2021-08-18
Worthy
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How a compiler does magic: Exploring Clang/LLVM optimization on programming horror
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Extremely good Things the establishment got wrong about wuhan-coof | Locklin on science
Turns out smokers are much less likely to be hospitalized and die of the ‘rona than non-smokers. This makes right thinkers everywhere sad. They even post obviously false papers reassuring themselves that smoking is bad mkay, but it is a huge, enormous and won’t go away statistical effect, even a dose dependent one; not quite the effectiveness of vaccines, but good enough nicotine was tested in clinical trials. I’m not suggesting people go out and buy a carton of marlboros (lord knows there are enough fearful idiots out there some would if muh science experts told them to), but it is one of those things where the “experts” are at a total loss; something they’ve been telling us is certain death for decades actually has some health-conferring benefits (FWIIW, also for Parkinsons disease). It’s part of the morality of the current year clerisy that smoking is bad mkay. A serious and cold blooded actual technocracy would accept that it confers some benefit as a coronavirus prophylaxis, figure out why smokers don’t die of rona as often as “healthy” people, and how to use it to our benefit, rather than posturing with paternalistic purity preening. I’m told by amateur historians tobacco was thought in olden times to have protective effects against the grippe and other plagues; maybe our forefathers were right on this one. Either way it makes fools of our “experts” and is worth noting.
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Outsourcing Virtue - by L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society
In lines he composed for a play in the mid-1930s, T. S. Eliot wrote of those who
“constantly try to escape / From the darkness outside and within / By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”
That last line has always struck me as a rather apt characterization of a certain technocratic impulse, which presumes that techno-bureaucratic structures and processes can eliminate the necessity of virtue, or maybe even human involvement altogether. We might just as easily speak of systems so perfect that no one will need to be wise or temperate or just. Just adhere to the code or the technique with unbending consistency and all will be well.
etc
Horseshit
celebrity gossip
Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination
Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship
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What The Media Hasn’t Told You About The Cuomo Debacle - by Michael Tracey - Michael Tracey
your personal feelings about Cuomo in relation to any other aspect of his governorship, ideology, temperament, etc. has no bearing at all on whether it’s factually true that he was accused of “sexually assaulting” 11 women. He was not. The Attorney General’s Report which precipitated his downfall does not allege that Cuomo sexually assaulted 11 women. Included among that tally of 11 are women who allege, for instance, that Cuomo committed such infractions as using comical terminology like “mingle mamas.” Another person complained about his telling her that she made wearing an elaborate “Personal Protective Gear” gown “look good” — at a public COVID press conference. Charlotte Bennett, an accuser described in further detail below, admitted that Cuomo never attempted to physically touch her.
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Twitter launches new process for reporting COVID misinformation - The Verge
Starting today, users will be able to report misinformation through the same process as harassment or other harmful content, through the dropdown menu at the top right of every tweet. Users will be prompted to select whether the misleading comment is political, health-related, or falls into another category. The politics category includes more specific forms of misinformation like content related to elections. The health category will also include an option for users to flag COVID-19-specific misinformation.
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FAU | FOX News vs. MSNBC Using 52,000 Transcripts, 283 Million Words
“The language of these two networks was never more distinct, and never more volatile, than during coverage of political events associated with the last presidential election. Yet the differences in language of the two networks were primarily in measures of linguistic style, including noun and pronoun use. Sociopolitical dictionaries largely tailored to assess left-right differences in language use, including moral metaphors and foundations, grievances, values, and personality, showed relatively modest effects.”
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Twitter Allowing Taliban to Remain if They Don't Share Violent Content
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CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin Admits "There's No Basis To Prosecute" Trump | ZeroHedge
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Who Tells Them Things They Don't Want to Hear? - by Freddie deBoer - Freddie deBoer
TechSuck
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Hash collision in Apple NeuralHash model
Apple said the version of NeuralHash analyzed by researchers is not the final version that will be used for iCloud Photos CSAM detection.
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Samsung confirms it’s removing ads from its stock apps later this year
Economicon
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Some white-collar workers are balancing 2 full-time jobs, earning $600k
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OPEC Delivers Another Embarrassment for Joe Biden by Spencer Brown
In a stinging rejection issued Monday, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) denied Biden's request for more oil, saying that its member countries "and its allies, including Russia" — conveniently — think markets "do not need more oil than they plan to release in the coming months, despite U.S. pressure to add supplies to check an oil price rise," according to sources who spoke to Reuters.
Poilitcks
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Is the CDC’s Eviction Moratorium a Third Amendment Violation?
