2024-02-27

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• Things Used to Work in This Country — The New Atlantis

  This is the stock complaint of the Baby Boomers, and if you are lucky enough to inherit a piece of their technology, you may find yourself agreeing. But when I say “things used to work,” the object of inherited nostalgia is not only manufacturing standards before planned obsolescence and offshoring. Things used to, literally, work. You turned a knob, and sound came on, because the knob controlled the mechanism that tuned the radio to the broadcast that the big metal radio towers dotting the landscape beamed at you. I am not a gearhead of any description and don’t care much about how the insides of electrical devices work, but I know exactly what I, personally, have to do to operate my end of the GE radio. There are no downloads, no platforms, no passwords, no little pull-down menus, no verifications or account recovery protocols. There is no streaming. Personal technology used to be a machine. Now it’s a bureaucracy.

  • You want to own modern machinery, you have to learn how to subvert the control systems. I think there's going to be growth in "Plain People" philosophies; where folks look to the Amish and Mennonite examples of a more thoughtful, intentional approach to technology. Avoiding the abnegation of Self that comes from delegating responsibility for one's life to various Vendors of Convenience will not be easy; but is worthwhile.

• New York Is an Unsung Haven for the World’s Languages - The Atlantic

  one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world, square mile after square mile, has been my home: Queens, New York. The soundtrack outside my door is extraordinary: On any given block, passing voices speak varieties of Polish, Ukrainian, Egyptian Arabic, Mexican Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, Dominican Spanish, Ecuadorian Spanish, Kichwa, and all the forms of New York City English they give rise to. As a linguist, I can usually distinguish them from one another, but understand only a fraction of what people are saying.

• Why some animals have evolved a sense of humour

Horseshit

• All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train—Asterisk

  The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because we refuse to learn from experts, other countries, and our own history.

• Quantum computers move closer to the assembly line

• In Hollywood, homeless encampments fuel neighborhood frustration

• Fentanyl Is Killing American Kids. Most Don't Even Know They're Taking It

• Senior Boeing employee on why he won't fly a MAX: Just Get me Off This Plane

• What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet (Archive)

  • HN comments

• Painting once valued at $17k is now a Rembrandt worth $13.8M (Archive)

• Generalising From Thin Slices of Behavior: other people as "cognitive surfaces"

  In this context, other people become integral cognitive surfaces for us, analogous to how tools or devices contribute to our cognitive processes: We use others to provide the necessary memory and cognitive scaffolds for conducting our work. And we have a mechanism for doing this that works exquisitely well—our astonishing conversational abilities.

• I Was a Heretic at the New York Times (Archive)

  I had to answer the pink prompt, which had me respond with my favorite sandwich. Russ & Daughters’ Super Heebster came to mind, but I figured mentioning a $19 sandwich wasn’t a great way to win new friends. So I blurted out, “The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A,” and considered the ice broken. The HR representative leading the orientation chided me: “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.” People started snapping their fingers in acclamation. I hadn’t been thinking about the fact that Chick-fil-A was transgressive in liberal circles for its chairman’s opposition to gay marriage. “Not the politics, the chicken,” I quickly said, but it was too late. I sat down, ashamed.

  • This Insider Account of New York Times Leftist Insanity Is Something Else

• A type of cyberattack that could set your smartphone on fire

• Gen Z Says Boomers Will Never Understand Today's Struggle

• California hoped to recoup millions in a bong auction. It made $2,075.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Self-Driving Cars Might Just Transform the Way We Work

• Ford's wacky electric Supervan 4.2 sets a new lap record at Bathurst

celebrity gossip

• Eagles' Don Henley testifies about cocaine-fueled night when he was caught with 16-year-old prostitute in LA

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Editorial: State of Maryland vs. The Takoma Torch

  My name is Eric Saul, and I am the creator of the Takoma Torch. Unfortunately, this is not a satirical article. Instead, this a disturbing true story that I never would have believed was possible: the Montgomery County State’s Attorney has criminally charged me for a satirical tweet.

• Meta forms team to stop AI from tricking voters

• US leading global alliance to counter foreign government disinformation

  James Rubin, the special envoy for non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts at the US state department’s global engagement centre (GEC), said the coalition hoped to agree on “definitions for information manipulation versus plain old opinions that other governments are entitled to have even if we disagree with them”. The US, UK and Canada have already signed up to a formal framework agreement, and Washington hopes more countries will join. The GEC focuses solely on disinformation by foreign powers. Apart from trying to develop global strategies, it works to expose specific covert disinformation operations, such as a Russian operation in Africa to discredit US health services.

