2022-01-17

• Martin Luther King I Have a Dream Speech - American Rhetoric

Cool

• Brew Perfect Coffee with Chemistry Equipment

Worthy

• In Praise of Corn Ethanol - Doomberg

  A standard trick of the public relations trade when confronting a terrible narrative like the ugly legacy of leaded gasoline is to divert attention to other problems, no matter the problem. By creating and stoking a debate about corn ethanol as a fuel, your attention is diverted away from its primary role as an anti-knocking additive. The goal is to get you to forget about the ugly history of TEL.

• A high-dimensional sphere spilling out of a high-dimensional cube despite exponentially many constraints | Stanislav Fort

  • I understand some of these words. Then there's another voice saying "this explains turbulence"

etc

• Sun Yuan and Peng Yu Installation Becomes Bizarre TikTok Hit – ARTnews.com

• Flights sent to assess Tonga damage after volcanic eruption

• (June 2021) Devices of Unknown Origin Part III: “Mr. Secretary, We Don’t Know” - The Debrief

• China says tickets for Winter Olympics will not be sold to general public due to Covid-19

• A massive asteroid the size of the Empire State Building is about to pass Earth

• 1,200 US flights canceled Monday as winter storm pummels East Coast

• Jonathan the tortoise: 190-year-old becomes the worlds oldest living land animal

• State nonprofit offers tech workers thousands in bitcoin to relocate | Fox Business

• Seventh grader dies after being exposed to fentanyl

Horseshit

• NFT Investors Owe Billions in Taxes as U.S. Officials Crack Down

• Lego sued over leather jacket worn by toy

• A Simple Plan to Solve All of America’s Problems

• SpiceDAO misunderstands copyright, wasting $3M buying rare Dune storyboard

  • €2.6M spent for a book at auction, believed they would own the IP | Hacker News

• America Is Falling Apart at the Seams

• Coulda grabbed another half dozen headlines on this one. "Quietly" quoth the PR flaks. Walmart is quietly preparing to enter the metaverse

celebrity gossip

• The Semi-Inside Story of Why Trump Refused to Pardon Snowden and Assange

  They were making very clear to him explicitly clear Republican senators like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell that if you do any of those things that you are considering doing, pardoning Assange and Snowden, declassifying JFK files, declassifying other secrets that should have been declassified long ago because they're from decades old treachery on the part of the US government, we will vote to impeach you. They had this leverage the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and I am not saying this to justify Trump's cowardly refusal to do what he should have done in pardoning Edward Snowden, then Julian Assange.

• World’s 10 richest men doubled their wealth during pandemic

Obit

• Celebrated Tuskeegee Airman Charles McGee dies at 102

COVID / VaxCult

• Pregnant people are still not getting vaccinated against Covid

• States Investigating Surge In Mortality Rate Among 18–49-Year-Olds, Majority Unrelated To COVID-19 | ZeroHedge

• Long Covid: probably worth avoiding–some considerations

• Mike Lindell says bank is closing his accounts over fear of reputational damage

• You people are just vectors of disease to me

• There are signs omicron is about to crest in Bay Area. One is in our wastewater

• Seven ways COVID can affect your brain

• The Covid generation: how is the pandemic affecting kids’ brains?

• UK schools receive 300k CO2 monitors in gov initiative to reduce COVID19 spread

• My triple-vaxxed, 85-year-old mother caught COVID. Medical triage made her doctor useless.

• Column: A new study calculates the incredible cost of ivermectin stupidity

• Making Paxlovid

• COVID-19: Democratic Voters Support Harsh Measures Against Unvaccinated

• Variants Fuel Decline in Student Mental Health Inside

• Back To Normal Isn't Enough | Defector

  The United States does not become the kind of country that threatens its citizens with onerous hospital bills as part of a vaccine promotion campaign by accident. This is how the country was built, and how the system has grown to work; it is how it was designed. Even miraculous innovation on the order of MRNA vaccines is not used to make everyone’s lives better. It was only marketed that way, for a little while.

  We do not deserve to go back to a normal that is so terribly bad for most people. We do not deserve to pay more for worse things. We do not deserve to be sold the lie that it is just more important for companies to make money than it is for us to live. Certainly no one would choose that, if they felt they had a choice.

• The poor die from Covid while the rich get richer, Oxfam warns

• Apple: Unvaxed employees will need negative Covid tests before coming to work

• Beijing locks down office building after single Omicron case

• Beijing Says International Mail Is Possible Culprit in First Omicron Case

• Australia has decided to let Covid rip

• Israel Trial Suggests 4th Dose Not Warding Off Omicron Infection

• The case for updating Covid-19 vaccines for the Omicron variant

• Coronavirus: Game Over - by Tomas Pueyo

• Google Mandates US Workers Submit To Weekly COVID-19 Tests, Surgical Masks

Culture War / Re segregation / Faith Fights

• Michigan’s Dana Nessel Speculates ‘White Supremacy’ to Blame for Texas Synagogue Terrorist Attack

• Want true equity? California should force parents to give away their children

• Glasnost Goes West · The Art of Defeat

  The glasnost comparison is much more troubling. If so many people have peeked into the sausage factory of our own past, they aren't going to forget what they saw. As a result, the foundations of Western self-esteem may have been critically undermined. Yet I think this is exactly where we are, and we should adapt our risk calculations accordingly.

