2021-04-06

Cool

• Bronze Age slab found in France is oldest 3D map in Europe

• An interactive visual database for American Sign Language reveals how signs are organized in the mind

Worthy

• White Hot Harlots — A movement that cannot be criticized cannot achieve positive goals

  You’d think a group that obsesses over power differentials and their own marginalization would have some grasp of this. Regardless of which side you fall into with this particular culture war, it should fucking terrify you that a movement that’s been tasked with addressing pressing social problems is designed in such a way that any substantial criticism is met with aggressive punishment.

  • A movement that cannot be criticized cannot achieve positive goals | Hacker News

• Overcoming Bias : Prefer Law To Governance

  Governance dealt with the pandemic by issuing regulations about masks, distancing, lockdowns, etc., by limiting and commanding how vaccines can be tested and produced, and then directly managing their distribution. In contrast, law could have dealt with the pandemic only via requiring liability insurance and the preservation of sufficient info to allow the infected to sue those who caused it.

• Overcoming Bias : To Beat Aliens, We Must Become Aliens

• Gregory Szorc's Digital Home | Surprisingly Slow

etc

• Police identify 6 people dead in Texas murder-suicide pact

• What Goodreads could have been

• Drones that swarmed U.S. warships still unidentified, Navy chief says

• Scientists Discover Huge and Mysterious Jellyfish-Shaped Structure In Space

• LinkedIn Is Adding 'Stay-at-Home Mom' as a Job Title

• 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they? | Pew Research Center

Horseshit

• American CEOs hit a new phase as actual lawmakers and rule-shapers - Axios

• In Los Angeles CA The myth of excess vacant housing distracts from solutions

• The Public Health Effects of Legalizing Marijuana

• I Refused to Become an FBI Informant. The Government Put Me on the No Fly List

• Ugly or Beautiful? The Housing Blocks Communism Left Behind

• Why the GOP and corporate America are breaking up

• How gossip forum Tattle Life became the most toxic place on the internet

celebrity gossip

• Will.i.am and Honeywell introduce the first connected mask

• If the Queen has nothing to hide, she should tell us what artefacts she owns

• Russian dissident Alexei Navalny falls ill in prison, tested for COVID-19

• Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why?

• Larry Page backed Wisk Aero sues Archer Aviation

• Caitlyn Jenner explores run for California governor

• Hunter Biden says psychedelic toad venom kept him sober for a year

Obit

• Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings Dies After Battle With Cancer | The Daily Caller

  + [Alcee Hastings - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcee_Hastings)
  

  • Rep. Alcee Hastings dies, narrowing Democratic House majority to just 7

• HBO's “Chernobyl” star Paul Ritter has died of a brain tumour

Media / Many Ministries of Truths

• On the Miserable Necessity of Doing Censorship Stories in Pairs - TK News by Matt Taibbi

  It’s now clear that’s not the case. One of the fundamental (and clearly intentional) elements of the crackdowns of the last few years has been the systematic de-ranking or removal of smaller, independent news sites. The pulling of raw footage and livestreams by outlets like Jordan Chariton’s Status Coup or Ford Fischer’s News2Share seems to indicate that platforms like YouTube and Facebook want to limit the power to use certain images or content to larger, corporate outlets like CNN, CBS, or the New York Times.

• Israeli Snoop-for-Hire Posed as a Fox News Journalist for a Spy Operation

• Politically Sound: Stories behind immigration stats

• Local Facebook groups become hubs for misinformation, squabbling, vigilantism

• YouTube Claims Less Than 0.2% of Total Views Are of Videos That Violate Policies

Identity Politics / Re segregation

• BLM activist says if Derek Chauvin isn't convicted of George Floyd's death 'all hell is gonna break loose'

• Q Isn’t The Most Interesting Thing About QAnon | FiveThirtyEight

  It’s entirely possible that Q may never post again, yet the movement is as strong as ever. Q didn’t need to post for some followers to take part in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6. QAnon has long since taken on a life of its own, and with nearly 5,000 extant Q posts to study and dozens of Q influencers pushing new theories and recasting the news of the day within the Q framework, it has all the ingredients needed to survive long after Q disappears.

  • Q Accidentally Outed Himself, But QAnon Followers Don’t Care

• Stop blaming everything on ‘white supremacy’ - spiked

• Group demands banner be hung for return of $500K Jefferson Davis chair

• George Floyd Trial: Police Chief admits Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s shoulder

• Computers are binary, people are not: how AI systems undermine LGBTQ identity

• “Online Haters” Are Psychopaths, Recent Study Finds

• Ark. gov. vetoes transgender youth treatment ban

• What We Learned from 15M Guesses About a Neighborhood’s Politics

TechSuck

• Two developers in race for Debian project leader post

• Google AI Research Manager Resigns After Two Ousted from Group

  • Google AI scientist (Samy) Bengio resigns after colleagues' firings

• Clubhouse Payments

  100% of the payment will go to the creator. The person sending the money will also be charged a small card processing fee, which will go directly to our payment processing partner, Stripe. Clubhouse will take nothing.

