2021-08-03

Cool

• 75 years ago today, veterans overthrew a corrupt local government to save democracy | War Is Boring

Worthy

• It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

• Adjusts my skepticism Carbon Neutral Concrete - the numbers

• Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed - by Charles Eisenstein - Charles Eisenstein

  This program is well underway toward the Covid-unvaxxed, who are being portrayed as walking cesspools of germs who might contaminate the Sanctified Brethren (the vaccinated). My wife perused an acupuncture Facebook page today (which one would expect to be skeptical of mainstream medicine) where someone asked, “What is the word that comes to mind to describe unvaccinated people?” The responses were things like “filth,” “assholes,” and “death-eaters.” This is precisely the dehumanization necessary to prepare a class of people for cleansing.

etc

• CIA’s fake Hepatitis B vaccine program in Pakistan helped fuel vaccine distrust

• Beautiful Disasters: "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" on Notebook | MUBI

• Q&A #02 Bombs vs. Bugs - by Edward Snowden

• Number of students being homeschooled in Colorado more than doubles.

Horseshit

• German pensioner given hefty fine for WW2 tank in house

• The Parallel-Parking Job That Ignited the Internet

• Former Nazi guard, age 100, to stand trial in Germany

• Home Depot Wants to Sell You Tools That Require Bluetooth Activation

• The Extremely Real Science behind the Basilisk’s Lethal Gaze | JSTOR Daily

celebrity gossip

• The $1.2 Billion Snub: Scholastic Corp. Boss Cuts Family From Will And Leaves Fortune To Former Lover | ZeroHedge

• Twitter admits it verified fake account of author Cormac McCarthy

• Probe finds Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, violated federal and state law

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Texas teachers fear effects of “critical race theory” law

  Texas teachers say GOP’s new social studies law will hinder how an entire generation understands race, history and current events

• David Brooks Reconsiders ‘Bobos in Paradise’ - The Atlantic

• AI has the worst superpower… medical racism. – Luke Oakden-Rayner

  The second important aspect though is that, with such a strong correlation, it appears that AI models learn the features correlated with racial identity by default. For example, in our experiments we showed that the distribution of diseases in the population for several datasets was essentially non-predictive of racial identity (AUC = 0.5 to 0.6), but we also found that if you train a model to detect those diseases, the model learns to identify patient race almost as well as the models directly optimised for that purpose (AUC = 0.86). Whaaat?

  Next we tried to pin down what sort of features were being used. There was no clear anatomical localisation, no specific region of the images that contributed to the predictions. Even more interesting, no part of the image spectrum was primarily responsible either. We could get rid of all the high-frequency information, and the AI could still recognise race in fairly blurry (non-diagnostic) images. Similarly, and I think this might be the most amazing figure I have ever seen, we could get rid of the low-frequency information to the point that a human can’t even tell the image is still an x-ray, and the model can still predict racial identity just as well as with the original image!

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• Trump Amends Big Tech Lawsuit as 65,000 Americans Submit Censorship Stories

• Out of The Newsroom    - by Spencer Ackerman - Forever Wars

  SOMETHING ELSE I didn’t know was that a lot of people in journalism do not need to earn money to live. When I worked in Washington, D.C., I met more people who had gone to private schools than I’d known in my whole life before I moved. Judis took an interest in me at TNR because, like him, I was a public-school kid; we were in a place where that was remarkable. That place was cliquish, self-reverent to the point of cultishness, and its alumni network stretched throughout prestige journalism.

• 'Warzone' Streamers Are Quitting the Game Because of Cheating Wave

• Bringing more reliable context to conversations on Twitter

  We’re excited to share that Twitter is collaborating with The Associated Press (AP) and Reuters to expand our efforts to identify and elevate credible information on Twitter.

  • Twitter works with news sites to tackle disinformation

• Substack doubles down on uncensored ‘free speech’ with acquisition of Letter | TechCrunch

TechSuck

• Interesting post on the KiwiSDR forums. Seems to imply the KiwiSDR author has remote access to all KiwiSDRs? Post has since been modified to remove the last paragraph and the thread locked : RTLSDR

• Student IDs on iPhone and Apple Watch Expand to Canada and More US Universities

• NLRB recommends Amazon union election results be scrapped over improprieties

• Amazon’s drone delivery program ‘one gigantic oversell,’ says report

• A reminder on qualifying links and our link spam update

• Facebook silences the people who know its operations best

• FBI used 'provocative photos' of female office staff to catch sexual predators

• Upholding ACM's Principles | August 2021 | Communications of the ACM

• Trusted platform module security defeated in 30 minutes, no soldering required

Economicon

• Nvidia is tracking more than 8,500 AI startups with $60B in funding | VentureBeat

• Predictions on what companies are about to do, after canceling return to office

• Household debt jumps by the most in 14 years to nearly $15T in second quarter

• Tenecent plummets as China calls online gaming as “opium of the mind”

• Companies claim there’s a labor shortage. Their solution? Prisoners

• Junk Bond Market Hits Record Negative Real Yield

• Update 2-Entire German bond yield curve back in sub-zero territory

• What if Bitcoin went to zero?

Poilitcks

• Peter Doocy Boxes Jen Psaki Into Corner Over ‘Example’ Obama Is Setting With Big Birthday Gala – RedState

• The Political Effects of Social Media Platforms on Different Regime Types

• 2,702 Pages Of Pork « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Crime / Police

• More Cities Are Moving to Drop Automated Gunshot-Detection Tech

• Crime-tracking app Citizen now includes a premium-priced safety help line

• Catalytic converter thefts in California: Why they are everywhere

• Uber requires nondisclosure agreement before compensating carjacked driver

• 4th Police Officer Who Was At Jan. 6 Capitol Breach Dies By Suicide | ZeroHedge

Security / Militaria

• SolarWinds: Russian hackers broke into email accounts at US attorney offices

World

• China quietly sets new 'buy Chinese' targets for state companies

• Belarusian NGO chief found hanged in Ukraine

Health / Medicine / COVID

• US Hits 70% Vaccination Rate A Month Behind Schedule As Delta Continues To Surge

  • 'Experts' Move The Goalposts, Declare Herd Immunity Threshold Now 90% Due To Delta

• Hunt for Covid vaccine boosters creates headaches for health care system

• The coronavirus is rife in common US deer

• Law professor with naturally acquired COVID immunity battles GMU’s strict vaccine mandate | The College Fix

• The pandemic has made homelessness more visible in many American cities

• Is it legal to mandate Covid vaccines?

• NYC Expected to Require Vaccination Proof for Indoor Dining and Fitness

  • NYC to mandate proof of vaccination for many indoor settings

• Melatonin interferes with Covid-19 at several distinct ROS-related steps

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Goose flying upside down is simply showing off, say experts | WGME

• Local food is on the menu at the COP26 summit