2024-04-18

etc

• US FAA issues ground stop advisory for Alaska Airlines

• Mercury: The Solar System's smallest planet may once have been as large as Earth

Horseshit

• Generation Z is unprecedentedly rich

  Pundits produce a lot of fluff about the cohort. Recent “research” from Frito-Lay, a crisp-maker, finds that Gen Zers have a strong preference for “snacks that leave remnants on their fingers”, such as cheese dust. Yet different generations also display deeper differences in their personalities, in part due to the economic context in which they grow up. Germans who reached adulthood during the high-inflation 1920s came to detest rising prices. Americans who lived through the Depression tended to avoid investing in the stockmarket.

  Gen Z’s economic power was on display at a recent concert by Ms Rodrigo in New York. The mostly female teenagers and 20-somethings in attendance had paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket. Queues for merchandise stalls, selling $50 t-shirts, stretched around the arena. Ms Rodrigo will have no trouble shifting merchandise in other parts of the world, as her tour moves across the Atlantic. That is in part because Gen Zers who have entered the workplace are earning good money throughout the rich world. In 2007 the average net income of French people aged 16 to 24 was 87% of the overall average. Now it is equal to 92%. In a few places, including Croatia and Slovenia, Gen Zers are now bringing in as much as the average.

• Pluralistic: The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant

  It was Kessel's 2004 Foundation essay, "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality," that helped me understand litcrit. Kessel expertly surfaces the subtext of Card's Ender's Game and connects it to Card's politics. In so doing, he completely reframed how I felt about a book I'd read several times and had considered a favorite: https://johnjosephkessel.wixsite.com/kessel-website/creating-the-innocent-killer

• Today, cars are better than they have ever been–and more similar to one another

• Star Forts Are Military History, and the Base of Some Strange Conspiracy Theories - Atlas Obscura

  I learned that there is an entire conspiracy theory built around these fortifications. According to the stranger corners of the Internet, these forts are not elaborate remnants of long-obsolete defense strategies, but rather structures built by some lost, hyper-advanced civilization. “Let’s be clear from the outset,” the website starforts.org states, “the starforts that remain today, either intact or in ruins, were part of a far larger network of a lost civilisation [sic] that spanned pretty much—as far as we can tell—the entire Earth. This is a bold claim, but there is a growing body of evidence to support such a claim. Research is ongoing.” The various fortifications of various countries engaged in various hostilities have been linked together, their lingering presence taken as evidence of some vanished empire.

  What’s stranger about the star fort conspiracy theory, then, is that it estranges Westerners from their own culture—these are not buildings constructed thousands of years ago and left in ruins, but were made by the conspiracists’ own ancestors, and explained in great detail in writing that is easily accessible to readers of English, French, and German. Any sense of mystery here is entirely, willfully manufactured.

• A brief, weird history of brainwashing

• Nestlé gets children hooked on sugar in lower-income countries

• America's Young Farmers Are Burning Out. I Quit, Too

Boeing

• Hundreds could die if Boeing fails to handle quality issues, whistleblower says

• Boeing Whistleblower Wants 787 Fleet Grounded

celebrity gossip

• Peter Thiel on Political Theology

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The Fake Fake-News Problem and the Truth About Misinformation | The New Yorker

  do the credulity theorists have the right account of what’s going on? Folks like Mike Hughes aren’t gullible in the sense that they’ll believe anything. They seem to reject scientific consensus, after all. Partisans of other well-known conspiracies (the government is run by lizard people; a cabal of high-level pedophilic Democrats operates out of a neighborhood pizza parlor) are insusceptible to the assurances of the mainstream media. Have we been misinformed about the power of misinformation?

• The “disinformation” game.

Musk

• Elon Musk confirms that Twitter will charge new users a temporary fee

• Tesla will ask shareholders to reinstate voided $56B stock grant for Musk

  • Tesla putting Musk pay package up for another vote after judge voided first one

  • Tesla pushes for $56B pay deal for Elon Musk

  • Elon Musk's $56B Pay Up for Vote – Again

  • Elon Wants His Money Back

• Why China is defeating Tesla

• Tesla to Cut 14% of Buffalo Staff in Latest Layoffs

• Cybertruck Deliveries Halted Due to Car Being a Piece of Shit That Doesn't Work

• Pakistan says it blocked social media platform X over 'national security'

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• The Electric: Under Trump, a Possible Welcome Mat to China

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• "Eich didn't lose the CEO's job for his Prop-8 donation."

  Since I see that a notable VC-famous jerk is now telling us that he wish he'd "stood by" Eich way back, I'd like to tell you a true fact: Eich didn't lose the CEO's job for his (reprehensible) Prop-8 donation. Everyone wants to believe that's true, because fits nicely into useful narratives a number of invested camps want to champion, whether it's somebody being ousted for reprehensible views or the woke SJW mob somehow pulling down a great leader (tm) but that's not what happened.

  At the time, maybe still today, the largest-by-far donors supporting the Foundation were a financially-very-successful gay couple, I believe New York-based financiers whose names escape me, and who IIRC had the ears of a number of other prominent donors. A significant chunk of the Foundation's even-then modest budget came from that, and when this blew up, it put the entire financial structure of Mozilla as a not-beholden-to-shareholders, privately-held-by-a-not-for-profit entity at risk.

  After what I'm told was a few days of very difficult negotiation under extraordinary pressure, both internal and external, a deal was struck. The plan was that Eich make an announcement, apologizing for his "mistake" and making some public-benefit commitment about inclusivity, importance of diversity, etc. Half the board resigned. But he takes his public drubbing, apologizes and gets his company. The structure of the organization survives, the mission lives. At the last minute, he reneged.

