2024-01-18

Cool

• Blastoise Humidifier Shows Us You Don’t Need A 3D Printer If You’re This Good With A 3D Pen

etc

• More Grid Trouble: Tennessee Valley Authority Asks Customers To Conserve Power Amid Cold Blast | ZeroHedge

• Experts Confirm: Icelandic Faultline Has Awakened After 800 Years.

• Ask HN: What's the best car without undesirable features?

Horseshit

• Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

  • HN comments

  • It's so cold, Teslas are struggling to charge in Chicago

  • HN comments

• Are You a Super Driver? Some States Want to Help You Go Electric

• Ex-Hertz Tesla Model 3s Cost as Little as $14,000. Would You Buy One?

• Stanley cups took the world by storm. Then the backlash began

  The Stanley Quencher has been called an “adult sippy cup”, an emotional-support item that comes in 26 colors, so it makes sense that its evangelists would fall victim to infantilization. What adult needs a straw to avoid spilling all over themselves? (Try sipping from a wide-brimmed Nalgene, and then ask that question again.) The single most redeeming quality of a Stanley – the fact that it is reusable, meaning fewer people are throwing out non-reusable water bottles – is also being debated.

• more "AI central planning" Burt's Bees X Hidden Valley Ranch

  Burt’s Bees teamed up with Hidden Valley Ranch to bring the craveable flavor of ranch and buffalo wings to your favorite lip balm

• Lost 'Atlantis' may have been home for half a million humans 70K years ago

• Sleep Retreats Are the Latest Wellness Travel Trend

• Thinking Out Loud About Paraphilias - by Jeff Clark, MD

  What dimensions matter in describing paraphilias? I would like to suggest that two dimensions must be present to even consider an attraction pathological. First, a paraphilic desire must be atypical. Under this dimension, a belly button fetish might score so low as to be unremarkable, while hebephilia would be clearly atypical. Second, paraphilic desires must be for nonconsensual sexual activity. For the sake of clarity, I note that some paraphilic behaviors are always nonconsensual—as children and unsuspecting victims cannot consent to sex. When consent is impossible, this paraphilia always falls on the extreme end of this dimension. A more nuanced approach needs to be taken when behaviors can be either consensual or sexual assault.

  • Almost every sexual possibility currently found kinky or wrong by some group, is or has previously been found reasonable, and often required in some circumstances, by some other group.

• Sharing deepfake porn could lead to lengthy prison time under proposed law

  • Sharing Fake Nude Images Could Become a Federal Crime Under Proposed Law

  • 'No AI Fraud Act' Could Outlaw Parodies, Political Cartoons, and More

    • HN comments

• More than half of US's 25,000 cities are predicted to become ghost towns by 2100

• Italian province orders all dogs to be DNA tested in poo crackdown

• Mexican Whiskey Is on the Rise, Powered by Ancient Corn

• Man's gross prank goes horribly wrong after his pants catch on fire

• The social media insiders fearing for their kids

celebrity gossip

Arnold Schwarzenegger Detained in Munich for 'Unregistered' Watch

• The Babylon Bee joked about Vivek running Trump’s 7-Eleven and it started a flamethrower war on the internet so let me explain it to you | Not the Bee

  Vivek is gonna be fine, y'all, and just because you're head-over-heels for him doesn't mean you have to be offended on his behalf by this joke.

  • Biden: "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent"

• Clinton advisor Dick Morris had a guy in underwear stroll through the background of his Iowa Caucus interview

• Pauly Shore’s Richard Simmons Biopic to Move Forward Despite Disavowal

  • Richard Simmons did not OK biopic starring Pauly Shore: 'Don't believe everything you read'

  • Richard Simmons isn't thrilled about Pauly Shore playing him in a newly announced biopic

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Exposed: Moderna's Vaccine Against Vaccine Dissent | RealClearInvestigations

  Moderna already had a sprawling media operation in place aimed at identifying and responding to critics of vaccine policy and the drug industry. A series of internal company reports and communications reviewed by RealClearInvestigations show that Moderna has worked with former law enforcement and public health officials and a drug industry-funded non-governmental organization called The Public Good Projects (PGP) to confront the “root cause of vaccine hesitancy” by rapidly identifying and “shutting down misinformation.”

