2024-03-13
Worthy
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(2020) Long, worth the full read: For Nearly 10 Years, I Operated a Satellite TV Hacking Network
These guys signed their messages with PGP before it was trendy. We also had some interesting ideas about things that are not so common today. If a satellite signal is being beamed onto my property from space, do I really not have the right to attempt to decrypt it? So edgy and esoteric but this was generally the consensus at the time in this scene. So much cypherpunk!
eventually at one point in 2006 DSSTESTER was in the top 2000 most visited websites on the entire internet. When TVs went down from an ECM I’d do millions of users in a weekend. The traffic was like an organic DDoS that never seemed to let up.
Costs were funded by mostly private advertising, Google Adsense, and some merch sales, and the whole thing was run by a dozen or so dedicated volunteers.
(post 2005) we have this very active period where the core DSS hackers (who were primarily hobbyists) are replaced by overseas, mostly Korean, shadowy actors who release code for their company’s FTA devices to drive sales. This change annoyed the hobby guys (us included) and many of them stopped contributing to the scene. Also during this period much of the larger community forums had been shut down by law enforcement. I had managed to forego this happening to myself by moving my operation overseas and being super careful, but I also knew eventually my number would be up.
Google was nice enough to let me know there was a subpoena for my account data but guess what? Nobody else even bothered to tell me. And by nobody else I mean: Paypal, eBay, 3 domain registrars, merch makers, VPN providers, and every other online service I had used with that email in the last five years. They had all been subpoenaed and happily handed it over without even letting me know and it works that way even to this day. DISH Network had sent all of this data over to my lawyer to show they meant business.
So in early 2010 we started what became a 6 month process of negotiating an end to DSSTESTER. I am bound by this agreement to this day and will not divulge the details other than to say it ended with me ceasing all DMCA piracy related activities globally or I will face some rather heinous penalties. I’ll point out they didn’t ever ask about Apache log files, and I was relieved because I always send web access logs to /dev/null – even to this day.
etc
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Global Population Collapse Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore: Niall Ferguson - Bloomberg
What Mussolini called “the battle for births” is a losing proposition. The global trend is to make abortion easier. (In the past 30 years, more than 60 countries have altered their abortion laws. All but four — the US, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Poland — eased access to abortion). A growing number of countries permit euthanasia and/or assisted suicide. Average sperm counts have fallen by more than 50% in 50 years. No one knows exactly why, but bad food, bad air and bad lifestyle are the contenders. How Mankind Chose Extinction will be an interesting read if anyone is left to write it.
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Total Solar Eclipses Are Cosmic Coincidences That Won't Last Forever
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For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
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Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure
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'There's a real joy in fixing something': the rise of the repair cafe
Horseshit
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New Yorkers can barely live in their apartments because the weed smell is so bad — ‘It wakes me up.’
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The Hittite Empire vanished from history at the start of the 12th century B.C. This coincided with the Late Bronze Age collapse, when many ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean were rocked by unrest. As described by historian Eric Clein in "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" (Princeton University Press, 2014), the reasons for the collapse aren't known, but they may include famines caused by climate changes. However, the invasion referenced by the newfound tablet doesn't seem to be related. Matsumura said the tablet dates to the reign of the Hittite king Tudhaliya II, between about 1380 to 1370 B.C. — roughly 200 years before the Late Bronze Age collapse.
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Shields up: New ideas might make active shielding viable | Ars Technica
The reason nearly none of this radiation can reach us is that Earth has a natural, multi-stage shielding system. It begins with its magnetic field, which deflects most of the incoming particles toward the poles. A charged particle in a magnetic field follows a curve—the stronger the field, the tighter the curve. Earth’s magnetic field is very weak and barely bends incoming particles, but it is huge, extending thousands of kilometers into space. Anything that makes it through the magnetic field runs into the atmosphere, which, when it comes to shielding, is the equivalent of an aluminum wall that's 3 meters thick. Finally, there is the planet itself, which essentially cuts the radiation in half since you always have 6.5 billion trillion tons of rock shielding you from the bottom.
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How many books did you read in 2023? - The Washington Post
Of 1,500 Americans surveyed, a less-than-ideal 46 percent finished zero books last year and 5 percent read just one. So, if you read more than two books in 2023, congratulations! You’re in the top half of U.S. adults. Reading five books put you in the top 33 percent, while reading 10 books put you in the top 21 percent. Those of us who read more than 50 books are the true one-percenters: people who read more books than 99 percent of their fellow Americans.
