2024-03-12
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Latam Airlines SYD to AKL flight: 50 people treated after mid-air incident
People "flew through the cabin" after an incident on board a flight to Auckland that left blood on the plane's ceiling, a person seriously injured, and saw 50 treated by Hato Hone St John Ambulance.
A passenger two seats away from him was not wearing his seatbelt, and flew up and hit the ceiling, Jokat said. "I thought I was dreaming. I opened my eyes and he was on the roof of the plane on his back, looking down on me. It was like The Exorcist."The man then fell back to the floor, breaking his ribs on his arm rest, Jokat said.
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(2015) Cataclysmic Polarity Shift – Is U.S. Prepared for the next Pole Reversal?
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How to spot a manipulated image
The techniques used to manipulate images are so sophisticated that we have entered the era of the hyper-realistic fake. Such images can lead to the spread of misinformation and could even influence public opinion in important events such as elections. With a picture of the Princess of Wales and her children being withdrawn by news agencies amid concerns it had been "manipulated", the issue has been thrown into the spotlight like never before. The Princess of Wales later apologised for making the changes to the image, stating that "like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing".
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A Mistake in a Tesla and a Panicked Final Call: The Death of Angela Chao - WSJ
Chao’s older sister Elaine was U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Bush administration and U.S. Secretary of Transportation in the Trump administration. Elaine Chao is married to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
Horseshit
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The curious theory about cars with loofahs on the roof
In The Villages, golf carts and cars share the space like equals. Interestingly, many of these vehicles have a loofah or a pool noodle on the roof, a particular ornament that has unleashed a curious rumor. These images, which have garnered more than six million views, gave rise to a curious theory: that drivers were supposedly using these shower accessories to inform other people that they were willing to swap partners.
- I recall hearing that "The Villages" was a sex cult, some time ago.
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The Chipotle founder's new robot-powered vegan restaurant
- "No animal dented its dignity for your food" seems to be the pitch. Level 4 vegan. Level 7 is "Eat nothing that casts a shadow".
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Think capitalism is terrible? This economist says it's already dead
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The great American llama (and ostrich and emu) collapse - The Washington Post
speaking to Sexton helped us unlock what was going on more generally. His objection to our farm-crisis theory was simple: The target market for these exotic animals wasn’t experienced stockmen and women. It was rubes. the classic mark for these dubious investments probably would have been a couple who had just retired or moved to the country and had a few extra acres burning a hole in their pockets. For this “dumb money” theory to hold water, we would expect to have seen these outsiders pour into farm country in the 1990s.
Alan made some money in ostriches, but nothing like some of the big exotic-animal dealers, at least one of whom he said bought a whole new spread in Texas with big-bird money. During the boom years, Alan watched every month as cadres of savvy bird brokers would spot new money the instant they walked in and bid up prices accordingly.“ Those people are masters at ripping people off,” Alan told us. Higher prices kicked off a feedback loop. More dumb money flowed in as friends and neighbors worried about missing out on the ostrich-and-emu game. That pushed prices up even further.
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Not all employers are tolerating Gen Z's laid-back language
Four months into the job, however, she was fired. Her manager cited her "lack of professionalism", including her frequent use of filler words like "like" and "totally", as a contributing factor. Anna's supervisor said she didn't come across as an "intelligent" person who should be working at a top hedge fund, and that her demeanour didn't fit the firm's image. Anna was devastated. "No-one told me beforehand what to say or not say. And everyone my age talks this way. How was I supposed to know?"
Electric / Self Driving cars
Obit
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Boeing whistleblower found dead in US
John Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017. In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday. It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Op-ed: Charges against journalist Tim Burke are a hack job | Ars Technica
Imagine a journalist finds a folder on a park bench, opens it, and sees a telephone number inside. She dials the number. A famous rapper answers and spews a racist rant. If no one gave her permission to open the folder and the rapper’s telephone number was unlisted, should the reporter go to jail for publishing what she heard? If that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is. And yet, add in a computer and the Internet, and that’s basically what a newly unsealed federal indictment accuses Florida journalist Tim Burke of doing when he found and disseminated outtakes of Tucker Carlson’s Fox News interview with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, going on the first of many antisemitic diatribes.
- I'm sure the Fine Folks at Ars will be leaping to the defense of those reporting about Hunter's laptop soon, too?
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Proliferating ‘news’ sites spew AI-generated fake stories.
Hundreds of AI-powered sites mimicking news outlets have cropped up in recent months, fueling an explosion of false narratives -- about everything from war to politicians –- that researchers say is stoking alarm in a year of high-stake elections around the world.