• The ongoing content moderation issues behind Substack's meltdown

• How The Biden Administration Used A Counter-Terrorism Grant To Fund Anti-Conservative Propaganda | The Daily Wire

  DHS used a grant program intended to combat terrorists, called the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Program, to pay activists to write blog posts that criticized Donald Trump and other conservatives under the guise of “media literacy,” the Media Research Center found through public records requests.

  “Propaganda can also be used for socially beneficial purposes. Indeed, because the public has long been recognized as being suggestible, the United States has long made use of beneficial propaganda during WWI, WWII, and the Cold War,” the grant application said.

  The Rhode Island Lab used the DHS money to pay people $250 each to write blog posts about “misinformation, disinformation, media literacy… and more!” The articles pushed for Left-wing policies, even though federal grants cannot be used to fund lobbying. The posts sometimes had less to do with “media literacy” than political opining, railing against the National Rifle Association and Stand Your Ground laws. “We are all living in a darker, scarier, angrier, less hopeful country thanks to Mr. Trump’s influence. Are we on the verge of civil war?” one post said, complaining that Trump “was able to crawl into the safety of First Amendment protections.”

Musk

• Watch: Globalist WEF Speak Complains 'X' Is "Toxic, Scary", Musk's Policies Are "Problematic" | ZeroHedge

• Elon Threatens to 'Build Products Outside of Tesla' Unless He Gets More Control

• Is the Tesla Cybertruck a Dud? An Experienced EV Reviewer Thinks So

  • HN comments

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Trump more popular than he's been in a long while – "deplatforming" didn't work

• Advocacy groups preparing litigation in case of Trump reelection

• Revealed: A plainclothes Capitol cop found the DNC pipe bomb | Blaze Media

• Dan Goldman Pushes Censure Against Elise Stefanik For Calling Jan. 6 Prisoners 'Hostages'

• E. Jean Carroll judge bench-slaps Trump's attorney 14 times over basic lawyering in a single day of testimony

• Trump suggests Clinton-appointed judge won't let him attend mother-in-law's funeral

• E Jean Carroll: Fiery exchanges mark day two of Donald Trump's defamation case

• In defamation case, judge threatens to remove Trump from courtroom

• Donald Trump Nearly Gets Himself Kicked Out of Court in E. Jean Carroll Trial

• Judge Warns Trump to Shut Up or Get Kicked Out of Rape Trial

• Judge Threatens To Kick Trump Out Of Courtroom

• Judge scolds Trump after Carroll attorney calls him out for grumbling so loud the jury could hear

• Judge Threatens Trump With Expulsion From Defamation Trial

• Vice President Harris says she's 'scared as heck' that Donald Trump could win

  • Kamala Harris Says She’s ‘Scared As Heck’ By The Idea Of Trump Being Reelected

  • Vice President Harris admits she's 'scared as heck' about a Trump win in 2024

  • Harris says she’s ‘scared as heck’ about a Trump victory

• Democrats Promise To Save ‘Democracy’ By Destroying It

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Chinese Lab Mapped Deadly Coronavirus Two Weeks Before Beijing Told the World (Archive)

  Chinese researchers isolated and mapped the virus that causes Covid-19 in late December 2019, at least two weeks before Beijing revealed details of the deadly virus to the world, congressional investigators said, raising questions anew about what China knew in the pandemic’s crucial early days. Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by a House committee and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that a Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the virus’s structure to a U.S. government-run database on Dec. 28, 2019. China only shared the virus’s sequence with the World Health Organization on Jan. 11, 2020, according to U.S. government timelines of the pandemic.

