2022-02-21

Cool

• A Ball Lens For Optical Fiber Coupling On The Cheap

Worthy

• Long and rambling, but worthy: The Dignity of the Body: Why Medical Rights Are Fundamental Now More Than Ever

  • HN thread

• I was wrong, we need crypto

  I still can't believe that this is the protest that would prove every Bitcoin crank a prophet. And for me to have to slice a piece of humble pie, and admit that I was wrong on crypto's fundamental necessity in Western democracies. And that it was the Canadians who brought this on? You might as well have told me that it was really the Care Bears who ran Abu Ghraib.

  • HN thread

etc

• Is The Plural of Anecdote Data? - Parrhesia’s Newsletter

• Data Intuition Case Study: Grain-free Dog Food

• It’s George Washington’s Birthday, Not Presidents Day

• Mike Rowe scholarship highlights the lost virtues of hard work and sweat | Washington Examiner

Crypto con games

• Why the NFT Market Will Collapse

• ‘Crypto Ruined My Life’: The Mental Health Crisis Hitting Bitcoin Investors

• Crypto Scammers’ New Target: Dating Apps

celebrity gossip

• John McAfee died by suicide in prison, Spanish judge rules

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing

• Inside Responsibility: What’s next on our misinfo efforts

• In the long run, wars make us safer and richer

• US re-erecting Capitol fence for Biden speech – media — RT World News

• USCP Plans for Extra Security Ahead of the Joint Session of Congress | United States Capitol Police

  The temporary inner-perimeter fence is part of those ongoing discussions and remains an option, however at this time no decision has been made.

Castro Jr's Canada

• Trudeau Government Moves to Make Expanded Surveillance Powers over Financial Transactions ‘Permanent.’

• Justin Trudeau Said He Admired China’s Dictatorship. Canadians Should Have Believed Him

• “A group representing Canadian journalists says it is shocked by the level of hatred, verbal harassment and physical confrontations some news reporters have experienced while covering protests against public-health measures cross the country.”

• “Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said this weekend that he will launch a legal challenge against the federal government’s ‘unnecessary and disproportionate’ use of the Emergencies Act to dismantle protests against COVID-19 measures.”

• Trudeau’s Destructive ‘Emergency:’ The truckers protest could have been handled without abusing the law.

• Ottawa Police Kidnapping Protesters.

• We had to beat up Indigenous People to stop the racists!

  • Woman trampled by Trudeau's forces during freedom protest identified as Indigenous elder | The Post Millennial

• Canadian Veteran: Trudeau Has Declared War On His Own People

• THE COLUMN: From Behind the Unreasoning Mask | The Pipeline

• Canada Moves to Make Asset Freezing Under Emergencies Act Permanent – Summit News

  “Some of those tools we will be putting forward measures to put those tools permanently in place. The authorities of FINTRAC, I believe, do need to be expanded to cover crowdsourcing platforms and payment platforms,”

  • Trudeau Government Moves to Make Financial Surveillance Powers ‘Permanent’

• Was the hacking of Ottawa trucker convoy donors a US-Canadian intelligence operation?

• Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act: Power Without Responsibility? | naked capitalism

  Canada appears a long way from Trumpist fascism. However, one should recall that fascism does not storm bastions of power; it is let into power’s corridors by those in charge.

• Trucker protests in Ottawa are winding down after police made 191 arrests and towed 76 vehicles away

COVID / VaxCult

• Impaired detection of Omicron by SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen tests

• A “Striking” Link Between Vitamin D Levels and Omicron

• Virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 BA2 variant: more pathogenic than BA1

• Why don’t some people want to get the vaccine

• UK PM Boris Johnson to lift all remaining Covid restrictions in England

• ICAN-Obtained Email Shows Alliance Between White House, Facebook, and Pharma - ICAN - Informed Consent Action Network

• CDC admits it withheld data from the public to avoid creating vaccine hesitancy

• Children should face fewer Covid restrictions than adults

• Vaccine makers announce slowdowns for omicron-specific booster

• NIH Sent The Intercept 292 Fully Redacted Pages Related to Virus Research in Wuhan.

• Nowhere is safe: Record number of patients contracted Covid in the hospital in January

• Baltimore public health professional exposes horrific conditions during the Omicron surge

• Whatever Happened to Biden’s Pandemic Testing Board?

• Coronavirus: Hong Kong confirms more than 7,500 new cases, vaccine pass to launch in days as residents urged to stay home

• "Just Scandalous": CDC Withholding Most of the Covid Data It Gathers. What Is It Trying to Hide? | naked capitalism

  I met someone recently who works in the tech world doing quite advanced stuff, and he genuinely thought that 99% of the people who are dying are unvaccinated. In reality for very recent time periods (i.e. deep into the Omicron wave) I have only seen numbers for Israel, UK, WA, and MA and the majority of people dying now, 50% to 80%, are in fact vaccinated.

• First report from the German Covid-19 autopsy registry

• CDC quietly lowers the bar for early childhood speech development.

• California is just straight-up admitting they're going to keep children masked until the teachers unions say it's okay for them to be unmasked again.