  • HN comments

  I disagree with Eich's vote but the idea that they were going to force him to make this kind of statement is shocking and reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. I would have told the Board to pound sand. Sadly this also explains Mozilla's shift to progressive activism from a focus on software, and it explains why they don't matter anymore.

• Pro-Palestinian workers at Google suspended after occupying office

  • Google workers arrested after nine-hour protest in cloud chief's office

  • Google fires 28 employees involved in sit-in protest over $1.2B Israel contract

    • HN comments

  • Google Fires Workers Protesting $1.2B Israeli Contract

  • Google fires 28 employees after sit-in protest over Israel cloud contract

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Student debt is haunting Americans from graduation to retirement

  • HN comments

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

• TikTok's efforts to silo US data are 'largely cosmetic'

• NPR whistleblower Uri Berliner resigns: ‘I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged’ | Fox News

• Hundreds of Small Presses Just Lost Their Distributor. Now What?

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• AWS kills Snowmobile data transfer truck eight years after driving it onstage

• The First OneWrt One Prototype (Router Board from OpenWrt and Banana Pi)

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• State tax officials are using AI to go after wealthy payers

• 'Immortal' AI Challenges the Mortal Computation of Humans

• Former OpenAI Board Member Calls for Audits of Top AI Companies

• Power-hungry AI is putting the hurt on global electricity supply

• Feds appoint "AI doomer" to run US AI safety institute

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Flight Test Enabling Global Payload Delivery in 90 Minutes

• The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit

Crypto con games

• Bitcoin Briefly Falls Below $60k Ahead of Halving Software Adjustment

Economicon / Business / Finance

• ASML profits plunge 40% amid dip in chipmaking tool orders

  • ASML sales to China made up a record 49% of the total in Q1 '24

• Priced out of America: more Americans say the only way to get ahead is to leave

• Google lays off employees, shifts some roles abroad amid cost cuts

• Lowest average pay US workers willing to accept for new job now $81,822

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The NSA is just days away from taking over the internet

  • HN comments

  • Supercharged Spying Provision Buried In "Terrifying" FISA 702 Reauthorization | ZeroHedge

  If the bill becomes law, any company or individual that provides ANY service whatsoever may be forced to assist in NSA surveillance, as long as they have access to equipment on which communications are transmitted or stored—such as routers, servers, cell towers, etc. That sweeps in an enormous range of U.S. businesses that provide wifi to their customers and therefore have access to equipment on which communications transit.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• The Michigan school shooter's parents face precedent-setting sentences

  The Crumbleys face up to 15 years in prison for their roles in the crime. Their son, who was 15 years old at the time of the shooting, was sentenced in December to life in prison without parole. Prosecutors have asked the judge in the trials to sentence both Crumbleys to at least 10 years. Although the case is precedent-setting, gun rights advocates haven’t really embraced it as a cause, likely due to the troubling circumstances that led up to the shooting. Prosecutors had argued that James and Jennifer Crumbley, both strident gun enthusiasts, enabled their son to commit the shooting in three key ways: by continually ignoring what should have been warning signs regarding his mental health, by purchasing a firearm they intended for him to illegally own, and by failing to secure the gun away from him — even after school officials alerted them to the problem.

• Parking crackdown: Transit boss warns of coming enforcement blitz

• 81-year-old charged with murder of Uber driver he mistakenly thought was scammer

• Multiple arrests, 19 charges in $22.5M Toronto gold heist

• MGM says FTC can't probe ransomware attack as Lina Khan was a guest at the time

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense.

• US to hit Iran with new sanctions in “coming days”, Yellen says.

• Tex. hack may be first disruption of U.S. water system by Russia

  • Russia-linked hacking group suspected of cyberattack on Texas water facility

  • Hackers Linked to Russia's Military Sabotage US Water Utilities

• Biden admin, ports prep for cyberattacks as U.S. infrastructure targeted

• Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.

World

• Magnitude 6.4 earthquake hits southern Japan

• UK rental costs rise at record 9.2%

China

• China kicks top influencer off social media for a fabricating story

• China's Punishment for People with Bad Debts: No Fast Trains or Nice Hotels

• China's Stock Market Struggles

Health / Medicine

• Microwave-Assisted, One-Pot Synthesis of Doxycycline Under Rh Catalysis in Water

  The present work focuses on the microwave-assisted hydrogenolysis of oxytetracycline to selectively produce α-doxycycline. Although the combination of microwave irradiation and a heterogeneous rhodium catalyst provided good conversions, the selective synthesis of active α-doxycycline was only achieved when an oxytetracycline-cyclodextrin complex was used as the starting material, giving the desired product at 34.0% yield in a one-step reaction under very mild conditions.

• What toilets can reveal about Covid, cancer and other health threats

• Maternity care deserts: Can CA lawmakers keep labor wards open?

• Smoking bans are coming: what does the evidence say?

• A junk food diet can cause long-term damage to adolescent brains

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Desert city of Dubai floods as UAE hit by heaviest rainfall in 75 years

  • Dubai's Floods Weren't Caused by Cloud Seeding

  • UAE government unit denies cloud seeding took place before Dubai floods

  • What caused the storm that brought Dubai to a standstill?

• The Paradox That's Supercharging Climate Change

• A plumbing issue at this Lake Powell dam could cause big trouble

• U.S. Geothermal Capacity Set To Grow by 1,900% by 2050

• Smog check cheaters busted, feds say; California ring turned pollution into cash

• Dead satellites are filling space with trash could affect Earth's magnetic field

• A 300-mile transmission line that could help decarbonize the Southeast?

• World faces 'deathly silence' of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts

• Quiet Our Loud World Is Making Us Sick

• STD-riddled "zombie" cicadas are coming in hot

• Climate crisis: average world incomes to drop by nearly a fifth by 2050

• Some bumblebees can survive underwater for up to a week, new study shows