2022-01-27

Worthy

• agency/satisfaction - by Ava - bookbear express

• The Folly of Pandemic Censorship

etc

• HRC Observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day

• "relatively nearby, at 4,000 lightyears away" Blasts of flashing radio waves coming from mysterious nearby object in space

  • Mysterious object unlike anything astronomers have seen before - ICRAR

• The Case for Writing Longhand

• The rise of the anti-work movement

• Scientific paper claims octopuses are aliens from outer space

  • All the "octopus intelligence" things the past few months have had me wondering about this. Like they're going to announce "The aliens are here, and they're squid."

• Paternity Leave Advocacy: Why Men Don’t Talk About Paternity Leave

• Californians Now Willing to Admit Why They Are Leaving

• Has the appetite for plant-based meat already peaked?

• Mechanics Warn That Walmart's Budget Bikes Are Built to Fail

Horseshit

• The Finely Pressed, Death-Defying World of Extreme Ironing

• It is time for unqualified people to be sued for bad medical advice

• Is (Pre-Publication) Peer Review a Good Idea? No

• The Speed Limit in Every City Should Be 20 MPH

• Those who don't use emojis on GitHub are 3x more likely to drop out remote work

• What if all workers wrote software, not just the geek elite?

• Mayor Breed's push to streamline housing production killed by supervisors

• Do I Really Need a Toilet?

• BMW Is Planning to Sell Heated Seats and More as a Subscription (No, Really)

• Bored Ape Yacht Club Is Racist and Started by Neo-Nazis

Obit

• Peter Robbins, who voiced Charlie Brown in the 1960s, has died

COVID / VaxCult

• Too young to retire but at risk for Covid, older Americans struggle to find work

• Covid-19 Patients Suffer Long-Term Lung and Heart Damage – Can Recover with Time

• (Oct 2021) Nature of the Covid-era public health disaster in the USA

  We conclude that a pandemic did not occur. We infer that persistent chronic psychological stress induced by the long-lasting government-imposed societal and economic transformations during the COVID-era converted the existing societal (poverty), public-health (obesity) and hot-climate risk factors into deadly agents, largely acting together, with devastating population-level consequences against large pools of vulnerable and disadvantaged residents of the USA, far above preexisting pre-COVID-era mortality in those pools. We also find a large COVID-era USA pneumonia epidemic that is not mentioned in the media or significantly in the scientific literature, which was not adequately addressed. Many COVID-19-assigned deaths may be misdiagnosed bacterial pneumonia deaths.

• New x-ray scanning technology reveals Covid-19’s damage to the body

• Why hospitals are denying transplants for patients who aren’t vaccinated

• Moderna starts trial for Omicron-specific booster shot

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

• Pfizer Moves to Intervene in High-Profile Case for Covid-19 Vaccine Safety Data

• 'Just wear a mask and don't tell anyone': Workplaces are filling up with sick

• One doctor’s perspective on COVID – Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

• Omicron Deaths in U.S. Exceed Delta’s Peak

• Long-COVID symptoms less likely in vaccinated people, Israeli data say

• Long Covid expert says the world is in ‘deep trouble’ and millions may suffer debilitating issues

• Japan gov’t to allow COVID diagnoses without testing as omicron cases surge

• Germany: Lawmakers debate introducing COVID vaccine mandate

• Florida Governor DeSantis demands COVID treatments deemed ineffective by FDA

• The Case Against Masks at School

• Has the Covid-19 pandemic made us more materialistic?

• US diplomatic officials forced to undergo anal COVID tests in China.

• What now? How pandemics end

  Mis- and dis-information campaigns have infiltrated trust in science and medicine across the world. For example, the vaccination rate is very low (30%) in South Africa, but not because of supply, instead people just don’t trust the vaccines. We need to work very hard to build trust in science on a global level.

• FDA Asks Court to Delay First 55K Page Production Until May, Pfizer Intervenes

• Sweden decides against recommending Covid vaccines for kids aged 5-12

• First, You Decide That Kids Belong in School

• Parents who kept kids at home for fear of Covid are reported for neglect

• Republicans Are Making It Easier for Doctors to Prescribe Shady Covid Treatments

• Last living signer of Canadian constitutional charter sues gvt over Covid bans

Culture War / Re segregation / Faith Fights

• By 2050, 1/4 of the world’s people will be African – this will shape our future

• America Has Split, and It’s Now in Dangerous Territory

• No, America is not on the brink of civil war

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Tennessee school board bans Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust novel, Maus

  Ten McMinn county board members unanimously agreed in favour of removing the novel from the eighth-grade curriculum, citing its use of the phrase “God Damn” and drawings of “naked pictures” of women, according to minutes taken from a board of education meeting earlier this month.

