2021-08-17

Cool

• The secret of the Stradivari violin confirmed

• Asking nicely for root command execution (and getting it)

Worthy

• Bad News: Selling the story of disinformation | Harper's Magazine

  The most comprehensive survey of the field to date, a 2018 scientific literature review titled “Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation,” reveals some gobsmacking deficits. The authors fault disinformation research for failing to explain why opinions change; lacking solid data on the prevalence and reach of disinformation; and declining to establish common definitions for the most important terms in the field, including disinformation, misinformation, online propaganda, hyperpartisan news, fake news, clickbait, rumors, and conspiracy theories. The sense prevails that no two people who research disinformation are talking about quite the same thing.

  This will ring true to anyone who follows the current media discussion around online propaganda. “Misinformation” and “disinformation” are used casually and interchangeably to refer to an enormous range of content, ranging from well-worn scams to viral news aggregation; from foreign-intelligence operations to trolling; from opposition research to harassment. In their crudest use, the terms are simply jargon for “things I disagree with.” Attempts to define “disinformation” broadly enough as to rinse it of political perspective or ideology leave us in territory so abstract as to be absurd. As the literature review put it:

  “Disinformation” is intended to be a broad category describing the types of information that one could encounter online that could possibly lead to misperceptions about the actual state of the world.

• Kids Can Recover From Missing Even Quite A Lot Of School - by Scott Alexander - Astral Codex Ten

• Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Field Experiment About Dishonesty - Data Colada

etc

• Pompeii’s fast food joint unearthed in 2019 opens to public

• New York City adds 629,000 people, defying predictions of its decline

• Space junk collision: Chinese satellite got whacked by hunk of Russian rocket in March | Space

Horseshit

• Hawaiian Residents beg tourists to stop visiting amid post-pandemic boom

• Ultraprocessed Foods Now Comprise 2/3 of Calories in Children and Teen Diets

  • comment:

  this research defines ultra processed foods in a way that doesn’t necessarily make sense, at least to a layman. For instance, sliced bread, including whole wheat bread, would count as ultra processed due to the slicing and bagging process.

celebrity gossip

• Qaddafi’s Son Is Alive. and He Wants to Take Libya Back

Obit

• Maki Kaji, ‘Godfather of Sudoku,’ Dies at 69

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Apple selects 15 Black- and Brown-owned businesses for Impact Accelerator

• A Twitter exec told an Asian-American employee she could pass as white if she wore sunglasses after she spoke out about the company’s lack of diversity, a report says.

• Facebook’s New Toxic Stew: Militia Groups and Vaccine Conspiracies

• Israel-Hating Curriculum Is Coming to California School Districts

• ‘My bosses were happy to destroy me’ – the women forced out of work by menopause

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• Opinion: Biden’s Afghanistan Failure Has Turned Media Against Him

• CNN: “they are chanting ”Death To America“ but seem friendly at the same time”

• Taliban-related content banned on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp

  Facebook has banned the Taliban and any content that promotes it from the main Facebook platform, Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook said this means it will remove accounts that are maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban, as well as those that praise, support and represent them.

• The Taliban is blanket banned on Facebook, but not on Twitter or YouTube

TechSuck

• Crypto platform hit by $600M heist asks hacker to be its chief security advisor

• Self-driving cars are a long way away

• Google Groups kills RSS support without notice

• Tinder will introduce voluntary ID verification to reduce catfishing incidents

• Qualcomm unveils its first 5G-capable reference drone

• 5G and Beyond for Contact Tracing | Hacker News

• Mastodon now a non-profit organisation

• Safer Illinois, Isn’t – Dhole Moments

  Full disclosure: I stopped looking into the hard-coded key around the time I typed this string into Google and discovered several results from other projects. This is weird. Weird and stupid.

• Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments? | Hacker News

Economicon

• Palantir bought $50M in gold bars in August as cash pile grows

• Excellent, from last week Cory Doctorow: End of the line for Uber

• What the “Creator Economy” Promises–and What It Does

• People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart

• I'm a landlord with 24 properties. We're suffering during Biden's eviction ban

• Cargo Ships Are Again Idling Off Jammed Southern California Ports

Poilitcks

• Tapper RIPS Biden’s Afghan Address: 'Full of Finger-Pointing and Blame' | Newsbusters

• Apple and Google Are Gearing Up to Fight a New App Store Bill

Crime / Police

• NRA's 'unabated' corruption justifies shutting it down, New York says

• The DOJ’s Crypto Dragnet is Bigger Than You Think - by Doomberg - Doomberg

• Thousands Of Counterfeit COVID-19 Vaccination Cards From China Seized In Tennessee | ZeroHedge

• Actor arrested in connection with Capitol riot; FBI cites evidence from his Instagram

  Carico was arrested in California on Wednesday. A confidential source gave the FBI a nine-second video alleged to show the hands and arms of a man later identified as Carico, records said. The man identified as Carico wore a camouflage shirt and brown and black gloves as he held a camera and a stabilizer, court records said. The confidential informant also provided the FBI with a video, recorded by the informant, which is alleged to show Carico telling others on the Capitol grounds that he had just been inside the building.

• FBI joins investigation into QAnon-affiliated leak of voting machine logins

Afghanistan

• Taliban accumulate massive amounts of U.S.-supplied firepower

• Situation At Kabul Airport "Would Have Been Difficult For Anyone To Predict" Says Pentagon Spokesman (Updated)

  "As far back as May, there were drills being done here at the Pentagon to walk through what different noncombatant evacuation operations might look like," [Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby] added. "There was another one recently done just two weeks ago, a tabletop exercise to again examine what a noncombatant evacuation would look like out of Hamid Karzai International Airport, specifically at the airport."

• Afghans scramble to delete digital history, evade biometrics

• A Hostage Crisis in Slow-Motion? | Power Line

• US Treasury Freezes Billions In Afghan Reserves, Depriving Taliban Of Cash | ZeroHedge

• Pentagon Says Goal To Evacuate 5,000 To 9,000 People Per Day From Kabul Airfield

• WATCH: Biden Admin Admits It Does Not Know How Many Americans Are Trapped In Afghanistan, Could Be 10,000 | The Daily Wire

  “Best guess … between five and ten thousand that are near Kabul,” he continued. “There was a message put out by the State Department today advising those Americans about how to queue up and how to get to the airport so that now that security’s better, they don’t need to necessarily shelter in place.”

• US social media firms face new challenge in Afghanistan

• ‘I Believed in the U.S. but That Turned Out to Be Such a Big Mistake’

• "Panic" As Afghani Crashes After Central Bank Chief Flees, Says No More Dollars Left | ZeroHedge

• Biden administration reverts to internal blame-shifting amid Afghanistan chaos

• George W Bush says he feels 'deep sadness' watching 'tragic events' in Afghanistan

• Republicans blame Biden for the US's chaotic withdrawal but are glossing over how Trump's Taliban deal set up the disaster

• The Taliban Declare 'Amnesty' In Afghanistan And Urge Women To Join The Government

• Pentagon says up to 22,000 'at-risk' Afghans could be transported to US

• In Pictures: Evacuation flights resume at Kabul airport

• British Student ‘Lord Miles’ Evacuated from Afghanistan

• Military adventures and skin in the game - by Branko - Machine Learning Everything

  there will be no real consequences for those that as late as July 2021 said this would not happen. Or those that encouraged aggressive military posturing for the last two decades. Or those that promised a democratic beacon in the middle east. Don’t worry, the president of Afghanistan is safe and may even hit the lecture circuit soon.

• Guantanamo ex-inmates emerge as key players in Taliban victory

• CIA’s turn to admit to its fiasco - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

• Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp? – Preston Byrne

• BIDEN TO AFGHANISTAN: DROP DEAD

• China may align with Taliban and try to exploit Afghanistan’s rare earth metals

• The War Nerd: Was There a Plan in Afghanistan?

