2024-02-24
Worthy
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On the Military Failures of Fascism
I generally follow Umberto Eco’s definition (from “Ur Fascism” (1995)). Consequently, not all authoritarian or even right-authoritarian governments are fascist (but many are). Fascist has to mean something more specific than ‘people I disagree with’ to be a useful term (mostly, of course, useful as a warning).
First, I want to explain why I think this is a point worth making. For the most part, when we critique fascism (and other authoritarian ideologies), we focus on the inability of these ideologies to deliver on the things we – the (I hope) non-fascists – value, like liberty, prosperity, stability and peace. The problem is that the folks who might be beguiled by authoritarian ideologies are at risk precisely because they do not value those things – or at least, do not realize how much they value those things and won’t until they are gone. That is, of course, its own moral failing, but society as a whole benefits from having fewer fascists, so the exercise of deflating the appeal of fascism retains value for our sake, rather than for the sake of the would-be fascists (though they benefit as well, as it is, in fact, bad for you to be a fascist).
war is something fascists value intensely because the beating heart of fascist ideology is a desire to prove heroic masculinity in the crucible of violent conflict (arising out of deep insecurity, generally). Or as Eco puts it, “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life, but, rather, life is lived for struggle…life is permanent warfare” and as a result, “everyone is educated to become a hero. Being good at war is fundamentally central to fascism in nearly all of its forms – indeed, I’d argue nothing is so central. Consequently, there is real value in showing that fascism is, in fact, bad at war, which it is.
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Troy Hunt: Thanks FedEx, This is Why we Keep Getting Phished
What makes this situation so ridiculous is that while we're all watching for scammers attempting to imitate legitimate organisations, FedEx is out there imitating scammers! Here we are in the era of burgeoning AI-driven scams that are becoming increasingly hard for humans to identify, and FedEx is like "here, hold my beer" as they one-up the scammers at their own game and do a perfect job of being completely indistinguishable from them.
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Thousands evacuated in Plymouth before unexploded WW2 bomb moved
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Why you, personally, should want a larger human population
I assume that when Ehrlich and Goodall advocate for much smaller populations, they aren’t literally calling for genocide or hoping for a global catastrophe (although Ehrlich is happy with coercive fertility control programs, and other anti-humanists have expressed hope for “the right virus to come along”). Even so, the world they advocate is a greatly impoverished and stagnant one: a world with fewer discoveries, fewer inventions, fewer works of creative genius, fewer cures for fewer diseases, fewer choices, fewer soulmates. A world with a large and growing population is a dynamic world that can create and sustain progress.
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Kinda nice - by Damola Morenikeji - More! by Damola
A kind person will help you understand reality as it is, prompt you to reflect, and nudge you to fine-tune your position till you get to a place where your resolution is helpful for you. A nice person will tell you what feels good - and often what you think you want to hear at that time - even if it doesn’t help you move past that situation.
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Certain dogs are capable of learning the names for more than 100 different toys
Horseshit
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Your Noisy Fingerprints Vulnerable To New Side-Channel Attack
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The definitive guide to doing laundry in your hotel bathroom
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Bezos, Nvidia Join OpenAI in Funding Humanoid Robot Startup Figure AI
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Solar storms, ice cores and nuns' teeth: the new science of history
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The New American Nihilism: Need for Chaos (Archive)
researchers came up with a term to describe the motivation behind these all-purpose conspiracy mongers. They called it the “need for chaos,” which they defined as “a mindset to gain status” by destroying the established order. In their study, nearly a third of respondents demonstrated a need for chaos, Petersen said. And for about 5 percent of voters, old-fashioned party allegiances to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party melted away and were replaced by a desire to see the entire political elite destroyed—even without a plan to build something better in the ashes.
“These [need-for-chaos] individuals are not idealists seeking to tear down the established order so that they can build a better society for everyone,” the authors wrote in their conclusion. “Rather, they indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.” To sum up their worldview, Petersen quoted a famous line from the film The Dark Knight: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Electric / Self Driving cars
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
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Elon Musk Blasts Google's "Insane Racist, Anti-Civilizational Programming"
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The Case for Turning Cybertruck into a Militarized Unmanned Ground Vehicle
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Tesla cancels pie order, hurting black business owner on Black History month
“Sorry to bother you again, but I’m a small business. I don’t have the luxury of infinite resources so I really need to be paid so I can secure my staff. I received a message back that was like ‘Hey, so sorry, I don’t think we’re going to need this order anymore,’” Rasetarinera said. Rasetarinera had turned down other orders and already purchased resources like ingredients, boxes and stickers. After she posted about it on social media, she says Tesla saw it and reached out. They said they wanted to make it right by me and they offered for me to do two events on March 6th and 7th, but I’m still waiting for confirmation,” she said. “If they want to make it right, I’m going to give them the opportunity to make it right.”
