2022-04-29

Worthy

• Long, wide ranging, worth the time: The World Order Reset - by N.S. Lyons - The Upheaval

  Events did not go as planned. In fact, the whole plan collapsed within 48 hours, after a helicopter-borne assault by Russian paratroopers meant to capture the critical airports near Kiev were annihilated by ferocious Ukrainian counterattack. Everything immediately went downhill from there. Unable to simply fly into the capital, Russian forces had to try to travel overland from Belarus. In their great tactical brilliance, they had blown up a regional dam and turned half their approach into even marshier land than it was already. They quickly got literally stuck in the mud; years of corruption and disorganization had rotted out their tires, along with their supplies. Their secure communications systems turned out not to work without 4G access, which they had also blown up. They piled up into miles-long convoys that went nowhere, while their soldiers shivered and starved and occasionally deserted.

  ...

  historically an upset in the global reserve currency is consistently the last epochal change to flow from the replacement of one reigning superpower by another, following only well after this succession has been cemented economically, militarily, and diplomatically. Ultimately, China cannot overthrow the power of the United States by deliberately undermining and replacing its reserve currency – it can only replace its currency by first dethroning the United States from power.

  ...

  Decadence, it may strike Uncle Sam in between snorting lines of coke in the Atlantic Council bathroom with an old buddy from Raytheon and a hot new friend from Helsinki, is no obstacle to power. In fact, come to think of it, it’s not unusual for the two to go hand-in-hand for quite a while. Heck, the Romans managed at least a couple centuries of it. What’s a few weird gender-bending religious cults and orgies and riots and corrupt Praetorians when your legions are still masters of the earth, eh? And who now can say that America is not still at its peak, the barbarian steppe hordes pushed back, the future bright?

  • side note: the longest thing i have ever seen on substack. I had placed their limit at 32kb based on my experiments.

etc

• Student loan borrowers will get help after an NPR report and years of complaints

• Ancestry-inclusive dog genomics challenges popular breed stereotypes

• James Webb Telescope Is Fully Aligned and Delivering Sharp Photos

• Ask HN: Reasoning for Animal Rights | Hacker News

• (2019) America's Achilles' Heel: the Mississippi River's Old River Control Structure | Weather Underground

• A Working Theory for NYC’s One-Bedroom Apartment Shortage

  “Everybody broke up in the pandemic, and all they want is one-bedrooms.”

• Is Everything Falling Apart? - Nonzero Newsletter

Horseshit

• Millions of South Koreans could soon get younger (on paper)

• Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere | Hacker News

  I'd say most of the places I lived from 2009 on (about 20 places?) I found on AirBnb, thanks guys, and then paid cash to the owner. Only once or twice, for a couple days at most, have I ever actually used AirBnb to run a transaction for me. ... I now live in a house I own in Portland with an AirBnb right next to me whose owners are off living in some other AirBnb out of the country, and I'm pissed as fuck that I'm living next to what's turned into a goddamn motel.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Remember George Orwell's Ministry of Truth? Orwell, meet Joe Biden

• Europe Escalates the Threat to Online Free Speech

COVID / VaxCult

• South Africa is being hit hard by Covid again

• Denmark becomes the first country to halt its Covid vaccination program

• Increased cardiovascular events in Israel during vaccine rollout and third wave

  • HN comments

• Correlation Between Mask Compliance and Covid-19 Outcomes in Europe

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The education culture war is raging. But for most parents, it's background noise

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Netflix Lays Off the Journalists It Just Hired

• There Is No CD Revival - by Damon Krukowski

Musk / Twitter

• Twitter should have died long ago – let Elon Musk take it out back and shoot it

• Elon Musk’s plans for making money with Twitter reportedly include job cuts

• Conservatives question spikes in Twitter followers after Elon Musk takeover

• Elon Musk Sells About $4B in Tesla Stock After Agreeing to Buy Twitter

• Is Elon Musk That Bad?

• Musk told banks he will rein in Twitter pay, make money from tweets, sources say

• Why an Elon Musk-run Twitter might surprise both Left and Right

• The far left hates everyone, themselves included

TechSuck

• Researchers find Amazon uses Alexa voice data to target you with ads

Crypto con games

• Crypto is winning, and Bitcoin diehards are furious about it

• Crypto Mortgages Let Homebuyers Keep Bitcoin, Put Down Nothing

Economicon / Business / Finance

• What a recession is and when to be worried

• Apple extends share buybacks by $90B, raises dividends by 5%

• Robinhood Reports 43% Revenue Decline

• Amazon shares fall on weak forecast and slowest growth since dot-com bust

  • Amazon stock plunges as company reports nearly $4B loss

• The billable hour is a trap more and more of us are falling into

• Futures Slide As Amazon, Apple Slump; Nasdaq Set For Worst Month Since Nov 2008

• California to raise its gas tax, already the highest in the nation

• Americans Are Spending Nearly a Third of Their Income on Mortgages

• Oil companies scramble to find workers despite boom

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Is President Biden OK?

• The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

• Regulatory Capture: Trucking Edition

• Biden’s New ‘Ministry of Truth’ Director Turns out to Be a Raving Lunatic.

  • Watch: Biden's New 'Disinfo' Queen Goes Full 'Libs Of TikTok' | ZeroHedge

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• I disagree, but someone had the time to set this up... A better way to read the text released by Jan 6 committee

• In Chicago, Wealthy Neighborhoods Hire Their Own Private Police as Crime Rises

• Audit: California Police rampant bias against minorites, support of far-right

• FBI Conducted Potentially Millions of Searches of Americans’ Data Last Year

• Lawmakers Look to Ban Use of Sexual-Assault Victim DNA in Unrelated Cases

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Defense companies aren't getting a boost from Russia's war with Ukraine

• US Army replaces cake it stole from Italian girl 77 years ago

Health / Medicine

• FDA proposes ban on menthol cigarettes

  • The FDA is proposing a ban on menthol cigarettes

• Scientists find a genetic cause of lupus

• Human bird flu case: CDC confirms case of bird flu in Colorado man

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Climate change could spark animal-to-human pandemics

• Fracking Boom Turns Texas into the Earthquake Capital of the U.S.

• One-fifth of reptiles worldwide face risk of extinction

• Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk

• The Extreme Heat Pummeling India and Pakistan Is About to Get Worse

• California promised to close its last nuclear plant. Now Newsom is reconsidering

etc

• Russian Energy Embargo 2 - by Sergey Vakulenko

• DJI lied about encryption and enabled Ukrainians to be murdered

• Oil Middlemen Fueled Putin’s War Machine. Now They’re Getting Out

• A new realization dawns for Washington, Europe, Kyiv and Moscow