2022-08-17

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• A Construction-Themed Amusement Park Answers the Question, ‘Can You Dig It?’ Archive link

• NTSB: Co-pilot was “visibly upset” before he exited plane in mid-air

• Live coverage: NASA prepares for rollout of Space Launch System moon rocket

• Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages? | Hacker News

• Couple arrested at Cedar Point for having sex on Ferris wheel

• Personal car use, less density correlated with downtown post-pandemic recovery

• Physical buttons clearly outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds

  • HN comments

• A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

• The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas - by Max Read

  • Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work? | Hacker News

• Language Log » Does "splooting" have an etymology?

• Why are border smugglers trafficking bologna?

  • HN comments

Horseshit

• Bill Gates Funded Study Claims Peanut M&M's Are Healthier Than Beef and Pork

• Without specific countermeasures, the easiest path likely leads to AI takeover

• The shock and awe of state-sponsored women’s fashion

• It's like Airbnb but for renting your pool to strangers

• A group of con artists rigged promotional sweepstakes throughout the 1980s

• Deadly swatting increasing on Twitch; alarmed streamers press for change

Obit

• Wolfgang Petersen, German Commander of ‘Das Boot,’ Dies at 81

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Social Media’s Intolerance Death Spiral

• How the brain gathers threat cues and turns them into fear

• The New Era of Political Violence Is Here

• The infidels will not be silenced - UnHerd

• Could referendums defuse political polarization?

• ‘Unfriending’ is a sign of America’s widening political divide: Rather than encouraging public debate and discourse, social media is exacerbating the anger and political polarization engulfing the nation.

Musk

• Musk Among Guests At McCarthy Fundraiser For Challenger To "Pariah" Liz Cheney

• Musk Among Guests as McCarthy Raises Money on Cheney's Home Turf

• Elon Musk says he was joking about buying Manchester United

  • Elon Musk ‘buying Manchester United’ football club

  • Elon Musk's tweet joking he'll buy Manchester United hits the real world

• Judge orders Twitter to give Elon Musk former executive's documents

• Elon Musk writes magazine column for China's Cyberspace Administration

Abortion

• Louisiana Woman Is Forced Carry Headless Fetus to Term or Travel to Florida for Legal Abortion

• Schumer Shrugs as Roe v. Wade Falls: The Inflation Reduction Act gave Democrats a chance to fund abortion. They didn’t even try.

Pestilence / Pox / COVID / VaxCult

• Philadelphia School District Forcing Students and Staff to Mask Up for First Two Weeks of School Year

• Blood abnormalities found in people with Long Covid

• Report: 44 Percent of Pregnant Women in Pfizer Trial Lost Their Babies; FDA and CDC Recommended Jabs For Expectant Mothers Anyway.

  More than 40 percent of pregnant women who participated in Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine trial suffered miscarriages, according internal Pfizer documents, recently released under court order. Despite this, Pfizer, and the Biden administration insisted that the vaccines were safe for pregnant women. Out of 50 pregnant women, 22 of them lost their babies, according to an analysis of the documents.

• Who Will Be Held Accountable for CDC Dishonesty?

• Investigating how antiviral treatment promotes new SARS-CoV-2 variant emergence

• BC forcing unvaccinated mothers to pay back up to $50K in maternity leave.

• Does long-ago smallpox vaccination protect from monkeypox?

• CDC changes guidance after dog contracts monkeypox from owners.

• Don't have sex with them while you have the pox: How to keep your Pets safe from Monkeypox – and what to do if they get it

• Two Monkeypox Variants will no longer be Named after Regions for ethical reasons

  The new names, Clade I and Clade II, replace the names Congo Basin clade, or variant, and West African clade, respectively. Subsequent variants will be named using Roman numerals for the clade, and lowercase letters for the subclade.

• Is there enough Monkeypox Vaccine to go around?

• Monkeypox virus shows potential to infect a diverse range of native animal species across Europe, indicating high risk of becoming endemic in the region

• Anti-vaccine activists giddily celebrate as poliovirus spreads in NY

Culture War / Tribal / Re segregation

• Teachers Outraged After Union Contract Suggests Race-Based Layoff Agreement

• British RAF recruiting head resigns to protest pause on hiring white men

  • RAF ‘pauses job offers for white men’ to meet ‘impossible’ diversity targets: The alleged move has prompted the head of recruitment for the Royal Air Force (RAF) – herself a senior female officer – to resign in recent days in protest.

• Trans Totalitarianism: Time For Moral Panic.

  this particular physician told me that the HR department at his hospital monitored their social media accounts, looking for wrongthink. He said that if he didn’t have a social media account, that would cause HR to flag him as a potential problem. So he kept his account up, but only put happy-clappy “wellness” things on it. This man is a top doctor at one of the country’s biggest hospitals, and he has to live in that kind of fear. Why doesn’t he quit? Because he has a family, and tuition to pay, and all the usual reasons.

