2023-02-09

etc

• Something strange is happening on the sun, and we've never seen it before

• The State of the Culture (2023) - by Ted Gioia

• Puzzled archaeologists find stone tools that don’t match human remains

Horseshit

• A neuroscientist shares the 4 ‘highly coveted’ skills that set introverts apart

• The Enduring Price of Place: Revisiting the Rural Cost of Living☆ - Zimmerman - Rural Sociology - Wiley Online Library

• Florida Beat New York, in terms of population growth and vitality

• Poll: Is flagging content abused on HN?

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Congress is set to expose what may be the largest censorship system in U.S. history.

• Johnstone: They're Not Worried About "Russian Influence", They're Worried About Dissent | ZeroHedge

• Peter Hotez on the increase of anti-science aggression on social media

• “Free Speech for Whom?”: Former Twitter Executive Makes Chilling Admission on the “Nuanced” Standard Used For Censorship – JONATHAN TURLEY

Musk

• Twitter faces widespread outage as users told they’re over tweet limit

• Twitter glitch wrongly tells users they’ve hit “daily limit” for tweets

• Elon Musk's SpaceX firm bars Kyiv from using Starlink tech for drone control

  • The dish antennas are a problem for small drones, anyway

  • SpaceX curbed Ukraine's use of Starlink internet for drones -company president

  • SpaceX accuses Ukraine of ‘weaponising’ Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites

• Twitter puts its developer community website behind a login

• Elon Musk Finally Broke Twitter

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• An Idiot’s Guide to Glowing Coverage in the New York Times

• Trump White House Asked Twitter to Take Down Chrissy Teigen Burn

  • Trump Tattling to Twitter over Mean Chrissy Teigen Tweet Just Tip of Iceberg

Pestilence / Pox / COVID / VaxCult

• WHO’s chief scientist regrets errors in debate over SARSCoV2 spread through air

• Covid drug drives viral mutations – and now some want to halt its use

  • HN comments

• California won’t require Covid vaccine to attend schools

Culture War / Tribal / Re segregation

• Boston task force appoints TWO 11th graders and a BLM-supporting college student to decide how much money to pay black community.

• ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ Leaves Some Gamers Conflicted over Rowling’s Trans Views

• I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

• People Are 'Jailbreaking' ChatGPT to Make It Endorse Racism, Conspiracies

• ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web | Hacker News

• The Rot Economy - Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At

  Google has, like every major tech company, focused entirely on what will make revenues increase, even if the cost of doing so is destroying its entire legacy. Google has announced their own “Bard AI” to compete with Bing’s ChatGPT integration, and I’ll be honest - I feel a little crazy that nobody is saying the truth, which is that Google broke the product that made them famous and is now productizing fixing their own problem as innovation.

TechSuck

• Magic Sand: augmented reality sandbox/playground | Hacker News

• Ask Hackaday: Incidental Earthquake Detection | Hackaday

Crypto con games

• Operation Choke Point 2.0 Is Underway, And Crypto Is In Its Crosshairs

  Beginning in 2013, Choke Point was a scheme which sought to marginalize specific industries operating legally — not through lawmaking, but by applying pressure via the banking sector. The Obama DoJ had already cut its teeth with its successful effort to sideline the online poker space in 2011 and 2012 with threats issued to banks supporting poker companies. With Choke Point, the Department decided to scale up its efforts and target other industries, starting with uncontroversial targets like payday lenders. Then, the DoJ coordinated with the FDIC and OCC to pressure member banks to “redline” — determine as too risky to do business with — certain legal but politically disfavored sectors, chief among them firearms manufacturers and adult entertainment. Banks and payment processors internalized this guidance, and even after the program was formally shuttered under Trump in 2017, its shadow lingered. Today, banks simply ascribe a higher risk to activities that they suspect might draw the government’s ire, even if no specific guidance exists.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Disney’s laying off 7k as streaming boom comes to an end

  • Disney to lay off 7,000 workers in major revamp by CEO Iger

• Wholesale Egg Prices ‘Collapse.’

• GoDaddy Announces Layoffs of “About 8%”

• Credit Suisse slumps to biggest annual loss since financial crisis

• Gitlab lays off 7% of the company

• Deliveroo to cut 350 jobs – 9% of its workforce

• GitHub to Layoff 10%

  • GitHub laying off 10% of its staff, going fully remote

• Yahoo to lay off more than 20% of staff as it shrinks ad biz

Shortages

• The Baby Formula Shortage Crisis Continues.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• MTG Rips Ex-Twitter Execs New Cloaca As AOC Melts Down With Hysterical Lies | ZeroHedge

• Former Exec Claims Twitter's Scrambling to Censor Hunter's Laptop Was Mere 'Mistake'

• Democrats and Media Suddenly Care About Decorum and Respect After Biden SOTU Address.

• "This shows COVID is over" EXCLUSIVE: Frame-By-Frame Analysis Sheds Light on Dr. Jill’s Open-Mouthed Make-Out Sesh With Kamala’s Husband: Biden family has a long history of marital chaos.

• Comcast gave false map data to FCC–and didn’t admit it until Ars got involved

• House Votes 419-0 to Pass Resolution Condemning China for Spy Balloon

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• flamewar continues: How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline? | Hacker News

• US bombed Nord Stream gas pipelines, claims investigative journalist

• Chinese balloon part of vast aerial surveillance program, U.S. says

• Previous Chinese spy balloons over US were classified as UFOs

• Holman Jenkins: A Balloon Pops D.C.’s Myth Bubble: Federal agencies have become too comfortable using disinformation. Archive link

  It became clear that, whether from serendipity or design, national security agencies were using UFOs to hide something they didn’t want us to see. That something, it has slowly dribbled out since last May, was Chinese surveillance in U.S. airspace. Suspected Chinese drones have been a sometimes daily presence in U.S. military training sites going back perhaps a decade or more. We learn now of multiple balloon incursions too.

  To the extent that the Chinese deliberately sailed their balloon across the continental U.S., they did so in full knowledge that Chinese aerial spying was already being progressively stripteased for the American people by U.S. intelligence-community leakage. The Biden administration had apparently decided the UFO smokescreen was no longer compatible with the heightened geopolitical moment.

  • IP thread

• Chinese Balloon Had Tools to Collect Communications Signals, U.S. Says

• FBI Says Possible 'Criminal Charges' Over Chinese Balloon Components | ZeroHedge

  “High resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations,” an official with the State Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Epoch Times. “The high altitude balloon’s equipment was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons. It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications. It was equipped with solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors,” the official added.

• U.S., UK and Australia carry out China-focused air drills

World

• Priest arrested for free speech protest outside abortion clinic

• Guaidó Is Gone But London Still Keeping Venezuela's Gold | ZeroHedge

• "Biggest Disaster In The Last Century": Turkey-Syria Earthquake Death Toll Surpasses 20,000

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Zelensky makes ‘wings for freedom’ plea in surprise UK visit for fighter jets

• Mysterious Russian satellite breaks up in orbit, generating cloud of debris

  • Secret Russian satellite has broken, cloud of debris could last a century

Health / Medicine

• My grandmother died at home, just as she wanted. It cost $145,000

  • HN comments

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Banning Gas Stoves by Regulation: New Energy Department rules would eliminate most current models.