Musk

• Musk steps in after California bakery jolted by cancelled Tesla order

• US tells Musk to allow Starshield service in Taiwan

• Elon Musk's Vegas Tunnel Project Has Been Racking Up Safety Violations

• Twitter (X) use predicts changes in polarization, sense of belonging, outrage

• China is building its own Starlink, as questions surround Musk's constellation

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• ‘Make Argentina Great Again’: Trump and Milei Embrace at CPAC.

• Trump wants to unravel Biden's landmark climate law. Here is what's most at risk

• Why Trump's $400 Sneakers Are Selling For Thousands

  Now, after seeing their potential resale value—with some sellers listing them online for as much as $45,000—Mr. Hardy wishes he had purchased three pairs instead of one. Mr. Hardy is one of several people who have listed the new shoes on the online auction website eBay. The presale for the shoes, called “Never Surrender High-Tops,” was limited to 1,000 units and they’re expected to ship in July.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• (Aug 2021) Are You Unvaccinated? It's Time to Make an End-of-Life Plan | Opinion

• Does vaping increase the likelihood of Covid infection? Paradoxically yes and no

  the study demonstrates that EC aerosols can impact susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection depending on their specific ingredients. PG/VG alone or PG/VG plus nicotine enhanced infection through different mechanisms, whereas benzoic acid in JUUL aerosols mitigated the increased infection caused by certain ingredients.

  • Other studies found nicotine protective against COVID, in multiple forms including patch; as I recall

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The Y Chromosome Is Vanishing. A New Sex Gene May Be the Future of Men

  the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years, leading to our extinction unless we evolve a new sex gene. The new finding supports an alternative possibility – that humans can evolve a new sex determining gene. However, evolution of a new sex determining gene comes with risks. What if more than one new system evolves in different parts of the world? A "war" of the sex genes could lead to the separation of new species, which is exactly what has happened with mole voles and spiny rats. So, if someone visited Earth in 11 million years, they might find no humans – or several different human species, kept apart by their different sex determination systems.

• Secularization Comes for the Religion of Technology

• Microsoft pays white employees less than non-white employees same job

• Mary Poppins’ UK age rating raised to PG due to discriminatory language | Mary Poppins | The Guardian

  It was changed because of a derogatory term for the Khoikhoi, a group of people who were among the first inhabitants of southern Africa. Classifiers picked up on the term used by the character Admiral Boom – first as a reference to people not onscreen, then as a reference to the film’s child stars when their faces are blackened with soot. “We understand from our racism and discrimination research … that a key concern for … parents is the potential to expose children to discriminatory language or behaviour which they may find distressing or repeat without realising the potential offence,” a BBFC spokesperson told the Mail.

  • Why the age rating for 'Mary Poppins' just changed

  • Mary Poppins film age rating raised over 'discriminatory language'

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why Is Plagiarism Wrong?

• $1B Donation Will Provide Free Tuition at a Bronx Medical School

  • New York medical school eliminates tuition after $1B gift

  • Ruth Gottesman's $1B Donation Makes Med School Free

• More than half of college graduates are working in jobs that don't require degrees - CBS News

  "What we found is that even in a red-hot economy, half of graduates are winding up in jobs they didn't need to go to college to get," Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman told CBS MoneyWatch. Examples of jobs that don't require college-level skills include roles in the retail, hospitality and manufacturing sectors, according to Sigelman. Another study from the HEA Group found that a decade after enrolling in college, attendees of 1 in 4 higher education programs are earning less than $32,000 — the median annual income for high school graduates.

• Career Earnings With a College Degree: Underemployed Graduates Lag on Income - Bloomberg

• Ending the Ivy League's Tax Dodge

• Libs of TikTok became a powerful presence in Oklahoma schools

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google News’ bias skewed even further left in 2023 — 63% from liberal media sources, only 6% from the right: analysis.

• AT&T reimburses customers after massive network outage | CNN Business

  The mobile network will issue a $5 credit to “potentially impacted” AT&T Wireless customers, which it says is the “average cost of a full day of service.”

• You'll Miss Sports Journalism When It's Gone

• My streaming fatigue got so bad I started collecting DVDs

• When Media Outlets Shutter, Why Are the Websites Wiped, Too?

