2024-01-27

etc

• Against the odds, Notre Dame cathedral will reopen this year

• Phones Track Everything but Their Role in Car Wrecks

• Provocative car content creators WhistlinDiesel inspired to rebuild ‘Killdozer’ for 20th anniversary

  • Marvin Heemeyer - Wikipedia

    Over about eighteen months, Heemeyer secretly armored a Komatsu D355A bulldozer with layers of steel and concrete. On Friday, June 4, 2004, Heemeyer used the bulldozer to demolish the Granby town hall, the house of a former mayor, and several other buildings. He killed himself after the bulldozer became stuck in a hardware store he was destroying.

• 'Obtundity' signs bewilder York residents and visitors

• (Jul 2023) Embracing the Beauty of the Present - by Jaimin

• First Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 flies after three-week grounding

• A roaring tailwind just hurled a passenger plane at 826 miles per hour

Horseshit

• Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

• How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

• GM and Honda join forces to make hydrogen fuel cells for 'various products'

• Why You Should Add Salt to Tea

  • Tea with salt? American scientist's "outrageous proposal" leaves U.S.-U.K. relations in "hot water," embassy says - CBS News

  • Tea with salt recipe by American scientist outrages the British : NPR

  • The chemist who told us to put salt in our tea explains why she did it | New Scientist

  • Opinion: We Brits don't need tea-brewing advice from Americans

  • We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

• Antony Blinken, Notorious Boeing Lover, Stranded After Davos

• We've Forgotten How to Use Computers

• Why there are no small pickup trucks

Electric / Self Driving cars

• San Francisco Sues To Keep Autonomous Cars Out Of The City

• Cruise wasn't hiding accident video from regulators – it had bad internet

• Solid-State EV Batteries Now Face "Production Hell"

• Evidence EVs are a fading fad is rolling in fast as Tesla GM and Ford cut prices

celebrity gossip

• WWE Boss Vince McMahon Hit With Sex Trafficking Lawsuit

• Fake Explicit Taylor Swift Images Swamp Social Media

  • Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes

  • Taylor Swift deepfakes spark calls in Congress for new legislation

  • Satya Nadella – the explicit Taylor Swift AI fakes are 'alarming and terrible'

Obit

• Harry Connick Sr., longtime New Orleans DA and singer's dad, dies

• NYC Dancer Dies From Mislabeled Stew Leonard’s Cookie

• GOP Sen. John Barrasso’s Wife Dies After 2-Year Battle With Brain Cancer

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Germany unearths pro-Russia disinformation campaign on X

  • Odd how there were all those "Russian Bots" all over Twitter so recently, that seem to have just vanished. The ones that were pushing "Hunter Laptop" and "Maui Roadblock" stories, for example.

• 'News finds me' mindset may lead readers away from political, science news

• Disinformation is blamed for swaying elections – research says something else

Musk

• Elon Musk warns Tesla workers they'll be sleeping on the production line

• Elon Musk's AI startup seeks to raise up to $6B

• Elon Musk wants to relive his startup days. He's repeating the same mistakes

• Musk: Chinese EV makers will demolish' most competitors without trade barriers

• An 'Official Organization' on X Is Just Openly Glorifying Hitler Now

  It’s unclear what’s going on here, but the episode is indicative of a trend where antisemitic and white nationalist groups capitalize on X’s freewheeling paid verification systems to promote their views. Defund Israel Now has been the subject of previous reporting, as well as other groups such as “Stop Zionist Hate,” which is a gold-verified account with 125,000 followers despite only having a barebones webpage with links to various social media accounts. That account has been linked by journalists to a network of white nationalist propaganda accounts on social media.

• Tesla Cybertruck Owner Gets 'Coming Soon' Message When Trying to Lock Diff

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Closing arguments expected in E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial against Trump

  • Trump takes the stand at E. Jean Carroll defamation damages trial

  • MSNBC's Katie Phang Predicts Trump's Testimony Will 'Blow Up In His Face'

  • Trump Ordered To Pay Over $80 Million In Carroll Defamation Case | ZeroHedge

  • Jury Awards E. Jean Carroll $83.3 Million in Second Defamation Case Against Donald Trump

  • Is the 25-year-old rape charge a new pension system for women of a certain age?

