2021-08-13

Cool

• Inheritance of coat color patterns in dogs

Worthy

• The Strange Neglect of Natural Immunity ⋆ Brownstone Institute

• The case against crisis-mongering - by Matthew Yglesias - Slow Boring

  But mostly I think we’re living through a time of toxic self-involved drama that threatens to make things worse through twitchy overreaction.

• UFO Weirdness continued: a “New Sheriff in Town” – Dawn Trowell Jones

etc

• UFOs: Shifting the Narrative from Threat to Science - The Debrief

• N.S. expert says American UFO report could be about something else entirely | CBC News

• Department of "No shit, Sherlock":

  • Cats Prefer to Get Free Meals Rather Than Work for Them, Study

  • Tests Show All Driver Assist Systems Can Be Fooled, Not Just Tesla

• America's White Population Shrank For 1st Time In US History, Census Data Show | ZeroHedge

• First batch of student's washing machines shipped to Iraq - BBC News

Horseshit

• (December 2020) Former Israeli space security chief says aliens exist, humanity not ready

• Digital Addictions Are Drowning Us in Dopamine

• Aliens Will Be Bear-Size, According to Math

• There Is a Tennis Ball Shortage Too Now

• German carmaker VW goes meat-free in canteen

celebrity gossip

• The release from prison of Samsung’s de facto boss raises eyebrows

• ‘South Park’: Trey Parker and Matt Stone Officially Buy Casa Bonita

Obit

• Opinion | Donald Kagan: A Classicist Who Fought for Free Expression on Campus - POLITICO

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Women are struggling to find men who make as much money as they do

• Watch: Parents Make Threats After School Board Mandates Elementary Children Mask Up - "We Will Find You"

• First major US city mandates proof of vaccinations for certain indoor activities

• Not a Joke: Philadelphia Mayor Announces Double-Mask Mandate – RedState

  Also new: Unvaccinated city employees will need to wear two masks while working indoors and new hires after Sept. 1 must be vaccinated.

• Lollapalooza not ‘superspreader’ event, says city’s top public health official

• Unvaccinated America, in 5 Charts

• Pushing for an ‘apolitical’ workplace is immoral (and unrealistic)

• Masking Emotions: Face Masks Impair How We Read Emotions

• Anti-Intellectualism, Populism, and Motivated Resistance to Expert Consensus | Public Opinion Quarterly | Oxford Academic

• Only 28 Percent of Young Black New Yorkers Are Vaccinated

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• Substack Journalism with Video at Rumble: The Free Speech, Anti-YouTube Platform

• Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

• Why Don’t They Believe Us? - Tablet Magazine

  The same people who told you Brexit would never happen, that Trump would never win, that when he did win it was because of Russian collusion but also because of racism, that you must follow lockdowns while they don’t, that masks don’t work, that masks do work, that social justice protests during pandemic lockdowns are a form of “health intervention,” that ransacking African American communities in the name of fighting racism is a “mostly peaceful” form of protest, that poor and underserved children locked out of shuttered schools are “still learning,” that Jussie Smollett was a victim of a hate crime, that men are toxic, that there is an infinite number of genders, that COVID couldn’t have come from a lab until maybe it did, that closing borders is racist until maybe it isn’t, that you shouldn’t take Trump’s vaccine, that you must take the vaccine developed during the Trump administration, that Andrew Cuomo is a great leader, that Andrew Cuomo is a granny killer, that the number of COVID deaths is one thing and then another … are the same people telling you now that the vaccine is safe, that you must take it, and that if you don’t, you will be a second-class citizen.

• Twitch Finally Gets Around to Letting Banned Streamers Know Why They Were Banned

• Combatting online racist abuse: an update following the Euros

• Reddit Quarantines AntiMask Antivax Subreddit

• AlgorithmWatch shuts down Instagram monitoring after threats from Facebook

• Co-Founder of Snopes Was Writing Plagiarized Articles Under a Fake Name

  “Our internal research so far has found a total of 54 stories Mikkelson published that used appropriated material, including all of the stories Buzzfeed shared with us,” Marchionni and Snopes Chief Operating Officer Vinny Green said in a statement.

  • Sockpuppet gala Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name | Hacker News

• Goodreads: Extortion Scams and Review Bombing

TechSuck

• Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks -sources

  • Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks: sources | Hacker News

• After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

• Git password authentication is shutting down | GitHub Changelog

• The Perl Foundation faces more departures

• Big Tech Is Coming to Small-Town America, but at What Cost?