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I Gave Tesla's Cybertruck a 48-Hour Thrashing. It (Mostly) Survived
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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The Businesses Fleeing Corrupt New York Amid $355 Million Trump Verdict.
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Trump can't postpone paying $355M judgment in NY fraud case, judge rules
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We’ve Reached The Tipping With Trump – Issues & Insights
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul seems to think so, which is why she rushed out to say that other people doing business in New York have nothing to fear: “Law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are businesspeople have nothing to worry about because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior.” What she should have said is: “if they are different from Donald Trump and his political views.” Because nothing about this case, or the multitude of other unprecedented legal attacks against the former president — the attempts to kick him off ballots, the two bogus impeachments, the Russia hoax, the endless stream of media mis-reporting — has anything even remotely to do with “upholding the law” or “protecting Democracy.”
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Capolino told The Daily Wire, in his first public remarks on the incident, that it looked like a stereotypical IED, or improvised explosive device, that is used by law enforcement in training sessions. “Any of the IED awareness training I’ve been to with law enforcement, that’s like the quintessential training device,” he told The Daily Wire. “That’s exactly what it looks like.”
The bomb, found minutes before protesters entered the Capitol, was attached to a 60-minute egg timer, but it had been there since the night before. “I was two feet from it. Why would someone construct a device with a one-hour kitchen timer, place it 8:30 p.m. the night before, if they intended for it to detonate 16 hours later?” he asked. Though referred to in the media as the RNC bomb, it was actually at the neighboring Capitol Hill Club, a Republican hangout. Capolino said his guards would have found it during their hourly sweeps if it was on RNC property.
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Blue Laws for Red Citizens - Victor Davis Hanson
We are entering a dangerous era in America. Ideology and party affiliations increasingly determine guilt and punishment. Opponents are first targeted, and then laws are twisted and redefined to convict them. The left is waging lawfare with the implicit message to political opponents: either keep quiet or suffer the consequences.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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A Requiem for the Culture of the Wall Street Journal
What I am saying is that treating people in newsrooms callously is always wrong, and that institutions where this happens repeatedly become coarsened and brittle. Editors and managers who behave badly, or even those who tolerate others doing so, are unlikely, at least in my experience, to possess the empathy that marks much of great journalism. That is to say, newsrooms which are run with arrogance and disregard ultimately will number their readers among those whom they betray.
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Not Solar flares, Russian and Chinese hackers? I'm shocked. AT&T blames software update glitch for service outage
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Tinder Owner Signs ChatGPT Deal. Enjoy the AI Dating Tidal Wave
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Meta Found Instagram Tool Enabled Child Exploitation. The Company Pressed Ahead
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Instagram’s Uneasy Rise as a News Site - The New York Times
In this year’s presidential election, more people are turning to Instagram for news, even as the platform tries de-emphasizing “political content.”
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User's $14k bill shock to run queries on 'free' dataset • The Register
However, the user, Tim, came back into the conversation. He said he was running queries from a Python script with the official GCP libraries, which, unlike the web UI, does not have a mechanism to show costs for a query, he said.
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Intel Processor Instability Causing Oodle Decompression Failures
RAD has become aware of a problem that can cause Oodle Data decompression failures, or crashes in games built with Unreal. We believe that this is a hardware problem which affects primarily Intel 13900K and 14900K processors, less likely 13700, 14700 and other related processors as well. Only a small fraction of those processors will exhibit this behavior. The problem seems to be caused by a combination of BIOS settings and the high clock rates and power usage of these processors, leading to system instability and unpredictable behavior under heavy load.
As far as we can tell, there is not any software bug in Oodle or Unreal that is causing this. Due to what seem to be overly optimistic BIOS settings, some small percentage of processors go out of their functional range of clock rate and power draw under high load, and execute instructions incorrectly. This is being seen disproportionately in Oodle Data decompression because unlike most gameplay, simulation, audio or rendering code, decompression needs to perform extra integrity checks to handle accidentally or maliciously corrupted data, and is thus likely to spot inconsistencies very soon after they occur. These decode failures then typically result in an error message.
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Developer just open sourced tool that could bring an end to Nvidia's AI hegemony
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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offensive to all, comforting to none. so totally divorced from meaning, intention, desire and humanity that it’s accidentally a conceptual masterpiece. A perfect example of headless runaway bureaucracy and the worst tendencies of capitalism. An unabashed simulacra of activism. The shining star of corporate surrealism (extremely underrated genre btw)
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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What caused the great inflation?
While some central bankers still adopt the irritating view that hindsight is not a valuable tool for assessing their decisions, most are now thankfully in lesson learning mode. That is the point of the book. In a well-judged introduction, Bill English, Kristin Forbes and Angel Ubide note that central banks underestimated the risks of inflation and should not fall into that trap again, successfully responded to the crisis once it was upon them, and have a reasonable chance of completing the job of normalising price movements.
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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NYC’s non-citizen voting law ruled unconstitutional on appeal - POLITICO
A state appeals court ruled that a New York City law that would allow non-citizens to vote in local elections is unconstitutional — marking a win for the Republican elected officials who sued to block it.
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CBS faces uproar after seizing investigative journalist's files
The timing of Herridge’s termination immediately raised suspicions in Washington. She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop. She continued to pursue these stories despite reports of pushback from CBS executives, including CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews. Given the other layoffs and declining revenues, the inclusion of Herridge was defended by the network as a painful but necessary measure. But then something strange happened. The network grabbed Herridge’s notes and files and informed her that it would decide what, if anything, would be turned over to her. The files likely contain confidential material from both her stints at Fox and CBS. Those records, it suggests, are presumptively the property of CBS News.
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Sifting the FBI’s Garbage - WSJ
House Oversight Committee Republicans say the FBI told Congress their source had worked for the bureau since 2010, had been paid roughly $200,000 for information, and was deemed “highly credible.” Ranking Oversight Democrat Jamie Raskin acknowledged the FBI’s briefing about credibility. Republicans say Director Christopher Wray also confirmed the FBI used Mr. Smirnov’s information in investigations until June 2023 (when the bribery claims went public). The FBI affirmed Mr. Smirnov’s credibility so long as it was useful to do so. It isn’t useful any longer. Republicans for months have hounded special counsel David Weiss, who is handling the Hunter Biden probe, to explain what he’s done since 2020 to verify or refute the Smirnov claims. Last week’s indictment, which he sought, is his answer. The FBI’s “highly credible” source is now presented as a brazen liar, a boaster, a profiteer who played a double game with the bureau, and a partisan who had it in for Joe Biden.
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Chief justice's Christian reasoning in IVF opinion sparks alarm
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New York Jury Finds NRA Head Wayne Pierre Liable, Must Pay $4.3 Million in Damages
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Blue-State Residents Streamed Into South Carolina. Here’s Why It Stayed Ruby Red. - WSJ
The Zals are part of a migration wave that has kept South Carolina ruby red despite an influx of newcomers from blue states. A Wall Street Journal analysis of census data found that a third of the state’s new residents between 2017 and 2021 hailed from blue states and a quarter from red ones, according to census data. The remainder came from closely divided states, including nearby Georgia and North Carolina, or are immigrants.
Yet the new arrivals are disproportionately Republican. Estimates from the nonpartisan voter file vendor L2 suggest about 57% of voters who moved to South Carolina during that time are Republicans, while about 36% are Democrats and 7% are independents. That places them roughly in line with recent statewide votes in South Carolina. Current Republican Gov. Henry McMaster took 58% of the vote in 2022, and Trump had a 12-point margin over President Biden in 2020.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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Military tracking high-altitude balloon flying over Western U.S.
The U.S. is tracking a high-altitude balloon flying over the Western part of the country, U.S. officials told CBS News. Military aircraft have spotted the balloon and determined it is not a threat, but its origin and purpose are still unknown, the officials said. Sources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the balloon was drifting east in the jetstream on Friday. Earlier in the day, one official said the balloon was over Colorado. Its presence prompted enough concern that the military sent aircraft to investigate.
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The Pentagon's Billion-Dollar Hunt for Batteries That Won't Explode on Soldiers
Israel
Health / Medicine
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The Coming Tyranny of Air Purification
Big Pure has us by the balls as air pollution has become the world’s single biggest environmental health risk, linked to around 7 million deaths in 2012 according to a recent World Health Organisation (WHO) report. The new data further reveals a stronger link between, indoor and outdoor air pollution exposure and cardiovascular diseases, such as strokes and ischemic heart disease, as well as between air pollution and cancer. The role of air pollution in the development of respiratory diseases, including acute respiratory infections and chronic pulmonary diseases, is well known. While both indoor and outdoor pollution affect health, recent statistics on the impact of household indoor pollutants is alarming.
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Read This, Not That: The Hidden Cost of Nutrition Misinformation