2022-01-26

Cool

• Simulating the IBM 360/50 mainframe from its microcode

etc

• In the 1800s, Jersey Island Was Covered With 12-Foot-Tall Kale

• Pilot and FAA Reveal Bizarre Encounter Unidentified Aircraft over Atlantic City

• January wildfire in Denver may have been caused by smoldering coal mine

• How do you feed an oral contraceptive to 2.5M grey squirrels?

• Playtime: Is it time we took 'play' more seriously?

• Parakeets take over south London neighbourhood Grove Park to delight of locals

Horseshit

• Astronomers fight bias: who gets to use the Webb telescope?

• Solo Bitcoin Miners Are Striking Crypto Gold With Tiny USB-Based Rigs | Tom's Hardware

  • Bad implications for chain integrity and how many actual miners there are, I think.

• You go viral overnight. Now how do you get rich?

• It’s time to take reproduction in space seriously

• Marketplace exploit leads to catastrophic losses for NFT collectors

celebrity gossip

• Gates Foundation expands board following Bill, Melinda split

• Terry Pratchett estate backs Jack Monroe’s idea for ‘Vimes Boots’ poverty index

• Melania Trump’s Auction of Hat Hit by Plunge in Cryptocurrency

COVID / VaxCult

• Long Covid: doctors find ‘antibody signature’ for patients most at risk

• Physician, Mathematician and Data Scientist: N95s Won't Work for Kids

• Psaki Suggests Monoclonal Antibodies 'Don't Work' Against Covid In Bumbling Defense Of FDA Decision

• WHO warns of potential for more variants as omicron subvariant found in US

• OSHA withdraws its workplace vaccine rule

• Nervous System Consequences of Covid

• Taiwan lab fined for biosafety lapses after lab worker contracts Covid-19

• (2017) Original Antigenic Sin

• Smoking status was associated with a lower risk of developing Covid-19

• Man Can’t Get Heart Transplant Because He’s Not Vaccinated Against Covid

• Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA Vaccination, December 2020 to August 2021

• New Research Hints at 4 Factors That May Increase Chances of Long Covid

• Differences in environmental stability among SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern

  • Omicron Survives Longer on Plastic, Skin Than Other COVID Variants

• Businesses in Wales Demand Vaccine Passport Exemptions After Government Fails to Prove They Work – Summit News

• Pfizer Launches Clinical Trial for Omicron Booster Awfully Late....What Gives? | naked capitalism

• Ivermectin trial in treating COVID nearing completion

• Covid-19 Deaths in U.S. Top 2,100 a Day, Highest in Nearly a Year

• Immunoglobulin signature predicts risk of post-acute Covid-19 syndrome

• New study suggests two paths toward ‘super immunity’ to Covid-19

• Multiple Early Factors Anticipate Long Covid-19 Sequelae

• Covid-19, College Academic Performance, and the Flexible Grading Policy

• Washington DC Requires Nude Strippers To Be Masked, Clubs Warned About ‘Staff Not Wearing Masks’ | The Daily Caller

• World’s brightest x-rays reveal Covid-19’s damage to the body

• More than two-thirds of omicron cases are reinfections, English study suggests

• Denmark confirms plan to lift Covid-19 restrictions on February first

• Quebec bans unvaccinated from buying groceries at Walmart, Costco

• Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates | Hacker News

Culture War / Re segregation / Faith Fights

• MSNBC host suggests leftists 'pick up a weapon and get involved' in 'war' for the country

• My Gentle, Intelligent Brother Is Now A Conspiracy Theorist And His Beliefs Are Shocking | HuffPost null

• (2011, PDF) Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge

• Why women being more college educated than men is troubling for society

• Pope tells parents not to condemn children with different sexual orientations

• Apple spotlights Black voices during Black History Month

• Xenophobia meter aims to track anti-immigrant hate speech

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Shovel More Dirt on Pre-K

Media / ShowBiz / Censorship

• Trump’s Big Tech Alternative Free Speech Site Will Have AI Censors

• Could Sarah Palin tear down libel protections for the press?

• America's kids get an internet librarian

TechSuck

• Mark Zuckerberg’s stablecoin ambitions unravel with Diem sale talks

• A bug lurking for 12 years gives attackers root on every major Linux distro | Ars Technica

  Those who can’t patch immediately should use the chmod 0755 /usr/bin/pkexec command to remove the SUID-bit from pkexec, which prevents it from running as a binary. [sic]

  • Argv silliness – pkexec vuln (2013) | Hacker News

• Nvidia RTX 3050 review: For an overpriced 1080p GPU, this could’ve been worse

• How Google Interferes with Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results

• Advanced Packaging Part 3 – Intel’s Curious Bet on Thermocompression Bonding, ASM Pacific, Kulicke and Soffa, and Besi TCB Tool Landscape – SemiAnalysis

Economicon / Business / Finance

• U.S. Companies Down to Five-Day Supply of Key Chips, Report Says

  • ‘Alarming’ Chip Shortages Uncovered by Commerce Department

• eBay will now authenticate all trading cards worth $750 or more

• They Need Legal Advice on Debts. Should It Have to Come from Lawyers?

• EU court annuls Intel’s billion euro antitrust fine issued in 2009

• Fed rate hikes will intensify a global debt crisis, research warns

• Jeremy Grantham Doubles Down on Crash Call, Says Selloff Has Started

• San Francisco is scaring away the tech crowd

• Fed flags rate hike 'soon,' plans for 'significantly reducing' balance sheet

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• ‘CNN has received the talking points’: President Joe Biden ‘deadpanned’ that stupid SOB line about Peter Doocy – twitchy.com

• Remarks by President Biden Before Meeting the White House Competition Council

• Kerik told Jan. 6 panel that former Army colonel came up with idea to seize voting machines

• Privacy concerns are breaking the Census

  The new Census Bureau method “systematically undercounts the population in mixed-race and mixed-partisan precincts, yielding unpredictable racial and partisan biases.”

• Federal disasters declared for 14 Alaska fisheries

• Democratic Supreme Court Justice Breyer Plans To Retire Before Midterms: NBC

• Zogby Poll: Biden lied to get elected and life is worse | Washington Examiner

• What you need to know about the IRS' facial recognition program

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• San Francisco's open air heroin market

• Treating Addiction as a Crime Doesn't Work. What Oregon Is Doing Just Might.

• Pentagon Plans to Spend $52M in 2022 on U.S. Border Spy Blimps

• The Lies Fueling California’s Package-Theft Panic

• Investigation Shows Faulty Drug Tests Resulted in NY Prisoners Wrongly Punished

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Everybody had this one Belarusian railway hacked to disrupt Russian buildup

• Russia Has Been Warning About Ukraine for Decades. The West Should Have Listened

• US F-35 Crashes on Aircraft Carrier in the South China Sea During Exercises

• Kyiv Embassy Warns U.S. Citizens to Consider Departing Country 'Now'

World

• Russia Will Intervene in Ukraine

• Witch Pardoning Spreads to Catalonia

• Also very extensively covered and pushed China gives Fight Club new ending where authorities win

• North Korean internet downed by suspected cyber attacks

• Watch: Ukrainians Attempt To Storm Parliament Building | ZeroHedge

Health / Medicine

• Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Can a Change in Orbit Save Planet Earth?

• Lawsuit alleging oil companies misled public about climate change moves forward

• Carbon offsetting is not warding off environmental collapse–it’s accelerating it

• How to build an online community to fight climate change

• Regions growing coffee, cashews, and avocados shift on a warmer Earth

• Did a mega drought topple empires 4,200 years ago?