2024-11-06

human and stellar scale condensation, advocacy reduction, wood satellite, Boeing unstruck, old folks homes, some election stuff, FBI dupe arrested, Russian fake bomb threats, more moles, worm worries


Obit


Musk

  • Musk now says it's 'pointless' to build a $25,000 Tesla for human drivers

  • Elon Musk's misleading statements viewed more than 2B times on X

  • The hyperloop lives on as a 1/12th scale model in Switzerland

  • Musk and X are epicenter of US election misinformation, experts say

  • X Is a White-Supremacist Site - The Atlantic

    X has always had a Nazi problem. I’ve covered the site, formerly known as Twitter, for more than a decade and reported extensively on its harassment problems, its verification (and then de-verification) of a white nationalist, and the glut of anti-Semitic hatred that roiled the platform in 2016. But something is different today. Heaps of unfiltered posts that plainly celebrate racism, anti-Semitism, and outright Nazism are easily accessible and possibly even promoted by the site’s algorithms. All the while, Elon Musk—a far-right activist and the site’s owner, who is campaigning for and giving away millions to help elect Donald Trump—amplifies horrendous conspiracy theories about voter fraud, migrants run amok, and the idea that Jewish people hate white people. Twitter was always bad if you knew where to look, but because of Musk, X is far worse. (X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment for this article.) It takes little effort to find neo-Nazi accounts that have built up substantial audiences on X. “Thank you all for 7K,” one white-nationalist meme account posted on October 17, complete with a heil-Hitler emoji reference. One week later, the account, which mostly posts old clips of Hitler speeches and content about how “Hitler was right,” celebrated 14,000 followers. One post, a black-and-white video of Nazis goose-stepping, has more than 187,000 views. Another racist and anti-Semitic video about Jewish women and Black men—clearly AI-generated—has more than 306,000 views. It was also posted in late October.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

Trump / Right / Jan6

  • The "Fundamental Transformation of Our Country" -- Gutting Historical Norms of Governance

    Almost every argument that I see Democrats and their allies make against Trump and Vance is a classic case of projection. You could write a book on it and someday someone will. It has been going on for years. Trump was colluding with Russia, at the exact time that the Hillary Clinton campaign was literally colluding with Russians to create to create the phony Trump-Russia dossier. Similarly, Democrats and their allies in the ancien régime media have been warning us that electing Trump would be the end of America as we know it. He is a Fascist and a Nazi. Anyone who supports him is “garbage.” Those who attend his rallies are no different than Nazi brown shirts of the 1930’s. To convince us of this, they tell us that Trump has made no secret of his intent to become a dictator on Day 1. And he would shred the Constitution. I would say it is all just a continuation of their projection. My Brit friends might put it more descriptively: It is “bollocks.”

  • Musk to Spend Election Night With Trump at Mar-a-Lago - The New York Times

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

  • Tab crash reporter

  • US soldier injured earlier this year on Gaza pier mission has died | CNN Politics

    23-year-old Sgt. Quandarius Davon Stanley, was one of three US service members injured in non-combat incidents during the mission, though two were immediately returned to duty after suffering minor injuries. He was assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. Stanley was recently medically retired by his unit because his injuries meant he would be unable to continue military service, a defense official said. He died on October 31. “Stanley was injured while supporting the mission that delivered humanitarian aid to Gaza in May 2024 and was receiving treatment in long-term care medical center,” Capt. Shkeila Milford-Glover, a spokesman for the 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, said Monday.

    It’s unclear how exactly Stanley was injured, though officials have emphasized that it was not combat related. Stanley’s injury — as well as the minor injuries of the two other troops — were first confirmed by Vice Adm. Bradley Cooper, deputy commander of US Central Command, who told reporters in May one individual was “undergoing care at an Israeli local hospital. He was injured out on a ship at sea.” Stanley was transferred back to the US for treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, in June.

  • Another Suspected Iranian Mole Unmasked Inside the Biden Administration

    How many Iranian moles are operating in the upper echelons of the Biden-Harris administration? Officially, nobody knows, while nobody in the legacy media will ask. Counterintelligence experts in Washington, DC, do ask, that’s their job, albeit in hushed tones. Counterspies inside the Beltway tell me that another suspected Friend of Tehran recently was unmasked, and the implications of this case are deeply alarming for U.S. national security. His name is Lawrence W.K. Casselle, and he’s one of the top officials in the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service. Although little known to the public, DSS are Foggy Bottom’s cops, the federal agents who guard American diplomats abroad as well as foreign government dignitaries when they visit the U.S. Importantly, DSS also provides counterintelligence oversight to the State Dept.

    Casselle was then promoted to be DSS regional director for the Near East (2023-24), including elevation to the Senior Foreign Service (State’s version of the Senior Executive Service for diplomats, equivalent to general officer rank in the military), to be moved up to Deputy Assistant Director of DSS in May of this year. Then, everything fell apart for this Foggy Bottom high-flyer. Casselle this summer came under suspicion for his ties to Tehran. When he was serving in the Middle East, apparently during his tour in Baghdad, Casselle became close with a foreign woman. They developed a romantic relationship, IC insiders tell me, and Casselle used his powerful job and State Dept. connections to help his new friend. Inconveniently, his paramour turned out to be an operative for Iranian intelligence. How compromised Casselle is by this scandal isn’t yet known. IC counterspies tell me that they are trying to establish how close to Tehran Casselle got during his close relationship with that Iranian spy, but the State Dept. isn’t cooperating energetically with the counterintelligence investigation. If one of Foggy Bottom’s rising stars turns out to be an Iranian mole, the embarrassment to the department will be serious. Casselle’s superiors want this mess to simply go away.

  • US fines GlobalFoundries for shipping chips to sanctioned Chinese firm

  • Fisker EVs Hired an IT Spy Who Funneled Millions to N. Korea's Missile Program

    The report from the Danish magazine The Engineer said Fisker was among numerous U.S. automobile companies targeted by a money laundering scheme that funneled more than a staggering $6 million to North Korea's ballistic missile program.

  • China Hack Enabled Spying on US Officials, Ensnaring Thousands of Contacts

World

Health / Medicine

  • Resolving the Deworming Paradox: Rethinking Deworming Campaigns for Children | Center For Global Development

    However, WHO’s recommendation and health impacts of mass deworming have been questioned in recent years. According to a Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis from 2019, “the current evidence does not support large public health programmes of deworming in low- and middle‐income countries” because of non-significant nutritional health effects. Regular mass deworming “does not appear” to improve three out of four primary outcomes in that meta-analysis, namely height, haemoglobin or cognition (“probably little or no effect”), whereas for weight there is mixed evidence. These findings are broadly in agreement with an independent replication by Campbell Collaboration from 2016. One thing that everyone agrees on is that all infected children should receive deworming treatment. This is obvious because the drugs are known to be effective, safe, and inexpensive. In fact, it’s several times cheaper to administer the drug to a child than to test for worms, which would leave many cases undetected anyway. However, this suggests a paradox in deworming meta-analyses: if infected children benefit from deworming, why would we not find smaller, but still meaningful effects from the mass deworming in the areas where worms are prevalent?

  • Drugmaker shut down after black schmutz found in injectable weight-loss drug

    On August 14, 2024, FDA received a complaint from a patient who noticed a black particulate in a vial of semaglutide distributed by Fullerton Wellness. On September 23, 2024, FDA received information from California regulatory authorities as part of ongoing collaboration between FDA and the state noting deficiencies found at Fullerton Wellness during a state inspection. After the state inspection, Fullerton Wellness voluntarily ceased operations.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp