2022-08-11

Worthy

• A model for journalistic copypasta

etc

• 39 homes damaged, 3 injured after explosion in Indiana

• "refines" more than overturns but OK New study overturns 100-year-old understanding of color perception

• Calls to ban gamebird release to avoid ‘catastrophic’ avian flu outbreak

• Advanced nuclear threatened by reliance on Russia as sole source of needed fuel

• The rise of repairing: Why more of us are trying to fix things

• (May 2022) The Real Reason Why Are Trucks Getting Bigger

  • HN comments

• Were bones of Waterloo soldiers sold as fertilizer? It’s not yet case closed

Horseshit

• Mark Cuban: Buying real estate in the metaverse is ‘the dumbest’ idea ever

• What are you supposed to do with old clothes? | Hacker News

• GM Makes $1,500 OnStar Subscription Mandatory on GMC, Buick, Cadillac Models

• How Airbnb is ruining local communities in north Wales

• California Exported Its Worst Problem to Texas

• China overtakes the US in scientific research output

• General Belief in a Just World Is Positively Associated with Dishonest Behavior

  • HN comments

• The Gold Rush in Space - by Jamie - Definite Optimism

• A mom’s campaign to ban library books divided a Texas town – and her own family

• GM gives customers no choice to opt out of $1500 onstar subscription | Hacker News

• FAA asking for public feedback on airplane seat size

celebrity gossip

• Billionaires Like Gates, Bezos Backing Search for Rare Minerals in Greenland

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• It’s not just social media: Cable news has bigger effect on polarization

• Spyware is huge threat to global human rights and democracy, expert warns

• Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022

  • More Than a Third of U.S. Teens Are on Social Media Almost Constantly

• Twitter Suspends Russian Foreign Ministry Account For COVID Origins Theory

• Twitter allows MBS aide implicated in spying plot to keep verified account

• Twitter To 'Pre-Bunk' Election Claims During 2022 Midterms | ZeroHedge

• A dark money group is lying about Medicare cuts

Jan6

• The J6 Hearings Had Virtually No Impact On Changing Public Views, New Poll Finds

Musk

• FSD was never engaged during Tesla self-driving crash test by smear campaign

  • Ralph Nader urges regulators to recall Tesla’s ‘manslaughtering’ FSD vehicles

• FCC cancels Starlink’s $886M grant from Ajit Pai’s mismanaged auction

  • FCC rejects Starlink, LTD bids for $2.18B in broadband subsidies

  Starlink emerged as two of the top ten winners in the $9.2 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) broadband subsidy auction, but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today they won’t be taking home any winnings. In a decision issued a year and a half after the auction’s close, the FCC concluded neither would be able to provide the services they promised when bidding in the proceeding.

  LTD Broadband originally won a total of $1.3 billion in the RDOF auction to deliver gigabit broadband to 528,000 locations across 15 states. Starlink bagged $885.5 million to provide 100/20 Mbps service to 642,925 locations across 35 states. But upon the auction’s close in December 2020, critics immediately questioned whether a hitherto small provider like LTD Broadband and an emerging service like Starlink would be able to deliver the goods.

  It specifically pointed to results which showed Starlink’s uplink speeds came in well below the promised 20 Mbps.

  The Commission was less specific about its reasons for denying LTD Broadband’s application, but indicated its initial default on winning bids in seven states didn’t help its case. Ultimately the agency concluded it would not be able to deploy a network of the scope and scale required by its RDOF commitments.

  • HN comments

  • FCC denies Starlink’s application for $885M subsidy

  • U.S. rejects broadband subsidies for SpaceX's Starlink, LTD

• Elon Musk cited Botometer in his dispute with Twitter. Its creator has thoughts

• Elon Musk's audacity may finally be catching up to him

• Musk admits Hyperloop about getting legislators to cancel highspeed rail in CA

• Did Twitterbots Hide a Myspace Like Collapse?