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Former Spook Warns This Is "One Of The Most Dangerous, Unpredictable Times In History" | ZeroHedge
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Biden To Increase Food Stamp Benefits By 25%, The Largest Hike In The Program's History | ZeroHedge
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New Article: The Irrepressible Myth of Jacobson v. Massachusetts – Reason.com
Crime / Police
Security / Militaria
Afghanistan
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Afghanistan's all-girls robotics team frantically trying to flee Taliban
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A claim that US troops have been ordered not to leave the airport to help secure evacuees
Friction at airport between US & UK forces Commanders.US forces won't leave airport due to Taliban deal. [UK unit] 2 Para still running patrols into Kabul to collect people from safe houses.US unhappy with Paras saying it puts their deal at risk. Things are so bad between US and UK forces at Kabul Airport,
Afghanistan, 2 Para have been tasked to observe US forces in
case they leave at short notice. 2 Para OC had a screaming match with 82nd Airbourne CO. Paras VERY unhappy at treatment of Afghans by US forces. Meanwhile, 2 Para are running constant patrols into Kabul to collect British, Irish and Afghan Nationals due for evacuation. Any other nationality also picked up if at location. Taliban are aware of patrols and taking no action.
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Our Winless Wars Gone Woke - by Donald Jeffries - "I Protest" by Donald Jeffries
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Taliban’s Abdul Ghani Baradar is undisputed victor of a 20-year war
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What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction
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Taliban kill woman not wearing burqa after vowing to honor 'women's rights'
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State Department Asks Taliban to Form “Inclusive and Representative” Government
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"The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war"
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A Hell Of Our Own Making - by Edward Snowden - Continuing Ed — with Edward Snowden
Just hours before I sat down to draft this, the President of the United States gave a speech in which he tried to defend the honor of this war—a defense that is frankly offensive, and that I think most offends the families of the injured and the dead. President Biden then went on to assert that our erstwhile ally, Osama bin Laden, had been brought to justice—our noble lie. He could have been brought to justice, but we shot him instead.
A fractious country comprised of warring tribes, unable to form an inclusive whole; unable to wade beyond shallow differences in sect and identity in order to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, and so they perish—in the span of a breath—without ever reaching the promised shore.
Today, the country this describes is Afghanistan. Tomorrow, the country this describes might be my own.
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Instapundit | THOUGHTS ON AFGHANISTAN, from a senior military officer with whom I am acquainted
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From ‘Night Letters’ to the Internet: Propaganda, the Taliban and the Afghanistan Crisis – GNET
To put it in perspective further, when the first pictures of the Taliban inside the seized Presidential Palace in Kabul emerged, there were almost as many Taliban members armed with video cameras and smartphones as those brandishing guns. The presence of smartphones everywhere around the Taliban’s rise despite the low-level Internet penetration in Afghanistan is a fixture of modern times in every sense of the term, as both clicks and Kalashnikovs become part of the future of modern warfare, terrorism and violent extremism. Here, scholar Martine van Bijlert notes that “the Taliban appear to have media teams accompanying their fighters as they take control of the cities or, at the very least, an intentional media engagement strategy. Much of the footage seeks to convey a message of law and order and seems intended to reassure and intimidate in equal measure.”
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Official Twitter Account of the Spokesman of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
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Taliban brags about captured US-made helicopters at Kandahar airport
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Taliban Take Kabul Via Path Paved by Corruption – The Diplomat
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The Taliban have nearly 900K Twitter followers as they 'fish for legitimacy'
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The Taliban Have Seized U.S. Military Biometrics Devices
“We processed thousands of locals a day, had to ID, sweep for suicide vests, weapons, intel gathering, etc.” a U.S. military contractor explained. “[HIIDE] was used as a biometric ID tool to help ID locals working for the coalition.”
“I don’t think anyone ever thought about data privacy or what to do in the event the [HIIDE] system fell into the wrong hands,” said Welton Chang, chief technology officer for Human Rights First, himself a former Army intelligence officer. “Moving forward, the U.S. military and diplomatic apparatus should think carefully about whether to deploy these systems again in situations as tenuous as Afghanistan.”
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Disbelief and betrayal: Europe reacts to Biden’s Afghanistan ‘miscalculation’
World
Health / Medicine / COVID
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Why is it so hard to investigate the rare side effects of Covid vaccines?
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Pandemic of unvaccinated continues to rage as states set new Covid records
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WHO COVID-19 library contains hundreds of papers from hijacked journals – Retraction Watch
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Virologist suggests coronavirus origin theorists are missing this other cover-up
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New Zealand announces it's locking down the entire country over 1 Covid case
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Leaky sewers are likely responsible for large amounts of medications in streams
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CA drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years, scientists say
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Town is the first in America to ban new gas stations – is the tide turning?
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Rewilding death: The plan to restore the necrobiome - BBC Future
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California Utility Cutting Power To 51,000 Customers Amid Dangerous Wildfire Conditions | ZeroHedge