• Got a Covid Booster? You Probably Won’t Need Another for a Long Time

Culture War / Tribal / Re segregation

• Why Progressives Don't Care For Black Lives

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Imagine if a lemon law penalized schools for rotten educations

• (2017) Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hypercompetition

• Yale’s Happiness Professor Says Anxiety Is Destroying Her Students

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Bots and Fake Accounts Push China’s Vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland

• Donald Trump’s social media app launches on Apple store

  + [Trump’s social media app will reportedly go live on Presidents’
  Day](https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/20/22943510/trump-social-network-truth-social-presidents-day-launch)
  

  • Trump's social media app goes live in Apple's App Store

  • Trump's Truth Social tops downloads on Apple App Store; many waitlisted

  • Trump’s New Social Media App Shows Errors on Launch Day

TechSuck

• Intel Details Its Bitcoin-Mining 'Bonanza Mine' Chips and 3,600-Watt Miner

• Clearview AI with 100B photos will have worldwide facial recognition ability

• Apple retail employees organize a union using Android phones to prevent spying

• Chris Lattner left Swift core team | Hacker News

Economicon / Business / Finance

• IT vendors set to use headline inflation to justify price hike

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Our outdated marijuana laws put Americans in danger

• Kamala's trip to Ukraine to prevent WW3 went about exactly as you'd expect 🤦‍♂️ | Not the Bee

• The rejection of Bidenomics - by Noah Smith - Noahpinion

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Shooting leaves one dead and five injured at Portland Black Lives Matter Protest

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Havana Syndrome: High-level natl security officials stricken unexplained illness

• A new era of transparent warfare begins

• USA to preemptively attack bad cyber actors

• I'll Be Against the Next "Good War" Too - Freddie deBoer

Ukraine

• US warns that Moscow could strike at any time

• The TikTok War

• Russia-Ukraine: New intel adds to US fears that Russia is readying for military action - CNNPolitics

  (Updated 4:50 PM ET, Sun February 20, 2022) The US has intelligence indicating orders have been sent to Russian commanders to proceed with an attack on Ukraine, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the US intelligence.

• Reporting on what CBS reports said on "Face the Nation" this morning: Russian Military Has ‘Received Orders Now To Proceed With The Invasion’ Of Ukraine, Report Says | The Daily Wire

• FBI Braces for Russian Cyber Attacks in US as Ukraine Tensions Rise

• Russia Extends Belarus Drills for Thousands of Troops as Ukraine Violence Escalates

• Defending the rule of law | Virgin

  The world must support Ukraine. We must not abandon a country that voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons in return for peace, and is now on the verge of being invaded by the very country that persuaded it to do so.

• Futures Surge After Putin Accepts Macron Proposal For Ukraine Summit With Biden | ZeroHedge

• Modern Ukraine and the spread of democracy in the former Soviet bloc countries

• LOL: Watch Blinken sputter and stumble over why Putin didn’t DARE try this while TRUMP was president | News Thud

• Ukrainians ‘to be killed or sent to camps’ following a military occupation

• Russia Planning Post-Invasion Arrest and Assassination Campaign in Ukraine

• Moscow claims it killed five Ukrainian troops who crossed into Russia Archive link

  Russia has claimed it destroyed two Ukrainian military vehicles straying into its territory, killing five people, in an unconfirmed incident that would be the first direct clashes with Ukrainian forces since Moscow mobilised 190,000 troops on its border.

• Security Alert: U.S. Mission Russia (February 20, 2022)

• Ron Klain Organizes a Stunning, Massive and Magnificent Biden-Putin Peace Summit Certain to Bring Nobel Peace Nomination - The Last Refuge

  Everything about the Russia invasion of Ukraine has to be increasingly imminent, horrible and loomingly catastrophic for the planet, so that when it doesn’t happen the glorious victory for Dear Leader Biden can be proclaimed and amplified from the mountaintops. Russia has absolutely no plan to invade Ukraine and doesn’t even have a role in this theatrical production from the White House.

• Russian Intel Chief Claims Capture Of Ukrainian POW As Putin Considers "Independence" Of Donbas | ZeroHedge

• Optimism Fades After Russia Says "No Concrete Plans" For Biden-Putin Summit | ZeroHedge

• The Burden Of Proof Is Always On The Ones Making The Claim (Even If It’s About Russia) – Caitlin Johnstone

• The Evidence for Invasion the US Could Produce – Consortium News

• Ukraine Crisis Version Of Iraq WMD: Putin To Send "LGBTQI+ Persons" To "Camps" | ZeroHedge

• Russia Will Recognize 2 Separatist Regions in Ukraine, Kremlin Says

• Ukraine Calls for U.N. Security Council Meeting as Russian Forces Mass on Borders

• Intel: US says it has credible information about Russian 'kill list' in potential Ukraine Invasion

• Putin will recognise breakaway regions as independent states, Kremlin confirms

• Putin to recognise Ukraine rebel regions’ independence

• Europe, US Preparing To Impose Sanctions On Russia | ZeroHedge

• Moscow Says US Embassy "Out Of Touch With Reality" After Dire "Terror Alert" | ZeroHedge

World

• Beijing Winter Olympics officially closes with stunning ceremony

• India’s proposed 30% tax on digital asset income is overall a positive

Health / Medicine

• Human beings are the only species with a teenage phase

• Miscarriage may be linked to changes in vaginal bacteria

• Masking may have put one of the 4 major flu lines into extinction

• Average Body Temperature Takes a Dip

• Long workouts and high protein: What eating disorders look like in men and boys

• Eating Vegetables Does Not Protect Against Heart Disease

• How Covid Changed Medicine for the Future

• Once-taboo ketamine booms for US at-home mental care.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• If The Desert Was Green: Mass tree-planting in the desert cause lasting damage

• The staggering ecological impacts of computation and the cloud | Hacker News

• The strange reason migrating birds are flocking to cities

• California Will Stick Solar Panels over Canals to Fight Two Disasters at Once

• Cheap Gasoline Can Be Part of a Good Climate Policy

• Atlassian Co-Founder Wants to Buy Australia’s Biggest Polluter to Make It Green

• Is Coca-Cola Serious About Returnable Bottles?