2023-11-18

etc

• Known Unknowns: The Major Sources for the Battle of Tours – The Historian's Sketchpad

  By the standards of eighth-century battles, the one in which al-Ghafiqi died actually has a lot of reasonably contemporary detailed sources. The bit before the comma is important. As discussed in the first paragraph, there are some huge holes in our knowledge of what happened. The body of evidence is small enough that Fraser and I could seriously contemplate translating all of the Latin sources in a couple of blog posts. Then, of course, things got out of hand, and we did all of them in one blog post. In doing so, we hope to make a little clearer what we do and don’t know about the Battle of Tours.

• We’re All “Flagellants” Now - The Daily Reckoning

• Attachment, Marital Satisfaction, Divorce During First 15 Years of Parenthood

• Why Some People Can't Remember Faces

Horseshit

• $13208 Winning bid for empty pill bottle of sleeping pills prescribed to Elvis

• Cruise Omitted Pedestrian Dragging in Self-Driving Car Incident CA DMV Summary

celebrity gossip

• Is Greta Thunberg anti-Semitic, or just naive?

• Roger Waters denied hotel stays in Argentina and Uruguay over antisemitism allegations days after saying Hamas were ‘morally bound to resist occupation’ and Israelis were ‘making up stories.’

Musk

• Apple to pause advertising on X after Musk backs antisemitic post

• Musk threatens 'thermonuclear lawsuit' as X ad boycott gathers pace

  • Elon Musk Threatens 'Thermonuclear' Lawsuit over Reports of Antisemitic Content

  • Stand with X to protect free speech

  For another brand showcased in the article, two of its ads served adjacent to 2 posts, 3 times, and that ad was only seen in that setting by one user, the author of the Media Matters article.

  • X Corp will be filing a 'thermonuclear' lawsuit against Media Matters

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• BLM-Linked Provocateur John Sullivan Found Guilty On 7 Jan. 6 Criminal Counts | ZeroHedge

• Jan6 Videos from Congress

  • Speaker Mike Johnson on X: "view the January 6th tapes for yourself."

  • Speaker Johnson Releases J6 Footage, and the Left Is Gonna Flip Out

  • Trump Supporters Elated by Release of More Jan. 6 Footage

  • Speaker Johnson Releases Jan. 6 Videos To The Public | ZeroHedge

• Capitol police uncuff, fistbump, release J6 protester

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Actor Wil Wheaton Explains Why He Still Wears A Mask In Public: ‘Covid Is Very Much Still A Thing.’

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Hate Speech Surges Across the Internet

• Where Are the International Women’s Organizations as the Shocking Scale of Hamas’s Sexual Violence Against Israeli Women on October 7 Becomes Horrifyingly Clear?

  • MeToo, unless you're a Jew: feminist groups are whitewashing Hamas's crimes

• Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire continues to post anti-Palestinian tweets

• The truth about TikTok hashtags and content during the Israel-Hamas war

  • TikTok Says It's Not the Algorithm, Teens Are Just Pro-Palestine

• NYU and Human Rights Watch Accidentally Doxxed 8k People

• Israel's war on American student activists

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• LeVar Burton Threatened ‘Physical Violence’ Against Moms for Liberty at Book Ceremony

Entertainment / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Meta's head of augmented reality software stepping down

• One-third of U.S. newspapers as of 2005 will be gone by 2024

• The Cassette-Tape Revolution

• Google is embedding inaudible watermarks right into its AI generated music

• Apple Says It Will Improve Green vs Blue Texting Experience

• TV: Now What? | Hacker News

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Commodore, Part 2 – The VIC-20

• comments smell funny on this. have the staff fake a HN story? Frigate: Open-source network video recorder with real-time AI object detection | Hacker News

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI announces leadership transition

  Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities

  • (HN server melting) HN comments

  • Sam Altman Sacked

  • Sam Altmen to Depart OpenAI, Mira Murati Interim CEO

  • OpenAI's Sam Altman to depart as company's CEO

  • OpenAI's Board Pushes Out Sam Altman, Its High-Profile CEO

  • Sam Altman Leaves OpenAI as CEO

  • Sam Altman's first response after being fired from Open AI

  • Who Is Mira Murati, OpenAI's New CEO?

  • Reddit "insider" comments on Altman firing

• Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

• Sam Altman and Greg Brockman Joint Statement | Hacker News

• Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

  • HN comments

• Microsoft was blindsided by OpenAI's ouster of CEO Sam Altman

  • HN comments

• WTF is going on at OpenAI? We have theories

• Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

• Everything We Know About OpenAI's Shocking Ouster of Sam Altman

• No "malfeasance" behind Sam Altman's firing, OpenAI memo says

• AI-generated movie posters with Disney logos force Microsoft to alter Bing Image Creator | Ars Technica

• Show HN: Combining Google Trends, OpenAI ChatGPT, and DALL-E to Create Daily Art

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time | Hacker News

• SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight

Crypto con games

• Vivek Ramaswamy Crypto Policy Framework

• More Sam Altman What to Know About Worldcoin and the Controversy Around It

Economicon / Business / Finance

• The Share of Americans Who Are Mortgage-Free Is at an All-Time High Archive link

  The share of US homes that are mortgage-free jumped 5 percentage points from 2012 to 2022, to a record just shy of 40%.

  Barbara Daly has two mortgage-free homes to her name. One in Beach Haven, New Jersey, which she inherited, and one in Ambler, Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband. The couple paid off the loan on the Pennsylvania property just before the start of the pandemic, after refinancing its 15-year mortgage halfway through the original 30-year loan.

• Thanksgiving Gas Prices Could Hit Lowest Level Since 2020, as Cost Keeps Sliding

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• TikTok Democrats and 4Chan Republicans

• Newsom Is Mandating Education in Disinformation—While Spreading It Online

• Hochul Signs Bill Giving Prosecutors More Power to Halt Deed Theft Evictions

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The Biden-Xi summit was a total embarrassment.

• (Oct 2023) Lockheed is now tracking phones and walkie-talkies from space, and the UAE military is allegedly a "strong" customer

World

• China Navy Used Sonar Pulses Against Divers, Australia Says

• Turkish Parliament Postpones Vote On Sweden's NATO Membership

• 'Shocking' scale of UK government's files on critics revealed

Israel

• Israel says it will allow limited deliveries of fuel to Gaza for aid needs

• Videos of the Hamas slaughter of civilians have been released.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• MSM Admits "Magical Thinking" Guided Its Reporting On Ukraine... Many Thousands Of Deaths Later | ZeroHedge

• Putin's war has basically killed off one of Russia's most successful tech cos

Health / Medicine

How many in the U.S. are disabled? Proposed census changes would greatly decrease count | Science | AAAS

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Canada's Supreme Court overturns ban on single use plastics

• Extreme weather pushes global wine production to lowest level in more than 60yrs

• The Surprising Reason Sea Creatures Are Getting Hungrier