2021-04-27

Cool

• Burning Man (Black Rock City) 2021 Cancelled

  • Good. It died long ago, put a stake in it already.

Worthy

• Political Polarization is Exaggerated | NeuroLogica Blog

  For example, if you ask Democrats how may Republicans would agree with the statement: “Racism is still a problem in America” they predict 50% will agree, while 78% do. And if you ask Republicans how many Democrats would agree with the statement: “Law abiding citizens should have the right to bear arms,” there is a 24% perception gap (46% compared to 70%). The other side is far more reasonable, with more nuanced opinions, than we assume.

• Epistemology Wars

  Modern civilization has been a story about battling each other about how we know things. The compromise that the Western Intellectual Tradition has come up with is the best answer we have so far. It's what has demonstrably made many civilizations and cultures better than others, even non-western ones. As far as we know, it's the only and best tool we have going forward to make future generations, societies, and cultures even better than the ones we have today.

etc

• Tense exchange aboard SpaceX craft records ‘possible close call’

• On Politics at Work

• Virus Killing Polymers - The Polymerist

• FCC Grants SpaceX's Satellite Broadband Modification Application (pdf)

• Famicomblog: Air Raid has some thoughts on the $660,000 copy of Super Mario Bros for the NES

• World’s Oldest Known Bottle of Whiskey Could Fetch $40K at Boston-Based Auction

• The rsync.net Warrant Canary is now 15 years old

Horseshit

• Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin files protest over SpaceX lunar contract.

• The Nazi-Soviet Pact: A Betrayal of Communists by Communists | The MIT Press Reader

  • Apparently ketamine and long form history mix badly.

• Bad infrastructure and not being male among reasons people give up EVs

• Eliminate parking requirements: Housing people over housing cars

• Citizen Kane loses 100% “Fresh” rating after 80-year-old review added to RT

• Alaska Airlines bans state lawmaker for her 'continued refusal to comply' ...

celebrity gossip

• Snowden Dunks on 'The Get-Rich-Quick Real Estate Investing Conference

• Texas public defender's office seeks posthumous pardon for George Floyd

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Read Facebook's Internal Report About Its Role In The Capitol Insurrection

  We were not able to act on simple objects like posts and comments because they individually tended not to violate, even if they were surrounded by hate, violence, and misinformation. After the Capitol Insurrection and a wave of Storm the Capitol events across the country, we realized that the individual delegitimizing Groups, Pages, and slogans did constitute a cohesive movement.

  • "a wave of Storm the Capitol events across the country" ... As I recall that was about half a dozen Trump supporters, total, and thousands of BLM and actual troops to meet them? that wave?

• 'This Land Is My Land' Wants to Sell an Indigenous Revenge Fantasy, But Without Any Indigenous Input

  A defensive, dismissive response reveals the rotten heart of a questionable project.

• Diversity pays . . . consultants — Joanne Jacobs

  The Racial Literacy Curriculum begins in kindergarten with 5- and 6-year-olds using Pantone Color Charts to match their skin tone so that they might start to see themselves and one another by skin color.

  This sounds like a parody, but apparently it’s not.

• Barnard College instructor discusses blowing up and gassing whites in coming race war | The College Fix

  “When this race war hits its crescendo, I’ll gather you all into a beautifully decorated room under the pretense of unity,” Philippe said. “I’ll give a speech to civility and all the good times we share; I’ll smile as we raise glasses to your good, white health, while the detonator blinks under the table, knowing the exits are locked and the air vents filled with gas.”

• What unconscious bias training gets wrong and how to fix it

• How Extremists Like The Proud Boys Weaponize Irony And Memes To Spread Hate : NPR

  22-year-old extremist Nick Fuentes repeated a formula that has won him a following with some of the youngest members of the far right. He went on an extended, violent and misogynistic rant, only to turn to the camera and add with a smirk, "Just joking!"

• The Death Cult of Smart - American Affairs Journal

• Kicked out of the Comedy Club | Andrew Doyle | The Critic Magazine

  Andrew Doyle wonders why so many comedians are offended by the satire of Titania McGrath

  Suddenly, comics I had known and worked with for years began to block me on social media, or write blog posts to express their displeasure at my diabolical creation. Those who knew me to be fundamentally opposed to racial discrimination started referring to me as “alt-right”, a shorthand term for white nationalist. Others accused me of being a shill for foreign powers and claimed that I was being funded by “dark money”. I remember thinking that this money must be very dark indeed, given that I have never actually seen any of it.

• DOJ Launches Probe into Louisville Police After Killing of Breonna Taylor

• Remains of Black Children Killed in MOVE Bombing Cannot Be Located

• ‘We are drowning in insecurity’: young people and life after the pandemic

• ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From Online Censorship Controversy: This Time Over BLM | ZeroHedge

• Basecamp Follows Coinbase in Banning Politics Talk at Work

• Florida private school threatens jobs of teachers who seek COVID-19 vaccines | Science | AAAS

• Sexual Harassment in Scala Community

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• Ottawa's move to regulate video posts on YouTube called 'assault' on free speech

• As tech faces a reckoning, what you do offline can get you banned

• China Censors Chloé Zhao’s Oscar Win, Fans Find Ways to Rejoice on Social Media

