2024-02-25
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Oh, to turn off your mind! - by Thorsten Ball
They can decide to do something and then go and… do it. No rethinking of the How and the Whether and the Are you sure? No second guessing. They decided to do it, so they’ll do it. I’m not talking about Being In The Zone or Flow here. What I think I’m talking about is conviction, confidence, self-assurance. Whatever it is: they have it. And boy does it change things.
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Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans
Horseshit
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Mass cellphone outage sparks fear of communications, electric grid failure.
- It was a "configuration error," the story now runs. That's certainly more plausible than a FTL solar flare that only targeted one company; or Russian / Chinese / Alien Hackers or military jamming. However, the Press doesn't acknowledge mistakes so we have to listen to them report on these wild imaginings for a wile longer.
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The Pineapple Pizza Scandal Dividing Italy
In March of last year, Italian minister of agriculture and food sovereignty Francesco Lollobrigida (brother-in-law to the country’s far-right prime minister Georgia Meloni) announced that Italy would lobby UNESCO to declare Italian cuisine a piece of intangible cultural heritage. “We are very strict when it comes to food,” a friend living in Puglia told me. “But I don’t see it as a negative thing. It’s why in Italy you can find the best food in the world.”
Yet despite this rigidity—or, maybe, because of it—this past December, one of Italy’s most famous pizzaioli, or pizza makers, did the unthinkable. Gino Sorbillo put pineapple on a pizza. His margherita con l’ananas was a playful (and PR-savvy) new addition to his menu at Pizzeria Sorbillo, a historic pizzeria on Via dei Tribunali in Naples. While perhaps no name is as synonymous with Neapolitan pizza tradition as Sorbillo, a respected pizza-making family that goes back several generations, the restauranteur is part of a wave of globally minded, very online Italian chefs embracing innovation—or, as some might call it, blasphemy. One of Sorbillo’s followers commented (translation mine), “It’s fine in the US and England, but in Naples, let’s leave tradition alone.” Another, “Noooo, how are we going to criticize Americans now?”
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Can we have our cake and eat it? Welcome to the world of sugar elimination
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Behind a Secretive Global Network of Non-Consensual Deepfake Pornography
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Why friends are always right — no matter their views
we must acknowledge the risk that we are self-selecting into echo chambers. Social media algorithms may be giving us a push, recommending content to us that drives “engagement”, the most surprising, outrageous and often toxic material. But we shouldn’t blame algorithms steering us away from serious and thoughtful exposure to different points of view. We are quite capable of choosing that for ourselves.
Electric / Self Driving cars
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Shirky’s principle also relates to another phenomenon that was identified by Parkinson, whereby the growth of a bureaucratic or administrative body is often associated with a substantial decrease in its overall efficiency. This is attributed to the desire of officials to increase the number of their subordinates, and to officials’ tendency to create work for each other. In addition, a similar famous concept that’s related to Shirky’s principle has been expressed by novelist and social reformer Upton Sinclair, who said that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Peter Thiel’s $100,000 Offer to Skip College Is More Popular Than Ever - WSJ
Since 2010, Thiel, an early Facebook investor and a founder of PayPal Holdings, has offered to pay students $100,000 to drop out of school to start companies or nonprofits. Early on, he met intense criticism. Some accused Thiel, who holds philosophy and law degrees from Stanford, of hypocrisy. Others said it was wrong to discourage young people from finishing their education. Former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers called it the “single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade.” In the next few weeks, Thiel’s program will announce 20 new fellows, chosen from an applicant pool that is bigger than ever. Winners plan to launch companies in hot areas including artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, according to executives of the program.