• EU seeks to investigate Apple over cutting off web apps

• Response to Etsy’s “Strengthening New-Shop Onboarding to Keep Our Community Safe” announcement – Indie Sellers Guild

• MSFT offered to sell Bing to Apple in 2018 but search quality got in the way

• Nevada sues to deny kids access to Meta's Messenger encryption

• Sean Bailey Exits as President of Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Lenovo's concept laptop is real, transparent, and ready to impress

• An actual look at Microsoft OS/2 2.0 | Virtually Fun

• Introduction To Low Latency Programming: Minimize Branching And Jumping - Tech @ DG

  ‘conditional move (copy)’. While spiritually similar to a branch, it is significantly cheaper than real ‘check and jump’. Since we are not writing assembly by hand, we won’t be directly implementing CMOV use. Rather, we will try to use code constructs that will be turned into CMOV instructions. One of these is ternary operator. Regardless, a good compiler will use CMOV when it can, even for if statements (when they simply assign to a value to a variable).

  • When it matters; don't guess: learn your compiler; watch its output, and (usually) go ahead and go to explicit ASM if it matters that much. Fighting compilers leads to suffering, suffering leads to the Dark Side. and pinned version dependencies. GCC 2.95 anyone? To do otherwise is writing the ASM with the compiler as a code generator that you do not control. Like tying reins to a steering wheel and driving from the trailer, instead of the front seat. Fun but sloppy.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Digital Masquerade: Unmasking AI's Phantom Journalists

• Language Modeling in the Limit - Matthew Francis-Landau

• India confronts Google over Gemini AI tool's 'fascist Modi' responses

• Microsoft strikes deal with Mistral in push beyond OpenAI

• Google's picture generator to relaunch due to criticism of inaccurate images

• Google’s AI Debacle: Why is Google creating pro-Nazi and pro-Confederate propaganda?

• Dell promises 'every PC is going to be an AI PC' whether you like it or not

• Risking Ruin: How Alphabet's AI Bias Threatens Shareholder Value

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Martians Wanted: NASA Opens Call for Simulated Yearlong Mars Mission

• Jeff Bezos' New Glenn rocket makes an appearance on the launch pad

• Final images of Ingenuity reveal an entire blade broke off the helicopter

  The new images are remarkable in that they reveal Ingenuity more clearly than before and show that one rotor blade was completely broken off. Additional sleuthing revealed that this blade lay about 15 meters away from Ingenuity on the red Martian sands, apparently winging away from the helicopter prior to or during a landing of the vehicle on its final flight last month.

• Intuitive Machines' stock plummets after Moon lander tips over

• Odysseus has less than a day left on the Moon before it freezes to death

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Booming Stock and Sky-High Pay: Nvidia Is Silicon Valley's Hot Employer

• Millennials Are Losing Their Cars

  "Consumers we talk to only have enough money to cover some of their bills, so they prioritize a roof over their head ahead over other expenses, racking up high-interest credit cards," Saltarelli said in a statement. "Collectors are turning up the heat after the pandemic, and increasing inflation makes what money people do have, worth less."

• Incoming Federal Price controls preparatory propaganda: Consumers Pushing Back Against Price Increases – and Winning

  Public frustration with prices has become a central issue in President Joe Biden’s bid for re-election. Polls show that despite the dramatic decline in inflation, many consumers are unhappy that prices remain so much higher than they were before inflation began accelerating in 2021.

  Such trends suggest that companies were well on their way to slowing their price hikes before Biden's most recent attacks on price gouging. Claudia Sahm, founder of SAHM Consulting and a former Fed economist, said, “consumers are more powerful than President Biden.”

• What is greedflation, why are groceries so expensive?

• Consumers are increasingly pushing back against price increases – and winning

• Stockmarkets are booming. But the good times are unlikely to last

  Rarely have corporate profits been valued so highly. And the outlook for the profits themselves is also challenging. To understand why, consider the fundamental sources of their recent growth. We have employed Mr Smolyansky’s methodology to examine national-accounts data for American corporations. Between 1962 and 1989 net profits increased in real terms by 2% a year. After that, profits accelerated. Between 1989 and 2019 they increased by more than 4% a year.