• Reliable Sources: Contrasting the media coverage of the Chauvin trial

• On Social Media, American-Style Free Speech Is Dead

TechSuck

• Google have declared Droidscript is malware

  • Google have declared Droidscript is malware | Hacker News

• Google promised its contact tracing app was completely private, but it wasn’t

• How TSMC has mastered the geopolitics of chipmaking

• Microsoft Teams is down worldwide

• DoorDash announces new pricing for restaurants, with commissions as low as 15%

• Cellebrite Pushes Update After Signal Owner Hacks Device

• EU to charge Apple with anticompetitive behavior this week

• GitHub Pages Disable FLoC

• Linux Foundation’s demands to the University of Minnesota

Economicon

• "It's About To Get Much Worse": Supply Chains Implode As "Price Doesn’t Even Matter Anymore" | ZeroHedge

• Microsoft, Apple, MicroStrategy to Be Listed on Binance as Tokenized Stocks

• The Climate Real Estate Bubble: Is the US on Verge of Another Financial Crisis?

• Raising the minimum wage to $15 will save the US billions of dollars per year

• Rubber Is the Next Shortage That’s Making the Auto Industry Nervous

• There's a simple solution for companies struggling to hire: Pay workers more

• Bitcoin Is a Threat to National Security

• US population grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s

• Payment for order flow made Robinhood huge. Now everyone's arguing about it

• MasterCard about to launch crypto rewards credit card

  • MasterCard and Winkelvoss twins' Gemini to launch a crypto rewards credit card

• Tesla Sold 10% of Its Bitcoin

• The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

Poilitcks

• Census: TX Gains 2 House Seats, CA, NY Lose One As US Political Map Is Redrawn | ZeroHedge

  • Winners and losers from first release of 2020 census data

• Legislation would mandate driver-monitoring tech in every car

• Biden seeks $80B to boost IRS enforcement

• Gavin Newsom: California's governor faces recall election

• Why Biden's address to Congress is not a State of the Union speech | Fox News

  As noted by the Congressional Research Service, each of the last six presidents opted not to give official State of the Union address during their first year, as they had recently given inauguration addresses. While they typically ended up delivering addresses not long after taking office, those speeches took on different titles, such as former President Donald Trump's "Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress" in 2017.

Security / Militaria / Crime

• Attorneys: Independent autopsy shows Black man killed by deputies was shot 5 times, including in back of head

• Kerry Denies Discussing Israeli Strikes in Syria With Iran

• US police mock dementia sufferer in 'torture' arrest

World

• As if Afghans don't have enough troubles already Open-source land registry

• EU Lawmakers Debate Brexit Accord Before Decisive Vote

• Fearing reprisals, Syrian refugees wary to vote in election

• Greek MEP stripped of immunity, arrested in Brussels over neo-Nazi criminal conviction

• Explosive-Laden 'Drone' Boat Targets Saudi Port of Yanbu

• China reports first pop. decline since 1949 despite relaxing one child rule

• New Chinese Decree Forces Religious Leaders To Actively Support Communist Party | ZeroHedge

• Iran Central Bank Is Allowing to Pay for Imports Using Mined Crypto

• Chinese military tests Taiwan’s radar system with surface-level incursion

• Japan's Olympic host towns pull out over pandemic

Health / Medicine / COVID

• 2 new clot cases in Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine recipients reported, CDC ...

• Quebec woman dies from blood clot after receiving AstraZeneca vaccine

• West Virginia Will Pay Young People $100 To Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19

• Brazil health regulator rejects Russia's Sputnik vaccine

• Common Diabetes Meds Tied to COVID-19 Complication

  Diabetics who've contracted COVID-19 should suspend their use of a class of common diabetes drugs known as sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i), new research warns. People using these medications for diabetes are at risk of a potentially fatal complication called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), and it now appears that risk increases even more if they become sick with COVID-19, said senior researcher Dr. Naomi Fisher, director of the Hypertension Service and Hypertension Specialty Clinic at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

• Bill Gates Doubles Down On Opposition To "Open Vaccine" Movement | ZeroHedge

• Florida private school threatens jobs of teachers who seek Covid-19 vaccines

• Government ‘Discrimination’ and the Age Profile of Covid-19 Fatalities – AIER

India

• The lever India is NOT using against US arm-twisting of local vaccine makers

• U.S. Announces Plans to Export Its AstraZeneca Vaccine Stockpile

  • US to share AstraZeneca shots with world after safety check

• India breaks global record for new Covid-19 cases for sixth day in a row

• India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing

• As Covid sweeps India, experts say cases and deaths are going unreported

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• (2017) What Happens When Environmentalists Ignore Data? - Big Think

  In Silent Spring, Carson focused on bird populations decimated by DDT, including robins, meadowlarks, cardinals, and eagles. Yet she got her data wrong: the number of birds in each population actually increased during the periods of heaviest DDT usage; they too suffer from insect-borne diseases. As a member of the National Audubon Society, whose data showed the higher numbers, Carson should have known better. Offit speculates that she ignored the information because it didn’t fit in with her narrative, which led to tragic consequences.

• Millions of Groundwater Wells Could Run Dry - Scientific American

• Climate tipping points may have been reached already, experts say

  • As has been the solemn tradition since 1989 and before

• Scripps researchers found 27,000 barrels of toxic waste near California coast

• DDT dump site off L.A. coast much bigger than scientists expected

• Climate scientists: concept of 'net zero' is a dangerous trap

• Florida Community Furious at Release of 500M Gene-Hacked Mosquitoes