2021-01-30

Cool

• Original Apple 1 from 1976 on bid on eBay, starting at $1,5M

Worthy

• Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » Once we can see them, it’s too late

  we necessarily find ourselves on a planet where all the steps necessary for blog-capable life happen to have succeeded. There might be vastly more planets where evolution got stuck on some earlier step.

• Uniwidth typefaces for interface design | by Lisa Staudinger | Jan, 2021 | UX Collective

• Linux-fsdevel – (PATCH) fs: point out any processes using O_PONIES

• From a "Robinhood class action" comment thread:

  The United States Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by the President of the United States questioning the legitimacy of the election he was a party to, saying that he had no standing. When courts can do that, we are far past lawsuits.

etc

• (600 - 800 AD) Burial practices point to an interconnected early Medieval Europe - Medievalists.net

• Famous private eye Jack Palladino gravely injured in robbery

• A piece of California's Highway 1 near Big Sur collapsed into the ocean

• Regular afternoon naps linked to improved cognitive function

• How did political elites in Rwanda get civilians to participate in genocide?

• Columbia University students are holding a tuition strike

• Children prioritize what they hear over what they see when gauging emotional aspects of their experience

• Disabled teachers face significant workplace discrimination despite drive for more inclusive schools | University of Cambridge

• Dave Ramsey's Empire all it seems?

• Research establishes antibiotic potential for cannabis molecule

• Using the Sun and Shadows for Geolocation

• To Counteract Propaganda, We Should Look to Lessons from Advertising

• A New History of the Cultural Revolution, Reviewed | The New Yorker

Horseshit

• Pentagon halts plan to give COVID vaccine to alleged 9/11 mastermind, Gitmo detainees

• The San Francisco School District's renaming debacle has been a historic travesty - Mission Local

• I regret the dumb stuff I bought during the pandemic.

• Did Everyone Buy a Guitar in Quarantine or What?

• Black Lives Matter Movement Nominated for 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

• Texas DPS mistakenly sends out Amber Alert for Chucky doll

• University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

• Are the Persian Gulf city-states slave societies?

  • the comments around this one, gah: "we're all slaves", "these people knew what they were signing up for, and of course "we cant impose our culture on them"

• The Keto Way: What If Meat Is Our Healthiest Diet?

• The Technium: Concluding our 25-year Bet

• The Biden Administration Just Made Peter Strzok’s Wife A Top SEC Official

• AAA wants us to stop calling car crashes “accidents”

• Kraft is cooking up pink mac & cheese for Valentine's Day

• California cancels Coachella, Stagecoach festivals due to COVID-19

• Bill Gates Aghast Over 'Crazy And Evil Conspiracy Theories' About He And Fauci, Hints At Social Media Censorship | ZeroHedge

ShortSquoze / Economicon

• Janet Yellen Got $810k to Give Speeches at Citadel

• GameStop Promoter Keith Gill Was No “Amateur” Trader; He Held Sophisticated Trading Licenses and Worked in the Finance Industry

  • mentions BlackRock may have raked in $2.4 billion on GameStop's retail-driven stock frenzy | Reuters

    (BlackRock) owned about 9.2 million shares, or a roughly 13% stake, in GameStop as of Dec. 31, 2020, a regulatory filing showed on Tuesday. https://bit.ly/39nfDwv

• Has The Robinhood Exodus Begun?  | ZeroHedge

  "Robinhood is basically not letting people trade anymore. This is the precursor to a potential BK filing on Monday morning. They'll be calling their VC backers for billions more this weekend. And when they say No... this is like LTCM," Gerber tweeted.

  He said, "So if Robinhood goes under the SEC will freeze all the accounts. The SIPC protects up to $500k in accounts. It takes months to unwind and get your money back. Move the money now. This could become a nightmare."

  "Robinhood is dealing with the classic run on the bank
  scenario. Everyone wants out but they can't process it fast
  enough depleting needed capital as fast as they can get new VC
  Capital in. So they need to put up more margin and they are
  losing Capital out the door," Gerber warned.
  

• A 10-year-old investor made big bucks on the GameStop shares he got for Kwanzaa

• Dogecoin trading volume hits $5B, surpassing Bitcoin's for the first time ever

• The GameStop surge is just another Ponzi scheme

• It's Not Just Robinhood, Reddit Rebellion Has Clogged Entire Financial System's Plumbing | ZeroHedge

  So now you own $GME stock in the margin account.

  Actually, you don’t - RH owns the stock and simply passes through many of the rights of ownership to you, crediting you with quasi-ownership.

  This is important because if RH failed, you would not “own” your stocks, per se. You would be a creditor with a claim against RH. This is a key risk of margin accounts.

• Reddit Preparing To Unleash "World's Biggest Short Squeeze" In Silver | ZeroHedge

• GameStop and AMC: UK trading platform IG stops new trades

• Analysis: Robinhood and Reddit protected from lawsuits by user agreement, Congress | Reuters

• Steve Cohen Nukes Twitter Account After Getting "Personal Threats" Over GameStop Debacle | ZeroHedge

• Mark Cuban Presents A "Little Trick" For Creating The Mother Of All Short Squeezes | ZeroHedge

• Some of the surrounding discussion is incredible; people explaining their preferred investment strategies like "dont own stocks, own options":

  + > Selling a deep in the money put behaves like owning the stock
  

  (probably with margin, but it depends on how many puts you are selling compared to your reserves of cash and short term "safe" bonds) except that you are capping your gains.