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Why Trans Kids Have the Right to Change Their Biological Sex
if children are too young to consent to puberty blockers, then they are definitely too young to consent to puberty, which is a drastic biological upheaval in its own right. Yet we let this happen every day — and not without casualties.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Harvard and the wider scientific community have much work to do to deserve and regain public trust. The first steps are the restoration of academic freedom and the cancelling of cancel culture. When scientists have different takes on topics of public importance, universities should organize open and civilized debates to pursue the truth. Harvard could have done that—and it still can, if it chooses. Almost everyone now realizes that school closures and other lockdowns, were a colossal mistake. Francis Collins has acknowledged his error of singularly focusing on Covid without considering collateral damage to education and non-Covid health outcomes. That’s the honest thing to do, and I hope this honesty will reach Harvard. The public deserves it, and academia needs it to restore its credibility.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Ex Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick reportedly thinking about buying TikTok
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Telegram hits 900M users and nears profitability as founder considers IPO
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You Thought You Were Learning a New Language, but There's a Different Agenda Afoot – PJ Media
For months, I didn’t think about it as anything other than something to make fun of. But this weekend, I stumbled on a tweet that Libs of TikTok posted on Friday, which exposed the truth: all of the gay content in Duolingo is by design. The tweet includes screenshots of a blog post crowing about how Duolingo is all about “normalizing queerness.” The word “queerness” is what triggers my spidey senses. I don’t remember if I’ve written this here at PJ Media, but I’ve often said out loud that my definition of “queer” is “gay with an agenda.” So to see the emphasis on “queer” characters tells us what we need to know.
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Unplug Your Laptop Now, or It Will Stay Plugged in Forever
- On the other hand, tethering your phone to a particular table in your house might be an advantageous lifestyle choice. "Phones everywhere" is a technical advance, but is it an advantage for your life? We aint obligated to bite every apple offered us.
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(2001) The Secret Life of XY Monitors
During my time at Atari/Atari Games I worked on several XY games. This article represents what I know about XY Monitors. XY was Atari's name for what the Computer Graphics industry calls '"Random Scan" and the Video Game Community calls "Vector Games."
The way CRTs were made (and probably still are) is that once a year Corning guessed how many CRTs the TV industry would need for the next year. They would then build that many CRT envelopes in a single run, and that would be it for the year. The CRT envelopes were then sold to the CRT manufacturers. Corning must have been good at estimating the need because I don't remember there ever being a CRT shortage.
Standard CRTs come in 90 degree, 100 degree, and 110 degree deflection angles. This is because the larger the deflection angle, the shorter the CRT envelope. These deflection angles came about because people don't want the backs of their TVs to stick out a lot.
The story I heard, while I was still at Atari, was that the method used to make the HV transformers turned out to be sensitive to humidity, and the first HV transformers to burn up were the ones made during hurricane season. Very likely, the real story is simply that the potting material used in the transformers was not up to the task. Regardless of the cause, by the time the problem appeared the Operators had already made a good return on their investment. That was good news for the Operators but bad news for those of us trying to keep their 17 year-old Star Wars games alive.
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I was a big fan of the "star wars" consoles; and they all had a peculiar smell. now i know what that was. cooking flybacks.
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AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Act now to prevent a 'gold rush' in outer space
Who owns the Moon — and perhaps more broadly, who owns outer space — is a complex, legally loaded question that has been asked since the space age commenced. Although a layperson might assume that there are no laws governing the exploration of the cosmos, international agreements, such as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, do exist. Grayling’s contention is that such arrangements, negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations, are essentially cold war-era arms-control pacts, focusing primarily on prohibiting nuclear weapons in outer space and preventing any single country from claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies.
Any future dispute-resolution mechanisms must balance inclusivity and justice, and acknowledge that space commercialization is a deep national security concern for many states. What happens in outer space should inextricably be linked to developmental debates on Earth. Otherwise, although space might nominally be for the ‘benefit of all’ — as per the Outer Space Treaty — a select few nations or companies could indulge in rapacious over-exploitation. So, we need to seriously ponder who will benefit and what will comprise the common interest.
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JPL’s Voyager team ‘extremely hopeful’ after ailing, faraway craft shows signs of former self.
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An 'Extraterrestrial' Gadget Was Something More Familiar (Archive)
Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard, drew on seismic data from near the site, looked for crash remains on the ocean floor ... Last fall, Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins University, led a team that re-examined the nearby seismic signals and concluded that they were not evidence of the extraterrestrial, or anything close to it.
we looked at the exact signal he was looking at, and it was coming from a main road. Over time, it moved from a main road in the direction of a hospital, and then back to the main road. So, from analyzing the data, it looks to us like the signal is much more likely to have come from a truck turning off the main road, driving past the seismometer near the hospital and then driving the other way. There was no meteor involved whatsoever.
Crypto con games
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Bitcoin rally pushes BlackRock ETF over $10B in record time (Archive)
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) needed less than two months from its January 11 launch to reach that landmark, beating Invesco QQQ’s record of just over a year, according to Morningstar. IBIT’s total assets now sit at around $12.7bn, a combination of bitcoin’s appreciation and more than $7bn in net inflows.
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comment: "The market capitalization of Bitcoin overtook Silver today"
Economicon / Business / Finance
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A Year Later, Lessons from Silicon Valley Bank's Epic Collapse
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Nobel laureate economist savages his own profession
I have recently found myself changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practicing economist for more than half a century. I will come to some of the substantive topics, but I start with some general failings. I do not include the corruption allegations that have become common in some debates. Even so, economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates.