• Hackers detail vulnerabilities at agtech giants John Deere, Case New Holland

Economicon

• Noncompete Agreements Are Everywhere, Even Neighborhood Yoga Studios

• Nearly all of the $600M stolen in a crypto heist has been returned

• These People Who Work from Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs

• Samsung’s leader is out of jail, allowing US factory plans to move forward

• The Great Resignation: From Full-Time to Freelance

Poilitcks

• House of Representatives raises max salary for staff to nearly $200k

• The Supreme Court won’t block Indiana University’s vaccine mandate

• Joe Biden blasted by Alberta for demanding more OPEC oil after cancelling Keystone XL | Financial Post

Crime / Police

• Anatomy of an Officer-Involved Explosion: a Post-Mortem on LAPD’s E. 27th Street Fireworks Blast – Streetsblog Los Angeles

Security / Militaria

• U.S. Embassy in Kabul Tells Staff to Destroy Sensitive Material and Evacuate

• Taliban Now 30 Miles From Kabul As Terrifying "March On Capital" Begins | ZeroHedge

• Taliban capture Afghanistan's Kandahar as embassies get staff out

• U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Embassy in Coming Fight for Kabul

• Pentagon says sending 3,000 troops to Afghanistan is about "prudent preparation" 

  Pentagon press secretary John Kirby today defended the Pentagon's decision to send 3,000 US troops into Afghanistan as "prudent preparation," suggesting it is necessary to send so many in order to plan for the worst case scenario. Two of the infantry battalions headed to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul are US Marines and one is US Army, Kirby said.

World

• China cranks up carbon-intensive projects as climate crisis grows research shows

• China's Busiest Ports Closes Container Shipments Due to Covid

• Swedish Politician Who Called UN Climate Report "Scare Propaganda" Forced To Resign From Party

• Australia’s capital city to enforce snap lockdown after one new Covid-19 case

• Canada to mandate vaccines for air travel

• Afghans Tell of Executions, Forced ‘Marriages’ in Taliban-Held Areas

• Afghanistan Vice President has escaped away from Kabul to Tajikistan

• Afghan women forced from banking jobs as Taliban take control

• ‘They sold us out’: Afghans in disbelief over Taliban gains

Health / Medicine / COVID

• Four Florida teachers died this week, days before school year begins

• 27 Covid cases reported aboard Carnival cruise ship

• Serbian cave hermit gets Covid-19 jab, urges others to follow

• Head Of WHO Origin Probe Team Admits Communist China Ordered Them What To Write In Report

• FDA permits Covid vaccine booster shots for people with weakened immune systems

• Head of WHO Team Investigating Covid-19 Calls for Closer Look at China Lab

• Don’t Panic, but Breakthrough Cases May Be Bigger Problem Than You’ve Been Told

• Covid Delta variant viral load similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated

• Infection-enhancing antibodies recognize both the original and Delta

• "Wakeup Call": Pfizer Vax Only 42% Effective Against Infection In July

• AstraZeneca Scientist Says Delta Variant Makes Herd Immunity Impossible. Here’s Why.

• CDC Took Mistaken Data on Delta Variant Transmissibility From a New York Times Infographic – Reason.com

• Repeated Exposure to Subinfectious Doses of SARS-CoV-2 May Promote Immunity

• No worries, its also about Covid! America’s losing battle against diabetes

• Little kids burn so much energy, they’re like a different species, study finds

• Dozens of New Cancer Drugs Do Little to Improve Survival, Frustrating Patients

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Covid-19 lab leak theory a ‘probable hypothesis,’ WHO scientist says

• July 2021 Was the Warmest July on Record for the Globe

• Playing Nice with the Fossil Fuel Industry Is Climate Denial

• Mass Audubon got millions for “preserving” trees that were never in danger

• Scientists urged Wisconsin to limit its wolf kill. It didn’t go well | Science | AAAS

• Climate Change and Childbirth

• Animals are shrinking. Blame climate change

• Media glosses over upsides and caveats in IPCC report

• ‘It’s outrageous’: Trinidadian fishers film ‘half-hearted’ oil spill clean-up

• Live Murder Hornet Spotted in Washington State

• World Wildlife Fund Funds Guards Who Have Tortured and Killed People

  Shikharam’s alleged murder in 2006 was no isolated incident: It was part of a pattern that persists to this day. In national parks across Asia and Africa, the beloved nonprofit with the cuddly panda logo funds, equips, and works directly with paramilitary forces that have been accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people. As recently as 2017, forest rangers at a WWF-funded park in Cameroon tortured an 11-year-old boy in front of his parents, the family told BuzzFeed News. Their village submitted a complaint to WWF, but months later, the family said they still hadn’t heard back.

• Nearly 200M in U.S. under heat advisories, warnings as two heat domes form