  • Chinese Lab Mapped Covid-19 Virus Two Weeks Before Sharing Information Globally

• Head of the NIH, and Anthony Fauci’s Superior, Francis Collins: Now That You Have Me Here Under Oath and Pain of Perjury, I Guess Maybe the Lab Leak Wasn’t a “Conspiracy Theory” Like I Repeatedly Claimed When I Wasn’t Under Oath

• The Likely Lab Leak and the Covid Cassandra - James B. Meigs, Commentary Magazine

• CDC Drafted Alert For Myocarditis And COVID-19 Vaccines, But Never Sent It | ZeroHedge

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• State-sanctioned protest - Don Surber

• What Really Happened to George Floyd? | The Free Press

• Increasing Psychopathic Behavior Is A Sign That Society Is On The Verge Of Breaking Down | ZeroHedge

• Is ESG Already Over?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

• Bad stuff going down at the American Sociological Association (Archive)

  We live in a world where political leaders start wars, companies and governments dump toxic waste, church leaders cover up child abuse, etc. In comparison, universities and academic societies faking statistics, rewarding plagiarism and other scientific misconduct, restricting data, and otherwise mucking up the process of scholarly inquiry . . . that barely registers on the scale of institutionalized evil.

  When Lysenko did his part to destroy Soviet agriculture, at least he personally got something out of it. These American Sociology Association etc dudes, they get nothing. It’s really pitiful, when you think about it. These people aren’t evil, they’re pathetic.

  • HN comments

• Universities Bend over Backwards to Accommodate Food Delivery Robots

• A groundbreaking study shows kids learn better on paper, not screens. Now what?

• How to figure out your timeline to student loan forgiveness, as more borrowers become eligible

  • Student-loan forgiveness is coming early for some borrowers. Here's what you need to do to qualify.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Music streaming platforms must pay artists more, says EU

• DigitalOcean Appoints Paddy Srinivasan to Succeed Yancey Spruill as CEO

• Amazon Wants to Turbocharge Its Sports Advertising Business, Too

• Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results are getting worse

  • HN comments

• Google to tweak search results to comply with EU tech rules

• Specifically Apple, but it does generalize. Corporations Are Not to Be Loved

  • HN comments

• Sheryl Sandberg to Leave Meta Platforms Board After 12 Years

• Hollywood Keeps Reminding Us Why We Need Physical Media More Than Ever - IGN

• Harmonix is ending Rock Band DLC releases after 16 years, \~2,800 songs

• Condé Nast Is Folding Pitchfork into GQ, with Layoffs

• Rare near mint/mint copy of the Spider-Man No 1 sells for more than £1M

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• AMD axes Xilinx CPLD's less than two years after acquisition

• The Director of "Toy Story" also drew the BSD Daemon logo

  • HN comments

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI political disinformation is a problem – but harder to fight than ever

• AI poisoning could turn open models into destructive "sleeper agents"

  • HN comments

• UN chief calls for global risk management of AI

• Unveiling the future of open-source generative AI

• BMW showed off hallucination-free AI at CES 2024

• SEC chair warns centralized AI could lead to 'fragile' financial system

• Sam Altman: human-level AI is coming, will change world much less than we think

• AI-driven misinformation 'biggest short-term threat to global economy'

• If you can't reproduce the model then it's not open-source

  • HN comments

• OpenAI is working with the US military now

• From climate to coding, AI's impact is ramping up

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The James Webb Space Telescope hasn't found life out there–at least not yet

• US must beat China back to the moon, Congress tells NASA

Crypto con games

• Bitcoin's stunning comeback means crypto's total market cap has doubled since the FTX fiasco

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Google is laying off hundreds of employees in its advertising-sales team

  • Google laid off 1000 last week – Sundar Pichai warns there will be more

• Red Sea risk to oil ‘very real,’ prices could change rapidly if supply disrupted, Chevron CEO says.

• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Declined 11% in 2023

• YouTube Cuts 100 Employees as Tech Layoffs Continue

• Remote Work Doesn't Seem to Affect Productivity, Fed Study Finds

  • HN comments

• Fed Posts Largest-Ever Annual Operating Loss - WSJ

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Another Bogus Border Story Goes Viral And Most Outlets Aren't in a Hurry to Issue Corrections – HotAir

• Defense Secretary Aide's 911 Call Reveals Attempt To Conceal Health Emergency

• Biden, White House Push Lie about Martin Luther King Statuette on MLK Day - The Lid

  The truth is, the bust was “picked” by Barack Obama when he was president. It wasn’t “handpicked by President Biden” at all. The bust, created by African-American artist Charles Alston in 1970, was added to the Oval Office in 2009, not long after Obama was inaugurated. That bust has been sitting in the Oval Office since the day Obama put it there. It also remained there during Donald Trump’s four-year term in office — though he moved it to a different spot in the office.

