2024-02-17

etc

• Why we stopped building cut and cover - Works in Progress

  Historically, most subways were built using what’s known as ‘cut and cover’ excavation: digging an open trench, building the tunnel structure within it, and then covering the trench up. Cut and cover was used for the first London subway line, in 1860; it was used for the construction of New York’s first subway, in 1900; and for nearly a century it remained the preferred method of building subway tunnels. As late as the 1970s, most subway construction in the US was done using cut and cover.

  for urban subway tunnels, cut and cover has largely been supplanted by the use of tunnel-boring machines (TBMs), which tunnel horizontally beneath the ground without disturbing the surface. In a database compiled by Britain Remade of recent transit projects around the world, there are 80 projects listed as using TBMs, compared to just one being built with cut and cover.

Horseshit

• The Thorny Ethics of Making Alien Planets Habitable

• The belief that the Jamaican language, created by our own people, is unworthy

• 'We cannot normalize having 10-year-old children working as influencers'

• The Center Moves Faster Than You – Probably Overthinking It

  The data validate Wright’s subjective experience. If you were a little left of center in 2008 and you did not change your views for 14 years, you would find yourself a little right of center in 2022. However, the cartoon is misleading in one sense: the center did not shift because people on the left moved far to the left. It moved primarily because of generational replacement. On the conveyor belt of demography, when old people die, they are replaced by younger people — and younger people hold more liberal views.

  • "younger people hold more liberal views," Except for those who do not; but that wouldn't advance the argument for the "liberal" views.

• (2019) The Risk of Dying Doing What We Love - Soaring - Chess in the Air

  When I looked for data on risky sports and activities, I also found the other extreme: a Google search will return plenty of articles listing “the most dangerous sports in the world,” almost all of which try to make most sports sound insanely dangerous. However, more often than not these articles are just click-bait to generate ad revenue and lack any serious effort to get to the facts. Even the most well-intentioned ones that actually quote their sources tend to suffer from one of two major problems: either they lack a common denominator and therefore compare stats that are just not comparable; or they use a denominator that isn’t all that meaningful such as the general population while ignoring the differences in participation rates among different sports.

  • Statistics tend to be used as a tool to obscure truth.

• Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

  • HN comments

• Why Not For-Profit Govt? - by Robin Hanson

  my best guess as to why is the same as why we have other non-profits: government seems to them sacred, while money is profane. So to many even autocrats seem more appropriate as priests of this kind of sacred than do profit-driven executives.

• Science fiction authors were excluded from awards for fear of offending China

• Culture war trolls add to UK vegan restaurants' struggles

• "Stolen" radio tower missing for at least a year

celebrity gossip

• MrBeast on His Swift Rise on YouTube and Beyond

• Jon Stewart Returns to an Older, Smaller Audience

• Paul McCartney reunited with guitar stolen 51 years ago

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• EU's tough new moderation rules are about to cover a lot more of the internet

• (Video) National security state is driver of censorship, election interference in the US

  What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy."

Musk

• Musk changed Twitter's algorithm when his tweets didn't pop off: book

• China-based propaganda accounts flourish on X as others try to curb them

• The majority of traffic from X may have been fake during the Super Bowl

• Why Tesla's Stainless Steel Cybertrucks May Be Rusting

  • HN comments

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• WMD, Part II: CIA "Cooked The Intelligence" To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016

• Fani Wiped From Fulton Cross-Exam After Shower-Shi**ing Testimony | ZeroHedge

• Trump and associates ordered to pay $364 million in civil business fraud case.

  New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling ordered Trump and his companies to pay millions of dollars to the state, while his adult children and other associates under the Trump Organization were ordered to pay additional fees in the millions. Engoron barred Trump from “serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York” for three years, according to the ruling. Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were found liable for $4,013,024 each and are similarly banned from doing business in New York for two years. Trump is also barred from applying for “loans from any financial institution chartered by or registered with the New York Department of Financial Services for a period of three years,” potentially complicating his stated effort to appeal the ruling.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Brazil Has a Dengue Emergency, Portending a Health Crisis for the Americas

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Even DeSantis Thinks Florida Book Removals Have Gone Too Far

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Passion is not misconduct | Science

  A lesson of the verdict is that despite its flaws, the process for vetting, publishing, and curating scientific findings in the literature is still the best game in town. Although some free speech advocates warn that the verdict will have a chilling effect on the criticism of scientific findings, perhaps the verdict can be viewed more optimistically as appropriately directing matters of opinion to blogs and opinion columns while matters of scientific disagreement are handled in the literature of scientific record.

