2024-02-04

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• Why Are Pickup Trucks Ridiculously Huge? Blame Government.

• Why drug history? - by Benjamin Breen - Res Obscura

  There’s something distinctly polarized and polarizing about drugs. Few terms in common use have such a wide spectrum of legal and cultural associations: there are drug dealers and drug stores, miracle drugs and drug addicts. This is why the term itself is almost impossible to define. It’s not a technical term at all. It’s an ever shifting and highly charged cloud of a society’s most persistent preoccupations.

• Red Pills and Pink Diapers - by Bruce Majors

  He said he had been driven from the left by its “pathologizing being white” and by his experience working for a Democrat campaign consulting group that had him surveying Hispanic voters in Maryland and then ignored the findings (Hispanic voters want more police!). My fairweather friend’s pink diaper baby has been red pilled.

Horseshit

• The hottest beer in America doesn't have alcohol

• The Sites That Never Get Built: Why Today’s Internet Discourages Experimentation

  if I were dead-set on launching Scatter Plot, I’d have to build native apps for both iOS and Android – and probably an open web mobile implementation that bridges them both. That means three separate development efforts, increasing both my costs and the complexities of building out my initial idea. While the idea is dead simple, executing it on a lark already feels out of reach – my back of the napkin math estimates development costs of at least a hundred thousand bucks, assuming I want it to be good enough to possibly catch fire with users.

  Turns out, there’s a rudimentary, open-web based version of this idea in the UK. It’s…cool in a 2005 kind of way…

  • Is the fault here the Internet or the imagination, that requires all the pre-requisites?

• Inside the Censorship Scandal That Rocked Sci-Fi and Fantasy’s Biggest Awards.

• Why is there plastic in your microwave with your potato? Microwaves transfer plastic components to potatoes

• Inert nuclear missile found in US man's garage

  Police in Washington state say an old rusted rocket found in a local man's garage is an inert nuclear missile. In a press release, police say the device is "in fact a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (previous designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead".

  However, there was no warhead attached, meaning there was never any danger to the community. the device was "just basically a gas tank for rocket fuel".

• Car insurance in America is too cheap

  • HN comments

• Potential Perturbation of the Ionosphere by Megaconstellations and Corresponding Artificial Re-entry Plasma Dust seen headlined "Space debris could weaken Earth's magnetic field"

  Here it will be shown that the mass of the conductive particles left behind from worldwide distribution of re-entry satellites is already billions of times greater than the mass of the Van Allen Belts. ... perturbation of the magnetosphere from conductive satellites and their plasma dust layer should be expected and should be a field of intensive research. Human activity is not only impacting the atmosphere, it is clearly impacting the ionosphere.

  • "billions of times greater" made me say "really?" and then i went and found this estimate of the mass of the Van Allen belts: 11 grams. Which makes me wonder about the disparity in energy levels between the classes of particles and if its a case of talking about icebergs vs superheated steam.

• The DIY Diggers Who Can't Stop Making 'Hobby Tunnels'

• Victims say sexual assault in VR feels real. The law may see it differently

• Taggers have sprayed graffiti on 27 stories of a downtown Los Angeles skyscraper

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Why Volvo has pulled the plug on its electric car brand

• It begins: Ethiopia set to become first country to ban internal combustion cars

• The West's humiliating electric car climbdown has begun

• Solid-state batteries: inside the race to transform electric vehicles

Obit

• Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy, son of Italy's last king, dies aged 86

Musk

• How bad is Tesla's hazardous waste problem in California?

  • Tesla ordered to pay $1.5M over alleged hazardous waste violations in California

• Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip: what scientists think of first human trial

• Tesla Has Found a Way to Use LFP Batteries and Qualify for Full EV Tax Credit

• Tesla Recalls Almost Every Vehicle Ever Sold in the US

• The Money and Drugs That Tie Elon Musk to Some Tesla Directors

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Vaccine Induced Social Amnesia

  As David Wallace-Wells explains, (in NYT) vaccination rates are still 90%+ and down only slightly but measles is so infectious that even amid an otherwise well-vaccinated population, it can sometimes find pockets of low vaccination populations and spread like wildfire.

  • "pockets of low vaccination populations" ... like immigrants who are not being held to the same standards as the rest of the society that surround them?