• Signal Adds a Payments Feature–With a Privacy-Focused Cryptocurrency

  • Help Us Test Payments in Signal

• It looks like Signal isn't as open source as you thought it was anymore

  • Signal server no longer open source (German)

• To upgrade the SSD in a Mac Pro, you need a second Mac computer

• Display Driver Chip Shortage Leads to Delays for Pretty Much Everything

• ACLU says it shares user data with Facebook

• Facebook Canceled Oculus Rift 2 Just Before Production – Palmer Luckey

• Facebook Pay Introduces Personalized QR Codes for Person-to-Person Payments

• Microsoft rolls out its OpenJDK preview release

Economicon

• NFTs Were Supposed to Protect Artists. They Don't

• Clubhouse Discusses Funding at About $4B Value

• Fidelity, Square, Coinbase Launch Bitcoin Trade Group

• Credit Suisse Loses 4.7B

• EU backs U.S. call for global minimum corporate tax

• Amazon Is the Target of Small-Business Antitrust Campaign

• The rich shouldn’t feel like the enemy’: Is New York turning on the wealthy?

• Acer sees global chip shortage gradually easing

• Renesas to make auto chips at alternative plant

• U.S. auto industry calls for govt help as it warns of impact of chip shortage

• How Toyota thrives when the chips are down

  “Toyota was, as far as we can tell, the only automaker properly equipped to deal with chip shortages,” said a person familiar with Harman International, which specialises in car audio systems, displays and driver assistance technology.

• Robinhood and other 'low cost' brokers still quietly screwing over their users

• Researchers estimate the richest 1% dodge taxes on over a fifth of their income

• U.S. Home Prices Rise at Fastest Pace in 15 Years

• Where did the $12 trillion of covid spending go? - Machine Learning Everything

  when Covid-19 was first emerging as a global pandemic, everyone thought the effects would require a shutdown of many years (3 years to flatten the curve).

  Government officials and institutions ensured this pandemic was contained. We made sure that testing was cheap and ubiquitous.

  There was reasonable discourse about mask policies and how the virus spreads. The distancing policies were reasoned and effective and prevented risky activities like walking in open-air parks.

  We had a mostly peaceful transfer of power. Nothing instills confidence in markets as a functioning political environment.

  Wall Street took note of the monumental effort and efficiency of our institutions. Not only did markets quickly recover from the initial drop due to Covid, but the renewed faith in institutions resulted in asset valuations 30% higher than pre-Covid levels.

• Global corporate tax deal edges closer after US backs minimum rate

Poilitcks

• Biden proposes $250B investment in research

• White House to Have States Compete for 10 Biggest Bridge Fixes

• Google Removes Entire State of Georgia from Google Maps

• They’re obsessed with trains. Will Biden bring them Nirvana? - POLITICO

• MLB's All-Star Game reportedly moved to Denver in wake of Georgia restricting voter access

• Ron Paul: Why Is The Biden Administration Pushing Ukraine To Attack Russia?

Security / Militaria

• Capitol Police officer killed in car attack will lie in honor in ...

• ‘They Aren’t Doing Shit’: This Capitol Cop Is Mad as Hell—and Calling It Quits

• Border Patrol Arrests Two Illegal Aliens On No-Fly, Terror Watch Lists

• Tennessee man accused of helping Islamic State group

  Carpenter, also known as Abu Hamza, provided English translations of ISIS media content to a person he believed to be associated with ISIS, prosecutors said. The person was actually a covert FBI employee, officials said

  It was not known whether Carpenter was represented by an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

World

• China Creates Its Own Digital Currency, a First for Major Economy

• Global capitalism abets China's repression

• Iran nuclear deal: US joins Vienna talks aimed at reviving accord - BBC News

• Iran's 'Saviz' ship hit by missile attack in Red Sea: Israel's media - Insider Paper

  • Iranian Electronic Surveillance Vessel Hit In Red Sea, Unconfirmed Reports Say

• Not optimistic, Israeli president gives PM Benjamin Netanyahu mandate to form coalition gov't

• Jordan Bans Media Coverage of King Abdullah’s Half-Brother

• Over 10,000 Flee Mozambique Town After Jihadist Attacks

• US Asks Russia to Explain 'Provocations' on Ukraine Border

Health / Medicine / COVID

• Third of COVID survivors suffer neurological or mental disorders -study

• Pfizer halts corona vaccine shipments to Israel after country fails to pay

• California to Lift Most Coronavirus Restrictions on Businesses by June 15

• Frontiers | Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer | Political Science

• Parents say 'Yes' to the Vaccine for themselves; 'No' for their kids

• Back to School: The Effect of School Visits on Covid-19 Transmission

• A majority of uninfected adults show pre-existing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2

• Troubling “Eek” variant found in most Tokyo hospital Covid cases

• Oxford-AstraZeneca trial suspended in children out of exceptional caution

• Clear link between AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots, EMA official

  • EMA denies already finding link between AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots

• Is Outside Air Covid Safe? Are Masks Needed Outdoors?

• Vaccines shown to protect even those who don’t get them – Israeli study

• Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte tests positive for coronavirus after receiving vaccine

• Preventing injuries and improving recovery with micro-Doppler radars | Penn State University

• More Than 4,000 Blood Tests Suggest Our Bodies Age in 3 Distinct Shifts

  In terms of biological aging, the body seems to shift gears three times during our lifespans, research from 2019 suggests – with 34 years, 60 years, and 78 years being the key thresholds.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• California is on the brink of drought – again. Is it ready?

• Soil bacteria could improve crop yields, via fungi | Cornell Chronicle

• Florida’s Crisis Highlights a Nationwide Risk from Toxic Ponds

• Increased winter snowmelt threatens western water resources

• GM Announces EV Silverado

• Bitcoin Mining Operations in China Threaten Climate Goals

• Reports of second breach at Florida wastewater reservoir ‘unsubstantiated’

• CO2 spikes to critical new record, halfway to doubling pre-industrial levels

• "The exact same way?" How Could a House Work in a Post Climate Change Scenario?

• Forecasting Lake Michigan's Meteotsunamis