2022-03-02

Worthy

• P. J. O'Rourke, 1947-2022 - Slack Tide by Matt Labash

etc

• Microaddictions - by Scott Alexander - Astral Codex Ten

• Finally, we know production costs for SLS and Orion, and they’re wild.

Horseshit

• An Economy Built for Men - by Thomas Klaffke

  The electric car was seen as being “feminine”, simply because it was slower, cleaner, had a lower radius, needed less maintenance, and was generally less dangerous. The “real man” would of course drive a smokey and noisy car - a muscle car that drives fast and far.

• Fire Victims Trying to Live Out of RVs on Burned Property; Town Code Prohibits

celebrity gossip

• Surprise Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson | Hacker News

  • Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter for 4 secret novels raises $15M in first day

Obit

• Priscilla Tolkien (1929-2022) | File 770

• Duvall Hecht, founder of Books On Tape, has died

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing

• NYT: In Germany, Threats Grow as Far Right and Pandemic Protestors Merge

• Defending Freedom And Democracy Sure Requires An Awful Lot Of Censorship

COVID / VaxCult

• Understanding Risk (Of Covid Mortality)

• Is COVID Policy Comedy, Tragedy, Or Both? | ZeroHedge

• Covid-19: Why Are We Ignoring Infection-Acquired Immunity?

• China quietly plans a pivot from ‘zero Covid’

• Plasma air conditioning technology inactivates Covid aerosol in real-time

• Respiratory infections like whooping cough and flu have plummeted amid COVID. But ‘bounce back’ is a worry

• “Why I think Omicron does not signal the end of the pandemic”

• Researchers find link between nerve damage and long Covid

• Correction, Mr. President: It’s a Deadly Pandemic of the Vaccinated Too.

• Scientists seek to solve mystery of why some people do not catch Covid

Culture War / Tribal / Re segregation

• At what point do we notice the misogyny of transactivism?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Asian-Americans Fight Back Against School Discrimination

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The Quest to Unwoke CNN

• Taking An Attack Column To Task - by Jeffrey Carter

• As Ukraine misinformation rages, Twitter's fact-checking tool is a no-show

• Journalists at Gizmodo and related websites go on strike

• Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

TechSuck

• Hackers now demand Nvidia should make drivers open source or they leak more data

• Intel, AMD, Arm, and Others Collaborate on Universal Chiplet Interconnect

• Fitbit recalls 1M smartwatches over burn hazard

• Thailand's Hard Drive Industry Problem - by Jon Y

• 3G’s Sunset Takes Aging Cars and Medical Devices With It - IEEE Spectrum

Crypto con games

• Millions for Crypto Startups, No Real Names Necessary

• Binance CEO Says Blocking All Russians from Crypto Exchange Is ‘Unethical’

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Nord Stream 2 declares bankruptcy

  • Nord Stream 2 declares bankruptcy

• Credit Suisse asks investors to destroy oligarch loans documents

• Furnace Repair Businesses Endure Long Winter of Parts Shortages

• Ford will split EVs and legacy autos into separate units

• $10 toothpaste? U.S. household goods makers face blowback on price hikes

• White House Quietly Calls On US Oil Companies To Increase Production

• Oil soars above $110 as markets 'panic' over Russia

• Powell Kills March 50bps Rate Hike, But Leaves Door Open For Later In 2022 | ZeroHedge

• Amazon to close all of its physical bookstores and '4-star' shops

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• State of the Union 2022

• Special Counsel Finds Zuckerbergs Election Money Violated Wisconsin Bribery Laws

• How a High School Debate Team Shaped Ketanji Brown Jackson

• Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert Heckle Biden at State of the Union

• Biden threatens Big Tech over its “national experiment” on children

• Biden’s ‘fund the police’ comment draws backlash from some BLM activists, support from others

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Kamala Harris Slammed Over ‘Terrifying’ Explanation Of War In Ukraine: ‘She Is The Michael Scott Of Politics’ | The Daily Wire

  “So Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong.”

World

• Afghans forced to sell their kidneys as extreme hunger tightens its grip

• Czechs Could Face 3 Years In Prison For Supporting Russia On Social Media | ZeroHedge

• Questions remain about videotaped Mexico 'massacre' – AP News

• Energy inflation rate in the EU hits 27% in Jan 2022

• Russian military helicopter violates Japanese airspace

• For Trudeau, There Are Only Canadians Who Agree With Him—and Nazis

Health / Medicine

• Why the FDA finally approved a condom for anal sex.

• White people at much higher risk of most cancers in England, study finds

• Evidence Grows for Vaping’s Role in Gum Disease

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• UN Climate 'Atlas of human suffering', worse, bigger

• Kill Them All: Will Australia’s War with Feral Horses Ever End?

• Hollywood Airport files environmental lawsuit against California’s bullet train

Ukraine War

• Russia bans coupon payments to foreigners holding rouble bonds

• European Union bans any dissemination of RT/Sputnik content on TV and Internet

• Russia's Lavrov says a third World War would be nuclear and destructive

• Ukraine Conflict Update 12

  • NATO and EU countries continued providing military aid but reneged on promised fighter jets for Ukraine on March 1.
  • European and Ukrainian leaders advanced efforts to quickly admit Ukraine to the EU on March 1.

etc

• Apple halts product sales in Russia

• The largest sovereign wealth fund says it'll dump its Russian assets

• Boeing suspends parts, maintenance and technical support services for Russia

• The impact of throwing Russia out of Swift

• What Happened to Russia's Air Force?

