting on swag surfin', a fan singing "Karma is the guy on the Chiefs!" , and a sneaky snippet of a fan dressed in a Chiefs jersey. Is TN jumping on the Tayvis train????

May 12 - Travis seen out in Paris before show

The Eras Tour, Paris La Defense Arena, Paris France N4

Travis attends with Gigi Hadid, Bradley Cooper, Andrea Swift, Lenny Kravitz & Ross Travis.

As Taylor said “Can you believe it’s the 87th show of the Eras Tour!” ❤️💛

The Alchemy x Treacherous (guitar), Begin Again x Paris (piano)

Tay & Trav - so much PDA!!

Heart eyes, glances, blowing kisses, heart hands and pointing at each other. Travis got to see TTPD era featuring Taylor singing to him in But Daddy I Love Him & So High School for the first time. We also heard once again that "Karma is the guy on the Chiefs"

May 13 - Taylor and Travis papped enjoying a private dinner together at the exclusive Villa Sola Cabiati, on the grounds of the Grand Hotel Tremezzo, Lake Como, Italy (x) and later seen strolling in the evening.

May 15 - New Heights Ep. 90 airs. Travis and Jason discuss the Paris Eras Tour show but do not disclose where in Europe Travis is currently staying (later revealed to be Lake Como, Italy).

As for Taylor's Paris show, Travis gushed that "it was an all-around lovely night."  "I don't know if they're just getting better or if I just keep forgetting how they are. It was electric." 

Go to previous update -> April part 3

Go to next update -> May part 2

Return to the timeline

[pablopictura]

Mystik Dan 2024 150th Kentucky Derby

[artificersarchive]

I've always been fascinated by hot air balloons. The Kentucky Derby has the Great Balloon Glow and Race, I drove through New Mexico during the Balloon Fiesta, and my former home of Marion County started a balloon glow not too long before I left during Ham Days. The colors, the shapes, the way they rely on Mother Nature to get where they need to go.

Hot air balloons were used for reconnaissance and directing artillery fire during the Civil War. In fact, there was a Union Army Balloon Corps!

This scene recalls Dorothy's exodus from Oz, flying over the fields in Kansas, but this time, she got to bring the Technicolor with her.

Back to Kansas, (c)2024, mixed media (needle felted wool, sari silk, glass, acrylic, laser-cut wood)