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He prosecuted child sex predators. Now, he's going after Meta
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Double-swiping rewards card led to free gas for months and felony theft charge
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The rats are all high, NOPD chief says of vermin-infested HQ | Crime/Police | nola.com
"The rats are eating our marijuana," Kirkpatrick said. "They're all high." Rodents have infested police headquarters, scattering feces across desks and feasting on narcotics in the department's evidence room, she said. Cockroaches are also abundant.
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Airlines Colluded to Ensure Onboard Food Would Be Awful
Airlines also colluded to limit inflight drink service. U.S. airlines entered into an agreement not to serve customers more than two drinks back in 1956, but the agreement fell apart in 1971 as carriers competed for business. The CAB actually discussed whether they needed to regulate the thickness of sandwiches on board, because airlines were getting too competitive on food. They were charging high prices for tickets, but spending that money right back on the customer – and the government meant to stop it. Somehow I had forgotten that there were, once, actual regulations on inflight sandwiches – at least for international flights.
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Why American cars are so big (Archive)
The rule favouring big petrol-guzzlers is about to change. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which sets limits on cars’ emissions, announced in April 2023 that it planned to tighten standards across the board and narrow the definition of a light truck. The agency is due to publish final rules this year. The CO2-emission limit for cars is currently 161 grams per kilometre, compared with 276 grams for light trucks, a 71% difference; the EPA is expected to cut that gap to 22% by 2032, forcing manufacturers to use more efficient engines in their big models, which will raise the price of big cars relative to smaller ones. The agency believes that its new rules are so strict that they will speed up the move towards electric vehicles (EVs), so that by 2032 two-thirds of new sales will be electric.
Electric / Self Driving cars
celebrity gossip
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US Billionaire Drowns in Tesla After Rescuers Struggle With Car's Strengthened Glass | IBTimes UK
Angela Chao, the billionaire sister-in-law of Sen. Mitch McConnell, tragically drowned in a pond at her Texas ranch.
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Influencer Andrew Tate arrested in Romania, to be extradited to U.K. after trial : NPR
Grainy footage from Romanian police shows a man dubbed the "king of toxic masculinity" being detained in the dead of night, along with his brother, then hauled into a Bucharest court in handcuffs. Within hours, a judge there Tuesday approved the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate to the United Kingdom, where they face charges of sexual aggression in a case that dates back more than a decade. But the judge said the Tate brothers won't actually be sent to the U.K. until after they face trial in Romania on separate charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal group to sexually exploit women.
Obit
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Boeing whistleblower is found dead in South Carolina : NPR
Barnett's body was found in a vehicle in a Holiday Inn parking lot in Charleston on Saturday, police said. One day earlier, he testified about the string of problems he says he identified at Boeing's plant where he once helped inspect the 787 aircraft before delivery to customers. "Upon their arrival, officers discovered a male inside a vehicle suffering from a gunshot wound to the head," police said in a statement sent to NPR. "He was pronounced deceased at the scene."
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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The Purge: Election Year - Team Trump Axes 60+ RNC Staffers | ZeroHedge
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Defending Democracy? A Majority of Democrats Oppose Certifying a Trump Victory
A national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and The National Pulse finds that 35% of Likely U.S. Voters say, if Trump wins this year’s election, they would support Democrats in Congress refusing to certify the election results, including 20% who would Strongly Support such a move. However, a majority (55%) would oppose Congress members refusing to certify a Trump victory, including 44% who Strongly Oppose the idea. Another 10% are not sure.
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Trump Vows To Free Jan. 6 'Hostages' In First Act As President | ZeroHedge
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Woke magazine asks “where are all the black people” in TV drama on Japanese history
There's a new drama that looks pretty awesome called "Shogun" which is about Japan in the 1600s. So, of course, woke journalists are asking the real question, "Where are all the black people?"
His entire argument to include black people in a show about Japan is that there MAY HAVE been ONE black person who was a Shogun. Although no one knows if he was really black or if he was just dark-skinned. But since a black person MAY have existed in 1600 Japan they HAVE to be inserted into the show.
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Children to no longer be prescribed puberty blockers, NHS England confirms
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Deadspin was just sold and all of their writers are being let go.
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Apple Announces Ability to Download Apps Directly from Websites in EU
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Bluesky is funding developer projects to give its Twitter/X alternative a boost
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I put "cast aside" at around 2015: Reddit is casting aside community spirit in search of financial maturity
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Most teens report feeling happy or peaceful when they go without smartphones, Pew survey finds.