• Blinken had to change plane after Boeing 737 failure in Davos

  • Secretary Antony Blinken's Boeing 737 out of Davos had a critical failure

  • US Secretary of State stuck in Davos after Boeing 737 breakdown

• Democrats’ Plan to Create Biden-Trump Matchup Is Still Working to Perfection | National Review

  The media–Democrat complex is dying to run against Trump — so much so that press outlets couldn’t contain themselves last night, announcing that he’d romped to victory while caucusing was still under way and before many Iowans had voted. Democrats want Trump to be the nominee, which requires convincing skeptical Republicans that he is a juggernaut who can roll over Biden. Hence the early victory projections last night that touted Trump potentially getting over 70 percent of the vote. At this point in the game, Democrats want you to believe Trump could annihilate Biden. Are they unnerved by Biden’s astonishingly low poll numbers? Sure they are — but that’s all the more reason to double down on inducing Republicans to nominate the one guy they’re confident he can beat, the guy he’s beaten before by laying low and letting Trump beat himself.

• Conservative justices seem poised to weaken power of federal agencies

• The Supreme Court will decide what cities can do about tent encampments

• Jim Jordan Demands Answers After Biden Admin Caught Flagging "MAGA" And "Trump" To Track Political Opponents' Financial Transactions | ZeroHedge

• House Republicans demand testimony from head of UNRWA over Hamas aid allegations.

• Seth Meyers Mocks Nikki Haley’s Delusional Reaction to Iowa

• Texas refuses to comply with Biden administration's cease-and-desist letter on border access

  • Texas defies federal threat to vacate park along southern border

• What we know about the migrant drownings at Texas border

• White House apologizes to Asa Hutchinson after snarky DNC statement

  • White House Phoned Asa Hutchinson to Apologize for DNC Slight

  • Asa Hutchinson's anti-Trump presidential campaign mocked by DNC

  • White House calls Hutchinson to apologize after mocking DNC statement

• Biden administration unveils proposed changes to big banks' overdraft fees

  • What to know about the Biden administration's proposed rule to limit bank overdraft fees

  • Overdraft fees would drop to as little as $3 under Biden proposal

• Harris says 'no denying' America's history of racism

  • Kamala Harris Knocks Nikki Haley’s Rejection of American Racism

• Dean Phillips Drops DEI From Campaign Website After Bill Ackman Donation

  • Phillips takes intra-party heat for scrubbing campaign website's reference to DEI

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• How Walmart's Financial Services Became a Fraud Magnet

• Police in Elyria, OH Toss Destructive Devices At Wrong Home, Injuring Baby.

• Alarm as Alabama man to be executed via gas method rejected by veterinarians

• Person of Interest in Custody Over Random NYC Stabbing Spree: Cops

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• A Reporter’s Journey Into How the U.S. Funded the Bomb - The New York Times

• Biden Decision To Water Down Houthi Terror Designation Draws Outrage.

  the Biden administration announced late Tuesday that it will be placing the Houthis on the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) list, which applies a range of new sanctions on the group, effective Feb. 16. This designation, however, is significantly weaker than the one applied by the Trump administration, which labeled the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a far more stringent classification that criminalized all support for the militant group and forced U.S. banks to seize the group's funds. Upon entering office in 2021, the Biden administration removed the Houthis from the FTO list as a gesture of good will toward Iran as it pursued diplomacy with the hardline regime.

