2021-08-25
Cool
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+ [Happy Birthday, Linux: Greg Kroah-Hartman Talks to the Register](https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/25/linux_kernel_30_years_old/)
Worthy
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Tetlock and the Taliban - by Richard Hanania - Richard Hanania's Newsletter
For all that has been said about Afghanistan, no one has noticed that this is precisely what just happened to political science. The American-led coalition had countless experts with backgrounds pertaining to every part of the mission on their side: people who had done their dissertations on topics like state building, terrorism, military-civilian relations, and gender in the military. General David Petraeus, who helped sell Obama on the troop surge that made everything in Afghanistan worse, earned a PhD from Princeton and was supposedly an expert in “counterinsurgency theory.” Ashraf Ghani, the just deposed president of the country, has a PhD in anthropology from Columbia and is the co-author of a book literally called Fixing Failed States. This was his territory. It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.
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Epistemic trespassing, or epistemic squatting? - by Noah Smith - Noahpinion
More fundamentally, what gives these philosophers of religion the right to gatekeep religious thought? Yes, they have thought about religion, discussed the topic with each other, cited each other’s papers, and so on. Perhaps Dawkins’ arguments are all stupid. But so what? On questions of the divine and the ineffable, do philosophers really have more access to truth than, say, clergy? And on questions of the social impact of religion, are philosophers’ logical arguments superior to the quantitative research methods of sociologists, anthropologists, and so on? Why are the philosophers the owners of this piece of epistemic real estate, rather than trespassers themselves? (Update: In an ironic twist, several commenters inform me that many religious studies scholars view philosophers of religion as epistemic trespassers!)
In chemistry it’s fairly easy to verify who’s a crank and who’s a real expert — the experts can predictably make cool and useful stuff happen with chemicals, and they can tell you how to replicate their feats at your factory or with your home chemistry set — and the cranks cannot do this. But in fields like literature, religion, or even philosophy itself, it’s harder to point to any sort of objective test of validity.
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Futurists have their heads in the clouds - by Erik Hoel - The Intrinsic Perspective
If you want to predict the future accurately, you should be an incrementalist and accept that human nature doesn’t change along most axes. Meaning that the future will look a lot like the past. If Cicero was transported from ancient Rome to our time he would easily understand most things about our society. There’d be a short-term amazement at various new technologies and societal changes, but soon Cicero would settle in and be throwing out Trump/Sulla comparisons (or contradicting them), since many of the debates we face, like what to do about growing wealth inequality, or how to keep a democracy functional, are the same as in Roman times.
etc
Horseshit
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Kaitiakitanga Māori Data Sovereignty Licences - Karaitiana Taiuru
6.1 Māori Data is ever only loan. Māori data shall be stored and transferred in such a way that it enables and reinforces the capacity of Māori, whānau, hapū, iwi, marae, rōpū Māori to exercise kaitiakitanga over Māori data. Non Māori can not own Māori data.
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Stop that! It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness | Brain | Oxford Academic
In Germany, current outbreak of “mass social media-induced illness” is initiated by a “virtual” index case, who is the second most successful YouTube creator in Germany and enjoys enormous popularity among young people. Affected teenagers present with similar or identical functional “Tourette-like” behaviours, which can be clearly differentiated from tics in Tourette syndrome.
celebrity gossip
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Nirvana sued by the baby from Nevermind's album cover - BBC News
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Well, in his defense: they taught him to chase money as a baby.
Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination
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Armbruster agreed to talk with Reuters after conferring with family and her lawyer, and said she was willing to discuss anything except her ongoing criminal charges in Washington, DC. One case stems from December 12, when DC police charged her with assault for spraying bear repellent during brawls with the Proud Boys near the White House. In another case, police charged her with assaulting far-right activist Jack Posobiec in June 2020 by shoving him. Over months of interviews, she and some colleagues opened a window into the Antifa movement and its motivations.
In reality, Antifa is not a well-structured organization, but rather a loosely organized, secretive movement of like-minded far-left activists. There are no leaders, no hierarchy and no formal membership. Instead, the activists organize in small units called “affinity groups.”
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Should Doxing Be Illegal? – The Markup
“Don’t think, haters, that you can hide behind a computer screen and not be held accountable for your actions,”
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Memo: Military Threatens to Revoke Benefits From Marines Who Decline COVID Vaccine
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The Secret Bias Hidden in Mortgage-Approval Algorithms – The Markup
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If the Unvaccinated Want to Work, They Face a Series of Hurdles
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WA high schools face controversy for asking students wear Covid ankle monitors
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Delta airlines to start $200/mo testing surcharge for unvaccinated employees
Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship
TechSuck
Economicon
Poilitcks
Crime / Police
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FCC proposes fining conspiracists $5.1M for voter suppression robocalls - POLITICO
The FCC is proposing to fine conservative conspiracists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman more than $5.1 million for allegedly coordinating more than 1,000 unlawful robocalls aimed at swaying last year's presidential election — a proposed punishment that would be the largest in FCC history under anti-robocall laws.