I long regarded unions as a nuisance that interfered with economic (and often personal) efficiency and welcomed their slow demise. But today large corporations have too much power over working conditions, wages, and decisions in Washington, where unions currently have little say compared with corporate lobbyists.
I am much more skeptical of the benefits of free trade to American workers and am even skeptical of the claim, which I and others have made in the past, that globalization was responsible for the vast reduction in global poverty over the past 30 years. I
I used to subscribe to the near consensus among economists that immigration to the US was a good thing, with great benefits to the migrants and little or no cost to domestic low-skilled workers. I no longer think so.
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Bay Area tech workers are seeing 'salary stagnation,' new report says
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Oracle tops quarterly profit estimates on AI demand, shares surge
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Infowar: Biden Begins Next PR Blitzkrieg To Sway Minds Of Americans | ZeroHedge
Two weeks ago, we described how, after two or so months since House Democrats abandoned the Biden administration's propaganda campaign to sell the American people on disastrous "Bidenomics," the White House would pivot to a new messaging strategy of "shrinkflation." The latest Google search of "shrinkflation" news stories shows what appears to be a flood of them across corporate media outlets.
According to Bloomberg data, the story count of news stories featuring "shrinkflation" surged this week to 1,365, up from 332 the week before. The first spike in shrinkflation headlines was a trial balloon by the White House around the Super Bowl.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Armed citizen patrols start in Hartford amid violence concerns – NBC Connecticut
“We are legally armed and we are patrolling,” said Cornell Lewis, the founder of the Self-Defense Brigade. “The people on Garden Street came to us and asked us for help.”
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Ranchers sentenced for tampering with rain gauges to increase crop subsidies
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Israel
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
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Russia's economy once again defies the doomsayers (Archive)
the Russian economy appears to be proving the pessimists wrong. Data to be published on March 13th are expected to show that prices rose by 0.6% month-on-month in February, down from 1.1% at the end of last year. On a year-on-year basis inflation is probably no longer rising, having hit 7.5% in November (see chart 1). Many forecasters expect the rate to fall to just 4% before long, and households’ expectations of future inflation have flattened. The result of Russia’s presidential election, which begins on March 15th, is a foregone conclusion. If it was competitive, these figures would do Mr Putin no harm.
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Opinion | The Prophetic Academic Emmanuel Todd Now Foresees the West’s Defeat - The New York Times
As Mr. Todd sees it, the West’s decision to outsource its industrial base is more than bad policy; it is also evidence of a project to exploit the rest of the world. But ringing up profits is not the only thing America does in the world — it also spreads a system of liberal values, which are often described as universal human rights. A specialist in the anthropology of families, Mr. Todd warns that a lot of the values Americans are currently spreading are less universal than Americans think.
Mr. Todd is not a moralizer. But he insists that traditional cultures have a lot to fear from the West’s various progressive leanings and may resist allying themselves on foreign policy with those who espouse them. In a similar way, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s official atheism was a deal-breaker for many people who might otherwise have been well disposed toward Communism.
Fighting a war based on values requires good values. At a bare minimum it requires an agreement on the values being spread, and the United States is further from such agreement than it has ever been in its history — further, even, than it was on the eve of the Civil War. At times it seems there are no national principles, only partisan ones, with each side convinced that the other is trying not just to run the government but also to capture the state.
China
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Hong Kong Pushes Strict New Security Law With Unusual Speed - The New York Times
The law known as Article 23 has long been a source of public discontent in Hong Kong, a former British colony that had been promised certain freedoms when it was returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Now, it is expected to be enacted with unusual speed in the coming weeks. The full draft of the law was only made public for the first time on Friday, as lawmakers began to review it. It targets five offenses: treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, and theft of state secrets and espionage. Mr. Lee said the law is necessary to close gaps in an existing national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 that was used to quash pro-democracy protests and jail opposition lawmakers and activists. Mr. Lee has depicted Hong Kong as a city under mounting national security threats, including from American and British spy agencies.
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China's housing minister says estate developers must go bankrupt if necessary
Health / Medicine
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FDA to Outlaw Soda Ingredient Prohibited Around the World
The FDA proposed in November to revoke the registration of a modified vegetable oil known as BVO in the wake of recent toxicology studies that make it difficult to support its ongoing use. BVO, or brominated vegetable oil, has been used as an emulsifying agent since the 1930s to ensure citrus flavoring agents don't float to the top of sodas. "Over the years many beverage makers reformulated their products to replace BVO with an alternative ingredient, and today, few beverages in the US contain BVO," said Jones.
The ban could be a sign of more things to come, with Jones announcing the agency is reviewing regulations that authorize the use of certain food additives, with a view to automatically prohibit the approval of any food coloring agents found to cause cancer in humans or animals, making for a more nimble bureaucratic process.