2021-10-28

Cool

• Or they could be ball courts... Hundreds of Ancient Maya Sites Hidden Under Mexico Reveal a Mysterious Blueprint

  In addition to analyzing LIDAR data, the team also conducted preliminary ground observations on foot at 62 of the sites, which on the whole are estimated to date from around 1,050–400 BCE, and are thought to have been used as ritual spaces, where people gathered to meet, and to watch processions.

Worthy

• From Kansas to Kandahar (And then back again!) – Malcom Kyeyune – Power & Politics

  Again, the takeaway lesson is not some sappy morality tale about the evils of late capitalism; in fact, the people – like congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – who are lining up to sell you that sad story are today just as dependent on wealth accumulation through highway robbery as the digital robber barons they unconvincingly purport to fight. In area after area, the progressive political line has become one of wealth transfer through open discrimination (by having companies and institutions hire certain groups at the expense of others), or wealth transfer through forced subsidies of a constantly growing cadre of managers and commissars. When Donald Trump tried to forbid companies that received federal money from paying for ”diversity training”, he didn’t just upset people’s moral sensibilities; he threatened an increasing number of rice bowls reserved for the young scions of elite America. What makes the Blizzard example particularly interesting here is that it shows an increased blurring of the line between the public and private sectors; today, even a private company can be inundated with demands to purchase increasingly costly forms of ideological ”fire insurance”, or else.

• Starship is Still Not Understood – Casey Handmer's blog

  Starship obliterates the mass constraint and every last vestige of cultural baggage that constraint has gouged into the minds of spacecraft designers. There are still constraints, as always, but their design consequences are, at present, completely unexplored. A dollar spent on mass optimization no longer buys a dollar saved on launch cost. It buys nothing. It is time to raise the scope of our ambition and think much bigger.

  I doubt Congress is going to increase NASA’s budget to a trillion dollars, so NASA and industry will have to find a way to produce 100x as much stuff for 1/10th the price. Rovers will have to be $1000/kg and we will need 100 T of them every year. This is comparable in terms of costs and volumes to Ferrari manufacturing, so we’re not necessarily talking about replicating Toyota’s automated production lines.

• An Unexpected Victory: Container Stacking at the Port of Los Angeles | Don't Worry About the Vase

  the whole reason this is a miracle, and that it shocked so many people, is that we didn’t think the system was capable of noticing a stupid, massively destructive rule with no non-trivial benefits and no defenders and scrapping it, certainly not within a day. If your model did expect it, I’m very curious to know how that is possible, and how you explain the years 2020 and 2021.

• Don't get distracted: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it

etc

• The rise of Korea What makes a cultural superpower? - by Noah Smith - Noahpinion

• My Changli Crapped Out On Me For The First Time Ever

  So, yeah, I had a fire start about three inches right under my ass. Not great.

Horseshit

• Why the Metaverse Will Be Bigger Than Facebook and Google Combined

• China beats Google by launching fastest programmable quantum computer

• First Bitcoin. Then GameStop. Now Tiny Tungsten Cubes

• Finding, mentoring, and rewarding potential shooters

• Heatbit: The electric heater that earns you money (Bitcoin)

celebrity gossip

• Lawyer Who Won $9.5B Settlement Against Chevron Reports to Prison

COVID / VaxCult

• Schools and childcare centres make up nearly 45% of coronavirus cases in Ontario

• How did Florida end up with one of the best Covid-19 case and death rates

• Immunocompromised may need a fourth Covid-19 shot, CDC says

• Should governments hire workers to check vaccine papers outside restaurants?

• Effect of fluvoxamine on risk of emergency care among patients with Covid-19

  • The antidepressant fluvoxamine can keep Covid-19 patients out of the hospital

  • Large study finds a cheap antidepressant lowers risk of Covid hospitalization

  • Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early Covid-19

    In the group that took the drug, 11% needed hospitalization or an extended ER stay, compared to 16% of those on dummy pills.

    • Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction

• Prominent Covid-19 vaccine skeptics to meet in Anchorage this week

• People with Covid jabs have been less likely to die of other causes

• Covid: Masks mandatory for everyone in the Commons - except MPs - BBC News

• The Epidemic as Anti-Politics — @im_1776

• Polish key for signing valid Covid passes seems to have been compromised

• FDA Committee Members Reviewing Pfizer Vaccine For Children Have Worked For Pfizer, Have Big Pfizer Connections

• Danish Health Minister Threatens to “Shut Down Society” if More People Don’t Get Vaccinated – Summit News

• NYC Firefighters Union Tells Members To Defy Vaccine Mandate; NYPD Union Loses Bid To Halt | ZeroHedge

• Adverse Effects After Pfizer Vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 Infection, by Age and Sex

  The risk of myocarditis, which is considered to be the most potentially serious vaccine-associated adverse event, was increased after both vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection. After vaccination, the risk was increased mostly among young male adolescents and adults (16 to 39 years of age), with 8.62 excess events per 100,000 persons (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.82 to 14.35). After infection, the risk was increased in both age categories (<40 and ≥40 years) and in both male and female adolescents and adults, with 11.54 excess events per 100,000 persons (95% CI, 2.48 to 22.55) in young male adolescents and adults.

• Surgeries, tests postponed as 4,000 unvaccinated B.C. medical staff put on leave

• 72% of unvaccinated workers vow to quit if ordered to get vaccinated

• Clement and Tribe Predicted the FDA Catastrophe

  Despite lacking statutory authority, the FDA has continued to claim it is authorized to regulate laboratory tests. Indeed, a key failure in the pandemic happened when the FDA issued so-called “guidance documents” saying that any SARS-CoV-II test had to be pre-approved by the FDA. Thus, the FDA reversed the logic of emergency. In ordinary times, pre-approval was not necessary but when speed was of the essence it became necessary to get FDA pre-approval. The FDA’s pre-approval process slowed down testing in the United States and it wasn’t until after the FDA lifted its restrictions in March that tests from the big labs became available.

• Death Fair: Russia Opens Funeral Exhibition Amid Coronavirus Surge

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Can Skeletons Have a Racial Identity?

• Nominees for a Science Award Were All White Men -- Nobody Won - Scientific American

• Ransomware gang says it targeted National Rifle Association

• Happy Halloween, Bigots - The American Conservative

• African-Americans Outpace Whites and Hispanics in Cryptocurrency Investments

Edumacationalizing

• Books deemed 'harmful to staff and students' are being removed

• Massachusetts school district ditches Halloween to be more inclusive, will celebrate fall instead

• No Squid Game Halloween Costumes, New York Schools Say

• MythBusters’ Kari Byron discusses future of education

• Florida school board has parent removed for simply quoting the graphic sex material they are teaching kids

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• Pixar’s Lightyear turns Buzz into a non-toy astronaut–with new voice

• My Week in Twitter Jail Shows How Jack Dorsey Lies

• Gizmodo’s photos from the massive iPhone 4 leak have disappeared - The Verge

Facebook

• Facebook Is Now Meta

  • Facebook changes company name to Meta

  • Facebook changes its name to Meta in major rebrand

• Emoji reactions were a cute addition to Facebook. Result: more “toxicity”

• Facebook shareholder lawsuit lands on Zuckerberg's desk

• Facebook's Hiring Crisis: Engineers Are Turning Down Offers

• Facebook tells employees to preserve all communications for legal reasons

  • Facebook tells staff to preserve documents amid heated inquiries – Facebook

• This internal Facebook benefits video may be Facebook’s greatest crime

• Whistleblower: Facebook's response to child abuse 'inadequate'

• Mark Zuckerberg's wife tries to clean up his image — good luck with that

• Whistleblower Absurdly Attacks Facebook's Privacy-Protecting Encryption Efforts

• No Amount of Whistleblowing Can Fix Facebook

• Social media don’t make you worse, but they do magnify jerks

• Facebook whistleblower warns encryption will aid espionage by hostile nations

• Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not a Horrible Company

TechSuck

• Sony has now sold 13.4m Playstation 5 consoles worldwide

• Netflix says algorithm is protected by First Amendment

• EU Commission opens in-depth investigation into acquisition of Arm by Nvidia

• Debian's which hunt

  All of this may seem like a big fuss over a tiny program, and that is indeed what it is. But it is also a statement of how the Debian project wants changes like this to be made. Debian developers have nearly absolute control over their packages, but there are mechanisms in place to intervene when one developer exercises that control in a way that appears damaging to the distribution as a whole. This sort of whichcraft is how Debian has managed to keep hundreds of independent-minded developers working toward a common goal for the better part of three decades.