• Amazon joins the Dow Monday, giving the 127-year old index a needed upgrade

• US sues to block merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons

  • FTC Challenges Kroger's Acquisition of Albertsons

  • US Government sues to block Kroger and Albertsons' $25B mega-merger

  • FTC Sues to Block $25B Kroger-Albertsons Merger (Archive)

  • FTC sues to block Kroger, Albertsons merger, arguing would raise grocery prices

• Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

• Wendy's Wants to Start Uber-Like Surge Pricing in 2025

  • Wendy's Is Introducing Uber-Style 'Surge Pricing'

• Why Capital One Wants To Buy Discover – Minh Quang Duong

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• It’s Over: Koch Network Pulls Plug on Bankrolling Nikki Haley’s Campaign.

• MSNBC Claims Trump's Numbers In South Carolina Are "Disastrous" Despite Defeating Nikki Haley

• McCaskill: Media Must Stop Fact Checking Joe Biden – JONATHAN TURLEY

  McCaskill called The New York Times “ridiculous” for a story correcting Biden’s false claims about the economy. She warned the media that they are only helping Trump by pointing out Biden’s false or misleading claims.

• Heidi Przybyla: Extremist Conservative Christian Nationalists Believe Your Rights Come From God, Not Government | Video | RealClearPolitics

  "The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists, not Christians because Christian nationalists are very different, is that they believe that our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any Earthly authority. They don't come from Congress, from the Supreme Court, they come from God," she explained.

• Supreme Court to hear challenges to Texas, Florida social media laws

  • Supreme Court weighs free speech challenges to social media restrictions

  • SCOTUS questions Florida and Texas social media laws on First Amendment grounds

  • Texas Is Right. The Tech Giants Need to Be Regulated

  • The Supreme Court Will Set an Important Precedent for Free Speech Online

• The IVF Patients Scrambling to Get Their Frozen Embryos Out of Alabama

• Before Joe, James and Hunter, There Was Great-Great-Grandpa Moses – JONATHAN TURLEY

  Their final argument was the one quintessentially Bidenesque. They told Lincoln that he was a political ally who was “ardent, and Influential … in opposing Traitors and their schemes to destroy the Government.” (It appears, even back then, the Bidens were union men.) It worked. Lincoln was known for leniency in pardons, and he signed a “Pardon for unexecuted part of punishment. A. Lincoln.” on Sept. 1. 1864. Robinette was a free man. So Robinette was found guilty at trial, severely cut an unarmed man, but was freed with the help of a U.S. senator with a plea that he was a loyal political ally.

  (regarding responses) The column was obviously drawing ironic, not genetic, comparisons to the current allegations. In anticipation of the next spin, I also referred to the “scripture” of the Bidens but I was not suggesting that they are divine or prophets. I also compared the Bidens to bottlenose dolphins but I do not believe that they are aquatic mammals. Finally, I do not believe that there is a genetic loss of humor. The faux outrage is merely adaptive behavior in this political ecosystem.

• Gavin Newsom: Biden’s age is an asset - POLITICO

  As a top Biden-Harris campaign surrogate, the 56-year-old Newsom often faces questions from the media about Biden’s fitness, as well as his own White House ambitions. He has gushed excessively about the president’s devotion to the country and capacity for empathy and declared himself “mesmerized” by the “masterclass” Biden has put on in Washington.

  He said merely engaging in the question about him or somebody else running is a boon to Republicans. GOP officials and conservative media figures for months have speculated about not only Newsom but also Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. “It’s a damning conversation, frankly, the other side wants us to have. And trust me, I know the mishegoss coming from the other side. I’m deeply mindful of the anger machine and all the entertainment industry out there on Fox and elsewhere,” said Newsom, a regular consumer of conservative media.

  • AKA "Newsom shows off Party Horse blanket"

• Democrats Whip Up New Russia Hoax To Let Biden Skate In 2024

  “It validates exactly what we were warning about,” Dilanian quoted Marc Polymeropoulos as saying, with Polymeropoulos described as “a 26-year CIA veteran who supervised operations involving Russia.” “Ours was a prudent warning. The Russians were going to push this narrative of Hunter Biden and corruption, to hurt Joe Biden,” Polymeropoulos told his NBC collaborator.

  No, what Dilanian and some 50 former intelligence officials were doing the month before the 2020 presidential election was deceiving the voters into believing the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. It wasn’t. On the contrary, the laptop provided Americans with concrete evidence of the Biden family’s corruption — which, had the FBI, intelligence community, and media not buried, would likely have cost Joe Biden the election.

• Biden's reliance on notecards at fundraisers worries donors

• Nearly half of Dems want to boot Biden off ticket -- with Michelle Obama his leading favorite replacement: poll 

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• RCMP investigating cyber attack as its website remains down

• UnitedHealth suspects ‘nation-state’ behind Change cyberattack.