• Let’s bring back the remarkable gift of wearing a mask | The Spinoff

  During the lockdowns, the Ardern government missed its chance to get everyone to embrace masks for what they are: a fucking godsend and literal lifesaver. We made a mistake in framing masking as a dreary obligation to others, when in reality it’s a nigh-miraculous gift to yourself. To have the air (including outdoors, I’m sorry to say) hung with immunity-destroying poison and to remain uninfected, to be able to go about your daily life with a few adjustments and stay healthy. You don’t have to like yourself to remember that doing the things you love – going for a run, visiting your niece, retaining the brainpower to make art — is something deeply worth protecting.

• Deer Are Beta-Testing a Nightmare Disease

• FDA devastation during the pandemic - a review

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Chicago adopts Gaza ceasefire resolution after mayor casts tie-breaking vote

  • Gaza Votes For Ceasefire In Chicago

• 'Cleansing the world of Jews': Porto housing protest turns antisemitic

• Shamanism's Legacy of Transcendence and Ecological Harmony — Ultra Unlimited

• Robot Racism: Pittsburgh Professor Sounds Alarm Over “Interacting with White Robots.”

• BBC employee called Jewish people ‘Nazis’ and whites ‘parasites.’

• NYPD officers will have to record race of people they question

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

  • HN comments

• How Quora Died

• Don’t Call It a Sellout | Whatever

  The fact that this story is not new does not minimize the endless wheel of online self-promotion creators have to do today, nor should it minimize the challenges creators have today getting their work seen in a system where it feels like putting your art out into the world is often like chucking it down a hole and hoping enough people see it flashing by before it settles forever into the darkness. We are also brought again to the consideration of what “selling out” means in an era where “artistic integrity” means you’re likely to make no money at all, instead of the very little money you might otherwise get.

• Don't Lose Your $3,500 Apple Vision Pro, You Can't Track Its Location

  • The Apple Vision Pro is spectacular and sad

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Fixing A Tractor Dashboard From Over 10,000 Miles Away

  With the file sent off via email, the Australian tractor owner flashed a fresh EEPROM and reinstalled it in their cluster. They were greeted with success, with the only complication being that the hours reading on the cluster had to be corrected to match the previous reading on their machine.

  • I think this makes this procedure or discussion of it illegal in the USA, hour meters may fall under the same laws as odometers.

• Significant features introduced for recent versions of Perl | Hacker News

• Vintage Computing Commandments

  • Thou shalt check voltage and polarity on new-to-thee power supplies, or thy machines shall be smote and release smoke.
  • Thou shalt not wrap the power cord around any plastic case, lest the stigmata they cause be grievous.
  • Thou shalt not say "recap!" every time someone else says their computer is broken.

• Show HN: Simple demo of a cold boot attack using a Raspberry Pi | Hacker News

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Zuckerberg explained how Meta will crush Google and Microsoft at AI

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• How much bigger could Earth be before rockets wouldn't work?

  Up above 10g, something really interesting happens that is kind of a theoretical limit. The mass of the rocket reaches a measurable fraction of the mass of the entire planet it's launching from. At 10.3g, rocket mass is 0.035 of the mass of the planet. 10.4g, rocket mass is one fifth of the mass of the planet. This doesn't actually alter the ∆v requirement -- we're going into orbit around the rocket/planet barycenter! At 10.47g, the rocket is the planet, and we're... just... chewing it up entirely, pulverizing it in a dust cloud expanding at 4km/s.

• Humanity has much to learn from the Voyager probes • The Register

Crypto con games

• Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• How Much for Thin Mints? Some Girl Scouts Raise Cookie Prices

• U.S. economy is booming. So why are tech companies laying off workers? (Archive)

• Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In Recent History

  the revisions were unambiguously designed to give the impression that the labor market is slowing much less than it is. Consider this: before the revision, the average monthly job gain in 2021 was largely unchanged (606K pre-revision vs 604K post), and while the average monthly gain in 2022 was revised lower (from 399K to 377K), this was purposefully goalseeked to make 2023 appear stronger, and indeed the average monthly increase in 2023 has been revised from 225K to 255K.

  while in January the BLS claims 353K payrolls were added, the Household survey found that the number of actually employed workers dropped again, this time by 31K (from 161.183K to 161.152K).

