2021-10-18

Cool

• Scuba diver discovers 900-year-old Crusader sword in Israel

Worthy

• Assessing Supernatural Belief in Colonial Mexican Inquisition Records - JHI Blog

• Wealth Creators

etc

• Why Do You Tattoo? Company engineered body ink that disappears in 15 months

Horseshit

• Cheaper form of meth is creating a wave of mental illness

• Teen girls are showing up to the doctor with tics

• North Vancouver announced it will become the first City heated by Bitcoin Mining

• Motorist fined after CCTV confuses his number plate with woman’s T-shirt

• This arthritis drug cost $198 in 2008. Now it's more than $10,000 - Axios

• Nuclear Fusion Edges Toward the Mainstream

celebrity gossip

• How Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Gwyneth Paltrow Short-Circuit Your Ability to Think Rationally

• Civil liberties groups push Biden administration to drop case against Assange

  • Coalition of 25 press freedom organizations call for end to Assange prosecution

Obit

• Colin Powell has died

  + [Colin Powell: Former US secretary of state dies of Covid
  complications](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58957273)
  

  • Fully Vaccinated Former SecState Colin Powell Dies From COVID Complications | ZeroHedge

    • General Colin L. Powell - Posts | Facebook

  General Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid 19. He was fully vaccinated. We want to thank the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center for their caring treatment. We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American. -- The Powell Family

• Legendary Namco pixel artist Hiroshi ‘Mr Dotman’ Ono has died

COVID / VaxCult

• Valneva Reports Positive Phase 3 Results for Inactivated, Adjuvanted Covid-19

• Excess mortality due to Covid-19? A comparison of total mortality in 2020 with total mortality in 2016 to 2019 in Germany, Sweden and Spain

  In 2020, there was barely any excess mortality in Germany for both approaches. In Sweden, excess mortality was 3% without, and 8% with consideration of increasing life expectancy.

• Increases in Covid-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination

• The social cost of wearing face masks

  “In some sense, before COVID-19, we were like the Mona Lisa — we were most charming when we smiled. People trusted us when we smiled, and could tell how we were feeling if they saw our full faces,” Dr Chan says. “But during COVID-19, we have lost our charming smile, and along with that, it has become more difficult to establish trust and to establish emotional connection. These are the hidden social cost of wearing face masks.”

• Biden’s Defense Dept. Could Make Unvaxxed Navy SEALs Pay For Their Training. Trump’s Interior Sec, A Former Navy SEAL, Blasts Biden | The Daily Wire

• Increases in Covid-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries

  At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people. Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.

• “Nearly 40% of California state workers are unvaccinated against COVID despite Newsom order.”

• Moderna 3rd shot: Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee October 14-15, 2021 Meeting Briefing Document- Sponsor (Moderna) - download

  • comment:

  am 70 and now, by decree, not fully vaccinated since I am in the Moderna line. How about if I were only 64? I'm thinking I'm going to need a lawyer to get across into Canada for the Spring fishing trip.

  • another comment:

  I have done a quick, first read of the FDA "Briefing Document" for the Moderna 3rd shot. Summary: It's different. And I'm not sure I understand it. Very small: approx 150 people in each study group Very female: 70% female in one arm, 60% in the other Very white: Black subjects 1.4% in one arm, 3.4% in the other Question for Dr. Fauci: In the initial Moderna vaccine trial, it was important to have adequate numbers of Black participants. In fact, in the initial trial, 10.3% of the participants were Black. In the booster study, how do you explain the fact that Blacks participate at only an average of 2.4%? Dr. Fauci, how many Black men got a third shot in the booster study? One? Two? What's going on here? Also, the third shot efficacy is completely UNKNOWN. It is not studied at all. Moderna guesses at the efficacy only by inference. I quote the FDA:

  Vaccine effectiveness of the 50 µg mRNA-1273 booster dose when given at least 6 months after a 2-dose primary series of 100 µg mRNA-1273 to adults ≥18 years of age in study P201B is being inferred based on immunobridging comparisons of the immune response induced by the booster dose in P201B to the immune response induced by a 2-dose primary series of 100 µg mRNA-1273 in P301, as assessed by neutralizing antibody GMTs and seroresponse rates (co-primary study endpoints).

• Evidence for Biological Age Acceleration and Telomere Shortening in Covid-19

• “Future passports should be based on skills and health rather than nationality”

• mRNA Vaccines: Maybe the Coronavirus Was Lower-Hanging Fruit

• (PDF) First Report of the Commission on the EU Digital Covid Certificate Regulation

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Lawsuit over mural showing city's first Black female firefighter depicted White

• The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr

• 1k Netflix employees threaten work stoppage over Dave Chappelle

• Why Right-Wing Extremists Love the Unabomber

  For right-wing extremists, the appeal of Kaczynski’s works originates in their identification of Kaczynski’s narrative about the development of industrial civilization and the destruction of wilderness with their own narrative about what they perceive to be the replacement and disempowerment of white people. Kaczynski’s description of the alienation of people from one another caused by technology aligns with white supremacists’ calls for solidarity among white people to resist what they regard as the threat of oppression and “white genocide.”