  • Dims shall not be allowed to disagree with the Smarts.

• New York Times, Get Out of My School

• 'Run by the Mob': How Anti-Semites Took over Stanford's Campus

• Against Scholar-Activism — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

  the confusion between advocacy and inquiry indicates a need for universities to clarify their purpose. When democracy and social-justice goals become the point, rather than secondary outcomes, of the university’s mission, advocacy can trump inquiry.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• No one cares about open-source, until … | CryptPad Blog

  Whether it's a technical outage or an acquisition like Skiff's, we don't think it's good karma to prey on the disgruntled users of our competition. We're also aware that CryptPad is not ready to serve all of the same use-cases as Skiff. We wish people well in finding new solutions that work for them. We also would like for this moment to encourage everyone to reflect on the ownership structure of the tools that they rely on, and perhaps to favour building some genuine commons rather than products that can simply vanish because of conflicting interests.

• It Was 33 Years Ago Today: Happy Birthday Lemmings! - The Scottish Games Network

  • HN comments

• Does copyright help artists? Not necessarily, say these writers (Archive)

• Bluesky and Mastodon users are having a fight about federation

• Google's origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance

• Author of "Savaged by Systemd", "The classic work of Linux satirical erotica": Dear writers: Delete your Findaway Voices account NOW – Michael W Lucas

  Spotify may now do anything they want with your audiobook. They will–not can, will–feed it to their AI system and use it to rip off your work. They specifically declare you can’t complain about derogatory uses. They can mix your book with work you find abhorrent and release it as a new product. They can use a speech recognition system and create a printed version of your book.

• A Wyze outage is cutting off people's access to their security cameras

  • Wyze outage leaves customers without camera coverage overnight

• 'Call of Duty' gamers sue Activision for monopolizing leagues, tournaments

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Considerations for a long-running Raspberry Pi # Chris Dzombak

  • HN comments

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• FTC Wants to Penalize Companies for Use of AI in Impersonation

• Cambridge brainiacs propose AI apocalypse kill switches

• How much electricity does AI consume?

• Anthropic takes steps to prevent election misinformation

• Tech giants pledge action against deceptive AI in elections

• OpenAI Completes Deal That Values the Company at $80B

Crypto con games

• How web3 music artists are using blockchain to connect with fans

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Retail sales tumbled 0.8% in January, much more than expected.

• January wholesale prices rise more than expected

• First-time buyers ‘rate-locked’ out of housing market.

• US homebuilding sees biggest drop since April 2020.

• Cisco to lay off more than 4k employees to focus on artificial intelligence

  • Cisco's AI push in focus as shares fall on tepid networking gear demand

  • Bay Area tech giant Cisco will lay off more than 4k in 5% staff cut

• Goldman Sachs raises CEO David Solomon's pay 24% despite weaker profits

  • Goldman Boosts CEO Solomon's Pay 24% After Firm's Profit Slumps 24%

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The U.S. Government Will Soon Spend More on Interest Payments Than Defense (Archive)

• Special Counsel Casts Pre-Election Doubt On Biden 'Burisma Bribe' With Dramatic Airport Arrest | ZeroHedge

• Forget Russian Nukes In Space, The Real Threat Is In Washington

• States whose residents most likely to support secession: Alaska, Texas, Calif.

  A total of 23% of Americans say they would support their state seceding from the U.S. Half (51%) oppose secession and 27% are unsure. (Even more – 28% — would support a state other than their own seceding.) Support for secession is higher among younger adults than among older Americans. Republicans (29%) are somewhat more likely to support secession than Democrats (21%) or Independents (19%).