Economicon

• US Coal Stockpiles Slump To Two Decade Low As Power Plant Demand Surges

• The Great Competition to Give Away Money

• China Tells Evergrande's CEO to Pay Down Debt with Personal Funds

• The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them

• What "transitory" means and why it matters - by Matthew Yglesias - Slow Boring

• Middle-class Americans face retirement insecurity, analysis finds

• Twenty Year Truck Driver: Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End

• The Single Best Investment Of All Time? From $8000 To $5.7 Billion In 14 Months | ZeroHedge

Poilitcks

• Vatican cancels live broadcast of Biden greeting pope

• There Is No Bottom When It Comes to Section 230 Reform Proposals

• Man Arrested For Threatening To Kill Matt Gaetz Worked For CNN, ABC, NBC

• President Trump Responds on Pennsylvania

  • Althouse: "In your editorial 'The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court' (Oct. 25), you state the fact that a court wrongly said mail-in ballots could be counted after Election Day. 'This didn’t matter,' you add..."

• Taxing unrealized capital gains and shifting marginal tax brackets - by Branko - Machine Learning Everything

• Clinton Campaign Spread Alfa Bank Ruse Throughout Obama Admin to Press Trump-Russia Probe | RealClearInvestigations

• Poor parents receiving universal payments increase spending on kids

Law / Crime / Police

• First Covid raised the murder rate. Now it’s changing the politics of crime

• U.S. government owes over $100M for TSA's patent infringement

• San Francisco residents are hiring private security in bid to stay safe

• Men shot by Kyle Rittenhouse cannot be called ‘victims’ in court, judge rules

• Trader Charged With Securities Fraud For Using Twitter To Operate Pump-And-Dump

Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• America Cannot Take on China and Russia Simultaneously

• US has stationed troops on Taiwan, leader Tsai Ing-wen confirms for first time

World

• Ukraine Strikes Russian-Backed Forces Using Turkish-Made TB2 Drones For The First Time

• Why is Asia paying five times more than America for natural gas?

• ‘Only two pages’ of Luxembourg PM’s university thesis were not plagiarised

• China limits construction of 'super high-rise buildings'

• China rations diesel amid fuel shortages

• Taiwan's President says the threat from China is increasing 'every day'

• China's Internet Trolls Go Global – Council on Foreign Relations

Health / Medicine

• The Fluoride Wars Rage On

  Some toxicologists and epidemiologists are now questioning whether even low doses of fluoride can have systemic effects, including causing a dip in IQ in children who were exposed to it in utero. The first indications of this came from studies that compared unfluoridated villages and communities with fluoridated ones (where fluoride is either naturally occurring or added to water), followed by better-controlled studies that measured fluoride in individuals. In the United States, each new study was met with extreme criticism, ridicule and anger that, at times, threatened the careers of those involved.

• CDC Launches New Education Campaigns Aimed at Preventing Drug Overdose Deaths

• Every gene can (and possibly will) be associated with cancer

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The $3.50 go-anywhere ticket to fight climate change

• There’s Still Time to Fix Climate–About 11 Years

• Anthropogenic Climate Change Deep Dive

• Wildfires, deforestation, global heating turn 10 Unesco forests into CO2 sources

• How the Rich Are Driving Climate Change

• Amsterdam bans fossil fuel ads from its metro

• How the rich are driving climate change

• My two-year, 26-country journey to the frontlines of the climate battle

• South America's second-largest river retreats to lowest levels in 77 years

• The New Climate Security Reports