2023-05-19

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• About – BasedCon

  The publishing industry’s hostility to authors who are critical of progressive dogma was the primary impetus behind BasedCon. I wanted to put together an event where non-leftist authors could network and where new and aspiring authors could learn from authors who had already navigated these treacherous seas.

• Blue Origin wins NASA astronaut moon lander contract to compete with SpaceX

  • Jeff Bezos announces $3.4B NASA contract to land astronauts on lunar surface

Horseshit

• Why is my dryer radioactive? | Hacker News

• American Food Will Never Look Natural Again

• Hyundai and Kia agree to $200M settlement over TikTok car theft challenge

• He Helped Train ChatGPT. It Traumatized Him.

• (Feb 2023) How many satellites can we safely fit in Earth orbit?

• The phone-free are finding themselves unwelcome in more places.

celebrity gossip

• The Grumpy Economist: Bob Lucas and his papers

Musk

• The proto-fascism of Elon Musk

• Twitter no longer ‘high risk’ after new chief hired, says top ad group

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• OUTRAGE: North Dakota Man Who Ran Down and Killed 18 Year-Old for Being a Republican Gets Reduced Charge of Manslaughter | The Gateway Pundit | by Mike LaChance

• FBI Concerned Jan. 6 Footage Would Expose Undercover Agents, Informants: Whistleblower | ZeroHedge

• BofA Gave FBI Access To Jan. 6 Bank Records Without Customers' Knowledge: Whistleblowers

• “The Impossible Must Be Possible”: How the Durham Whodunit Became Who Didn’t Do it – JONATHAN TURLEY

Pestilence / Pox / COVID / VaxCult

• Rubio Publishes Vast COVID-19 Report: ‘Beijing Hid the Truth’ | RealClearWire

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Profits Skyrocket for AI Gun Detection Used in Schools – Despite Dubious Results

• If Your Toddler Isn’t Talking Yet, the Pandemic Might Be to Blame

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Supreme Court Rules Andy Warhol’s Prince Art Is Copyright Infringement

  • HN comments

• Disney’s absurdly expensive Star Wars hotel is shutting down

• Bluesky Social, the company started by ex-Twitter CEO and drugged-out mosquito bait Jack Dorsey, just released its code as open source.

• Disney Removes Dozens of Series from D+ & Hulu, Including ‘Big Shot’, ‘Willow’

TechSuck

• Uncensored Models

• Britain's headlong slide from silicon supremacy to silicon irrelevance

  These amazing contraptions are not merely manifestations of brainwork and clever design, but of the most advanced material science in the world. Dummer, the RRE and Plessey were running smack bang into the limitations of 1950s physics and chemistry. Indeed, for much of the early years of semiconductors, one of the biggest challenges was not so much a lack of brainpower but our inability to create substances pure enough to turn into semiconductors, where a single atom out of place could ruin a device. That was especially difficult with silicon, which has an extremely high melting point.

• Verizon abandons it’s confusing mess of six “unlimited” wireless plans

• Texting between iPhone and Android users currently broken due to bizarre bug

Crypto con games

• Crypto Miners Pivoting to AI Cloud Services May Face an Uphill Battle

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Visa and Mastercard agree to lower average credit card interchange fee below 1%

  • HN comments

• More Americans are struggling to make ends meet NOW than in the aftermath of the pandemic – new survey shows nearly 40% of US households can’t pay expenses.

• The Disappearing White Collar Job

• Many of America's poorest communities dig deepest for charity

• More Than a Third of American Homes Struggle to Make Ends Meet, Census Says

• Uber will lease out entire office building in San Francisco.

• Could a US debt default unleash global chaos?

• Ghost Kitchens Are Going the Way of the Pandemic

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Tara Reade : Politico didn't run any articles like this about Jean Carroll, Trump's accuser - The New Neo

• The Senate’s hearing on AI regulation was dangerously friendly

• FTC to crack down on biometric tech, health app data privacy violations

• US Supreme Court leaves protections for internet companies unscathed

• "They're Just Unreasonable": Debt Ceiling Talks Collapse As Republicans "Abruptly" Walk Out Of Negotiations

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Ex-Biden Nuclear Official Sam Brinton Arrested As ‘Fugitive From Justice’ For Luggage Theft

• The FBI Is Attacking Whistleblowers

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Not a Terrorist? The Biden Team Killed the Wrong Person Again

  “We are no longer confident we killed a senior AQ official,” one official said. The other, offering a slightly different view, said “though we believe the strike did not kill the original target, we believe the person to be al-Qaeda.”

World

• Serbians surrendered more than 15,000 weapons, more than 2,500 explosive devices

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• G7 summit: Zelensky to travel to Japan to take part in G7 summit, reports say

• US signals to allies it won’t block their export of F-16 jets to Ukraine

• Russia is decrypting 256-bit radio. Cryptographers HN is it plausible? | Hacker News

Health / Medicine

• Don’t get an epidural in Mexico, CDC warns–40 dead, including 1 Texan

• Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Celebrity chef Jose Andres exempted from Palo Alto gas stove ban

• Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

  used satellite observations, climate models, and hydrologic models to show that more than 50% of both large natural lakes and reservoirs experienced volume loss over this time (see the Perspective by Cooley). Their findings underscore the importance of better water management to protect essential ecosystem services such as freshwater storage, food supply, waterbird habitat, cycling of pollutants and nutrients, and recreation.

  • HN comments

• Dandelion Root Recipes | Hacker News

• Fossil fuel firms owe climate reparations of $281B a year, says study