2024-03-11
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Surprise Discovery Shows Forbidden Particles Can Attract Each Other : ScienceAlert
It was clear based on their observations that the negatively charged silica particles in water-based solutions didn't push apart as they would in an ideal, empty space. Far from it – they actually drew together.
Oddly, silica particles tweaked to have a positive charge didn't behave this way at all, at least not in aqueous solutions. Further experiments using alcohol as a solvent provided a prime opportunity for positively charged particles to draw closer together, however.
- The positive effects of Alcohol extend from the molecular scale to the social and political: Founding Fathers Racked Up Huge Bar Tab Before Signing Constitution
Horseshit
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Is This Desire? On the Intersection of Human Sexuality and Pornography
There is no one reason why we’re uptight about sexuality, but there’s lots of evidence that Judeo-Christian religions are a source of our worries about sexuality and the unruliness of it—the idea that emotional and other kinds of complications arise as a result of people having sex outside of approved circumstances. Of course, in different centuries there have been different ideas about what constitutes good or bad sex and who should be having sex and who shouldn’t be. The stereotype is that the Victorians were really uptight, but history has demonstrated that they were absolutely obsessed with sex and talked about it all the time. And in all that talking, they were laying down rules about what was and wasn’t appropriate.
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Dartmouth's vote to unionize could help end college sports' plantation dynamics
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The study also says "timers" High shower pressure can help people save water, study suggests
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US 'Prepper' culture is diversifying
A self-described "30-year-old lesbian from Indiana," Morgan is one of a new breed of Americans getting ready to survive political upheaval and natural catastrophes, a pursuit that until recently was largely associated with far-right movements such as white nationalists since the 1980s. "I'm really surprised by the number of people of color here," Morgan said. "I always went to these shows with my family in Indiana and it was just white people who were my parents' age. There are a lot of younger people here, too. It's a real change."
Electric / Self Driving cars
celebrity gossip
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“What are you doing sitting down over there? What are you getting sitting down?” Madonna asked, before walking to the edge of the stage to get a closer listen to the fan. That’s when the 80s pop icon realized she made the mortifying mistake. “Oh, OK. Politically incorrect. Sorry about that,” Madonna said after realizing the fan was in a wheelchair. “I’m glad you are here.”
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
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Elon Musk Has a Giant Charity. Its Money Stays Close to Home (Archive)
At the same time, he runs a charity with billions of dollars, the kind of resources that could make a global impact. But unlike Bill Gates, who has deployed his fortune in an effort to improve health care across Africa, or Walmart’s Walton family, which has spurred change in the American education system, Mr. Musk’s philanthropy has been haphazard and largely self-serving — making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses.
Mr. Musk has not hired any staff for his foundation, tax filings show. Its billions are handled by a board that consists of himself and two volunteers, one of whom reports putting in so little time that it averages out to six minutes per week.
In 2022, the last year for which records are available, they gave away $160 million, which was $234 million less than the law required — the fourth-largest shortfall of any foundation in the country.
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Led by Musk, Silicon Valley inches to the right
In just the latest example, repeating a conspiracy theory of far right chat rooms, Musk last week posted that US President Joe Biden was importing migrants for votes, laying the groundwork for "something far worse than 9/11." But beyond the posts, the question on everyone's mind is whether the world’s second richest person will put his weight, and wealth, behind the bid of former US president Donald Trump to retake the White House.
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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The Intercept Drops Secret FBI Files and HOO BOY Does It Make the FBI Look BAD – Twitchy
- Federal agents running the Whitmer kidnapping investigation put the public in danger to avoid undermining their operation, the files show.
- When FBI agents feared their informant might reveal the investigation’s flaws, they sought to coerce him into silence, at one point telling him: “A saying we have in my office is, ‘Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story,’ right?”
an extraordinary view inside a high-profile domestic terrorism investigation, revealing in stark relief how federal agents have turned the war on terror inward, using informant-led stings to chase after potential domestic extremists just as the bureau spent the previous two decades setting up entrapment stings that targeted Muslims in supposed Islamist extremist plots. The files also suggest that federal agents have become reckless, turning a blind eye to public safety risks that, if addressed, could disrupt the government’s cases.