• Diversity and Division in Advanced Economies | Pew Research Center

  In some places, this acrimony has risen to the level that people think their fellow citizens no longer disagree simply over policies, but also over basic facts. In France, the U.S., Italy, Spain and Belgium, half or more think that most people in their country disagree on basic facts more than they agree. Across most societies surveyed, those who see conflict among partisans are more likely to say people disagree on the basic facts than those who do not see such conflicts.

• Reads like: "People who believe conspiracy theories are genetically inferior and intellectually lazy" Memetics and neural models of conspiracy theories

  Hence, genes determine personality, predispositions, skills, but not particular decisions." "Moreover, accepting simple explanations can be satisfactory; it saves energy (and the brain consumes huge amounts of it), brings a pleasant sense of understanding. In contrast, complex explanations require much effort and time to be fully understood. A simple, but false, explanation is thus attractive: it is always better than no explanation at all," explains Prof. Duch.

• Conspiracy Theories and Religion: Reframing Conspiracy Theories as Bliks

• Is our cancel culture killing free speech?

Edumacationalizing

• Computer scientists contemplate courses without 'Alice' and 'Bob'

• McAuliffe Agrees Public Schools Should Not Tell Parents If Their Child Is ‘Gender Fluid.’

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• Bari Weiss Confronts Brian Stelter on CNN Lab Leak Coverage

• Roblox, the Gaming Site, Wants to Grow Up Without Sacrificing Child Safety

• At Axel Springer, Politico’s New Owner, Allegations of Sex, Lies, Secret Payment

• Sinclair Broadcast Says It Was Hit by Cyberattack

Facebook

• I commented yesterday that whoever bought the "Facebook is Bad" media Hate had only paid for a 3 day ticket. Apparently they've bought an encore.

• Facebook to hire 10k in EU to work on metaverse

  • Facebook plans to hire 10k in Europe to build ‘metaverse’

• Facebook disputes that its AI can’t detect hate speech or violence consistently

• Facebook wants you to believe its AI is working against hate speech

• Facebook denies weak performance on hateful content

• Ex-Facebook executive explains how they make money

• Facebook created its own PR nightmare

TechSuck

• US gov claims ransomware 'earned' $590m in the first half of 2021 alone

> Two political action committees organized to oppose a Lincoln
> County ballot measure that would phase out short-term rentals in
> unincorporated residential neighborhoods have raised more than
> $280,000 — almost 20 times the amount raised by a committee in
> favor of the measure — much of it from outside the county.

• Intel CEO blames predecessors for manufacturing woes

• Windows 11: Microsoft's pointless update

Economicon

• U.S. port's supply chain fix challenge: selling 24/7 shifts

• How to think about the unstoppable rise of index funds

• The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks

Poilitcks

• Precinct Strategy

• How Mitch McConnell Accidentally Created An Unregulated THC Market | FiveThirtyEight

• The big hole in Christopher Steele’s defense of himself

  • Ex-Spy Behind Salacious Trump Dossier Has Damning Theory About Alleged Pee Tape

Law / Crime / Police

• Greenwald: Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled By Exploiting "Insurrection" Fears | ZeroHedge

  Serious questions about FBI involvement in the 1/6 events linger. For months, Americans were subjected to a frightening media narrative that far-right groups had plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, only for proof to emerge that at least half of the conspirators, including its leaders, were working for or at the behest of the FBI. Regarding 1/6, the evidence has been clear for months, though largely confined to right-wing outlets, that the FBI had its tentacles in the three groups it claims were most responsible for the 1/6 protest: the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters. Yet last month, The New York Times acknowledged that the FBI was directly communicating with one of its informants present at the Capitol, a member of the Proud Boys, while the riot unfolded, meaning “federal law enforcement had a far greater visibility into the assault on the Capitol, even as it was taking place, than was previously known.” All of this suggests that to the extent 1/6 had any advanced centralized planning, it was far closer to an FBI-induced plot than a centrally organized right-wing insurrection.

• Woman raped on US train as bystanders do nothing - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

• Tsarnaev Supreme Court appeal: Do unbiased jurors exist in age of social media?

Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• ‘Escalating Into A Firing War’: Texas Gov. Abbott Says ‘Aggressive’ Mexican Cartels Shooting At National Guard.

• China Denies Financial Times' Report Of Hypersonic Missile Test

  • China surprises U.S. with hypersonic missile test

  • China denies testing nuclear-capable hypersonic missile

  • Claims about Chinese hypersonics

• After 9/11, China grew to a superpower as a distracted U.S. fixated on terrorism

World

• China's economic growth weakens amid construction slowdown

• In Russia, experts are challenging official pandemic figures as too low

• Facial recognition cameras installed in UK school canteens

• Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

• Myanmar to release 5,600 anti-regime prisoners

Health / Medicine

• Prof Sarah Gilbert, Covid vaccine creator: Now let’s take on 12 more diseases

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven't We Bent the Emissions Curve?

• From childlessness to the climate crisis, why is the blame always on us?

• How industrial chicken production is breeding the next pandemic

• How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1998)

• Be Green: Buy a Coal Mine!

• Lake Tahoe hits a critically low water threshold

• Electric Vehicles, The Gasoline Problem, And Synthetic Fuels | Hackaday

• Why we don't like ground source heat pumps - NATE THE HOUSE WHISPERER

• Few health effects in wildlife exposed to low levels of radiation from Fukushima

• To Strike a Climate Deal, Poor Nations Say They Need Trillions from Rich Ones