• Devastated Female Afghani Reporter Weeps During Pentagon Briefing. John Kirby's Response Was Yet Another Slap in the Face. – PJ Media

  “Nobody here at the Pentagon is happy about the images that we’ve seen coming out in the last few days,” he added. “And we’re all mindful of the kind of governance that the Taliban is capable of. So, heartfelt respect for what you’re going through, and we understand that.”

• Taliban Leaders Used Twitter and WhatsApp to Help Capture Kabul

• Tell HN: Resources for Those in Afghanistan Or Stateside Who Want To Help | Hacker News

• This is worse than Saigon - spiked

  The scale of the humiliation just suffered by the United States cannot be overstated. The most powerful military force on Earth and its incredibly well-funded allies in Kabul have been pushed aside by a regressive 12th-century movement that thinks adulterers should be stoned to death. The allies of the most technologically sophisticated army in the world have been sent packing by a ragtag Islamist army which set about painting over billboard posters for female beauty products the minute it arrived in Kabul. A nation founded in freedom – and which justified its international presence in the language of freedom for the entire postwar period – has been usurped by a movement so intolerant that it bans pop music, executes comedians who make fun of it, and beats women with canes if they are immodestly dressed.

• Afghanistan conflict: As Kabul falls, Biden backlash grows.

• Taliban Collect Weapons From Civilians In Kabul As They "No Longer Need Personal Protection" | ZeroHedge

• US Officials Livid Over Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal, Say Military Was Rebuffed For Wanting Larger Role In Evacuations | ZeroHedge

• Help open-source contributors escape Afghanistan

World

• New Zealand PM Ardern Puts Nation in Lockdown on Single Covid Case

• China will tread carefully in navigating the Taliban’s return – Afghanistan

• Chinese media claims US will abandon Taiwan like Afghanistan

• Beijing Tightens Grip on ByteDance with Rare China Board Seat

• Scottish Government seeks to make many emergency coronavirus powers permanent

• Senator reveals '30,000 US troops stationed in Taiwan island,' equal to ‘declaring war on China’ if it's true - Global Times

Health / Medicine / COVID

• The CDC is finally listening to women about vaccines

• Tennessee Governor Allows Parents to Opt Out of School Mask Mandate

• Federal vaccine court hasn't helped those whose lives were altered by COVID-19 shots

• Does not seem to be "new" news: Delayed Wuhan Report Adds Crucial Detail to Covid Origin Puzzle

  a research paper that languished in publishing limbo for a year and a half contains meticulously collected data and photographic evidence supporting scientists’ initial hypothesis—that the outbreak stemmed from infected wild animals—which prevailed until speculation that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a nearby lab gained traction.

  According to the report, which was published in June in the online journal Scientific Reports, minks, civets, raccoon dogs, and other mammals known to harbor coronaviruses were sold in plain sight for years in shops across the city, including the now infamous Huanan wet market, to which many of the earliest Covid cases were traced.

• Biden administration to announce most Americans will need coronavirus booster shots.

  + [Biden Administration Expected to Call for Covid-19 Booster
  Shots](https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-to-call-for-covid-19-vaccine-booster-shots-11629170031)
  

  • U.S. to Advise Boosters for Most Americans 8 Months After Vaccination

• Covid Patients fighting for their lives are still refusing the vaccine

• Who can get a 3rd vaccine dose now–and who may be next

• A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

• A shot to prevent Lyme disease could be on its way

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Something is killing gray whales

• Lovely Weather Defined California. What Happens When It's Gone?

• Dead white man’s clothes: charity clothes fuel environmental disaster in Ghana

• Global water crisis will intensify with climate breakdown, says report

• The realist guide to solving climate change

• First-ever water cuts declared for Colorado River in historic drought

• Big Oil methane emissions: ‘significant gap’ between reality and reporting

• SF Bay's tides are going to rise. Should we dam the Golden Gate first?