2026-02-08
Horseshit
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Researchers Warn: WiFi Could Become an Invisible Mass Surveillance System
- Passive radar that can see meat and bone; with ubiquitous sensing beacons everywhere. Vernor Vinge "smart dust" grade stuff but demonstrated in real world without extreme tech.
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Scientists Discover Levitating Time Crystals You Can Hold, Defy Newton’s 3rd Law
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Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change
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This robotic vacuum can accept voice commands in lieu of commands from its proprietary smartphone app, so to bypass this Max set up a system of automations in Home Assistant that would command the robot over voice. His software is called jacadi and is built in Go, which uses text-to-speech to command the vacuum using a USB speaker, keeping it usable while still offline.
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Penisgate erupts at Olympics; scandal exposes risks of bulking your bulge
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Fire-juggling unicyclist caught performing on crossing
Police have caught a man juggling fire while riding a unicycle on a pedestrian crossing. Footage shows the unicyclist performing on the pedestrian crossing at the intersection between US-85 and East 60th Avenue in Commerce City, Colorado. The man, wearing a red hat, blue trousers and a colourful jacket, can be seen driving forwards and backwards on the crossing, entertaining motorists waiting for the traffic light to turn green.
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Tesla turbine-inspired structure generates electricity using compressed air
Epstein
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Trump says America should move on from Epstein – it may not be that easy
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Founder member of Time's Up movement advised Jeffery Epstein before launching organization
What started out as righteousness ended in scandal, and Time’s Up was forced to cease operating in 2023 after it was revealed that the organization had advised former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo how to counter sexual harassment allegations against him. But the power grab appears to have been even more craven than previously known. Documents in the Epstein Files suggest that Time’s Up leaders may have been actively engaging with Jeffrey Epstein’s inner circle in a bid to launder his disgraced image. The scandalous ploy involved LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, former director of the MIT Media Lab Joichi “Joi” Ito, Steve Bannon and (perhaps most notably to the town) CAA board member and chief innovation officer Michelle Kydd Lee – who now goes by Michelle Kydd.
In a March 26, 2018, exchange, Bannon texted a person whose name has been redacted in the files, but who appears to be a Washington-based political operative living in a compound behind the Supreme Court. Bannon wrote: “joi will organize a meeting with the powers behind times up. (they prefer academic setting for cover ) already in the works.” That same day, Ito texted a person with a redacted name, perhaps the same person Bannon was texting. “I already started talking to TimesUp.” The anonymous figure wrote: “I’m glad. Now you can convince Reid.” Ito responded: “I’ll convince Reid. I’ve already started [convincing] timesup people. I talked to the secret top dog on the phone already. … It may have to be a secret pact but I think we can get them to join.”
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
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On Friday (Feb. 6), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorized SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to return to flight, ending a four-day grounding that was spurred by an issue with the vehicle's upper stage.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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More States Are Taking Aim at a Controversial Early Reading Method
As states continue to pass new legislation aimed at improving early reading instruction, one embattled instructional technique has become a special target for lawmakers: “three-cueing.” At least eight states have introduced or passed bills this session that take aim at the approach, in which teachers coach beginning readers to rely on “cues” in the text, such as pictures, context clues, or syntax to identify words, not just the letters. Bills in five states ban the use of three-cueing in schools outright, while three require that the method be excluded from state literacy guidance covering methods and materials. This flurry of legislation comes after at least 11 states prohibited three-cueing in schools, or prevented teacher-preparation programs from training future educators in the method, over the past two years.
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"The Stanford scam proves America is becoming a nation of grifters"
This week, the Stanford junior Elsa Johnson revealed in The Times that many of her fellow students were claiming they were disabled to receive accommodations like extra time on tests, excused absences and the best housing on campus. Johnson admitted that she had used her own endometriosis diagnosis to secure housing and academic perks. “The truth is, the system is there to be gamed,” she wrote, “and most students feel that if you are not gaming it, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.” The result? We are gradually teaching young people corruption under the guise of compassion.
Just look at the numbers. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 18 per cent of male and 22 per cent of female college undergraduates report having a disability. Among non-binary students the figure jumps to 54 per cent. The figures are especially striking at elite universities.