Abortion

• Teen and mother facing charges in abortion-related case due to FB Messages

• Facebook's Message Encryption Was Built to Fail

• Mother charged for helping daughter abortion after Facebook hands over messages

Gun control / Mass shooting

• How the FBI Undercounts Armed Citizen Responders to Mass Killers — and Media Play Along.

Pestilence / Pox / COVID / VaxCult

• With PPE use, ED Covid risk 4.5%; no higher in physicians vs. nonclinical staff

• The US is on a Covid plateau, and no one’s sure what will happen next

• Researchers Find Overlap in Pathology of Long-Covid and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

• Why the Chair of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission Thinks The US Government Is Preventing a Real Investigation Into the Pandemic

• (Jan 2020) Logistical and Technical Exploration into the Origins of the Wuhan Strain of Coronavirus (COVID-19) - Harvard to the Big House

• New test may predict Covid-19 immunity

• America’s New Monkeypox Strategy Rests on a Single Study

• FDA Monkeypox Response

• WHO asks people not to attack monkeys over monkeypox.

• As U.S. hits 10,000 monkeypox cases, CDC still aims for "containment"

Culture War / Tribal / Re segregation

• A Boy Bosses of Silicon Valley Are on Their Way Out

• Fear turns to shock among Albuquerque Muslims as police say the shooter is a Muslim

• The Woke Civil War at the New York Times

• The Gender Pay Gap May Be a Sign That Women Prioritize Socially Valuable Careers

• Google’s Caste-Bias Problem

  • HN comments

• Elite Nashville Girls School, Founded in 1865, Announces Transgender Girls Are Welcome

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why Americans are increasingly dubious about going to college

• Themes in academic literature: prejudice and social justice

  • HN comments

• Boston School Dean Recruited Students for Latin Kings

• Circling the wagons - by Stuart Ritchie - Science Fictions

  But even for autoethnography, this paper is terrible. A masturbation diary isn’t “research”. There is absolutely nothing we learn from it apart from gaining a disturbing insight into the mind of the author.

  The claim that the paper wasn’t funded isn’t true: even though the paper contains a statement that no funding was received for that project specifically, Andersson mentions in his Twitter bio that he’s funded by his university department, has put a video on YouTube talking about how his PhD is funded through his department, and someone—most likely the university—has paid the ~£2,500 “article processing charge” required to make the article fully open-access. Someone is paying for this - and given how universities are funded, it’s perfectly reasonable to think it’s all, or at least in part, the UK taxpayer.

• Ask HN: Is America truly running out of teachers? Is there a teacher shortage?

• 2022 U.S. student visas for Chinese nationals down 50% from pre-Covid levels

• How Can Textbook Publishers Milk Students Even More? NFTs, Apparently

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Snapchat Introduces Parental Controls

• OnlyFans bribed Meta to put many porn stars on terror watchlist, suits claim

  • HN comments

• New Meta CFO another sign Zuck is shifting into wartime CEO mode

• 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

  • HN comments

• Disney raises price on ad-free Disney+ 38% to $10.99

• Spotify Tests Selling Concert Tickets Directly to Fans

• Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format | Hacker News

• Give nothing, expect nothing: GitLab’s the latest punching bag for entitled users: Dissociated Press

  • HN comments

• Wikipedia’s Credibility Is Toast | Wikipediocracy

  It first hit me when I walked into my local Waterstones, grabbed a book on Victorian inventors and found Alan amongst other greats. In the run up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Alan was hailed as a reason why an independent Scotland could be a success. To this day, Scottish Government-funded organisations refer to Alan’s story.

• American Literature Loses Out to Consolidation

TechSuck

• Amazon begins large-scale rollout of palm print-based payments

  • Amazon's Creepy Palm Reading Payment System Is Taking over Whole Foods

• Spent $15 in DALL·E 2 credits creating this AI image, and here’s what I learned

Crypto con games

• The collapse of CryptoKitties, the first big blockchain game

• Hackers and fraudsters used crypto bridge RenBridge to launder $540M

• There aren't that many uses for blockchains

  • HN comments

• Ted Cruz Says Bitcoin Mining Can Fix Texas’ Crumbling Electric Grid

• After Bashing It For Years, The World's Largest Asset Manager Is Now Offering Bitcoin To Its Top Clients

Economicon / Business / Finance

• ‘Dr. Doom’ Nouriel Roubini warns the era of stagflation is here and central banks are setting a trap in trying to normalize policy.

