2023-08-19

Worthy

• Scott is in fine form here: Historical censorship attempts and shifting elites | Locklin on science

  The vast swathes of people in the US are ridiculously absurdly obese, there are tens of millions of people with allergies which didn’t exist when I was a kid, human fertility is plummeting in the civilized parts of the world, 20% of kids in America claim they are gay, 50% of liberal white women are mentally ill by their own definitions, there are druggies living in favelas even in minor cities, 100,000 opiate addicts die every year, infrastructure is crumbling, autism rates have skyrocketed. Even putting aside the vast crimes and impostures of 2020-2022 ‘rona hysteria and our careening towards a completely unnecessary nuclear war over the sacred borders of a country which is 5000 miles away and didn’t exist 40 years ago. This is what happened from listening to our radio and TV “experts;” we live in clown world. In the EU clown car, the the second Morgenthau plan‘s destruction of German industry, French race riots and the clerisy imposes a wide-ranging censorship regulation in the “digital services act.” All under a background of high excess death rates which every official legacy “news” source and politician seems completely incurious about.

  • linked from that, worthy too, from 2022: Like Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump Drinks Beverages

  the researcher at the government-funded center that supports the intelligence community’s cognitive security efforts is here to warn us against authoritarianism.

etc

• New data reveals dozens of power grid malfunctions as Maui wildfires began

• EXCLUSIVE: Maui wildfires death toll climbs to 480 locals claim, as Hawaii morgue workers run out of body bags and survivors are left to recover the charred remains of their loved ones | Daily Mail Online

  • Maui Wildfires Death Toll Rises to Nearly 500 as Morgue Runs Out of Body Bags, Locals Claim

• British Columbia declares a state of emergency amid devastating wildfires

  • The capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories ordered to evacuate from wildfires

• The Current State of American Chestnut Tree Conservation - FineGardening

  Many seedlings will survive to nut-bearing age before succumbing to blight. This could be an important step in the preservation of the American chestnut until scientists figure out how best to conserve the species. Gardeners should expect their trees to get about 4 inches in diameter before succumbing to blight.

• Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

  • HN comments

• Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft suffers technical glitch, space agency says

Horseshit

• AI is speeding up scientific discoveries and helping to spot new ideas

• Why your new electric car won't have a spare tire

celebrity gossip

• Former Virgin Islands AG Says Governor Pressured Her To Allow Epstein Onto Island | The Daily Caller

Obit

• World-famous meme dog Cheems dead aged 12 after leukemia battle as tributes flood internet for 'Ironic Doge' | The US Sun

  • HN comments

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Xbox’s new “8 strikes” mod rollout judges hate speech 3x worse than cheating

  • HN comments

• “We Have Lost Our Way”

Musk

• Elon Musk's Latest Big Idea for X Is Removing the Block Button

  • Musk Says Twitter Will No Longer Let You Block Other Users

• Elon Musk's X follower count bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts

• Twitter/X has removed all media posted before 2014

• X suspends pro-Nazi account after two brands halt advertising

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• New Details Emerge About 75-Year-Old Utah Man Gunned Down by FBI Agents - Neighbor Captures Footage Showing the Moments Before He Was Killed (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cullen Linebarger

Pestilence / Pox / COVID / VaxCult

• Another One? Boeing Dreamliner Pilot Suffers "Fatal Cardiac Arrest" Shortly After Takeoff

• Scientists race to understand highly mutated coronavirus variant

• Which arm gets the Covid-19 booster may make a difference, study shows

• The Lab-Leak Illusion

  I am neither a scientist nor a science writer, so this will not be a technical essay. Nor will I be offering any original research. This will be a critical analysis of the debate along with some concluding thoughts about how and why the discourse on this topic has diverged so sharply from the available evidence. Although gaps remain in the natural hypothesis of COVID-19’s origins, the lab-leak alternative is poorly supported and internally incoherent. The debate only continues because popular consensus is not yet ready to accept this.

  for the most committed lab-leakers—the members of DRASTIC and their associates who tweet about nothing else—the single issue motivating their reasoning on this issue has been opposition to gain-of-function research, which absolutely terrifies them. Some of them refuse to concede that this kind of research can yield any benefits whatsoever and maintain that it is simply a malign expression of scientific hubris, the public funding of which incentivises pocket-lining irrespective of risk. A thoughtful debate about biosafety protocols would probably be a good idea.