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FBI declines to do anything about Ilhan Omar marrying her brother to commit immigration fraud
- This is not "declining to do anything"; they arrested the guy investigating it.
Security / Militaria
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Former CIA officer on possible Havana syndrome incident: This was no coincidence - CNN Video
- linked as "Harris is suffering from Havana syndrome" ... people are stretching for that.
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Is Havana syndrome a new method of covert sabotage – or all in our heads?
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Judging from comments made by leaders of the intelligence community, it almost seems like they don't want to know the truth.
Afghanistan
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U.S. still working to contact most of the estimated 1,500 American citizens left in Afghanistan
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"The situation is horrendous. The entire airport is littered with bullet casings and flash-bang grenades," he continued. "Everything, absolutely everything is covered in barbed wire. The entire runway is lined with barbed wire." And there are tragic scenes of desperate Afghan civilians standing outside the airport walls in knee-deep sewage.
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US: 'specific threat stream' from ISIS against crowds outside Kabul airport
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These Are The Military's Options For Extending Evacuations In Afghanistan. None Of Them Are Good.
Then we come back to Bagram Airfield—you know, the massive installation with two runways and a huge, well-fortified perimeter, located in a not-so-dense area around 25 miles north of Kabul? That one. In one of the strangest military decisions I have seen in my life, the U.S. gave the stronghold back to the Afghans in early July—well, more like it cut and ran from the facility it built up so much over 20 years. Why on earth the U.S. would have done this before the evacuation had ended is just beyond puzzling.
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One thing I have hated seeing on the internet this past week and a half are people saying things like "Why would we fight for them if they won't fight for themselves." They fought, bled, and died beside NATO troops in this 20 year war they didn't start. Sure, some of them were awful, but that is the case in any military. We left them with all this gear and literally no way to maintain any of it. We pulled every contractor with us. Even in 2011 we (the US) couldn't conduct the war without contractor support.
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3rd hand tweet? Bah. "US Soldiers forcing journalists onto flight to Doha"
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Taliban seat on UN Commission on the Status of Women is ‘likely,’ John Bolton says.
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We came into this visit wanting, like most veterans, to push the president to extend the August 31st deadline. After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late, that no matter what we do. we won’t get everyone out on time, even by September 11. Sadly and frustratingly, getting our people out depends on maintaining the current, bizarre relationship with the Taliban.
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US lawmakers’ Kabul trip prompts Biden administration fury
Two members of Congress flew unannounced into Kabul airport in the middle of the chaotic evacuation stunning State Department and U.S. military personnel who had to divert resources to provide security and information to the lawmakers, U.S. officials said.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., flew in and out on charter aircraft and were on the ground at the Kabul airport for several hours Tuesday. That led officials to complain that they could be taking seats that would have otherwise gone to other Americans or Afghans fleeing the country, but the congressmen said in a joint statement that they made sure to leave on a flight with empty seats.
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How Mexico Helped the New York Times Get Its Journalists Out of Afghanistan
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U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults
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Taliban reject extended evacuation: The answer is no. Or there'd be consequences
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Is This Why Joe Biden Is Late for His Afghanistan Address? It's Not Good, Folks. by Matt Vespa
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Biden decides to keep August 31 deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan
World
Health / Medicine / COVID
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The Great Masturbation Delusion - The Skeptic
The delusion consisted of the belief that masturbation is uniquely harmful to those who practise it, leading inexorably to feebleness and debility through a wide assortment of ailments to madness, and ultimately death. The delusion was subscribed to, and often vehemently promoted by, men and women in the highest scientific positions throughout Western Europe and North America, as well as churchmen and others with the moral clout to ensure that they would be listened to with respect. Yet in support of these affirmations there was not a scrap of scientific evidence. Instead, scientific and medical findings were distorted and manipulated to give a wholly erroneous impression. As a result, millions of children were subjected to a reign of terror in which horrific mental suffering was often accompanied by physical torture.
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Vaccine Efficacy Diminished as Delta Arose, CDC Report Shows
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New NY governor adds 12,000 deaths to publicized Covid tally
The count used by Cuomo in his news media briefings only included laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 deaths reported through a state system that collects data from hospitals, nursing homes and adult care facilities. That meant the tally excluded people who died at home, hospice, in state prisons or at state-run homes for people living with disabilities. It also excluded people who likely died of COVID-19 but never got a positive test to confirm the diagnosis.
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Johnson and Johnson announces boosting its single-shot Covid-19 vaccine
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Ultra-Vaccinated Israel’s Crisis Is a Dire Warning to America
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Unvaccinated individuals are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized from Covid
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Biden receives inconclusive intelligence report on coronavirus origins
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In Kids, the Risk of Covid-19 and the Flu Are Similar – Risk Perception Isn't