  While many legal scholars say that the U.S. Constitution does not give states a right to secede, 26% of Americans disagree, believing that it does include such a right. 35% say there is no right to secession, and 39% are not sure. Most people who support their state seceding believe secession is a constitutional right (61%), compared to just 16% of people who oppose secession; 54% who oppose it believe it is not a right.

• The Supreme Court will decide if the govt can seize control of YouTube, Twitter

• Amazon joins companies arguing US labor board is unconstitutional

  • Amazon Joins SpaceX in Mission to Destroy NLRB

  • Amazon and SpaceX are quietly trying to demolish national labor law

• Slow Growth Is Ahead Unless Government Gets Out of the Way.

• Biden’s DOJ Arrests Former FBI Informant Who Alleged Burisma Biden Bribes, and I Have Questions – PJ Media

• Sen. Joe Manchin announces he won't run for president in 2024

• To Save San Francisco, a Democrat Wants to Scrap Environmental Reviews

• Leak of Russian 'Threat' Part of a Bid to Kill US Surveillance Reform, Sources

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• DOJ removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon launches nuke-spotting satellites amid Russian space bomb rumors

• US and allies disrupt Russian cyber espionage operation against US and Europe

World

• Sweden's call for population to prepare for war sparks panic and criticism

• No, New French Law Does Not Criminalise Opposition to mRNA Vaccines

Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean

• Propaganda horseshit: Iran declares Antarctica its property in direct challenge to Biden, global treaty

  “We have property rights in the South Pole. We have plan to raise our flag there and carry out military and scientific work,” Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Shahram Irani said in late September, according to a translation by the Washington D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Israel

• Gaza and the End of the Rules-Based Order | Foreign Affairs

  Today’s diplomatic complicity in the catastrophic human rights and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is the culmination of years of erosion of the international rule of law and global human rights system. Such disintegration began in earnest after 9/11, when the United States embarked on its “war on terror,” a campaign that normalized the idea that everything is permissible in the pursuit of “terrorists." To prosecute its war in Gaza, Israel borrows ethos, strategy, and tactics from that framework, doing so with the support of the United States. It is as if the grave moral lessons of the Holocaust, of World War II, have been all but forgotten, and with them, the very core of the decades-old “Never Again” principle: its absolute universality, the notion that it protects us all or none of us. This disintegration, so apparent in the destruction of Gaza and the West’s response to it, signals the end of the rules-based order and the start of a new era.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Dies In Jail

  • Alexei Navalny has died in prison

  • Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny dies, prison service says

  • Balls of Steel - by Brian Howard - Personality Disorder

  Alexei Navalny made a name for himself as a political figure in Russia by making speeches and videos criticizing Putin and the regime. His goal was to build up political support so that he would ultimately replace Putin as President. He stirred up a following and predictably drew the ire of the authorities. What’s an authoritarian state without authorities, after all? Predictably to everyone except Navalny, they eventually tried to kill him. Specifically, they poisoned him with the greatest sounding nerve toxin known to man: Novichok (which would also be a great name for a rock band or a sports team, think the Sandusky Novichoks, two-time youth hockey champions). He survived, and this is where the movie begins.

Health / Medicine

• Why Sugar-Free Candy Upsets Your Stomach

  If a pack of sugar-free gum has ever given you a nasty stomach ache, you might have your gut bacteria to blame. New research in mice found a link between the gut microbiome and a food intolerance to sorbitol, a commonly used sugar substitute. The findings could even point to an effective treatment for the condition,

• Smoking has long-term effects on the immune system

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

  • HN comments

• The threat of extinction is getting worse for migratory animals

• Climate change denial heats up at Wyoming Capitol

• Giant, synchronized swarms of locusts may become more common with climate change

• Hardly any plastics can be truly recycled, and producers have known for decades.

  • Plastic industry knew recycling was a farce for decades

• Ocean Temperatures Keep Shattering Records–and Scientists

• Richard Branson, Oppenheimer's grandson urge to stop AI, climate 'catastrophe'

• Revealed: The 1,200 big methane leaks from waste dumps trashing the planet