2021-08-11

Cool

• RS Ophiuchi in a rare outburst to naked-eye visibility – Astronomy Now

• The IBM PC, 41 Years Ago | OS/2 Museum

• Astronomical Engineering: A Strategy for Modifying Planetary Orbits (2001)

• The British Library puts 1M newspaper pages online for free

• (July 2021) Amateur Astronomer Discovers New Moon of Jupiter - Sky & Telescope - Sky & Telescope

Worthy

• Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: Why the Hype around Hypersonics?

• Why I Am Not A Progressive - by Michael Shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

  Yesterday I debated a British climate scientist named Richard Betts on television. After I pointed out that he and his colleagues had contributed to one out of four British children having nightmares about climate change he insisted that he was all for optimism and that he agreed with me about nuclear power. But just hours earlier he had told the Guardian that we were “hopelessly unprepared” for extreme weather events, even though deaths from natural disasters are at an all time low and that, objectively speaking, humankind has never been more prepared than we are today.

• The Grumpy Economist: Covid incompetence

  It did not have to happen. The vaccine was in hand, the lines were done, anyone could walk in and get the vaccine. All we had left to do was get pretty much everyone vaccinated before the new variant hit, and it would have been pretty much over. Something like $5 trillion dollars of extra debt, the economy closed for a year, thousands dead, thousands unemployed, huge pain and now we lose sight of the ball when all we had to do was pay a little attention, get some small incentives going for everyone to get vaccinated. (A tweeter suggested, just pay people $1,000 to get vaccinated. 100 million people times $1,000 is $100 billion. Couch change in what the pandemic has cost us, or the upcoming $3.5 trillion "infrastructure" bill. That's not much more than rail and transit subsidies alone. )

  This isn't "misinformation" cured by even more internet censorship. Indeed, it is the opposite. People know that the internet is censored, that public authorities have been lying to them all along. After mask/no mask, Wuhan lab/no Wuhan lab, FDA explicitly trying to manipulate public psychology in delaying approval and the J&J pause, and so on, people have lost trust. CDC flip flopping on masks clearly under political pressure did not help. And none of them present facts. The cry of wolf falls on deaf ears.

  Masks do much more to stop you from giving it to someone else than to protect you. Cloth masks are close to useless. Well-fitting N95 masks work much better in both directions. Neither comes close to vaccination. Wearing cloth masks outdoors, far from other people, in the wind, as is the fashion in Palo Alto, is just part and parcel of the pointless virtue-signaling so prominent here. If you do go to that crowded all-night disco, wearing an N95 mask might be a good idea. Of course if you’re even thinking about wearing a mask, you’re not going in the first place, which is why the whole mask-mandate business is a bit silly.

etc

• FEMA To Test National Emergency Alert System | ZeroHedge

  • The IPAWS National Test | FEMA.gov

• PG&E software issue allowed 2019 SF gas fire to burn longer, feds say

• Feds dismantle Blue Origin and Dynetics protests of NASA’s lunar lander award

• 3D printed nuclear reactor components now installed at TVA Browns Ferry plant

Horseshit

• Mystery Builds over Who Is Buying Millions of Cellphone Lines

• Scans peek at brains of highly sensitive people - Futurity

  The results of this paper represent a significant advance in the growing understanding of sensory processing sensitivity, a trait that is present among an estimated 1.4 billion of the global population. The results may also have some clinical relevance for those with mood disorders, such as anxiety, says Acevedo, editor of the book The Highly Sensitive Brain (Academic Press, 2020).

• Disney's Covid shade in S Johansson lawsuit is darkly comical and flawed

• Techies think we’re on cusp of virtual world called ‘metaverse’. I’m skeptical

celebrity gossip

• Julian Assange: US extradition bid gets a legal boost

  • Julian Assange loses court battle to stop US expanding extradition appeal

• Jay Y. Lee, Samsung’s De Facto Leader, Wins Parole from Prison

• ‘Jeopardy ’ Announces Mike Richards and Mayim Bialik as New Hosts

Obit

• Neal Conan, longtime host of NPR's 'Talk Of The Nation,' dies at 71

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Individual Choices, Not Lockdowns

• 'It Was Just Disbelief': Parent Files Complaint Against Atlanta Elementary School After Learning the Principal Segregated Students Based on Race

  “She said that’s not one of the Black classes, and I immediately said, ‘What does that mean?’ I was confused. I asked for more clarification. I was like, ‘We have those in the school?’ And she proceeded to say, ‘Yes. I have decided that I’m going to place all of the Black students in two classes,’” Posey said.

• A view of covid and the left in 14 points - Left Lockdown Sceptics

  I am horrified that people I used to respect now chase the mirage of zero covid, defend red list, amber lists etc, demand more state controls and celebrate state repression in the name of public health.

• Dem Official Says Burning Police Station Was ‘Act of Pure Righteousness’

• Ohio Judge Orders Man Convicted Of Fentanyl Possession To Get Vaccine Or Face Jail Time | ZeroHedge

• Post-Pandemic Offices Could Be Whiter and More Male

  That might be because in the U.S., office culture was originally created to accommodate the needs of white people, and specifically men, says Angelica Leigh, a professor of management and organizations at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

• Robin comes out as bisexual in new Batman: Urban Legends comic

• Mask bullies don’t want to persuade you — but to humiliate and rule you.