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Conditional probability: an educational defect in Physics didactics
My favorite potential example of this is ET Jaynes idea that the mysteries of quantum entanglement go away when you think about conditional probability. I like this one a lot. Mostly because it dispenses with all the psychic powers quantum mysticism that has sprung up around the ideas of quantum mechanics. Also because it dispenses with quantum computers, which are both obviously fake and retarded. But mostly because Jaynes is the patron saint of physicists who make the jump to data science, and so, was uniquely qualified to bring this sort of thing up. Data science people have to know all about conditional probability: that’s pretty much what they’re doing, all day, every day. If nothing else, the fact that the main engagement with this idea in the literature ends up agreeing with it, rather than deboonking it kind of indicates that the conditional probability is weak among physicists. That’s not to say Jaynes was right, but the lack of informed argument against it indicates a weakness in the topic of conditional probability. If indeed the ideas of Jaynes turn out to be true (I’m in no position to adjudicate), this example will be held up by some future Thomas Kuhn type of thinker to be a spectacular example of a field of very smart people deluding themselves with didactic deficiencies, mathematical ignorance and group-think.
- I dunno when, but at some point "Statistics" became focused on "how to lie with numbers". The science of "what do our numbers mean?" is anathema, and only touched on lightly in Actuarial studies.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Spotify now requires premium accounts for developer mode API access
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Toyota Developing a Console-Grade, Open-Source Game Engine with Flutter and Dart
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Baldur's Gate to be turned into TV series – without the game's developers
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Forcing Rust: How Big Tech Lobbied the Government into a Language Mandate
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Ai.com bought by Crypto.com founder for $70M in biggest-ever website name deal
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Washington Post CEO Will Lewis Steps Down After Stormy Tenure
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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A new comet was just discovered. Will it be visible in broad daylight?
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It’s time to think about human reproduction in space, scientists urge.
- I have severe doubts low gravity pregnancy is going to be a good thing, ever, for terrestrial species. Even eggs require special care: chix-in-space
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NASA delays moon rocket launch by a month after fuel leaks during test
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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Voyager CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved
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US tech stocks lost an aggregate $1 trillion as a little air was let out of the AI bubble.
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Goldman Sachs taps Anthropic's Claude to automate accounting, compliance roles
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I am not fond of this recent genenerative AI movement. It is a profound waste of resources, a theft machine masquerading as intelligence, and generally a tool which enables numerous social harms at scale. I am a firm proponent that we (academics) should not be involved in the rat race to improve or to use these systems because of their enormous ethical violations.
- It isn't possible to ignore the scams; one must defend one's own work and life from them. Perhaps someday the actual capabilities of LLM's will be explored; beyond the glitter of "next big thing"
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How AI Is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender
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AI anxiety batters software execs, costing them combined $62B: report
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OpenClaw AI chatbots are running amok – these scientists are listening in
Neo Gambling / Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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What Percentage of Our Economy Is Fake?
Ten percent of all employment in the US is in the NGO sector, and much of that money comes from local, state, and federal governments. The people who run these nonprofits are often, perhaps usually, tied in some way to government officials or even former government officials, and there sure are a lot more "service providers" than services provided. As Nick Shirley showed, you only have to scratch the surface to discover that recipients of government largesse are frauds, and that many of the people who provide the funding are in on it.
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These White-Collar Workers Actually Made the Switch to a Trade
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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New York Budget Bill Mandates File Scans for 3D Printers
- It should be trivial to shadow "forbidden" hashes with innocent and functional input files. Much fun.
Left Angst
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US to bankroll far-right think tanks in Europe against digital laws
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Frisco residents divided over H-1B visas, 'Indian takeover' at council meeting
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Political strategy exploits flashpoints to create martyrs across 40 years
I saw it 40 years ago and testified about it to Congress. Today we are seeing again: Inserting American citizens into flash points as part of a political strategy to get people shot for the purpose of inflaming the public against a president and his policies. The recent deaths of two Minneapolis protesters reminded me of what I had learned as a 24-year-old in the mid-1980s while infiltrating radical groups – much as people in their 20s are doing today.
