2021-03-05

Cool

• 'Hovering ship' photographed off Cornish coast by walker - BBC News

• (PDF, 1943) A Method of Estimating Plane Vulnerability Based On Damage Of Survivors - Abraham Wald

  • see also AMS :: Feature Column :: The Legend of Abraham Wald and Wikipedia: Abraham Wald

• I dont see any glaring errors here: Hackers, Mason Jars, and the Psychedelic Science of DIY Shrooms

  Resourcefulness and inventiveness—especially creative appropriation—are equally valued. Underlying all of this is a commitment to an open source and do-it-yourself ethos. The kinship with the hacker ethic is not incidental: This kind of psychedelic kitchen science shares a genealogy with personal computing, both with roots in 1970s Northern California counterculture and its communalism, pragmatism, and eco-modern aesthetic. While these histories have diverged, reconverged, and diverged again, home cultivators and hackers still share critical attitudes towards science and technology—especially in their principled freedom from the norms of professional science while appropriating its tools. They share the drive to spread technological fluency, to make science and technology serve people rather than the other way around. And they share a mischievous, sometimes trollish, sense of humor.

Worthy

• Collections: Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part I: High Fiber – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

• Interesting for the perspective, if nothing else China's “Semiconductor Theranos”: HSMC

  ASML’s reputation is damaged by this transaction. It doesn’t sell to any company that has the money to buy; it evaluates the buyer’s technical capabilities first to make sure the buyer can make proper use of its product. ASML toured HSMC prior to agreeing to sell its equipment, and lauded HSMC’s team as the best it has seen in Mainland China, mostly on the strength of Chiang’s reputation and the engineers he was able to attract. ASML now must feel like a fool. But the bigger fool here is China.

• Memorial to a hound: Love Persevering | No Mercy / No Malice

etc

• Earthquake swarm in Iceland could hint at even bigger event

  • Huge Pacific quake forces thousands to evacuate but tsunami threat passes with little damage

• Chess: Levon Aronian switches to US as new regime in Armenia cuts support

• Scientists shocked at water and organic material found on asteroid for the first time | The Independent

  The sample, which was only a single grain, came from asteroid ‘Itokawa’ by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (Jaxa) first Hayabusa mission in 2010.

• John McAfee Indicted Over Alleged Cryptocurrency Fraud | ZeroHedge

  + [McAfee Indicted in Manhattan Federal Court for Fraud and Money
  Laundering](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/john-david-mcafee-and-executive-adviser-his-cryptocurrency-team-indicted-manhattan)
  

  • U.S. says John McAfee indicted over fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes

  • CFTC Charges Two Individuals with Multi-Million Digital Asset Pump-and-Dump

Horseshit

• Insanely, It Is Costing San Francisco $5,000/Month For Each Homeless Tent

• Data keeps piling up: No 'mass exodus' from California during pandemic

• Student passes 3 classes in 4 years, ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA

• Experts sound the alarm on declining birth rates among younger generations: “It’s a crisis.”

• CDC has 'zombie preparedness' tips in case Nostradamus is right

• Althouse: "If a state decides to prematurely lift rules against the guidance of CDC, should it be eligible to receive federal help if it later needs it as a result?"

• Rampant Shoplifting Forces Ten Bay Area Walgreens To Close

• Pratt & Whitney Makes Hypersonic Revival As Pentagon Pushes Reuse | Aviation Week Network

  Already at least two years old, Metacomet ... draws on the company’s expertise with gas turbine combat engines, and in particular reaches back to decades-old experience with the unique J58 engine developed for the Mach 3-plus Lockheed SR-71. That aircraft achieved sustained flight above the Mach cutoff point of a normal turbojet by diverting inlet air from the compressor directly into the afterburner.

  Despite its vintage, the J58, which was developed in the 1960s and retired when NASA ended test flights of the SR-71 in 1997, remains one of the most successful and ingeniously designed high-speed air-breathing engines.

  ... and we've been looking into successor technology for two years now. Riiiiiight.

Media / Ministry of Truthy

• Facebook Locks Out Ron Paul Following Column Criticizing Big Tech Censorship

• Can a Healthy American Society Exist on the Internet?

• Fake news can direct your behavior without you realizing it

• YouTube bans several channels of Myanmar media citing ‘community guidelines’ – media

• YouTube to lift Trump ban if violence threat falls, says CEO

Identity Politics / Race Baiting

• First Vigil – Tracking White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi Violence

TechSuck

• Whatever Happened to Google Fiber?