The files also raise questions about whether the FBI pursued a larger, secret effort to encourage political violence in the run-up to the 2020 election. At least one undercover FBI agent and two informants in the Michigan case were also involved in stings centering on plots to assassinate the governor of Virginia and the attorney general of Colorado.
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How Raw Milk Went from a Whole Foods Staple to a Conservative Signal
owa has flipped — it’s a Republican state now, from the presidential vote to the governor’s office to the near-supermajority Legislature — and that flip has occurred alongside even larger shifts in national politics, spurred on by the rise of Donald Trump. With Trump has come a new GOP electorate, one more rural, more working class, less ideological and generally more distrustful of lobbyists, big business and “the experts.” And that has been a big help for a cause that is bucking just about every one of those groups.
Long a fringe health food for new-age hippies and fad-chasing liberal foodies, raw milk has won over the hearts and minds of GOP legislators and regulators in the last few years. (The Iowa vote broke almost perfectly along party lines with nearly all Republicans in favor and only a handful of Democrats defecting to their side.) And it’s not just in Iowa. Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Georgia and Wyoming all have passed laws (or changed regulations) since 2020 legalizing the sale of raw milk on farms or in stores.
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Exclusive: Jan. 6 Committee Hid Trump-Exonerating Evidence
Cheney and her committee falsely claimed they had “no evidence” to support Trump officials’ claims the White House had communicated its desire for 10,000 National Guard troops. In fact, an early transcribed interview conducted by the committee included precisely that evidence from a key source. The interview, which Cheney attended and personally participated in, was suppressed from public release until now.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
- "VR for Seniors" or "lets get the State to pay for all the unsalable headsets leftover from 'Metaverse' scams" 'Soaring' over hills or 'playing' with puppies
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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Silicon Valley is pricing academics out of AI research (Archive)
Fei-Fei Li, the “godmother of artificial intelligence,” delivered an urgent plea to President Biden in the glittering ballroom of San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel last June.The Stanford professor asked Biden to fund a national warehouse of computing power and data sets — part of a “moonshot investment” allowing the country’s top AI researchers to keep up with tech giants. She elevated the ask Thursday at Biden’s State of the Union address, which Li attended as a guest of Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) to promote a bill to fund a national AI repository. Li is at the forefront of a growing chorus of academics, policymakers and former employees who argue the sky-high cost of working with AI models is boxing researchers out of the field, compromising independent study of the burgeoning technology.
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Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: tech giants inciting existential fears to evade scrutiny
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Why Walmart's quick success in generative AI search should have Google worried
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AI chatbots found to use racist stereotypes even after anti-racism training
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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What has replaced Silicon Valley Bank as startups' favourite banker? (Archive)
“A year later, it feels eerily similar to pre-SVB downfall,” said Peter Hébert, chief operating officer at $5bn Silicon Valley venture firm Lux Capital. “Whatever gaps would have existed in the near term have very quickly been filled.” the core of the bank’s role was its high-risk appetite for underwriting loans to pre-revenue or lossmaking start-ups based on the strength of their venture capital backers and the likelihood they would continue to invest. Despite the flood of new options, fledgling technology companies are in some cases struggling to get the same access to capital that powered the booming venture market for two decades. None is as appealing as the “one-stop-shop” linchpin to the venture community SVB had been.
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"Let them eat cereal" How "greedflation" fueled consumer ire against Kellogg
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Job growth is booming across the U.S. but not in California. Here's why
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The Fed's 2% inflation target is a source of growing liberal discontent
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Biden's 60 minutes of hate - by Corrin Strong
I was struck by how much his speech followed the blueprint of the famous “2-minute hates” from Orwell’s novel “1984.” If you read it or watch the (1984) movie adaption, you will see that the daily hate sessions were focused on stirring up hatred of two main antagonists: the horrible people of Eurasia (or East Asia depending on who the current enemy was), and the insidious followers of Goldstein, a homegrown terrorist who was threatening to bring down the regime.