• Former White House official Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena

  • Former Trump Aide Peter Navarro Sentenced to 4 Months in Jail

• Trump Shuts Down RNC Proposal to Name Him GOP’s Presumptive Nominee

  • Republican National Committee said to scrap naming Trump "presumptive" nominee

• Trump Joins Legal Effort To Disqualify DA Fani Willis From Georgia Election Case

  • Trump Joins Motion to Disqualify Prosecutor in Georgia Election Case

  • Trump cites allegations of improper relationship in effort to dismiss Georgia election charges

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Email Reveals Why CDC Didn’t Issue Alert on COVID Vaccines and Myocarditis | The Epoch Times

  The nation’s top public health agency did not send an alert on COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation because officials were concerned they would cause panic, according to an email obtained by The Epoch Times.

• New Documents Largely Confirm That Covid Was Created in Wuhan Lab.

  New documents may explain why no one has been able to find the SARS2 virus (aka SARS-CoV-2) infesting a colony of bats, from which it might have jumped to people. The reason would be that the virus has never existed in the natural world. Documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know, a health advocacy group, provide a recipe for assembling SARS-type viruses from six synthetic pieces of DNA designed to be a consensus sequence—the genetically most infectious form—of viruses related to SARS1, the bat virus that caused the minor epidemic of 2002. The probative weight of the recipe is that prior independent evidence already pointed to SARS2 having just such a six-section structure.

  The new recipe is in striking accord with a theoretical paper published in 2022 that predicted the SARS2 virus had been generated in exactly this way. Three researchers—Valentin Bruttel, Alex Washburne, and Antonius VanDongen—noted that the virus could be cut into six sections if treated with a pair of agents known as restriction enzymes and so had probably been synthesized and assembled in this way.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• An ideological divide is emerging between young men and women around the world

  • HN comments

  • A new global gender divide is emerging

  In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up. Germany also now shows a 30-point gap between increasingly conservative young men and progressive female contemporaries, and in the UK the gap is 25 points. In Poland last year, almost half of men aged 18-21 backed the hard-right Confederation party, compared to just a sixth of young women of the same age.

• Skulls reveal scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

  • HN comments

• Veterans Group Sues Government To Cover Gender-Affirming Surgery For Veterans

  • Trans Veterans File Lawsuit Against VA Over Gender Confirmation Surgery

  • Transgender veterans sue VA over delayed transition surgeries: 'They are letting us die'

• Alcoholics Anonymous more likely to benefit White Americans.

• Inequality Inc: How corporate power divides our world and the need for a new era

• Tens of thousands of pregnancies from rape occurring in abortion-ban states | Ars Technica

  The study did not assess how many of the estimated 64,565 pregnancies resulted in births, but it makes clear that tens of thousands of pregnant rape survivors, including children, were forced to turn to illegal procedures, self-managed abortions, or burdensome travel to states where abortion is legal—cost-prohibitive to many—as an alternative to carrying a rape-related pregnancy to term.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• U.S. Department of Education recommendations on teaching math to young children

• Cornell donor demands president step down, citing 'toxic' diversity policies

• The blogger who spotted problems in Dana-Farber cancer papers

• B.C. to restrict cellphones in schools to protect kids from online harm

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Maine considers allowing communities to tax streaming services for using wires

• Pokémon Company will "investigate" Palworld in light of plagiarism accusations

  • Palworld, deemed ‘Pokémon with guns,’ stirs up the internet and sparks scrutiny

  • The Pokémon Company says it will ‘investigate’ Palworld

• Is it worth collecting cassettes in 2024?

• Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union

  • HN comments

  • Getting started as an alternative app marketplace in the European Union

  • "Under the new EU Apple rules" If you make $10M in sales, Apple's cut is $6.2M annually

    If you make less than $0.57 per user - which is most apps - you will end up negative and you will owe Apple money.

  • HN comments

  • Apple faces 'strong action' if App Store changes fall short, EU's Breton says

• Meta tool to block nude images in teens' private messages

• ESPN monopoly power: "You'll take 720p broadcasts and like it."