• Domino's tried to sell pizza to Italians. It failed

• Groupon cuts over 500 staff, plans to focus only on mission-critical activities

• Inflation drops to zero in July due to falling gas prices

• CEO's LinkedIn Crying Selfie About Layoffs Met with Backlash

  • HN comments

• Sanofi, GSK Plummet After Zantac Lawsuit Concerns Wipe Out $40 Billion In Value | ZeroHedge

• The Price Of Eggs Is Up 47% As Food Costs In The US Spiral Out Of Control

Shortages

• America's Most Popular Sriracha Maker Confirms 'Unprecedented Shortage'

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• What is the ‘Dark Brandon’ meme that has taken the White House by storm? | The Hill

• ‘Shitshow on Steroids’: The House GOP’s Plan to Troll Biden With Investigations

• Republicans pounce on FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago to solicit campaign funds

• FBI delivers subpoenas to several Pa. Republican lawmakers: sources say.

• Biden's Department of Labor threatens to end me

• Republican AGs Allege BlackRock Violating Law With Woke Investing.

• There's Only One Way To Make Democrats' Persecution Stop

• FTC explores rules cracking down on commercial surveillance and lax security

  • HN comments

Trump

• Donald Trump Changed Facebook

• Twitter Suspends Journalist Paul Sperry After FBI Trump-Raid Tweets

  According to the Wall Street Journal, the records included a letter from former President Barack Obama, and correspondence between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

   The boxes contained some documents subject to a federal law
  

  requiring official records to be turned over when a president leaves office as well as some material archives officials described only as “classified national security information,” prompting them to refer the matter to the Justice Department for investigation. -WSJ

  Sperry, meanwhile, tweeted several hot-takes on the raid, which appear to have gotten him suspended.

  "DEVELOPING: Investigators reportedly met back in June w Trump & his lawyers in Mar-a-Lago storage rm to survey docs & things seemed copasetic but then FBI raids weeks later. Speculation on Hill FBI had PERSONAL stake & searching for classified docs related to its $Spygate scandal."

• Trump Refuses To Answer NY AG's Questions At Deposition

  James had insisted that Trump be deposed in person, Insider reports, after her office issued its original subpoena in December while investigating whether the Trump Organization misstated the value of various properties on financial documents - which James alleges were then used to obtain tax breaks and bank loans. James' office is considering whether to file a civil suit against Trump,

• Trump Critics Say FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid May Have Handed Him GOP Nomination, "Potentially The Presidency"

• Trumps Reveal How FBI Raid Went Down, Former Prez Suggests 'Planted' Evidence

• White House Claims It Had No Notice Of FBI Raid On Trump

• DOJ Source Calls Trump Raid a "Spectacular Backfire;" DOJ Distances Itself from Raid, Claiming Merrick Garland Never Signed Off On It

  The senior Justice Department source says that Garland was regularly briefed on the Records Act investigation, and that he knew about the grand jury and what material federal prosecutors were seeking. He insists, though, that Garland had no prior knowledge of the date and time of the specific raid, nor was he asked to approve it. "I know it's hard for people to believe," says the official, "but this was a matter for the U.S. Attorney and the FBI." FBI director Christopher Wray ultimately gave his go-ahead to conduct the raid, the senior Justice official says. "It really is a case of the Bureau misreading the impact."

• Opinion: Trump should make the search warrant public

• The Trump Mar-A-Lago Raid: America Needs Some Answers

• Why the Trump search warrant is nothing like Hillary’s emails

  ‘For the department to pursue a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago tells me that the quantum and quality of the evidence they were reciting — in a search warrant and affidavit that an FBI agent swore to* — was likely so pulverizing in its force as to eviscerate any notion that the search warrant and this investigation is politically motivated,’ he said.