• I Regret Being A Slut

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• A Chinese MIT professor accused of spying helped discover a new semiconductor

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Streaming Services Deal with More Subscribers Who ‘Watch, Cancel and Go’

• Report details sexual harassment and gender discrimination at Nintendo America

• Oracle Starts Checking That China Isn't Manipulating TikTok

• Free Speech on Trial

  What is really happening is that these firms are trying to monopolize a market, and then exploit their resulting power to generate cash. Only, in speech or cultural markets, fostering a monopoly means not only that you are able to extract profits. It also means, willingly or no, you become a powerful influence over speech. Large publishing houses choose who gets published and who doesn’t, and that confers significant power. The more dominant the publishing house, the more power. Search engines or social networks are vastly more concentrated, but a similar dynamic exists. Once you control society’s single search engine or social network, editorial choices, whichever direction they lead, help determine what is heard in the public square. So what these executives are doing isn’t trying to censor, but trying to ensure that they have market power in targeted advertising, search advertising or book sales. They simply end up as speech police, because that’s what it means when you build a monopoly that can determine who gets to be heard and who doesn’t.

• The Secret Talks That Could Have Prevented the Apple vs. Facebook War

• Social Media Is Awful. Group Chats Can Be a Refuge

TechSuck

• Hackers took over a commercial satellite to broadcast hacker movies

• Ex-Google chief’s venture aims to save neglected science software

• 6 Raspberry Pis, 6 SSDs on a Mini ITX Motherboard | Jeff Geerling

  • HN comments

• HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer | Hacker News

Crypto con games

• Our five step plan to bring crypto in every hand

• Coinbase will 'briefly pause' deposit/withdrawals during ETH Merge

• Nobody wants to admit owning WazirX, and be busted laundering for loan sharks

• CEO took control of Celsius trading strategy months before bankruptcy

• Exxon is mining Bitcoin in North Dakota as part of its plan to slash emissions

• Miami’s Gold Rush: Finance Firms and Crypto Move In, Bringing Strains

  • Miami becomes the new boom town for corporate lawyers

• Chainalysis: Amount stolen in crypto heists is up 60% this year to $1.9B

• Adam Neumann’s Cult of ‘We’ Is Now the Cult of Web3

• Coinbase Insider Trading May Be Wider Than US Case, Study Says

• Canadian pension manager says they invested too soon in crypto after $150m loss

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Why Amazon warehouse workers walked off the job in San Bernardino

• Why Bed Bath and Beyond's stock is up 60% today

  Bed Bath & Beyond has 50.7% of its public free float in short position. The rapid rise in the stock price triggered a short squeeze signal, according to analytics firm Ortex. The stock rose as much as 78.8% to $28.60 during the session and trading was halted multiple times for volatility. About 189 million shares changed hands by midday, more than six times the firm's 30-day moving average volume. The stock is up 440% so far this month in a rally that evocative of eye-watering gains in shares of GameStop and AMC Entertainment early last year that hurt hedge funds that had bet against the stock.

• Apple Card Launched Three Years Ago, Remains Exclusive to U.S. Residents

• Maybe the VC market is correcting and not on a downturn

• Ocean freight shipping costs are driving prices higher

• Closing Down the Billionaire Factory - BIG by Matt Stoller

• US chipmakers hit by sudden downturn after pandemic boom

• Target Slumps Amid Growing Inventory Glut As Consumer Spending Continues To Shrink

Shortages

• The world isn't producing enough Nickel to keep up with demand

• Californians urged to conserve electricity amid heat wave

• Chongqing orders factories to shut to save power during heat wave

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Dept. of Ed cancels $3.9B in student debt for over 200k borrowers

  All remaining students who attended the now-defunct ITT Technical Institute (ITT) between Jan. 1, 2005, through its closure in September 2016, including those who have not submitted a borrower defense claim, will have 100% of their loans canceled. Borrowers who qualify for the relief will not need to take any additional action to receive the funds.

  • $3.9B in debt is canceled for former students of ITT Tech

• 'National' figure Cheney 'feels bigger' than 'small' Wyoming election, says ally of lawmaker | Just The News

  a Cheney ally says the Wyoming Republican running to hold on to her House seat "feels bigger" than the "small" Wyoming election. “What's remarkable is that in the face of almost certain defeat she's never once wavered," Republican Accountability Project Executive Director Sarah Longwell told us.

• Bill Gates and the Secret Push to Save Biden’s Climate Bill

  • Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act "Secretly" Brought To You By Bill Gates | ZeroHedge

• Subsidies in the Climate Bill Keep Oil and Gas Alive

• Liz Cheney Goes Down In Defeat, Primary Called Soon After Polls Closed.

  • Neogone: Liz Cheney Voted Out Of Congress, Trump Takes Victory Lap | ZeroHedge

  Her challenger, Harriet Hageman, was ahead by more than 30% with 13% of the votes counted - enough for NBC News to call it for her.

• Liz Cheney Vows To Do 'Whatever It Takes' To Stop Trump | ZeroHedge

• Joe Biden’s Best Week Ever

• Five US States Will Decide If the 2024 Election Can Be Stolen

• Pennsylvania’s Mastriano rewrites debate rules to thwart anti-GOP bias.