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Mass retraction of unethical Chinese forensic genetics papers
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Makes It To The Lunar Surface In US Return After Half A Century
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Intuitive Machines: Odysseus Moon lander 'tipped over on touchdown'
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Intuitive Machines CEO Says One Switch-Flip Led to 'Spicy' Moon Landing
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U.S. lunar lander is on its side with some antennas covered up, the company says
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Moon Lander Is Lying on Its Side but Still Functional, Officials Say
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SpaceX seeks a waiver to launch Starship "at least" nine times this year
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Berkshire Hathaway Reports Profit of $97B Last Year, a Record
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Self-checkouts are disappearing from retailers. Here's why
you may be seeing fewer of them in major retailers nowadays, and you can blame California’s retail crime wave. On social media, one user recently posted this picture of the Walmart in West Hills – with the self-checkout lanes roped off. The post said all Wal-Marts have removed self-checkouts due to theft. A Wal-Mart spokesperson told us they needed to research the issue. They later replied, saying, “We’re always looking at ways to innovate and improve our stores. We have nothing to announce related to self-checkout removals at this time.”
- But we have all these news stories assuring us crime is down; that the economy is Strong; and anyone who says different is a MAGA wrecker spreading Russian disinformation...
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Nasdaq rose 3%, first since dot-com bubble. Reminding people of the scary period
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Why widespread tech layoffs keep happening despite a strong U.S. economy
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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How does Nikki Haley plan to win her home state? - Deseret News
Polls indicate that Donald Trump should win South Carolina’s Republican primary comfortably this Saturday. But Nikki Haley — the state’s former governor — is going beyond her Republican base: In the hopes of an upset victory, she’s asking Democrats to vote for her, too. In a last-moment heave, Haley is trying to bank on the huge number of remaining Democratic and independent voters to provide a burst of momentum.
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He infuriates wife Jill by joking that the key to their 47-year marriage is 'good sex'. His racy comment has been revealed for the first time by Katie Rogers in her forthcoming book 'American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden,' in an exclusive excerpt obtained by DailyMail.com. The president gives that marital advice to aides 'much to his wife's chagrin,' reports Rogers, a longtime White House reporter for the New York Times.
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Pence group announces $20 million effort to fight GOP’s ‘drift toward populism’ | The Hill
Former Vice President Mike Pence’s political advocacy group plans to invest $20 million this year to shape the conservative agenda, an effort to directly counter what Pence had previously described as populism “unmoored to conservative principles.”Advancing American Freedom, which Pence launched in 2021, announced Wednesday the creation of the American Solutions Project, a three-prong effort to push more traditional conservative policy priorities during an election year likely to be dominated by former President Trump.
The new project, an outline of which was obtained by The Hill, will have three main objectives. The first will be to shape political majorities by creating a policy platform for candidates to embrace “and reverse the Right’s drift toward populism and the Left’s embrace of socialism.” The second piece is focused on championing conservative legislation and advancing Pence’s policy priorities, which include promoting free trade, limiting government spending, restoring U.S. leadership on the world stage, and confronting China. The third and final part of the project is aimed at protecting conservative principles, such as limited government.
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The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech
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A magician says a Democratic operative paid him to make the fake Biden robocall
A Democratic consultant who worked for a rival presidential campaign paid a New Orleans magician to use artificial intelligence to impersonate President Joe Biden for a robocall that is now at the center of a multistate law enforcement investigation, according to text messages, call logs and Venmo transactions the creator shared with NBC News. Paul Carpenter says he was hired in January by Steve Kramer — who has worked on ballot access for Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips — to use AI software to make the imitation of Biden’s voice urging New Hampshire Democrats not to vote in the state’s presidential primary. “I created the audio used in the robocall. I did not distribute it,” Carpenter said in an interview in New Orleans, where he is currently residing. “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it. There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.”
- "according to text messages, call logs and Venmo transactions the creator shared with NBC News." Usually a single anonymous source is enough to fly these.
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speaking of anonymous sources... Biden planning to hit food ‘shrinkflation,’ corporate greed in SOTU - POLITICO
the White House has been aggressively testing out the messaging on the airwaves and in internal polling ahead of Biden’s speech, according to two White House officials familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak on the issue and were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Recent polling circulated within the White House has been favorable to Biden’s push to blast what he’s described on the campaign trail as “corporate greed” driving higher prices across a range of sectors. The most recent drafts of Biden’s State of the Union address have included a reference to shrinkflation as part of a broader segment on administration efforts to pressure companies to lower costs across the board, a third White House official said, though the speech is not yet finalized and could still change. “It’s about framing this for the American people,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Biden’s open frustration with tactics like shrinkflation, the official added, “speaks to what they feel in a way that’s useful for us both in terms of messaging and making sure they understand that the president sees what’s going on.”
Biden, however, likes the “greedflation” and “shrinkflation” arguments, an interest sparked most recently conversations with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) during a January trip to Allentown, Pennsylvania, according to three other people familiar with the matter, who were also granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. Biden and Casey have also discussed the topic on the phone several times, both before and after the Pennsylvania trip. The president sees the ideas as a relatable way to acknowledge and explain the lingering financial pressures on Americans, even as inflation is falling and prices for some food staples are moderating.
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What Texas can teach San Francisco and London about building houses
New York, San Francisco and London are led by progressives who wring their hands publicly over their acute and long-running housing crises. Texas, meanwhile, is a red state, not generally given to pursuing socially beneficial projects. But actions speak louder than words. Homes in Texan cities are cheap and their populations soaring because the state has made urban development easy. California, New York and London are overheating and squeezing out young families because their planning systems place artificial constraints on supply, making urban development extremely difficult.
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The Longer The U.S.’s Pause On LNG Projects Goes On, The Better It Is For Russia | OilPrice.com
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Trump Defeats Haley in South Carolina Republican Primary: Live Updates - The New York Times
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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U.S. rice exports to Haiti have unhealthy levels of arsenic, study finds
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Unidentified balloon belongs to amateur balloonist: US official
The high-altitude balloon flying over the western U.S. is the property of an amateur balloonist, a U.S. official told NBC News Saturday. Prior to Saturday, the U.S. military said it was monitoring an unidentified "small" balloon flying at high altitudes over the west, according to two U.S. officials and a defense official.
World
Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
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France Says Russian Intelligence Behind Antisemitic Graffiti Campaign | ZeroHedge
But on Friday the AFP is reporting that France's international security service DGSI believes this was all the work of Russia's FSB, which is a successor agency to the Soviet KGB: "France believes that Russia's security service FSB was behind a campaign in which Star of David graffiti were daubed on buildings in and around Paris last autumn, a French source said Friday."
France's international security service DGSI believes the operation was run by the FSB's fifth division that undertakes international operations, the source said, quoting from a secret internal note that was first revealed by the Le Monde newspaper. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said during last year's investigation that the daubings had been made at the "express demand" of an individual residing abroad.
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“The war remains an active and bountiful research opportunity for American military planners as they look to the future, officials say,” the Post reported. A senior defense official explained, “We immersed them in this conflict to make sure they were understanding the implications for warfare.” A second official told the outlet that the Ukraine war will be “an enduring resource.”
China
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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This company wants to turn a Tennessee coal plant into a fusion reactor | Electrek
Type One energy has announced its intention to use a retired TVA coal plant site, the Bull Run Fossil Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as the site for a prototype fusion reactor with the hope to eventually commercialize fusion power – and maybe even find a neat way to use old EV batteries to help power the process. The Bull Run Fossil Plant was a coal-powered generation facility first opened in 1967 and shut down on December 1, 2023 – just over two months ago. It was run by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the largest public utility in the US, and sits just across the river from Oak Ridge, the site of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), one of America’s most important national science labs.
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Could we monitor biodiversity from space as we do the weather
- Sometimes it takes microscopic examination by trained professionals to determine if an animal is a member of a protected, endangered species or a "must cull" invasive species. Spotted vs Barred Owls, fer instance. Orbital sensors won't help much with that.
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Record-Setting Blazes Are Growing More Common. What Survivors Want You to Know
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Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?