• Contrast to the "RMS is a peado" discussions I've decided not to work with Aubrey de Grey or SENS | Hacker News

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• YouTube Suspends Senator Rand Paul

  “A badge of honor . . . leftwing cretins at Youtube banning me for 7 days for a video that quotes 2 peer reviewed articles saying cloth masks don’t work,” the Kentucky senator said in a tweet.

  • YouTube suspends Sen. Rand Paul for 1 week for claiming masks are ineffective

  • YouTube suspends Rand Paul over a video disputing the effectiveness of masks

• Instagram apologizes for Almodóvar film’s poster censorship

  “We do, however, make exceptions to allow nudity in certain circumstances, which includes when there’s clear artistic context. We’ve therefore restored posts sharing the Almodóvar movie poster to Instagram, and we’re really sorry for any confusion caused,” the company said in an emailed statement.

• Instagram launches hate-speech 'limits' to hide abuse

  • Instagram's latest feature lets you limit comments and requests on popular posts

• Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Turned Goodreads into Authors Worst Nightmare

TechSuck

• Google may cut pay of staff who work from home

• Amazon will pay up to $1k in damages caused by defective products

  • Amazon’s plan to avoid lawsuits: Pay customers $1k when products injure people

• Norton and Avast are merging into an $8B antivirus empire

• Facebook open-sourcing a more precise time server

• Default disappearing messages

• AT&T delays 500k fiber-to-the-home builds due to severe fiber shortage

Economicon

• The SEC Has Some Crypto Complaints - Bloomberg

• Regulators should treat stablecoins like banks

• Millennial Homeowners Regret Buying

• Wendy’s to open 700 ghost kitchens by 2025 with startup Reef

Poilitcks

• Biden Administration Expands Definition of Intolerable Covid 'Misinformation'

• National mile-driven tax pilot program tucked into $1.2T infrastructure bill

• Texas House Speaker signs 52 arrest warrants for house Democrats

Crime / Police

• College lecturer charged with starting blaze near Dixie Fire

  • Former college professor accused of serial arson is denied bail in California

    "He entered the evacuation zone and began setting fires behind the first responders fighting the Dixie fire," the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento said in court papers. It added, "Maynard's fires were placed in the perfect position to increase the risk of firefighters being trapped between fires."

• $600M gone: The biggest crypto theft in history

World

• (Poland) Last Stand for the Rule of Law?

• Scale of Russian mercenary mission in Libya exposed

  • The lost tablet and secret documents – Clues pointing to a shadowy Russian army

• Russia Slams "Crude Provocation" After US Invited To Station Troops & Anti-Air Systems In Ukraine | ZeroHedge

• Australia is becoming a surveillance state

• Property Prices in Australia Are Through the Roof

• China sentences Canadian to 11 years in case tied to Huawei

  • Canadian Michael Spavor found guilty, sentenced to 11 years by Chinese court

Health / Medicine / COVID

• On the other hand some researchers think cloth masks, specifically gaiter types, are worse than nothing.

  A bigger droplet scatters more light than a smaller droplet. This insight is important to interpret the result of the neck gaiter. The neck gaiter has a larger transmission (110%; see Fig. 3A) than the control trial. We attribute this increase to the neck gaiter dispersing larger droplets into several smaller droplets, therefore increasing the droplet count. The histogram of the binary diameter for the neck gaiter supports this theory (see fig. S5).

• CDC Forced To "Adjust" Sunday's Florida "Record" COVID Count Lower By Almost 50% After State Health Department Cries Foul On Data

• Larry Brilliant, smallpox slayer, says herd immunity will fail, but sees option

• Three Charts The Delta Variant Scaremongers Don’t Want You To See – Issues & Insights

  So far, in fact, there have been 36.8 million recorded cases of COVID, there are 167 million people fully vaccinated, and another 29 million partially vaccinated. That means roughly 60% of the nation has either had COVID or has been vaccinated. Even assuming there’s a lot of overlap between the two groups, that’s still a massive number of people with at least some immunity to the disease.

• UK scientists believe it is 'almost certain' a coronavirus variant will emerge that beats current vaccines - CNN

• Delta variant renders herd immunity from Covid ‘mythical’

• Nurse in Germany suspected of replacing Covid vaccines with saline solution

• After a Covid-free year, delta arrives in Wuhan, China

• Farm Supply Stores Are Running Short on a Horse Dewormer Pseudo Covid Cure

• Patients died from neglect, not Covid-19, in Ontario LTC homes – military report

• Herd immunity 'not a possibility' with Delta, says head of Oxford Vaccine Group

• Government Failure Gave the World Covid

• Still Unsure About Getting the Covid-19 Vaccine? Start Here

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• California Megafires Are Solvable

• Stop blaming yourself for the climate crisis

• 50 years of failed doomsday, eco-pocalyptic predictions; ‘experts’ are 0-50

• UN climate report pins hopes on carbon removal technologies that barely exist

• Siberia’s wildfires are bigger than all the world’s other blazes combined

• The Dixie Fire Is Now the Largest Single Wildfire in California History

• The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

• Welcome to the ‘plastisphere’: the synthetic ecosystem evolving at sea

• The Far-Right View on Climate Politics

• They fought for clean air. They didn’t know they were part of a gas induatry campaign

• New heat record in Italy 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 Fahrenheit)

  • Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

• Global food supplies will suffer as temperatures rise – climate crisis report

• To deal with climate change we need a new financial system