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Rotten Tomatoes Desperately Claims 'Impossible' Rating for 'Melania' Is Real
The parent company of movie review site Rotten Tomatoes has been forced to deny critic-shamed Melania was declared a fan favorite by an army of MAGA bots. Fans of Melania gave the documentary a 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes’ “Popcornmeter,” despite it being widely panned by critics, who scored the film at 6% on its “Tomatometer” and called it “exhaustingly boring” and “pure, endless hell.”
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State Department will delete X posts from before Trump returned to office
The State Department is removing all posts on its public accounts on the social media platform X made before President Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025. The posts will be internally archived but will no longer be on public view, the State Department confirmed to NPR. Staff members were told that anyone wanting to see older posts will have to file a Freedom of Information Act request, according to a State Department employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. That would differ from how the U.S. government typically handles archiving the public online footprint of previous administrations. The removal of State Department X posts from public view appears to be less about ideological differences with past statements and more about control of future messaging. The directive will see the removal of posts from Trump's first term as well as those under then-Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
- Is this like when NARA wasn't allowed to archive Trump tweets?
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NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and person close to Trump
Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) detected evidence of an unusual phone call between an individual associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney briefed on the existence of the call. The highly sensitive communique, which has roiled Washington over the past week, was brought to the attention of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard – but rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further, she took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the attorney, Andrew Bakaj, said. One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office. Details of this exchange between Gabbard and the NSA were shared directly with the Guardian and have not been previously reported. Nor has Wiles receipt of the intelligence report.
- Has not been previously reported but has "roiled " Washington...
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Bioethicist: Government Whole Milk Push Is Racist | National Review
As a student of and writer on the history of science and public health under fascist regimes, I am suspicious. Milk drinking is political. Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking. Fascists have used the beverage as a rallying cry for white supremacy since the days of Il Duce’s (Benito Mussolini’s) public health campaigns in Italy. The Nazis were enamored of whole milk as well In America, drinking whole milk has for years been a part of alt-right, white nationalist messaging in tweets, memes, and videos. The neo-Nazi MilkTwitter hashtag began shortly after a large gathering of white men descended on an anti-Trump art exhibit in 2018. The men carried cartons of milk and voiced explicitly racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic rants. After taking a swig of milk from his carton, one bare-chested man approached the camera and sneered. “An ice cold glass of pure racism.”
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Jill Biden’s ex-husband charged in wife’s death after once praising her
The ex-husband of former first lady Jill Biden, who is charged with murdering his current wife, once described his spouse as "the greatest thing in my life," according to reports. William "Bill" Stevenson, 77, was arrested Monday in connection with the death of 64-year-old Linda Stevenson following a weeks-long investigation, the New Castle County Division of Police said.
World
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Canada unveils auto industry plan in latest pivot away from US
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If you lose your passport in Austria, head for McDonald's Golden Arches
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Dozens killed after suicide bomb hits Shia mosque in Pakistani capital
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They were drawn to Korea with dreams of K-pop stardom – but then let down
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Take a trip to Japan's Dododo Land, the most irritating place on Earth
Next was an area where people with A-type blood were forbidden to enter. In Japan and some other Asian countries, there is a popular theory that blood types dictate a person’s character traits. While not quite as popular as it was 15 years ago, there are still a lot of people who subscribe to the theory.
Health / Medicine
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UK infants ill after drinking contaminated baby formula of Nestle and Danone
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New wave of GLP-1 drugs is coming–and they're stronger than Wegovy and Zepbound
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FDA Intends to Take Action Against Non-FDA-Approved GLP-1 Drugs
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Researchers surprised by the brain benefits of cannabis usage in adults over 40
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Autism Incidence in Girls and Boys May Be Nearly Equal, Study Suggests
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California urges people avoid wild mushrooms after 4 deaths, 3 liver transplants
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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Covid has become as unremarkable to most as any other common infection. Over the holiday season, the diseases everyone was talking about in my two home countries—Greece and the United States—were norovirus and the flu. Even so, I was genuinely surprised when epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz collated the data for Australia and concluded that “we are now at a stage where Covid-19 is genuinely less problematic than influenza.” It’s a strange accomplishment to arrive here after all the twaddle comparing the two half a decade ago, when Covid was more dangerous by at least a factor of ten.
- There's no longer money to be made jinking the statistics.
