2021-10-21

Cool

• An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms

• Penplotting Perlin Landscapes

Worthy

• Two conspiracy theories about cola

• Silencing the Competition: Inside the Fight Against the Hearing Aid Cartel

  This problem is weird, and it shouldn’t be happening. Large ships, which usually bring full containers to the U.S. and empties back to Asia, are no longer bringing the empties back. And it’s not clear why. This problem is certainly occurring in other ports, like Tacoma. Phillip Sanfield, an official at the Port of LA, told me that yes, “Indeed, we are swamped.” And he didn’t have any guesses as to why. “I don’t have any insights into why shipping lines are refusing to pick up empties,” Sanfield added.

etc

• A fireball raced across the Midwest sky, except it 'was not a natural fireball,' group says

  the American Meteorological Society came to a different conclusion than the Channel 4 weatherman, noting that the sighting "was not a natural fireball" but instead appeared to be "the re-entry of an unknown satellite or spent rocket body."

• Covid means remote workers can live anywhere. So where’s 'anywhere'?

• If you don't know where your onions came from, throw them away

  "Throw away any unlabeled onions at home. Do not eat, sell, or serve red, white, or yellow onions imported from Mexico and distributed U.S.-wide by ProSource Inc," the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned in a tweet.

• (July 2021) The LulzSec Prelude: How A Memory-Holed Sting Operation Set the Stage for Occupy, Snowden, and Beyond – Beyond_Lies_The_Wub

Horseshit

• Fisher-Price made a working Chatter phone for adults

• Vinyl (Records) Is Selling So Well That It’s Getting Hard to Sell Vinyl

• Illegal sprinkles force British bakery to shelve popular cookies : NPR

• California tried to save the nation from tax filing – then Intuit stepped in

• How 'speed friending' events can banish loneliness

celebrity gossip

• President Trump Announces Trump Media and Technology Group and 'Truth Social' Media Platform - The Last Refuge

  + [Former U.S. president Donald Trump launches 'TRUTH' social media
  platform](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-us-president-donald-trump-launches-new-social-media-platform-2021-10-21/)
  

  • Alex Stamos on Twitter: "Looks like TRUTH Social actually moved to @fastly from @Cloudflare two days ago. Apologies and condolences to Cloudflare, and congrats to the newly busy Fastly product policy team." / Twitter

  • Mastodon's Founder Says Trump's New Social Network Is Just Mastodon

    “The main thing is that Mastodon is free software, released under the AGPLv3 license, so anyone can use it—provided they comply with the license. The main part of the license is making the source code and any modifications to it available to the public,” Rochko told Motherboard. With Truth Social saying that its code is proprietary “that would be a problem, as that would indicate a license violation,” Rochko added.

  • Donald Trump's social media SPAC shares surge 200%

  • Trump’s new social media site collapses after trolls flood it before launch

  • Trump's "TRUTH Social" SPAC Is Now Up Over 400% On The Day

    • Trump’s Brand New Truth App May Violate Terms of Open Source Code It’s Built On

• “To recap: An ex-congresswoman was forced to resign because of her sexual relationships with her staffers, and now she’s having a baby with one of the reporters who was assigned to cover the story.”

• Margaret Atwood has become one of her own handmaidens, rising up against tyranny

• Protest Outside the Bill and Melinda Gates HQ London

Obit

• Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi who recognised the psychological concept of flow died

  • Mihály CSíkszentmihályi – Flow Theory Architect – Dies Aged 88

COVID / VaxCult

• COVID vaccine injury claims mount, but recourse is lacking for those harmed

• Approx 3% of the workforce Nearly 1,900 Washington state employees quit, fired over vaccine mandate

• FDA clears boosters for Moderna and J&J Covid-19 vaccines

  The Food and Drug Administration authorized booster doses for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines, following its authorization of a third Pfizer / BioNTech shot in September. The agency also said today that it will allow “mix-and-match” boosters — eligible people who are already fully vaccinated can get a booster dose of any of the three vaccines, regardless of which they started with. As with the Pfizer / BioNTech booster, the FDA cleared third Moderna shots for vulnerable groups, including people 65 years of age and older, those who are at high risk of severe disease, and people at high risk of exposure to COVID-19 at work.

  • FDA authorizes booster, mix and match doses of Moderna and J&J vaccines

• Brazil’s Bolsonaro accused of “crimes against humanity” over Covid response

• Lithuanian news websites delete public coments to prevent COVID19 misinformation

• NIH Contradicts Fauci, Admits Funding Gain-of-Function Research at Wuhan Lab.

  + [Senator Rand Paul on Twitter: "“I told you so” doesn’t even begin
  to cover it here:" /
  Twitter](https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1450996489862459394)
  

  • NIH Admits Funding Gain-Of-Function COVID Experiments; Gives EcoHealth Five Days To Report Data | ZeroHedge

    • NIH Admits to Funding Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan

  • EcoHealth Alliance Conducted Risky Experiments on MERS Virus in China

• A cancer survivor had the longest documented COVID-19 infection. Here’s what scientists learned | Science | AAAS

• What Will It Take to Boost Vaccinations? The Scene From Kentucky’s Back Roads | Kaiser Health News

• How cultural differences shape responses to COVID-19

• Apple still won’t mandate vaccines, will require employees daily Covid-19 tests

• Booster dose of Pfizer vaccine shows 95.6% efficacy in Phase 3 trial

• Lectures From Limousine Liberals - Tablet Magazine

  You’ll be forgiven if you suffered narrative whiplash. The sneering contempt many in the left-wing pundit class have demonstrated in their recent rhetoric about the “unvaccinated,” many of whom are lower-income people of color, is in direct opposition to the years of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” These days, the men and women who worked through the whole pandemic are being shamed and patronized by the very people whose cushy existences they facilitated for a year and a half. The liberal elites who holed up in the Hamptons and didn’t have contact with the outside world for a year are ready to get back to their SoulCycle classes, even if it means firing a few people they once called “frontline heroes.” The irony of the same people who screamed in the faces of policemen at the height of a pandemic turning around to demand that these cops now shut up, stop asking questions, and get vaccinated is almost too much to bear.