  • Biden admin missing mark as it redesignates Iran-backed Houthis to terror list, critics say

  • US Redesignates Houthi Rebels as Terrorist Group

  • U.S. Yemen Envoy: We Picked Weaker Terror Designation for Houthis for Same Reason We Delisted Them in '21

  • U.S. Redesignates Houthis as a Terrorist Organization

  • Biden ‘playing with fire’ by redesignating Yemen’s Houthis as ‘terrorists’

• How the Biden Administration’s Strikes on Houthis Could Violate the Law

• Biden admin. blacklists former Guatemalan president, ex-minister for corruption

World

• Amazon, Microsoft, Meta accused by rivals of not respecting new EU rules

• Poland's journalists caught up in battle for airwaves

• Fujitsu apologizes for software bugs that fueled wrongful convictions in UK

• Myanmar's military is losing ground against coordinated attacks

• Qatari court convicts ex-finance minister of laundering $5.6B

• Cannabis Crunch: Thailand's Sudden Reversal on Marijuana Legalization

• Ecuador prosecutor investigating gang attack on TV studio shot dead

  • Prosecutor in the TV studio attack is shot dead in Ecuador's most dangerous city

  • Prosecutor Probing Gang-Related Ecuador TV Studio Attack Killed

• Argentine president praised for calling out Davos elites abandoning freedom for socialism: 'Drops truth bombs'

Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean

• Red Sea conflict worsens, forcing more ship detours around Africa

• Houthis Strike Red Sea Ship With Drone On Day US Terror Designation Takes Effect

• Pinprick attacks on Houthi pirates' positions won't solve the bigger problem

• Iran's Proxy Wars Could Boomerang Back and Harm Tehran's Middle East Interests

• Beyond the Red Sea: Who are the Houthis up against inside Yemen?

• U.S. Strikes 14 Houthi Missiles Ready to Launch: Pentagon

• Israel-Hamas War: U.S. Strikes Houthis Again as Tensions in Region Rise

• U.S. conducts fourth attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen

• US launches fourth round of strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen

• US military launches another barrage of missiles against Houthi sites in Yemen

• U.S. military launches another barrage of missiles against Houthi sites in Yemen

• Pakistan attacks "terrorist hideouts" in Iran as neighbors trade fire

  • Pakistan Unleashes Retaliatory Strikes in Iran, Killing Nine

• U.S. strikes Yemen and Pakistan hits Iran, escalating fears Gaza-Israel conflict will spread

Israel

• Just how bad is it in Gaza?

  the sprawling humanitarian operation that cared for 80% of 2.2m Gazans relied on the private sector. If a charity needed flour, it rang up a trader in Gaza, who called a mill in Israel or the West Bank. Aid workers might handle the last-mile delivery to bakeries and families—but businesses took care of the rest.

• Hamas’ underground tunnels are at least 350 miles long and have turned Gaza ‘into a fortress’: officials.

• Israeli war cabinet divided over plans to scale back Gaza war

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia is hit by huge civil protest in support of anti-Ukraine war activist as 10,000 take to the streets and clash with riot police: Putin speechwriter warns ‘This is how the Soviet Union collapsed.’

• 'FrankenSAM' Systems Are Now Shooting Down Drones in Ukraine

China

• China Told Women to Have Babies, but Its Population Shrank Again

• Affluent Chinese have been moving to Japan since the Covid lockdowns

• A Million Chinese Expats Are Transforming Far-Flung Places

• Taiwan Faces Foreign Policy Dilemma as China Turns Up Diplomatic Pressure

Health / Medicine

• Hospitals owned by private equity are harming patients, reports find

• Healthspan Is as Important as Your Lifespan–and It's Declining

• Long Island Midwife Gave Pellets Instead of Vaccines to 1,500 Children

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Bird Flu Kills a Polar Bear in a World First. Here's What That Means for Us

• Third of UK teenagers believe climate change exaggerated, report shows

• In Brazil, drones take flight in Rio in high-tech reforestation push

• Climate change isn't producing expected increase in atmospheric moisture

• Greenland's ice sheet melting faster than scientists previously estimated

  • The more scientists study Greenland, the worse its ice melt looks

  • Greenland’s Ice Sheet May Be Losing 20% More Ice Than Previously Measured