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Time for TikTok to cut its ties to China (Archive)
TikTok admits that it once blocked videos on subjects like the Tiananmen Square massacre, but insists things are different now. It has made extensive, expensive efforts to hold American users’ data separately from others’ and opened its code for inspection. But it has undermined itself, too. It argues that selling its American operations would be impractical, since they are so closely linked to the rest of the business—thus casting doubt on its claims of strict separation from Beijing. It has tried to rally users to its cause, pinging some with a message to contact their member of Congress. That has only emphasised its potential as a political force; some wavering representatives are said to have flipped against TikTok after their switchboards were jammed by callers. A drip of scandals, such as ByteDance’s admission that its employees snooped on American journalists’ TikTok habits, has hardly helped.
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We’re Cleaning Up Gab And It’s Long Overdue – Gab News
I’ve come to the conclusion that these subversive mentally ill people don’t deserve the freedom of speech, they deserve to be committed. Why on earth are we giving our enemies the freedom of speech and a platform they can use to destroy us with? It’s foolishness. At a minimum these people are being expelled from Gab for good. Threats and harassment are not protected by the First Amendment and they aren’t protected by Gab’s terms of service.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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Gold-Medalist Coders Build an AI That Can Do Their Job for Them
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Microsoft opens its Copilot GPT Builder to all Pro subscribers
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Your Kid May Already Be Watching AI-Generated Videos on YouTube
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OpenAI: The Board Expands - by Zvi Mowshowitz
The investigation into events has concluded, finding no wrongdoing anywhere. The board has added four new board members, including Sam Altman. There will still be further additions. Sam Altman now appears firmly back in control of OpenAI.
If Altman is doing the types of things people say he is doing, and you do not offer a confidential way to share relevant information, that tells me you are not so interested in finding wrongdoing by Sam Altman. Taken together with an inability to offer confidentiality, it would be difficult for a summary statement to louder scream the message ‘we wanted this all to go away quietly and had no interest in a real investigation if we can avoid one.’ There was still the possibility that one could not be avoided, if the gun was sufficiently openly smoking. That turned out not to be the case. So instead, they are exonerating the board in theory, saying they messed up in practice, and moving on. One detail that I bolded is that the board did not anticipate that firing Altman would destabilize OpenAI, that they thought he would not fight back. If true, then in hindsight this looks like a truly epic error on their part.
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
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Crypto 'Mixer' Convicted of Money Laundering on Bitcoin Fog
The "Perry Mason" moment was a catch by defense expert Jeff Fishbach. The government’s evidence included their description of a screenshot of a text message chain discussing a money laundering plan by the defendant. Turns out, it was just a picture from an e-book the defendant was reading on his computer! Ouch. During closing the prosecution apologized for their mistake but promised it was their only one. The prosecutors C. Alden Pelker and Chris Brown wrote a Justice Department publication advising prosecutors against bringing cases based on tracing alone. They suggested using corroborating evidence like possession of a private key to Bitcoin addresses holding illicit funds.
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Iron Ore's Steep Decline Intensifies | ZeroHedge
Futures in the critical steelmaking ingredient are down 25% year-to-date in Singapore, and they fell nearly 7% on Monday to around the $107 a ton level. Iron ore has slid about 25% from a peak of $142 a ton in early January as China's real estate and manufacturing secotr remain under pressure.
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CPI for all items rose 0.4% in Feb, 3.2% over 12 months; gasoline and shelter up
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Boston's too expensive, so "alarming" number of young adults plan to leave
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Teachers Unions Quietly Spend Millions on GOP Primaries in 32 States.
According to databases maintained by Open Secrets and Follow the Money, the largest teachers unions in 32 states have drastically increased donations to Republican state house, assembly, and senate candidates since 2018—donating up to $117,700 to individual candidates in a Republican primary. In the 2012 and 2016 elections, only 12 states’ teachers unions donated to Republican primary candidates for state legislatures, and of those, only three states’ unions donated average sums of over $3,000 per Republican candidate.
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Haiti replaces Ukraine - Don Surber
The internal polling on Dark Brandon’s state-of-the-union speech must be horrible because Democrats and their deep-state go-fers in the media quickly changed the subject. First, they tried to make the story about Republican Katie Britt’s Karen-in-the-kitchen response to Biden’s speech, but no one outside DC cares about these responses. Then Biden said he threatened Netanyahu with a come-to-Jesus moment. Bibi did not take Biden serious and no one else did. I mean, what was Biden going to do? Make Bibi eat a ham sandwich? With the Ukraine war wearing out its welcome, the only diversion left was the uncivil war in Haiti. Suddenly riots in its capital became the most important story in the world!