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Biden Apologizes for ‘Disrespecting’ Accused Laken Riley Killer by Calling Him ‘Illegal.’
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The Only Force Stronger Than Polarization? Rising Home Prices (Archive)
A lot of causes—including immigration reform, vaccination, Ukraine funding, and most recently in vitro fertilization—have supporters across the ideological spectrum but nevertheless have become mired in red-blue polarization, blocking what could be bipartisan legislation to address major issues facing Americans. In Congress, lawmakers regularly work together across the aisle, but on one condition: The issue in question can’t be too politically salient—that is, the type of issue that voters really care about. This is why Congress can pass laws about subsidizing semiconductors but not laws addressing immigration. For groups that want to get their priorities enacted, the question is how to gain enough attention without getting caught up in the polarization vortex. And no movement is walking this tightrope more precariously than the YIMBYs—who typically favor easing restrictions on housing development.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Armed Troops on the New York City Subways (Archive)
This is progress after the denial that has prevailed for years among the city’s ruling Democrats. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio and progressives started the downhill slide when they waged political war on cops, on stop and frisk policing, and on the enforcement of offenses against civilized norms. Yet sending in the military to protect mass transit is also in some sense a sign of societal and political surrender. It means that New York has concluded that it can’t protect its citizens with a normal police presence, or with the laws against vagrancy that once prevailed, or with prosecutors who used to put people in jail for crimes against public order. So send in the guys with assault rifles.
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Denver police raided the wrong house after officers relied on phone tracking app
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Irish voters reject bid to rewrite constitution’s view of women and family – POLITICO
In final results announced Saturday night, the amendment to change the constitutional definition of family was rejected by 67.7 percent of voters. The proposed changes on family care took an even harsher drubbing, with 73.9 percent against — the greatest defeat of an amendment in Irish constitutional history. The outcome means that the 1937 constitution, the legal bedrock for the Irish state, will continue to declare marriage a requirement for any family, while women’s value to society comes from delivering “duties in the home.” Those notions from a bygone era contrast starkly with the reality of Ireland today, where two-fifths of children are born out of wedlock and most women work outside the home.
The government, with support from all the main opposition parties, had wanted the public to accept two amendments. One recognized that people in “other durable relationships” could form family units too. The other said providing care should be a responsibility for the wider family, not just the mother.
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Canada faces a series of crises that will test it in the coming years, RCMP warn
Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
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China Intensifies Push to 'Delete America' from Its Technology (Archive)
Document 79 was so sensitive that high-ranking officials and executives were only shown the order and weren’t allowed to make copies, people familiar with the matter said. It requires state-owned companies in finance, energy and other sectors to replace foreign software in their IT systems by 2027.
Health / Medicine
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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New study shows what urban coyotes are really eating in San Francisco
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Bumblebees socially learn behaviour too complex to innovate alone
Here we show that bumblebees can learn from trained demonstrator bees to open a novel two-step puzzle box to obtain food rewards, even though they fail to do so independently. Experimenters were unable to train demonstrator bees to perform the unrewarded first step without providing a temporary reward linked to this action, which was removed during later stages of training. However, a third of naive observer bees learned to open the two-step box from these demonstrators, without ever being rewarded after the first step. This suggests that social learning might permit the acquisition of behaviours too complex to ‘re-innovate’ through individual learning. Furthermore, naive bees failed to open the box despite extended exposure for up to 24 days. This finding challenges a common opinion in the field: that the capacity to socially learn behaviours that cannot be innovated through individual trial and error is unique to humans.
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Lead in gasoline blunted IQ of half the U.S. population, study says
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Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat