2024-02-26
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What It’s Like to Be a Sociopath - The New York Times
The part that’s missing is you can be a sociopath and have a healthy relationship. You can be a sociopath and be educated. That’s a very uncomfortable reality for some people. People want to believe that all sociopaths are monsters and that all monsters are easy to spot.
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Why don’t people talk about fat-tailed sheep more?
- One reason is they're a bit harder to keep; they require more attention than "cleaner" breeds. The sheep breeds we keep in quantity now are often docked and infibulated for purposes of hygiene.
Horseshit
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When Eyes in the Sky Start Looking Right at You - The New York Times
“We’re acutely aware of the privacy implications,” Topher Haddad, head of Albedo Space, the company making the new satellites, said in an interview. His company’s technology will image people but not be able to identify them, he said. Albedo, Mr. Haddad added, was nonetheless taking administrative steps to address a wide range of privacy concerns. “This is a giant camera in the sky for any government to use at any time without our knowledge,” said Jennifer Lynch, general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who in 2019 urged civil satellite regulators to address this issue. “We should definitely be worried.”
- Haven't we hashed these cases out with news and law enforcement aircraft? And then camera drones?
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70 coins removed from stomach of zoo alligator during routine exam
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Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars? - The New York Times
Instead of asking questions about aeroshell sensor design and terrain-relative navigation, it promised to ask questions about people. For 378 days, four ordinary people would enact, as closely as possible, the lives of Martian colonists, receiving directives, feedback and near-total surveillance from mission control. They would eat astronaut food, conduct basic experiments, perform maintenance duties, respond to endless surveys and enjoy highly structured down time. This level of extreme verisimilitude is necessary to ensure that the experiment accurately determines whether human beings can thrive while living millions of miles from everybody they’ve ever known.
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AI 'dream girls' are coming for porn stars' jobs (Archive)
For Maupin, the real humans behind porn are the entire draw, but some porn companies are willing to bet he’s a dying breed. Since the first AVN “expo” in 1998, adult entertainment has been overtaken by two business models: Pornhub, a free site supported by ads, and OnlyFans, a subscription platform where individual actors control their businesses and their fate. Now, a new shift is on the horizon: Artificial intelligence models that spin up photorealistic images and videos that put viewers in the director’s chair, letting them create whatever porn they like.
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How the luxury beliefs of an educated elite erode society
White privilege is the luxury belief that took me the longest to understand, because I grew up around a lot of poor white people. Affluent white college graduates seem to be the most enthusiastic about the idea of white privilege, yet they are the least likely to incur any costs for promoting that belief. Rather, they raise their social standing by talking about their privilege. When policies are implemented to combat white privilege, it won’t be Yale graduates who are harmed. Poor white people will bear the brunt.
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Fake: It’s only a matter of time until disinformation leads to calamity | Tim Harford
Which were the fakes: the yarn about the Da Vinci or the drawing? The Brueghel sketch or the story of its provenance? Deciding what’s true and what isn’t is something we’re quickly having to get used to doing. I’m not completely confident that we’re up to the challenge.
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Uncovering drone intentions using control physics informed machine learning
The CPhy-ML couples the representation power of deep learning with the conservation laws of aerospace models to reduce bias and instability. The CPhy-ML achieves a 48.28% performance improvement over traditional trajectory prediction methods. The reward inference results outperforms conventional inverse reinforcement learning approaches, decreasing the root mean squared spectral norm error from 3.3747 to 0.3229.
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The latest billionaire trend? Doomsday bunkers with a flammable moat
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Peter Thiel's steroid Olympics will hurt the poor
the Enhanced Games might also produce a less salutary result — the reduced participation of poor and working-class people in high-level athletics. Years ago, when I was working on a story with the help of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), one of their spokespeople noted that drug testing, for all its faults, not only reduces the overall incidence of drug use but also levels the playing field in sports like track and field, thus enabling impoverished youths with tremendous genetic talent from places such as Jamaica and the Bahamas to consistently outclass runners from richer European nations.
- Seems to have the unexamined assumption that the "steroid Olympics" will overtake all sport; that there will be no further interest in the exploits of the unenhanced, "natural" human athletes. Embrace diversity: there's room enough for all us freaks, ain't there? We can have "special Olympics" without people amputating limbs to compete; we should be able to have "cyborg Olympics" for those that want powered grafts.
Electric / Self Driving cars
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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Florida surgeon general defers to parents over CDC during measles outbreak - UPI.com
Amid an outbreak of measles at a Florida elementary school, the state's surgeon general has defied federal health guidance and told parents it's up to them whether they want to keep their unvaccinated child home to avoid infection. That advice runs counter to what Ladapo acknowledged in his letter was the "normal" recommendation that parents keep unvaccinated children home for up to 21 days -- the incubation period for measles. This is not the first time that Ladapo has challenged health recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Last month, he called for halting the use of COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna.
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Early Covid-19 research is riddled with poor methods and low-quality results
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Microsoft, not Google: Can a Tech Giant Be Woke? (Archive)
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A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr and Automattic
We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
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New York Times 'Reviewing' Reporter Who Liked Gaza 'Slaughterhouse' Tweet
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Book promotion Why science relies too much on mathematics (Archive)
mathematical analysis is not the only way of approaching scientific enquiry. Scientists also need to develop concepts on which to build the mathematics and carry out experiments to test and demonstrate their ideas. And they also need to translate the equations back into physical concepts and verbal explanations to make them comprehensible. These other aspects have long been undervalued – in both the teaching and practice of physics – and this has damaged and is continuing to damage our understanding of the world around us.
The overreliance on mathematics also delayed our understanding of how the spin of Earth makes it habitable. By the end of the 18th century, Laplace had derived equations describing how Earth’s spin deflects bodies of water moving over its surface. However, even he failed to observe that it would also affect solid objects and gases, so his work was ignored by the early meteorologists.
The truth is that the basics of physics, despite involving simple mathematics, are harder to grasp than we tend to think. It took me two years, for instance, to master just the science of spin and rotation for my latest book. We need to spend more time thinking about, visualising and demonstrating basic physical concepts. If we do, we could produce a generation of physicists who can communicate better with everyone else and discover more about the world around us. The answers are probably already there, hidden in the equations
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Apple AirTag: Antitheft Or Antistalking?
The solution is to pop the back off the tag and yank out the little sounder module from the rear plastic. You lose the ability to locate the tag audibly, but you gain a little more chance of returning your stolen goods. Apple could easily remove this feature with a firmware update, but it’s a matter of picking your poison: antistalking or antitheft?
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Apple Ponders Whether to Develop Smart Glasses, Fitness Ring
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Reddit admits more moderator protests could hurt its business
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Facebook and Instagram are platforming sexually exploitative parents
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Floppy Disk Imaging - Tech Tangents
PCs originally shipped with disks formatted with 8 MFM sectors on a single single side. Microsoft Adventure though....uh...didn't. It was entirely possible to manually control the floppy drive on a PC to make custom and strange formats that only your program was designed to work with. This game is booted on the system directly to run, not loaded form DOS, so it has full hardware access. This wasn't the only game like this, Sublogic's Jet has a normal first track and then a weird 5 sector format after. You could define diskdefs for these disks, but this is a harder subject that also gets into defeating the checks built into the game's executables as well which is beyond the scope of this video. For disks like this, I would recommend sticking with just flux for preservation unless you really want a challenge.
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Indeed, time sharing was a natural fit for teleprinter terminals. With a teleprinter and a computer with a suitable modem, you could "call in" to a time sharing computer over the telephone from a remote office. Most of the first practical "computer networks" (term used broadly) were not actually networks of computers, but a single computer with many remote terminals. This architecture evolved into the BBS and early Internet-like services such as CompuServe. The idea was surprisingly easy to implement once time sharing operating systems were developed; the necessary hardware was already available from Western Electric.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Five takeaways from the South Carolina GOP primary | The Hill
Haley’s speech in the Palmetto State amounted to an adamant declaration that she will battle on, until at least Super Tuesday. She earned one of the biggest cheers of the night when she noted her previous promises to keep going and added, “I’m a woman of my word.” Her rationale is that she is not going to “give up this fight” when so many Americans are unenthused about a match-up between President Biden and Trump.
It isn’t just Trump’s margin of victory that shows his dominance of the party. It’s that most Republican voters in South Carolina share his entire worldview.
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To what extent, if any, has the Russian government manufactured or amplified unproven allegations of corrupt Ukraine dealings by Joe and Hunter Biden? In a request to revoke his bail, prosecutors said that former informant Alexander Smirnov, charged last week with lying to the FBI in 2020 when he said Joe Biden had received a $5 million bribe, “is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials” as recently as last fall.
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Joe Biden Often Brags About ‘Good Sex’ With Dr. Jill. That Could Be a Sign of Dementia.
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Elon Musk and Donald Trump Cases Imperil the Rule of Law - WSJ
New York and Delaware have played an outsize role in business in the U.S. Many major companies are incorporated in Delaware owing to the state’s body of corporate legal precedents; and a significant number of banks operate in New York, the world financial capital. The appellate courts in those states now have a chance to review these dangerous judicial rulings and try to stop further damage to the reputations of their respective judiciaries. If they don’t, blue-state politicians may have the satisfaction of “sticking it” to Messrs. Trump and Musk, but the loss to those states will be significant. The damage to the legal fabric of the country will be even worse. A dispassionate justice system is at the heart of American exceptionalism, and the country will be poorer if we lose it.
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Why Possible Trump VP Pick Tulsi Gabbard Is Visiting Mar-a-Lago Soon | ZeroHedge
On Feb. 20, President Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, revealed at a Fox News town hall in Greenville, S.C., that Ms. Gabbard, a former Democrat, had made his “short list” of possible running mates.
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"Biden's Custom "2018 Cadillac ATS-V Sedan" Hits the "Auction Block"
This unique vehicle was custom-built for Biden during his time between roles, following his tenure as Vice President in the Obama administration. It boasts distinctive features such as tinted windows and an exclusive Kona Brown interior, a combination not found in any other ATS-V model directly from the factory. A representative from Cadillac confirmed Biden's previous ownership and noted that the car's original wheels have been replaced with 18-inch CT4-V Blackwing wheels in Tech Bronze, underscoring Biden's refined automotive taste. Documentation for the 2018 ATS-V includes emails indicating that "Biden's Secret Service detail" requested a black exterior for the vehicle, with "Biden" himself specifying no additional custom features aside from the Kona Brown leather interior. The timeline for the addition of the custom wheels remains unclear.
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Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, find allies
this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017. At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed so-called “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories. One member of the group, Greg Conte, who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, said that his group showed up to talk to the media. He said that the group was prepared to be ejected if CPAC organizers were tipped off, but that never happened.
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Compulsory voting can reduce political polarization in the US, study finds
Introducing compulsory voting in the United States and other majoritarian democracies, with meaningful and enforceable penalties for abstention, has the potential to reduce political polarization and protect democratic institutions from anti-democratic threats,
Implementing compulsory voting in the U.S., however, is not likely, according to Oprea, who says such a proposal would bring constitutional challenges, and getting every state on board would be difficult. But she believes it's time for local and state governments to experiment with ways to increase turnout.
Our article strengthens the normative case for compulsory voting by arguing that it could improve democracy by reducing polarization, which existing work suggests can lead to democratic backsliding. Drawing on spatial models of electoral competition, we argue that, by reducing more extreme voters’ ability to threaten to abstain due to alienation, the introduction of compulsory voting can push party platforms toward the median voter’s preferences. This directly decreases party polarization, defined as the distance between party platforms. We examine potential normative and empirical objections to this argument and provide scope conditions under which compulsory voting is likely to decrease polarization.
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A Blue State Exodus: Who Can Afford to Be a Liberal? – MishTalk
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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How hard should L.A. go after copper wire thieves? Council holds a lively debate
Beyond wire theft, the invigorating conversation illuminated the council members’ differing approaches to crime, with some wishing for more preventive efforts and others pushing for accountability. The motions, which passed on a 13-2 vote, will create a task force with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Bureau of Street Lighting and establish a rewards program to encourage the public to submit information regarding the thefts.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said the rewards program “misses critical steps in understanding the root of this problem.” “Rather than expand city efforts and resources on a reward program that does not intervene until after the damage is done and focuses on punitive measures, why aren’t we looking into how we can prevent this cycle together?” said Hernandez, who voted no on the motions. Hernandez praised a Jan. 9 motion by Councilmember Heather Hutt that requested an examination of replacing copper wires with solar-powered lighting. Efforts like those, Hernandez said, address the root causes of the problem instead of spending money on “solutions that are Band-Aids.” (Hutt did not speak during Wednesday’s discussion but voted to approve both motions.)
- small value, hard to take wires are being stolen; let's fix it by using higher value, higher portability solar lighting units! That will address the "root causes!" ... Politicians suffering recto-cranial inversions is one thing, this is utterly back asswards.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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Freedom of Navigation and American Policy Part 1
Freedom of navigation, the idea that the waters of the world should be open to all, is America’s oldest and most consistently held foreign policy position. Even before the Constitution was written, trouble flared on this front, as the Barbary States in North Africa had a habit of taking passing ships and holding them for ransom. Previously, American vessels had been protected by the RN, but with that shield gone, other means were required.
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The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin - The New York Times
There is also one more secret: The base is almost fully financed, and partly equipped, by the C.I.A. “One hundred and ten percent,” Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy, a top intelligence commander, said in an interview at the base. Now entering the third year of a war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the intelligence partnership between Washington and Kyiv is a linchpin of Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. The C.I.A. and other American intelligence agencies provide intelligence for targeted missile strikes, track Russian troop movements and help support spy networks.
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House committee demands SpaceX open Starshield internet to U.S. troops in Taiwan
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) said in a letter to Musk that multiple sources told a committee he leads that the satellite broadband provided through the company’s Starshield unit is inactive near and in Taiwan. “SpaceX is possibly withholding broadband internet services in and around Taiwan—possibly in breach of SpaceX’s contractual obligations with the U.S. government,” Gallagher wrote in the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. He made clear in the letter his concern relates to communications, including for U.S. military personnel, in the event of Chinese “military aggression against Taiwan.”