• Timnit Gebru Was Fired from Google – Then the Harassers Arrived

• US carriers suggest folks use 2G to save battery

Economicon

• NFT crap A 10-second video clip sold for $6.6M

• In America’s cities, home prices and rents are going in opposite directions

• China sets 2021 GDP growth target of over 6%

• Mark Cuban's Dallas Mavericks will accept dogecoin for tickets and ...

• The US 30-year mortgage rate climbs above 3% for the first time since July

Poilitcks

• The federal labor legislation that would kill my livelihood

• Biden Says He'll Agree To Curb War Powers Amid Bipartisan Anger Over Syria Strikes | ZeroHedge

  Politico cited a statement it received from press secretary Jen Psaki, who said the admin will "ensure that the authorizations for the use of military force currently on the books are replaced with a narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars."

• Cuomo's advisers covered up high nursing home death tolls by pushing NY ...

• Psaki won't give Trump WH credit for vaccine plan

• Harris speaks with Netanyahu amid ICC probe

• Senate nearly half way done with reading 628-page COVID-19 bill

• Democrats Agree To Cut Weekly Unemployment Benefits By 25% | ZeroHedge

• Former State Department aide arrested in connection with Capitol riot

• Richard Barnett, seen at Pelosi's desk on Jan. 6 riot, changes lawyers before May 4 court date

• Developing some perspective on the Capitol riot.

• US police say they have intelligence showing plot 'to breach Capitol' on March 4 | Daily Mail Online

• And Here We Go: Now There Is "Intelligence" That the Coup That Didn't Happen Today Will Instead Happen on March 20th, Or Maybe April 15th, Or... Maybe a Randomly Selected Day Every Month Until The End of Time

• A Pennsylvania man said he would find a local Democratic Party office and 'shoot it up' for Donald Trump, and then he did, authorities say.

World

• Covid: Bolsonaro tells Brazilians to ‘stop whining’ as deaths spike

• India Threatens Jail for Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter Employees

• US Blocked Myanmar Junta Attempt to Empty $1 Billion NY Fed Account, Reuters Reports

  + [In Myanmar Protests, Women Are on the Front
  

  Lines](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/world/asia/myanmar-protests-women.html)

  • Journalists Become Targets in Myanmar Violence

Health / Medicine / COVID

• Under intense pressure, WHO skips summary report on coronavirus origin

  Facing intense international pressure and criticism, the World Health Organization has abandoned plans to release a summary report of its investigation into the possible origin of the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Instead, the health agency of the United Nations is skipping the summary report and plans to release a full report the week of March 15. The WHO had previously said it would release a summary report in mid-February.

• Covid death rates 10 times higher in countries where most adults are overweight

• China's anal tests for coronavirus upset visitors

• Thousands at Oakland Coliseum got wrong Covid vaccine dosage, medical staff say

• U.S. Optimism About Covid-19 Situation Reaches New High

• (PDF) A mountable toilet system for personalized health monitoring via the analysis of excreta

  Technologies for the longitudinal monitoring of a person’s health are poorly integrated with clinical workflows, and have rarely produced actionable biometric data for healthcare providers. Here, we describe easily deployable hardware and software for the long-term analysis of a user’s excreta through data collection and models of human health. The ‘smart’ toilet, which is self-contained and operates autonomously by leveraging pressure and motion sensors, analyses the user’s urine using a standard-of-care colorimetric assay that traces red–green–blue values from images of urinalysis strips, calculates the flow rate and volume of urine using computer vision as a uroflowmeter, and classifies stool according to the Bristol stool form scale using deep learning, with performance that is comparable to the performance of trained medical personnel. Each user of the toilet is identified through their fingerprint and the distinctive features of their anoderm, and the data are securely stored and analysed in an encrypted cloud server. The toilet may find uses in the screening, diagnosis and longitudinal monitoring of specific patient populations.

• When more Covid-19 data doesn’t equal more understanding

Climate / Green Propaganda

• Oakland bans the use of combustion engine-powered leaf blowers and trimmers

• Climate Activist Who Took on BlackRock Now Takes Aim at Vanguard

• The Frustrating, Maddening, All-Consuming Bitcoin Energy Debate

• A sand shortage? We are running out of a crucial and underappreciated commodity

• Global warming led to ancient mass extinction event, scientists say

Obit

• Tony Hendra, This Is Spinal Tap Actor and National Lampoon Alumnus, Dies at 79