• The fight to keep 6% commission for home sales alive in the US

• How the U.S. Became the World’s Biggest Gas Supplier - The New York Times

  In just eight years, the United States has rocketed from barely selling any gas overseas to becoming the world’s No. 1 supplier, a remarkable shift that has profited oil and gas companies and strengthened American influence abroad. But climate activists worry that soaring exports of liquefied natural gas could make global warming worse.

  Last month, the Biden administration said it would pause the permitting process for new facilities that export liquefied natural gas in order to study their impact on climate change, the economy and national security. Even with the pause, the United States is still on track to nearly double its export capacity by 2027 because of projects already permitted and under construction. But any expansions beyond that are now in doubt.

• Amazon is more profitable than ever after a year of mass layoffs

• Why is it so hard to find a job despite low unemployment?

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Nikki Haley appears to fabricate her own fan mail and gets devoured by the apex predators of MAGA - American Thinker

  too lazy to actually write a fake handwritten letter, so you used some weird font on Windows. In the other instance, you were too stupid to hit send on your fake email before screenshotting

• Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

• Los Angeles Passes Rule Banning Broadband Deployment Discrimination

• White House says Biden will visit East Palestine, Ohio, a year after devastating train derailment | PBS NewsHour

  • Biden to visit East Palestine, Ohio, one year after derailment | Reuters

• Ted Cruz wants lawmakers to get security escorts through America's airports

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Massachusetts converts recreation center into shelter for homeless migrants, including those sleeping at Boston airport

• China's Hackers Keep Targeting US Water and Electricity Supplies

• Freedom Convoy Arrives At US Southern Border While Biden Drops Bombs In Middle East | ZeroHedge

World

• Germany Is Being Served Up on a Platter to the Far Right

• Eurozone narrowly avoids recession as German economy shrinks

• No space for SUVs? Paris to vote on tripling parking fees

• The powerful are protected while vengeful laws silence their critics

Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean

• Iran’s vile way of trying to eradicate homosexuality, gay people | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

  Death or surgery? It’s a capital offence to be gay in Iran. But gender-change surgery is legal. Now, 4000 Iranians are undergoing the life-changing procedure every year. And many of them are children. The plight of Iran’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) was brought back to the attention of the world after the belated arrest of a provincial “morality police” chief last month after video of him engaging in homosexual acts began circulating on social media.

• The Next Casualty of the Red Sea Attacks: Undersea Cables

• US Strikes At Least 85 Targets In Iraq & Syria, Including From B1 Bombers | ZeroHedge

• US Strikes Killed At Least 39, Including "Many Civilians," As Iraq Warns Stability Is On "Brink Of The Abyss" | ZeroHedge

• US and UK hit 30 Houthi targets to further weaken Iran-backed groups

Health / Medicine

• Blockbuster weight-loss drugs slashed from NC state plan over ballooning costs

• Your appendix is not, in fact, useless

• Michael J Fox on pity, Parkinson's – and a potential cure

• Lead aprons no longer necessary for dental X-rays.

• Global cancer cases will jump 77% by 2050, WHO report estimates

• The Dirty Business of Clean Blood

  Today’s issue is about the two powerful corporations, DaVita and Fresenius, who control access to dialysis, the treatment for people whose kidneys are failing. But it’s also about the risk of Medicare-for-All, because kidney disease is the one area where the government pays for everyone, no matter the age or income level. It’s universal health care, for one organ in the body. But because monopolists control this market, dialysis has turned from a miraculous life-saving medical innovation of the 1960s into a legal morass full of pointless death and moral injury.

• Experts Confirm: US Is Dealing With an ‘Out-of-Control’ STI Epidemic.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Alpine ibex becoming more nocturnal as temperatures rise

• Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis? - The New York Times

  • Our plan to TP the Planet is more realistic and cheaper.

• East Palestine residents still displaced, suffering 1 year after toxic train derailment.

• Cork is displacing plastics and creating a billion-dollar industry

  • HN comments

  • Wasn't that long ago bringing wine with a real cork would get you chucked out of the best parties; "cork is endangered dontcha know".

• California braces for a stronger atmospheric river this weekend

• A US mining firm sued Mexico – for billions for trying to protect its seabed