  • HN comments

Culture War / Tribal / Re segregation

• Why Did “On The Media” Stoke The Moral Panic Against Innocent New York Times Journalists Rather Than Investigate It?

• What is an embryo? Scientists say definition needs to change

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Boston University hires Harvard's dismissed disinformation scholar Joan Donovan

• Cyberattack shutters major NSF-funded telescopes for more than 2 weeks

• Buy Me a Chair - by Paul Musgrave - Systematic Hatreds

  • HN comments

• Elite colleges hire Biden official under FBI investigation | The College Fix

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Interstate 76; car combat game: From Mechs to Mopar: The Digital Antiquarian

  • HN comments

• 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Artist Turns Down $8 Million From Stunned Music Execs, Says "Nothing Special About Me"

• Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today? | Hacker News

• Facebook won't lift ban in Canada even for sharing wildfire info | Hacker News

• Ask HN: What is going on with HN? | Hacker News

  I know the rules say that "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on-topic, but is HN now a platform for sharing news about meme dogs and wikipedia articles about farting?

TechSuck

• Bambu Owners Woke Up Yesterday to Find Their 3D Printers Had Gone Rogue

  • HN comments

  • Bambu X1C and P1P started printing while owners were asleep

• WD refused to answer our questions about its self-wiping SanDisk SSDs

  • HN comments

• Rust devs push back as Serde project ships precompiled binaries

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US Steel, a symbol of America’s economic might, now for sale in the bargain bin

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Wiki Wow! Damning Emails Reveal Manipulated Biden Wikipedia Entries

• Chicago Democrat Asks Gang Members To Limit Shootings to Nighttime

  Democratic alderwoman Maria Hadden, in an email newsletter, promoted a proposal from the community group Native Sons called "the People's Ordinance," which asks gang members to not shoot between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

  "We have to start somewhere," cofounder of Native Sons Tatiana Atkins said of the ordinance, according to CWBChicago. "Our goal is to approach our city’s gun violence problem strategically and not all at once. Things didn’t become this way overnight, and change won’t happen overnight.

• Biden administration announces $1.2B for DAC plants in Texas and Louisiana

• 1/3 of America’s organic dairies have failed in the last four years

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• The FBI proves again it can’t be trusted with Section 702

  • HN comments

• Officials name IRS agent shot, killed during training exercise in Phoenix

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Families of Those Excluded from Iran Hostage Deal Demand Answers

World

• China Is Desperate to Boost Low Birth Rates. It May Have to Accept New Normal

• ‘The Eurocentric fallacy’: the myths that underpin European identity

• China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

• After McDonald's, Burger King India drops tomatoes from its menu

• UK needs to be distracted from other things, i guess: Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby - BBC News

  The unit's lead consultant Dr Stephen Brearey first raised concerns about Letby in October 2015. No action was taken and she went on to attack five more babies, killing two. Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six others in a neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, in Cheshire.

  • Doctors were forced to apologise for raising alarm over Lucy Letby/baby deaths

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl: A Mystery Few Seem Interested in Solving

  • HN comments

• Russian women fear return of murderers freed to fight for Wagner

Health / Medicine

• Compensating Kidney Donors

  we come down strongly in support of indirect payment, specifically, a $100,000 refundable federal tax credit. The tax credit would be uniformly applied over a period of 10 years, in the amount of $10,000 a year for those who qualify and then become donors.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• ‘Gigantic’ power of meat industry blocking green alternatives, study finds

• An Invasive Hornet Species Is Spotted in the U.S. for the First Time

• Dead trees around the world are shocking scientists

• First Hurricane to hit California in 84 years; ‘catastrophic’ flooding feared