  • The solvency issue is the root cause leading me to leave Robinhood personally. The limitation on market orders was the symptom; the cause was a rotten core. This is the true reason why everyone should leave Robinhood. I do not want to deal with realizing FDIC/SIPC insurance preferably ever in my lifetime.

    • As yet unmentioned; there's no insurance covering his RH account. many comments in this sub thread assuming FDIC $250k account limits apply to retail brokerage accounts. RH and some of the others aren't even that formal a thing but "you can play in our closed accounting pool", that self-insure.

• 2021 Prediction #3: Get ready for more GameStops as hedge funds are no longer the only bullies in town | I, Cringely

  What about the regulators? Well they let the hedges bully for decades so it is difficult to say gamers can’t be bullies, too. Which is why this problem won’t be going away unless the shorts stop shorting so much. If the hedges hadn’t been so greedy, this would never have happened. Gordon Gekko may have been wrong after all: maybe greed ISN’T good.

• r/WhiteHouseBets – alexdanco.com

  You may know where I’m going with this: politics. And before you say, “Trump did this”, yes, Trump found new frontiers of how to meme your way into the presidency, but it was still a top-down effort. I’m talking about something a lot wilder, which is people learning how to exploit the reflexive rules of media: “If it’s related to an election campaign, then it becomes a campaign story” and “Anyone can meme their way into getting a story going.” Doing Reflexivity is a transferrable skill.

• Original reddit thread from Oct 2020 The REAL Greatest Short Burn of the Century : wallstreetbets

• No, WallStreetBets isn’t robbing Wall Street to help the little guy

• GameStop Shares: 5-Count Felon JPMorgan Could Have Made Upwards of $174M

TechSuck

• Google reinstates Element after an appeal

• CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

• A New Lawsuit Accuses Valve of Abusing Its Power to Keep PC Game Prices High

• Broadcom Bluetooth: Generating (not so?) random numbers

• WhatsApp Now Requires Biometric Authentication for Desktop, Web Access

• Tesla's Profits Are Not from Selling Cars

• Tim Cook May Have Just Ended Facebook

• Facebook Moderators Speak Out About Poor Working Conditions in Ireland

• Lawmakers take aim at insidious digital “dark patterns”

  • Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites (2019)

• We can have democracy or surveillance society, but we can't have both

Unity

• A Different Sort of Storm Is Coming for Marjorie Taylor Greene

• Twitter User Trolls Democrats By Repurposing Old Maxine Waters Quote

• “Republicans Need To Suffer”: Drake Professor Triggers Free Speech Debate With Hateful Tweets Against Men and Conservatives – JONATHAN TURLEY

• Unite and Heal With Show Trials and Fascist Purges | Frontpagemag

• Speech and Sedition in 2021. Progressive press decides to suppress dissent

• Romney blasts news of Trump call with Taylor Greene: 'Lies of a feather flock together'

• Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts | PNAS

  Both liberals and conservatives believe that using facts in political discussions helps to foster mutual respect, but 15 studies—across multiple methodologies and issues—show that these beliefs are mistaken. Political opponents respect moral beliefs more when they are supported by personal experiences, not facts.

• The Running With Scissors Party - The G-File

  “Measure twice, cut once” is the boring, grown-up way to do carpentry. The exciting way to do carpentry is to get drunk on peach schnapps and high on airplane glue, cover yourself in baby oil—especially your hands so they’re super slippery—and then let the chainsaw guide you.

  • 700+ pissed off comments Instapundit thread on same

  • Am I to understand that Goldberg thinks we want a party that runs on conspiracy theories and wants to split the country into factions? A party that throws gasoline on the fire?

    Personally, I’m sick and tired of the sweeping generalizations as if we’re all just a bunch of kooks and don’t know what’s good for us. What Goldberg (and Bernstein) do is exactly what the Democrats do. They forget that we are individuals and the majority of us aren’t stupid. We had the temerity to look past Trump's personality faults and see all the good he accomplished. And all we get is, "But, he’s such a boor!"

BidenTime

• Joe Biden Covid Team Derides Trump Plan While Borrowing Its Playbook - Bloomberg

  “What we’re seeing here is them marching through the playbook of Operation Warp Speed,” added Michael Pratt, a former Health and Human Services official under Trump. “Something cannot simultaneously be a dismal failure and have already accomplished the ‘ambitious goal’ you set.”

• The new marshmallow media in the Biden era | TheHill

• Joe Biden’s war on women - spiked

• New Biden executive order makes science, evidence central to policy

• US Senate Impeachment - Biden's Agenda

Trumpoline

• Facebook’s Oversight Board wants feedback on whether FB was right to ban Trump

• Pressure mounts on Trump as former lawyers for the Trump Organization will have to surrender ...