• Russian Troop Deaths Expose a Potential Weakness of Putin’s Strategy

• The Internet Is a Force Multiplier for Ukraine

• Ukraine wages ‘information insurgency’ to keep Russia off balance

• No need to declare captured Russian tanks, other equipment of invaders as income

• Russia Scrambles to Maintain Oil Sales, Lifeblood of Economy

• Qt blocks Russian IP addresses for paying customers

• TikTok Was Designed for War

• Putin prohibits leaving Russia with more than $10k in foreign currency

• Researchers gather evidence of possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine

• Kazakh oil flows caught in Russian export problems, traders say

• Ukraine: Watching the war on Russian TV – a whole different story

• Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains

• Interpreting the first few days of the Russo-Ukrainian war

• The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin

• U.S. to Ban Russian Flights from American Airspace

• ‘Local’ Russian GPS jamming in Ukraine hasn’t affected US support ops, so far

• Putin’s War Is Europe’s 9/11

• No fly zones and the Russian nuclear threat

• RU's aggression against UA: EU bans certain Russian banks from SWIFT system

• Russian forces close in on Ukraine’s capital as death toll mounts

• Reports That Ukraine Is About To Get 70 Donated Fighter Jets Don’t Add Up

• Black Sea Insurance Rates Soar As NATO Fails To Protect Commercial Shipping

• Follow the money: how Russia will bypass western economic warfare

• Shocking Lessons U.S. Military Leaders Learned by Watching Putin’s Invasion.

  One retired U.S. Army general told Newsweek in an email: “We know that Russia has a plodding army and that Russian military force has always been a blunt instrument, but why risk the antipathy of the entire planet if you have no prospect of achieving even minimal gains.” The Army general believes that the only explanation is that the Kremlin overestimated its own forces.

• How the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Is Playing Out on Wikipedia

• EU checking if cryptoassets being used to bust Russian sanctions – EU official

• Tech's crackdown on Russian propaganda is a geopolitical high-wire act

• Analysis: Russia will struggle to occupy Ukraine

• Sandbags and soldiers as Ukraine leader gives interview under siege

• Russia places extraordinary demands on OneWeb prior to satellite launch

• Russia says its economy is taking 'serious blows' as isolation grows

• Ukraine conflict splinters the global internet

• Ukraine as Swiss Mongolia: Neutrality as an End to War

• (feb 26) The economic consequences of the war in Ukraine

• Putin’s public approval soared as Russia prepared to attack Ukraine

• A summary of what Russian nationalist accounts think

  Overall, complete dehumanisation of Ukraine, dismissal rather than aggressive challenging of the West (yesterday's hegemon) and the start of a RU golden era.

• Namecheap offers free, anonymous anti-Putin/regime hosting

• Gerhard Schroeder refuses to resign from Russian energy company boards

• Ukraine: Putin has already carried out war crimes – Boris Johnson

• Russia will treat any hacking of its satellites as a justification for war

• Factorio Devs Support Ukraine

• Crypto exchanges won't bar Russians, raising fears of sanctions backdoor

• Russia's Navalny calls Putin insane and urges anti-war protests

• The impossible suddenly becomes possible

• Airbus halts Russia parts, studying engineering centre options

• EU Hits Belarus With New Sanctions As Pentagon Says "No Indication" Its Troops In Ukraine | ZeroHedge

• Keyboard army using restaurant reviews to take on Russian state media

• Russian parliament to vote on imposition of martial law in Russia

• Russia's top bank quits Europe due to sanctions

• Russia: IT companies will be exempted from paying income tax for 3 years

• Ukraine: BBC adds two shortwave broadcasts, NEXUS adds MW service

• Philip Morris handing over 500k packs of cigarettes to Ukrainian army

• Ukraine's tech community rises to challenges of war

• Vladimir and the Ukraine – The Laughing Wolf

• Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble

• Irish aircraft firms face ‘mission impossible’ recovering planes from Russia

• Oracle Corporation has suspended all operations in the Russian Federation

• OneWeb: Russian ultimatum over UK satellite launch

• Finland to break energy reliance on Russia “as soon as possible”

• They are ‘civilised’ and ‘look like us’: the racist coverage of Ukraine

• Why Russia is threatening to ban Wikipedia over Ukraine war

• Ukraine Offers to Pay Russian Soldiers to Surrender

• Russia’s Sberbank collapses 95% on London stock exchange as it exits Europe

• What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

  • HN thread

• The Ukraine war could last 10-20 years

• U.N. General Assembly votes overwhelmingly to censure Russia

• How the Finns Deter Russian Invasion

• Russia’s Finances Are Closing Up

• Putin withstood sanctions before. The west came back with a better plan

• OneWeb: UK rejects Russian demand to sell share in satellite firm

• Noam Chomsky: US Military Escalation Against Russia Would Have No Victors

• People of colour fleeing Ukraine attacked by Polish nationalists

• A view from Russian academia – Tatyana Deryugina

• A Few Comments About That Big ‘SWIFT’ Threat | Sovereign Man

  I own a bank here in Puerto Rico. And a few years ago when my bank was accepted into SWIFT, I remember the onboarding team told us to go find a computer with Windows 7 on it. Now, Windows 7 is an obsolete operating system that Microsoft had stopped supporting long ago. Yet it was still the foundation of one of SWIFT’s ‘secure’ messaging products. It turns out that this is not unusual in banking; many financial institutions are in the dark ages when it comes to technology, and security is really lacking.

• As Tanks Rolled into Ukraine, So Did Malware. Then Microsoft Entered the War

• EU's Ukraine Fighter Jet Promise Falling Apart as Russia Advances

• Swedish Armed Forces says Russian fighter jets violated Swedish airspace