• We’re Losing Our Humanity, and the Pandemic Is to Blame

• (2021) A Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict over Critical Race Theory

Media / ShowBiz / Censorship

• '270 doctors’ called out Joe Rogan, but the authors of the letter and the vast majority of its signatories are not medical doctors

• DirecTV Dumps OAN, Leaving It with No Major TV Distributor

• Activision seeks Call of Duty cheatmakers' real names

• Unredacted Antitrust Complaint Shows Google’s Ad Biz Even Scummier Than Imagined

  Honestly, I am not surprised. Online ads are a cesspool and make gig economy platforms look good. When Uber is caught out cheating by showing drivers a lower gross fare than what passengers actually paid, it goes “Mumble mumble” and narrowly corrects the bad practice. By contrast, as a small publisher, I have no way of verifying anything my ad service tells me because I have no audit rights. I have no idea how much they are skimming on top of what I’ve agreed to pay them.

• Nigeria Lifts 7-Month Ban on Twitter

• China Embassy Twitter Still Locked One Year Later

TechSuck

• Hark back to the late 1990s with this re-creation of the dialup Internet experience | Ars Technica

• Making Open Source software safer and more secure

• Can 5G be used as surveillance radar? U.S. military funds Binghamton research

• Is Open Source Free If We Aren’t Allowed to Break It?

  • HN thread

• Microsoft Blacklisting Linode IPs

• Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell | Hacker News

• US-China chip cold war? It's only helping the Middle Kingdom, silicon makers

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Apparently still ongoing: Hackers disrupt payroll for thousands of employers, including hospitals

  • HN thread

• Amazon UK and Visa credit card reach a deal

• Empty grocery shelves return as sick employees, supply chain delays collide

• McDonald's To Slash Hours By 10% Due To Labor Shortage

• The $800B PPP: Where Did the Money Go and Why Did It Go There?

• Hope on the Horizon - BIG by Matt Stoller

• Visa survey says that 24% of small businesses plan to accept Bitcoin in 2022

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The moment Joe Biden finally lost his credibility | Washington Examiner

• UAE Adviser Illegally Funneled Foreign Cash into Hillary Clinton's 2016 Campaign

• Dems are using the Capitol riot to hunt political foes

• How the states have become labratories of autocracy

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI Changes Tune On Synagogue Hostage Situation: ‘The Jewish Community Was Targeted’ | The Daily Wire

  • FBI Claims Attack on Synagogue 'Not Specifically Related to Jewish Community'

    • First Thing: Teenagers arrested in UK over Texas synagogue siege | US news | The Guardian

  Two teenagers have been arrested in Manchester, north-west England, after the FBI said an armed British man travelled to Texas and took four hostages at a synagogue in what President Joe Biden called “an act of terror”. Last night, UK counter-terrorism police said the pair, whose ages and genders they did not immediately confirm, had been arrested in the south of the city as part of the investigation into the attack and remained in custody for questioning.

• Rail Theft Soars in California

  + [Union Pacific Official Blames L.A.’S Policies for Train
  Thefts](https://www.dailywire.com/news/union-pacific-official-blames-l-a-s-far-left-policies-for-massive-train-thefts-considers-leaving-l-a)
  

  • Union Pacific Addresses LA Cargo Thefts; Problem Requires Collective Effort

    • HN thread

• US to end case against Gang Chen, MIT scientist accused of hiding ties to China

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Russia issues subtle threats more far-reaching than a Ukraine invasion Archive link

  “Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, fast and tough,” Mr. Putin said last April, referring to the kinds of unconventional military action that Russia could take if adversaries threatened “our fundamental security interests.” The current crisis was touched off by the Kremlin’s release of a series of demands that, if the U.S. and its allies agreed, would effectively restore Russia’s sphere of influence close to Soviet-era lines, before NATO expanded into Eastern Europe. It has also demanded that all U.S. nuclear weapons be withdrawn from Europe, saying it felt threatened by their presence — though the types and locations of those weapons haven’t changed in years. And it wants a stop to all Western troop rotations through former Warsaw Pact states that have since joined NATO.

• False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory | ZeroHedge

• Time for NATO to Close Its Door

World

• Tonga tsunami: Anxious wait for news after Tonga cut off

• Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India

• Tthe long-term effects of protestant activities in China - ScienceDirect

• Japan’s Shift to the Right: Computational Propaganda, Abe Shinzō’s LDP, and Internet Right-Wingers (Netto Uyo)

• Ukraine ex-president returns to Kiev for treason trial

• Nigeria's economy: Why people are buying sanitary pads in packs of two

• China's birth rate drops for a fifth straight year to record low

• Russia detains six more suspected REvil group members

• Faint echoes of Ford pardoning Nixon in possible Netanyahu plea deal

• Far-right French presidential candidate found guilty of racist hate speech

• Eastern Europe Tests New Forms of Media Censorship

Health / Medicine

• Aduhelm and Medicare | Science | AAAS

  Yesterday the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) finally announced their decision: they will not pay for Aduhelm outside of its use in a controlled clinical trial. I think that's an excellent call, and I can recommend the full CMS document as a summary of the state of Alzheimer's research and therapy. It goes into the reasons to believe that amyloid is an appropriate target for treating the disease, and it goes into the reasons to doubt that idea.

• Revealed: Many common omega-3 fish oil supplements are ‘rancid’

• It's Misleading to Call Addiction a Disease

• We Have an Obesity Problem in This Country

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Earth is running low on wildlife. Plants will be next

• Get Ready for More Volcanic Eruptions as the Planet Warms

• Schwarzenegger: Solar Panels on 1M Roofs in Calif. That Win Is Now Under Threat

• The World Was Cooler in 2021 Than 2020. That’s Not Good News

• China’s coal production hit record levels in 2021