Capitol Riots / Fortification

• 2021-01-29 3pm Twitter Video: troops and police outside Supreme Court fencing

• Don’t Permanently Fence the Capitol

• Wall Street Journal: Top Trump Donor Funded Rally that Preceded US Capitol Riot

  + [Alex Jones and a grocery heir helped fund Trump’s rally before
  the deadly Capitol
  riot](https://www.vox.com/2021/1/30/22257893/alex-jones-publix-heiress-julie-jenkins-fancelli-fund-trump-rally-capitol-riot)
  

  • Grocery chain Publix says heiress not connected to company after report links her to Trump ...

• The body of Brian Sicknick, the police officer killed in the pro-Trump insurrection, will lie in ...

World

• Taiwan is a civilization - Noahpinion

• US congressional commission hears China may force Taiwan crisis in 2021 | The Strategist

• UK applying to join Asia-Pacific free trade pact CPTPP

• India protests: Internet cut to hunger-striking farmers in Delhi

  • Why Ordering Internet Shutdowns Is Outrageous

• China is arresting citizens for posting criticism on social media

  • China Is Now Sending Twitter Users to Prison for Posts Most Chinese Can’t See

• Amsterdam drugs: Tourists face ban from cannabis cafes - BBC News

• India blocks mobile internet at sites of farmers’ protest

• South African Exchange Control Rules relaxation

• New Protests in Paris Against Global Security Bill

• 'Fiscal Vampire' – Hundreds Protest Amazon Expansion in France

• Venezuela hired Democratic Party donor for $6 million

COVID

• New clinical trials raise fears the virus is learning how to resist vaccines

• Is there NO way to stop COVID-19? | the chronicle flask

  It’s suggested that the nitric oxide in the SaNOtize nasal spray destroys the virus and also helps to stop viral replication within cells. Plus, it blocks the receptors that the virus uses to enter cells in the first place. Essentially, it locks the doors and rains down fire on the potential intruders — nice work.

  • I seem to recall an early thing last year, talking about a correlation between NOx pollutants and COVID case severity; it was among the first victims of the "misinformation" purges and might have been the first such to generate controversy over information suppression.

  • (April 2020) What Is Nitric Oxide? How the Gas That Gave Us Viagra Could Help Treat Coronavirus Patients

  • (April 2020) COVID-19: Maybe Just Say NO? | MedPage Today

• A Year Ago Today, the WHO Called COVID a “Public Health Emergency of International ...

• CDC Mask Mandate Issued for All Public Transportation | National Review

  Travelers and commuters will be required to don a face mask on all airplanes, ships, trains, subways, buses, taxis, and ride-shares. Masks must also be worn while waiting, boarding, traveling, and disembarking at airports, bus or ferry terminals, train and subway stations, and seaports. The order applies to “all passengers on public conveyances” traveling to or within the U.S.

  The CDC’s order goes into effect at 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday.

  Also on Friday, the CDC announced it will extend the federal moratorium on evictions through the end of March. The moratorium was set to expire on Sunday, but President Biden ordered that it be extended during his first week in office.

  • (PDF) CDC Mask Order

  • CDC Issues Sweeping New Mask Mandate For U.S. Travelers; Extends Eviction Moratorium

• Dem. Rep. Stephen Lynch (MA) tests positive for Covid after 2nd vaccine shot

• It’s Been 10 Months, and I Still Don’t Know When to Replace My Mask

• We asked 13 public health experts whether they double-mask. None of them do.

• Twenty Million Doses of Vaccine Sent to States Are Unaccounted For

• The South African Covid-19 variant is proving to be a vaccine challenge

• Tech Glitches, Swamped Websites Impede U.S. Vaccine Rollout

Climate

• Fighting Climate Change in America Means Changes to America

  So far, the greening of America has been subtle, driven by market forces, technology and voluntary actions. The Biden administration is about to change that

  These are the types of shifts that don't cost much — about $1 day per person — and won't require people to abandon their current cars and furnaces but replace them with cleaner electric vehicles and heat pumps when it comes time for a new one, said Margaret Torn,

  All this work on power and vehicles, that's easy compared with decarbonizing agriculture with high methane emissions from livestock and high-heat industrial processes such as steelmaking, Breakthrough's Hausfather said.

  "There's no silver bullet for agriculture," Hausfather said. "There's no solar panels for cows, so to speak, apart from meat alternatives, but even there you have challenges around consumer acceptance."

Obit

• "PC Music and Hyperpop will never be the same" SOPHIE Has Died | Pitchfork

  SOPHIE, the influential British producer who molded electronic music into bracingly original avant-garde pop, died in an accidental fall Saturday morning (January 30), a representative confirms. SOPHIE, who was 34, died at roughly 4 a.m. in Athens, Greece, where the artist had been living. In a statement, the labels Transgressive and Future Classic wrote: “True to her spirituality she had climbed up to watch the full moon and accidentally slipped and fell. She will always be here with us.”

• Longtime DB Cooper suspect dies at 94, once admitted FBI 'had good reason to suspect me' | Fox News