• For Car Thieves, Toronto Is a ‘Candy Store,’ and Drivers Are Fed Up - The New York Times

• San Francisco police want to use drones in car chases

• The IRS unit taking on America's millionaires and billionaires

• US pharmacy outage triggered by Russian Blackcat ransomware at UnitedHealth unit

• Explosive device detonates outside Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s Office - al.com

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• CIA Built "12 Secret Spy Bases" In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms

• US Used AI to Help Find Middle East Targets for Airstrikes

• New Biden order would stem flow of Americans' sensitive data to China

World

• WTO chief warns of tough economic outlook as trade ministers gather in Abu Dhabi

• Amazon's AWS to invest over $5B to boost cloud computing in Mexico

• Spain's plan to ban domestic flights where you can take a train in under 2.5 hrs

• Qatar announces new gas output boost with mega field expansion.

• Sweden clears final hurdle in bid to join NATO after Hungary approves accession.

  • Sweden clears final hurdle in bid to join NATO

• Online harms bill would create a new hate-crime offence, impose big fines

• Supporters of Brazil's Bolsonaro stage huge demonstration to defend him amid investigations - The Washington Post

  • Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro rejects coup allegations as thousands of supporters rally in Sao Paulo | CNN

  Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday led a large rally of his supporters in São Paulo as he denied allegations that he took part in a coup plot in an attempt to stay in power. Thousands of Bolsonaro’s followers wearing the green and gold of Brazil’s national flag thronged Paulista Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the country’s largest city, in a show of support for the former leader as he faces mounting legal challenges. The far-right populist had called for the protest rally last week on social media platform X, calling it in “defense of the democratic rule of the law.”

Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean

• Houthis knock out underwater cables linking Europe to Asia - report - The Jerusalem Post

  Four underwater communications cables between Saudi Arabia and Djibouti have been struck out of commission in recent months, presumably as a result of attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, according to an exclusive report in the Israeli news site Globes. The successful targeting of the four cables, which are believed to belong to the AAE-1, Seacom, EIG, and TGN systems, marks a serious disruption of communications between Europe and Asia. Most of the immediate harm will be absorbed by the Gulf states and India, Globes said.

Israel

• Air Force man sets himself on fire outside Israeli embassy in Washington DC

  • US Airman Who Set Himself On Fire In Front Of Israeli Embassy Dies

  • Man Dies After Setting Himself on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy in Washington

  • Air Force member dies after setting himself on fire near Israeli Embassy

• Israel Not Complying with World Court Order in Genocide Case

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Navalny was close to being freed in prisoner swap, says ally

• Trudeau calls Putin a 'weakling' for executing Navalny, other opponents

China

• Chinese Chamber of Commerce Hawaii creates GoFundMe for chemical attack victim

• Fire at residential block that killed 15 casts spotlight on e-bikes in China

• China's plan to reshape world trade on its own terms

• McKinsey-led think-tank advised China on policy that fed US tensions

  Ultimately, the Five-Year Plan adopted a number of policies to improve China’s technological prowess, including a “Made in China 2025” strategy with global market share targets for strategic industries from robotics to aerospace and new energy vehicles. Then US president Donald Trump launched a trade war against Beijing in response, and tensions between the two countries have remained elevated ever since.

• Chinese visitors allegedly barred from Airbus German military plane at airshow

Health / Medicine

• Early immunotherapy for Crohn’s disease significantly reduces complications

• Surge in syphilis cases drives some doctors to ration penicillin

• U.S. launches probe into possible fraud by organ collection groups - The Washington Post

  The probe involves U.S. attorneys in various parts of the country who are investigating organ procurement organizations in at least five states. Their team includes investigators from the Department of Health and Human Services and the office of Michael Missal, the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. They are seeking to determine, among other things, whether any of these groups have been overbilling the government for their costs.

• What Americans Think of Weight Loss Drugs

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Cool: Trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds

• How First Contact with Whale Civilization Could Unfold

• The New Hot Climate Investment Is Heat Itself

• Germany to allow subsea carbon sequestration

• 9 Charts that show US factory farming is even bigger than you realize

• China's Carbon Emissions Are Set to Decline Years Earlier Than Expected

• Trojan horse: Shell launches a climate tech startup advertising oil and gas jobs

• Can we drill for hydrogen? New find suggests additional geological source

• The False Promise of Carbon Capture as a Climate Solution