• What We Discovered on 'Deep YouTube'

• Microsoft Cancels New Blizzard Video Game After Six Years of Development

• Cable Giants: Making Cancellations Easier Violates Their First Amendment Rights

• HP CEO Says They Brick Printers That Use Third-Party Ink Because of Hackers

• Beeper's Push for iMessage on Android Is Over

• Starting April 8, 2024, your Google Nest Dropcam will no longer work

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• New email policies at Gmail, Yahoo et al will require DMARC enabled domains | easyDNS

• AMD Publishes XDNA Linux Driver: Support for Ryzen AI on Linux

  • HN comments

• It is not "brief" A brief story about the usr split

• Lossy CSS compression for fun and loss (or profit)

  • HN comments

• US to propose 'know your customer' requirements for cloud computing companies

• Microsoft accidentally granted global admin privileges to a random legacy test account.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• US Launches Inquiry into AI Deals by Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and Amazon

  • FTC Launches Probe of Big Tech's AI Investments

• Taiwan builds own AI language model to counter China's influence

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• So Long And Thanks For All The Flights: Ingenuity Permanently Grounded After 72 Flights

• China, Russia Disguise Attack Threats Posed by Their Satellites, US Says

• Northrop charges on lunar Gateway module program reach $100 million - SpaceNews

  Warden mentioned the latest charge only in passing in the company’s latest earning call, which was dominated by discussion of a far larger charge the company took on its contract for production of the B-21 stealth bomber.

Crypto con games

• China's Bitcoin boom poses a threat to Xi

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Economic strength surpasses expectations, new GDP data shows

  • The US economy is likely headed for another 'roaring '20s' of rapid growth, market veteran says

  • US economy surprises with faster than expected growth

  • Many experts feared a recession. Instead, the economy has continued to soar

  • The economy is doing better than expected. Your 401(k) probably is, too.

  • Americans are shopping their way to a stronger economy

  • How America's economy keeps defying expectations

  • Economists Predicted a Recession. So Far They’ve Been Wrong. - The New York Times

• Fed's preferred inflation gauge falls below 3% for first time since March 2021

• U.S. workers getting scooped up by international companies hiring remote roles

• When Layoffs Happen, Remote Workers Are Hardest Hit

• Salesforce to Cut About 700 Workers

  • Salesforce is the latest tech company to cut jobs with 700 layoffs, report says

• Flexport to lay off 20% of its workforce

  • Flexport Plans to Cut Another 20% of Staff

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• US Administration Announces Pause on Approvals of Liquefied Natural Gas Exports

  • Biden hits pause on approvals of liquified natural gas exports

  • Biden Set To Announce New LNG Export Ban After White House Met With Gen-Z Climate Warrior

  • Biden administration pauses new LNG exports to reassess climate impact

  • Biden halts new US natural gas export facilities, citing climate

  • Biden hits pause on natural gas projects amid plans for carbon ‘mega bombs’

  • (May 2023) How LNG shipping kept Europe’s wartime energy supply secure

  • In Pathetic POTATUS Pander, WH Pulls LNG Football Just Before Winning Kick.

• Texas Is Ginning Up a New Constitutional Crisis

  • 25 Republican governors back Texas in escalating border standoff with US gov

  • Far-Right Extremists Are Organizing an Armed Convoy to the Texas Border | WIRED

    While this kind of right-wing chatter doesn’t always amount to anything, on Telegram, the main Take Back Our Border channel now has over 1,000 members and is being used as a place to plan and share information about the convoy, as well as three rallies taking place in Texas, California, and Arizona next week. The convoy will reportedly begin on Monday, January 29, and participants currently say they are planning on driving to Eagle Pass, Texas where the Texas National Guard are currently in a standoff with the Border Patrol.

  • Texas border: Greg Abbott joined by GOP governors, invoking confederacy.

• "The Country Has Been Invaded": Ex-FBI Brass Pen 'Sobering' Letter Over "New And Imminent Danger" From Biden's Open Border

• McConnell Is Mad GOP Voters Won’t Let Him Pass An Open Borders Bill

• Michigan GOP chair Kristina Karamo rightly ousted, say RNC lawyers

  • Michigan GOP descends into chaos amid an escalating leadership battle

• Greg Gutfeld's sexual obsession with AOC accidentally reveals the insecurities of the MAGA man

  • Greg Gutfeld: It’s ‘Now Acceptable’ to Use R-Word on Fox News

• The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried.

• Can the IRS's New Free Tax-Filing Tool Replace TurboTax? We Tried It Out

• Nancy Pelosi Made $500k from Her Nvidia Bet, Doubling Her Annual Salary

• Who Is Dean Phillips and Why Do All the Tech Bros Want Him to Be President?