  (He being:) David Laufman, who led the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section until 2018 and is now a partner at the firm Wiggin and Dana. Laufman has the credentials to judge the severity of these matters. In addition to the Clinton case, he managed the investigation of David Petraeus, the former general and CIA director who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling classified material. CNN reported that one of the DOJ officials involved in the Trump investigation is his immediate successor.

• With the Trump Raid, Merrick Garland Draws a Line in the Sand

  “Then last night, the sky broke open and it began to rain. A rain of joy, and of memes, and of hopes. There will be time for “a hundred visions and revisions.” In the meantime, I’m singin’ in the rain. What a glorious feeling. I’m happy again.”

• FBI’s Trump raid inadvertently revealed Mike Lee’s secret personal Twitter account and it’s a doozy

• DOJ bets its future on how it handles the search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort

• ‘The Opposite of a Raid’

• Honig explains why pleading the Fifth can be used against Trump

• Mary Trump: Donald Trump In A 'Panic' Over FBI Raid, Shocked DOJ Took Action

• Trump seizes on FBI search to fuel backlash.

• Questions grow about Trump raid after revelation of grand jury subpoena, extensive cooperation | Just The News

• FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home followed tip classified records were there – report

• Court Removes Page for Judge Who Approved Raid of Trump’s Home

• FBI chief Christopher Wray says bureau monitoring 'deplorable' threats after raid of Donald Trump's home in Florida

  • FBI Director Denounces 'Deplorable' Threats After Mar-A-Lago Raid

• FBI Tipped Off By Informant Who Guided It To Documents In Mar-A-Lago Raid: Reports

• Trump and his allies are again painting the former President as a victim of political persecution

• Hell Week: How Trump’s Problems All Converged at Once

• Judge Orders DOJ To Respond To Requests To Unseal FBI’s Trump Warrant | ZeroHedge

  “On or before 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on August 15, 2022, the Government shall file a Response to the Motion to Unseal,” wrote Judge Bruce Reinhart on Wednesday afternoon, referring to the Department of Justice.

• Media Stopped Describing Targeting of Trump as “Raid” After Former FBI Agent Complained – Summit News

• FBI, R.I.P.?

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Judge rules Walgreens contributed to San Francisco’s opioid crisis

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Russian Spy Planes Enter Alaska Air Defense Zone In 1st Since Ukraine War: NORAD

• A US-China War over Taiwan Isn't Happening Anytime Soon

World

• China's Military Ends Taiwan Drills As Pelosi Boasts Trip "Absolutely" Worth It

• All children under 10 in London to be offered polio vaccine after virus detected

• Seoul to phase out Parasite-style semi-basement flats after storm deaths

• The Speakeasy Economy of WeChat

• Paris Faces an Even Colder, Darker Winter Than Berlin

• Vegetarian women more likely to fracture hips in later life

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia Took over Ukraine’s Internet in Occupied Territories

• Satellite images of damage done to Saki airfield in Crimea

• Russia sent Steven Seagal to occupied Ukraine to spread propaganda, part of his role as a Kremlin spokesman

• Celebrities embark on a Ukraine safari - The Spectator World

• Russia charges journalist who protested Ukraine war live on TV

Health / Medicine

• Body Posture Affects How Oral Drugs Absorbed by Stomach

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Move over, Silicon Valley. Engineers are quitting for climate tech

• Backyard hens’ eggs contain 40 times more lead on average than shop eggs

  • HN comments

• Global coal demand set to return to its all-time high in 2022

• Chile Is Blowing the Electric-Car Revolution

• DOE digs up molten salt nuclear reactor tech, Los Alamos to lead the way back

• River Cleanups Move to the Next Level Using Grasses and Oysters

• Record Death Valley flooding ‘a once-in-1k-year event’

• Birds respond to a half-century soundscape reversion during the COVID19 shutdown

• International partnership aims to improve sorghum breeding