• DEF CON Voting Village takes on election conspiracies, disinformation

• CDC Announces Overhaul After Botching Pandemic | ZeroHedge

Trump

• 2022 Is More Important Than 2020, and Not Just the Elections – PJ Media

  The good news is this: A handful of congresspeople are standing up, and it’s a few more than the usual four we typically see. We are all holding our breath and hoping things change after the November midterms, but hope alone isn’t gonna cut it. It’s time to talk with people and get them involved. Push people to vote to keep our Republic. It’s easier than shooting our way out of communism. And no, I’m not suggesting violence — stop talking about another Civil War. Don’t take the bait.

• Trump is still scrambling the minds of the elites

• Congressman: "Tyranny" Is Coming "Right Into Everyone's Living Room Very Very Shortly" | ZeroHedge

• WaPo’s Catherine Rampell: Is there no crime Trump could commit that would lose him GOP support?

• This is the leading MAL-raid theory, shared by many – The New Neo

  He believes that it wasn’t egregious overreaching. Instead, he argues that indications support his argument that Trump asked heads of Departments what documents they absolutely would not want to see declassified? (This has been mooted elsewhere.) And then declassified them and secreted them away as insurance over the Deep State.

• Eric Trump Says He’ll Release FBI Raid Surveillance Tape

• 30 Things Donald Trump Did as President You Might Have Missed

• Sweeps Week on FBI TV

  The timeline of leaked explanations of the raid is mind-boggling. Anonymous officials started by telling us the case was linked to Trump having “delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by… the National Archives,” then it was “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons,” then it was fear Trump could reveal “sources and methods,” then it was possible Espionage Act violations. By Saturday, former “national security prosecutor” Barb McQuade went on MSNBC to explain the “brilliant tactical move” of using the Espionage Act, since it doesn’t “require the documents to be classified” (we’d been told all week this was about classified material). The next day, CBS published news of a joint FBI/DHS bulletin warning of “armed rebellion,” “civil war,” and a “dirty bomb attack,” and the day after that, we were told FBI “filter agents” did, then didn’t seize, then did again seize Donald Trump’s passports, but returned them in the end.

• FBI Raid Has Solidified Trump's Clout In GOP Ahead Of Expected 2024 Run, Conservative Observers Say | ZeroHedge

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud

• Two of New York’s Oldest Mafia Clans Charged in Money Laundering Scheme

• ‘It’s like walking through Dante’s inferno’: Manhattan’s trendy Chelsea neighborhood has become ‘a 24-hour drug and sex den’ as vagrants inject themselves in plain sight of a school and parents beg NYPD to ‘do something.’

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Tactical Chat: How the U.S. Military Uses IRC to Wage War

• Space Force Takes Over All Military Satellite Communications.

• Kissinger says U.S. is heading aimlessly toward brink of war against Russia and China.

• (Oct 2021) WWIII Has Already Started - by Dr Pippa

World

• UK hospitals lose millions after AI startup valuation collapses

• Scotland – the first Country to offer Tampons and Pads for Free, officials say

• Tesla’s public Superchargers are deemed ‘illegal’ in Germany due to technicality

• Saudi woman given 34-year prison sentence for using Twitter

  • HN comments

• Germany Faces Power Grid Collapse as Demand for Electric Heaters Soar.

• In a Belated Outburst of Rationality, Germany Decides To Keep Three Nuclear Plants Open.

• Turkey Strikes Northern Syria, Killing At Least 17, As Cross-Border Offensive Looms

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia is going to have a better Winter than Ukraine, Europe, and America

• Russian invasion has dangerously destabilized cyber security norms

• The first U.N. ship transporting Ukrainian grain to Africa has set sail

• Ukraine has telegraphed its big counteroffensive for months So where is it?

• Ukraine Strikes Again in Crimea, Challenging Russian Hold on Peninsula

• China to send troops to Russia for 'Vostok' exercise

Health / Medicine

• 5,760 cases of Capri Sun have been recalled after being contaminated with cleaning solution.

• New Jersey takes and stores blood samples from every newborn for decades

• The Unintended Consequences of OTC Hearing Aids

• Ice cream is better for you than granola: surprising snack study.

• Buy a rural hospital for $100? Investors pick up struggling institutions for pennies

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• US: Drought-stricken states to get less from Colorado River

  • Feds cut Colorado River allocation to Arizona, Nevada as talks fail

  • Western states hit with more cuts to Colorado River water

  • U.S. says Arizona and Nevada will get less water from Colorado River

• England must reduce meat intake to avoid climate breakdown, says food tsar

• Cambridge planning vote that to stop accepting fossil fuel money for research

• How safe are nuclear power plants?

  • HN comments

• New AFBF Survey Shows Drought’s Increasing Toll on Farmers and Ranchers

• Even Republicans worry climate change could impact their favorite foods

• The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb

• China fires rods into sky to make it rain, as it faces worst heat wave on record

• World Bank taps blockchain for carbon offsets