• Male and female fetuses respond differently to COVID-19.

• Canada launches international proof-of-vaccination for Covid-19

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• People Who Jump to Conclusions Show Other Kinds of Thinking Errors

  • comment:

  on closer inspection and thoughtful consideration it resembles propaganda to ignore your instincts, trust the narrative, and provides blunt tools for being suspicious of others who don't. If only most people were smart and comfortable enough to jump to conclusions and then course correct as needed, we could avoid the consequences of groupthink by those who fear criticism above all.

• Dan Bongino Punishes Sponsor for Bowing to Antifa Mob

• The Ideological Battlefield of the "Mamasphere" - by Anne Helen Petersen - Culture Study

  I started out by trying to wrap my head around the tension between two related questions: how are momfluencers acting as vectors of neoliberal discipline and control, but also simultaneously creating their own tactics and strategies for survival within a precarious economic environment? A bit of interplay between Foucault and Bourdieu. But when I started thinking about actually designing a research project, I knew I had to zero in on specific practices and move away from these giant questions.

Edumacationalizing

• The determined math tutor teaching calculus on Pornhub

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• Are Film Industry Insiders Covering Up Fauci Film Flop? | MissLiberty.com

• Roku tells customers it is unable to strike a deal with YouTube

• The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism - by Michael Hobbes - Confirm My Choices

  Moral panics entrench misinformation and foment reactionary backlash. The parents storming town halls and taking over school boards to ban critical race theory have been explicit that their efforts are in response to the alleged “wokeness” of K-12 teaching. This is precisely, word for word, the narrative that the Economist and Atlantic articles, and dozens like them, have promoted. They are doing the same thing now, playing with the same fire that has pulled the United States rightward and backward over and over again for the last 40 years.

• Twitter algorithms bias toward right-wing content

Facebook

• Mark Zuckerberg Will Be Added to a Facebook Privacy Lawsuit

• Pierre Omidyar, the tech billionaire aiding the Facebook whistleblower

• Facebook Can't Hide Its Problems Behind a New Name

• I hope he proclaims himself the High Pontiff of the Church of Consensus Mark Zuckerberg hasn't decided on Facebook's new name despite rebrand looming

• Facebook kept its own oversight board in the dark on program for VIP users

• Facebook Is Rebuked by Oversight Board over Transparency

• Facebook ‘whistleblower’ Frances Haugen represented by US intelligence insiders

TechSuck

• Dutch forensic lab says it has decoded Tesla's driving data

• Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer to online abuse

• Google dropping Play Store subscription fee from 30% to 15%

Economicon

• FlixMobility Acquires Greyhound to Expand U.S. Intercity Bus Services

• TV prices are the highest they've been in at least nine years

• Time to get worried about Tether, the “stablecoin” at center of cryptocurrency

• Amazon is now a bigger shipper in the U.S. than FedEx

• The Economist is selling their cover as an NFT

• WeWork is trying to go public – again

• Bayer: Farmers Prebuying Crop Inputs as Supply-Chain Snarls Continue

• Anhydrous Breaks $800 Per Ton as Fertilizer Prices Soar

• Tesla is outrunning the supply chain crunch

• Southwest Airlines lost $75M amid mass flight cancellation

• J&J looking to bankruptcy to resolve 40,000 baby powder cancer lawsuits

• Fed announces new curbs on trading by central bank officials

  • Fed Imposes New Restrictions on Officials’ Investment Activities

• What Happens If the World’s Key Metal Exchange Has No Metal?

Poilitcks

• Western Maryland asks West Virginia to 'consider adding us' to their state

• Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

• Fed Ethics Office Warned Officials to Curb Unnecessary Trading During Rescue

• A 30-Year Campaign to Control Drug Prices Faces yet Another Failure

• Four Hours at the Capitol

• Buttigieg: Paid Family Leave Is ‘Not a Vacation’

Law / Crime / Police

• Head of California's largest union arrested for theft, fraud

Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• State Dept. Celebrates ‘International Pronouns Day’ as China and Russia Increase Their Strength

• 5G surveillance: US military funds research into radar-like use

• NSA is surging its collaboration with the private sector

World

• South Korea tests first domestically made rocket as it pursues satellite launch

• The Bomb Will Backfire on Iran: Tehran Will Go Nuclear–and Regret It

• Lira Crashes To All Time Low After Turkey Shocks With 200bps Rate Cut Despite Soaring Inflation

• US didn’t ‘engage’ China to make it rich and free; it profited off it

Health / Medicine

• Breathing enough to spread tuberculosis bacteria

• A Common Infection Could Be a Trigger for Multiple Sclerosis, Large Study Finds

• A pig kidney has been successfully transplanted into a human for the first time

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• COP26: Document leak reveals nations lobbying to change key climate report

• Think big on climate: transformation of society in months has been done before

• (PDF) National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change

• We can make the steel of tomorrow without the fossil fuels of yesteryear

• The world is banking on giant carbon-sucking fans to clean our climate mess

• Oops EVs cost more to run: Study compares electric vehicle charge costs vs. gas and results were surprising