• Trader Joe's Follows SpaceX in Arguing US Labor Board Is Unconstitutional

• Is the Electoral Fix Already In? - by Matt Taibbi

  For over a year, the Biden administration and its surrogates have dropped hint after hint that the plan for winning in 2024 — against Donald Trump or anyone else — might involve something other than voting. Lawsuits in multiple states have been filed to remove Trump from the ballot; primaries have been canceled or invalidated; an ominous Washington Post editorial by Robert Kagan, husband to senior State official Victoria Nuland, read like an APB to assassins to head off an “inevitable” Trump dictatorship; and on January 11th of this year, leaders of a third party group called “No Labels” sent an amazing letter to the Department of Justice, complaining of a “conspiracy” to stop alternative votes.

  The grim reality of Campaign 2024 is that both sides appear convinced the other will violate “norms” first, with Democrats in particular seeming to believe extreme advance action is needed to head off a Trump dictatorship. Such elevated levels of paranoia virtually guarantee that someone is going to cheat before Election Day in November, at which point the court of public opinion will come into play. The key question will be, who abandoned democracy first?

  The TIP report provided an answer. It contained long lists of theoretical Trump abuses that sounded suspiciously more like the extralegal maneuvers already deployed against Trump dating back to mid-2016, particularly during the failed effort to prosecute him for collusion with Russia. Interpreted by some as a literal plan to overturn a legal Trump victory, its greater significance was as a historical document, since it read like a year-by-year synopsis of all the home team rule-breaking. In other words, the TIP read like a Team Clinton playbook, only with hero and villain reversed.

  Many who couldn’t stand Trump, would never vote for him, and have been willing consumers of the awesome amount of propaganda published on the Trump subject, now need to face the fact that they’ve been had. Transformed into the avatar of all bad things — a crude domestic combo platter of Saddam, Milosevic, Assad, and Putin — this vision of the über-villain, Trump, has been used to distract mass audiences from the erosion of “norms” at home. “Protecting democracy” in the Trump context will be remembered as having served the same purpose as Saddam’s mythical WMDs, the shots fired in the Gulf of Tonkin, or Gaddafi’s fictional Viagra-enhanced army. Those were carefully crafted political lies, used to rally the public behind illegal campaigns of preemption.

  Voters, by voting, “protect democracy.” A politician who claims to be doing the job for us is up to something. The group in the current White House is trying to steal for themselves a word that belongs to you. Don’t let them.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Inmate’s Spiritual Adviser Breaks Down Describing Nitrogen Execution

• Michigan school shooter's mum weeps as she goes on trial

• US agencies warn companies: Don’t delete Slack or Signal chats

• Election cybersecurity director was a victim of a ‘swatting’ attack in her home.

• Police arrest California teen, said linked to swatting attacks

• Stowaway on Los Angeles-Bound Flight from Denmark Found Guilty

• US National Security Agency buys web browsing data without warrant, letter shows

  • NSA is buying Americans' internet browsing records without a warrant

  • The NSA buys Americans' internet data, newly released documents show

  • NSA admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon Report Predicts New Age of Covid Bioweapons and Brain Chip Warfare

• US Warned Iran of ISIS-K Threat Ahead of Deadly Blasts, US Official Says

• National security adviserJake Sullivanis heading to Thailand to discuss the Houthi attacks

  • Sullivan Dispatched To Politely Ask China To Pressure Iran On Halting Houthi Attacks

World

• Government warned about Post Office system unreliable in 1998

• King Charles arrives at hospital for prostate surgery

  • Enlarged prostate searches surge after King's diagnosis

• Why South Korea is banning the sale of dog meat

• UK pulls out of post-Brexit trade talks with Canada

• Top Polish court rules Donald Tusk’s media overhaul unconstitutional

  Poland’s highest court on Thursday ruled that Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s overhaul of state media was unconstitutional, the latest pushback against the pro-EU leader’s sweeping attempt to overhaul public institutions. The constitutional court ruled in a case brought by the rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) that the liquidation of state media — which Tusk said was a step in his planned overhaul — breached a constitutional article declaring Poland to be a “democratic state ruled by law”.

  Tusk’s culture ministry said Thursday’s ruling on state media had “no legal significance” because of the court’s politicisation. “Judgments issued with the participation of so-called double judges do not have universally binding force and are not final,” it said, noting that the European Court of Human Rights in 2021 found that Poland’s constitutional tribunal was no longer an independent court.

Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean

• Houthis launch more attacks in Red Sea; alleged Netanyahu recording causes diplomatic spat

• Red Sea Chaos: Houthi Missile Hits Trafigura Oil Tanker Near Yemen - Bloomberg

• British Oil Tanker Containing Naptha Hit by Missile, on Fire;at Risk of Sinking

• Oil tanker on fire in Gulf of Aden

Israel

• ICJ Orders Israel to Prevent Genocide Without Cease-Fire

  • HN comments

  • What the ICJ’s interim ruling means for Israel’s war on Gaza

  • U.N. court says Gaza genocide is 'plausible,' but does not order cease-fire

  • ICJ Orders Israel to Prevent Genocide, but Does Not Demand Stop to War

  • Israel loses IJC interim verdict. Must stop genocide

• Israeli Hostage Families Vow More ‘Disruption’ After Storming Parliament

  • Widening Mideast Crisis: Families of Israeli Hostages Protest at Border Crossing to Block Aid to Gaza

  • Families of Israeli captives deny leaking Netanyahu Qatar tape

• The long and bitter relationship between Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas

  • Do not confuse Benjamin Netanyahu’s interests with Israel’s

  • Qatar Expresses Anger Over Netanyahu’s Leaked Criticism

  • More Netanyahu blowback: Senate Dems call for new leadership in Israel

• UNRWA Is Investigating Charges of Workers’ Involvement in Oct. 7 Attacks - The New York Times

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• British Defense Ministry: Russia Cracks Down on Criticism About Ukraine

China

• China Added More Solar Panels in 2023 Than US Did in Its Entire History

• US Extends Lead over China in Race for Biggest Economy

• In depth: New Zealand fruit giant's kiwi battle in China

• People are wrong about Taiwan scenarios

Health / Medicine

• Balancing Outdoor Risky Play and Injury Prevention in Childhood Development

  • HN comments

• Surgery Works Well Without the FDA

  There are problems with surgery. There are unnecessary deaths and ineffective procedures. There are bad actors and high prices. But surgery is not the vision of snake oil and certain death that is painted by many FDA defenders when you ask them to imagine a world without the FDA. The problems faced by surgery are matched and sometimes exceeded by problems faced by pharmaceuticals.

  Surgery has at least all of the market challenges that harry pharmaceuticals and it doesn’t have an FDA. Yet, it still muddles through. This is what we should expect pharmaceuticals to look like if we abolished the FDA. We would have a well-functioning, self-improving market for medical treatments without billion-dollar fifteen-year waits for any new drug that people want to try.

• Year of inaction leaves children at risk from bad cancer drugs

• Caffeine’s Dirty Little Secret - The Atlantic

  All the attention on Panera’s Charged Lemonade has resurfaced an age-old question: How much caffeine is too much? You won’t find a simple answer anywhere. Caffeine consumption is widely considered to be beneficial because it mostly is—boosting alertness, productivity, and even mood. But there is a point when guzzling caffeine tips over into uncomfortable, possibly unhealthy territory. The problem is that defining this point in discrete terms is virtually impossible. In the era of extreme caffeine, this is a dangerous way to live.

  The FDA does have a recommended daily caffeine limit of 400 milligrams, the equivalent of about four or five cups of coffee. “Based on the relevant science and information available,” a spokesperson told me, consuming that much each day “does not raise safety concerns” for most adults. The agency, however, doesn’t require food labels to note caffeine content, though some companies include that information voluntarily.

  But the numbers are helpful only up to a point. The FDA’s daily recommendation is a “rough guideline” that can’t be used as a universal standard, because “it’s not safe for everybody,” Temple said. For one person, 237 milligrams could mean a trip to the hospital; for another, that would just be breakfast. The effect of a given caffeine dose “varies tremendously from person to person based upon their historical pattern of use and also their genetics,” Juurlink told me.

• Study links social media use to increased inflammation over time

• Wastewater could offer an early warning system for measles

• Buried in Wegovy Costs, North Carolina Will Stop Paying for Obesity Drugs

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Idle oil wells threaten health in California and will cost billions to plug

• Why are Alaska's rivers turning orange?

• The Japanese philosophy for a no-waste world

• 'How to greenwash': propane industry tries to rebrand fuel as renewable

• Expected CO₂ levels in 2024 threaten 1.5°C warming limit

• What are the odds that extreme weather will lead to a global food shock?

• What to expect from this year's rare double brood of cicadas

• A Counterintuitive Effect of Global Warming

• Noticing less snow in New England? Researchers are too

• 'Mysterious Black Goo' Has Plagued Venezuela for Nearly 40 Years

• A wolf killed the EU president's pony then the fight to catch the predator began

• 'Hot droughts' are becoming more common in the arid West, new study finds