  + [McMinn County Bans “Maus”, Pulitzer Prize Winning Holocaust Book
  | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30094295)
  

  • Tennessee School Board Bans Holocaust Graphic Novel over ‘Vulgar’ Words, Themes

• School district denies litter boxes for students identifying as ‘furries’.

• Human Capital Is Real, and Some People Are Smarter Than Other People

Media / ShowBiz / Censorship

• Subreddit r/antiwork goes private after fox news interview debacle

  • Anti-Work Subreddit Suddenly Goes Private

• Spotify Takes Down Neil Young’s Music After His Joe Rogan Ultimatum

  • Spotify to keep antivaxxer instead of rocker

• Pay transparency series by Insider goes horribly wrong | Hacker News

• Naomi Wu Demonetized on YouTube | Hacker News

• Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

• Anti-vaxxers making ‘at least $2.5m’ a year from publishing on Substack

TechSuck

• Security/Referrer - MozillaWiki

  • 'network.http.referer.spoofSource' in about:config : "true = send the target URL as the referrer"

• Despite Decades of Hacking Attacks, Companies Leave Sensitive Data Unprotected

• Apple to enable NFC payments on iPhones via software update

• Nothing Sacred: These Apps Reserve The Right To Sell Your Prayers

• Muslim Prayer Apps Sold Location Data to a Controversial Data Broker

• The First Standard to Assure a Photo’s Authenticity Has Been Created

• Google relents: Legacy G Suite users will be able to migrate to free accounts

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Judge imposes strike ban on 17,000 BNSF railway workers

• Japan’s favorite snack falls victim to global inflation in first ever price hike

• Is the Great Resignation Overblown?

• Kevin Erdmann was right - Econlib

  I was just shooting from the hip when I questioned the housing bubble view that was so popular after 2006. Credit should go to Kevin Erdmann, who produced a mountain of evidence against the bubble hypothesis in two very impressive books on housing. His view, which was once highly contrarian, has now been completely vindicated. Indeed, I don’t see how any fair-minded person reading his books could still believe in the housing bubble theory. Unfortunately, he’ll probably be ignored. The media tends to focus on academic research from top schools like Harvard, not unaccredited individuals working on their own. Better to be famous than to be right.

• Amazon’s Banned China Sellers Turn to Walmart’s Marketplace

• US GDP Soared In Q4 To 6.9% Despite Omicron, Driven By Huge Inventory Accumulation | ZeroHedge

  the surge in private inventories was most remarkable: as shown below, Q4 saw the 2nd highest inventory restocking on record (although one wouldn't know it by looking at all those bare shelves).

• It’s Hard to Tell When the Crypto Bubble Will Burst, or If There Is One

• Worried about inflation? In Argentina, it’s a way of life

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Breyer to Retire

  • By-the-book Breyer said to be miffed retirement leaked.

  • Biden’s Pledge to Nominate Black Woman to SCOTUS in Spotlight as Breyer Plans Retirement

• Democrats Rushing Through Massive Ukraine Defense Bill

  • Democrats’ Russia sanction bill could lead to a diplomatic disaster

• The need to deregulate legal advice

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Vast Troves of Classified Info Undermine National Security, Spy Chief Says

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. urges de-escalation over Ukraine, offers Russia diplomatic path

• Russia could unleash cyberattacks, effort to sow confusion, division more likely

• Taiwan is not Ukraine: Stop linking their fates

• Ukraine crisis: Nord Stream 2 pipeline could be axed, US warns

• 27 Russian Diplomats Expelled From US - Embassy Laments "Very Bitter Event"

• Culture Wars and Russia/Ukraine Foreign Policy

• The race is on to reach sunken US F-35C before China

World

• In Iran a French tourist was sentenced to 8 years prison for taking drone photos

• Russia, Ukraine Agree To Uphold Donbas Ceasefire In Normandy Format Talks

• Mapping Ukraine and Russia on the edge of war

• Why is Ukraine such an economic failure? - by Noah Smith

Health / Medicine

• Bird Flu Is Back in the US. No One Knows What Comes Next

• Children of smokers have lower test scores and more behavioural issues

• A Rare Brain Mutation Spread Across America

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• We can restore the Earth's climate if we want to – and we should

• Why Environmentalists Pose a Bigger Obstacle to Effective Climate Policy

• The Cheap and Easy Climate Fix That Can Cool the Planet Fast

• The Once-Extinct Auroch May Soon Roam Europe Again

• Gas stoves leak methane even when they’re off

  • Americans’ Gas Stoves Are as Bad for Climate as 500k Cars

  • Gas stove is always polluting, even when it’s turned off

• Evidence that glaciers may have caused the Great Unconformity

• Axolotls among most widespread amphibians on Earth, almost extinct in the wild