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Hur to testify as a private citizen | The Hill
Special Counsel Robert Hur will testify as a private citizen before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday after leaving the Department of Justice (DOJ), a source familiar confirmed to The Hill. The source added that Hur will still be bound by DOJ policies and protocols because he is testifying about his work for the agency. When DOJ employees, former or current, are set to testify, they receive a letter explaining the bounds of DOJ policy, the source said. Hur’s work for the Justice Department ended last week when he resigned from the agency following the conclusion of the investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
The transcripts surfaced hours before Hur testifies before the House Judiciary Committee, after he declined to press charges against the president for his handling of classified documents, citing in his report that "Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
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We are all vegans at a BBQ joint
America cares more about having a President who gives good press conference as opposed to a President who gives good Presidenting. Because Biden, or whomever is actually running his administration, seems decent enough at doing functional stuff. And when it comes to political strategy, give a medal to whomever decided to give Republicans everything they want in an immigration bill just so they’d have to vote it down because Trump no likey…
The Dems should keep going hard on immigration. Whatever the Republicans say they want, match it. Why’s that a good strategy? Because immigrants can’t vote! Yup, a solid strategy for winning elections is to focus on people who can actually vote. It’s baffling that is in any way tricky, but Dems have a knack for grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.
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Sell lab-grown meat in Tennessee, pay a $1M fine
What’s happening in Florida is part of a broader political strategy to hinder the nascent cell-cultivated meat industry. Last month, lawmakers in Arizona introduced a similar ban, with one Republican supporter saying, “We want to protect our cattle and our ranches.” One of the co-sponsors is a rancher himself. The bill is advancing through the legislature, having passed out of two committees this month. Meanwhile, politicians in Tennessee are pushing a cell-cultivated meat sales ban that imposes a $1 million fine on violators.
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couple days ago, for contrast: How Raw Milk Went from a Whole Foods Staple to a Conservative Signal
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"If Them is For It, I'm agian' it!" ... see also "reactionary".
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It's Time For The Chicken Tax To Die
he Chicken Tax has been around since 1963, pushing a crushing 25 percent tariff on imports of potato starch, brandy, dextrose, and light trucks and vans. I don’t know much about potato starch, brandy, or dextrose, but the light trucks and vans part of the law was intended as a middle finger to Germany’s Volkswagen.
Ford was recently hit with a massive $365 million fine for circumventing the import tax. The blue oval violated the chicken tax law by misclassifying and understating the value of hundreds of thousands of its Transit Connect vans. The company was building Transit Connect vans in Turkey with vestigial rear seats and windows installed in the cargo area so the vehicle could be designated as a passenger vehicle with a 2.5 percent import duty instead of a commercial one with a 25 percent hit. Once they got to the U.S. those pieces would be removed, and the car could be sold as commercial competitors.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
World
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Haiti Prime Minister Resigns Amid Ascent Civil War, Cannibalism
Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced Tuesday morning that he will resign after several weeks of chaos and what could be an unfolding low-scale civil war as gangs fight for control. Henry said in a statement that he would step down as prime minister immediately after a transitional presidential council is formed and an interim prime minister is named. "The government that I'm running cannot remain insensitive in this situation. There is no sacrifice that is too big for our country," Henry said in a statement, adding, "The government I'm running will remove itself immediately after the installation of the council."
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Canadians are fleeing the country. Here’s why – and how – they did it.
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German military still faxes documents and cannot radio allies, official warns
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Dutch gov. proudly announces it will tap Europe's largest internet exchanges
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Australia has walked away from a panicked anti-doxxing promise
Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean
Israel
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Hamas casualty numbers are statistically impossible, says data science professor
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Israeli-American IDF soldier taken hostage in Oct. 7 attack confirmed dead
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So, a Pier for Hamas it is - CDR Salamander
yes my friends - the Army has its own navy. (the Besson class is a) 243 foot, 4,200 ton ship commanded by … a Warrant Officer.
Generally speaking, no operation starts out on the right foot with a lie.
“We’re not planning for this to be an operation that would require U.S. boots on the ground,” said a senior administration official.
I’m not mad at the official. They are just making sure their statement is in line with higher direction and guidance. You cannot build a pier, even JLOTS, without putting boots on the ground.
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
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‘Russian warship, go f–k yourself’ ignites Ukraine-EU spat – POLITICO
Kyiv's accidental war slogan "Russian warship, go fuck yourself" is at the center of a fierce trademark battle between Ukraine’s State Border Guard and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). Brussels-based lawyers Andrej Bukovnik and Taras Kulbaba first filed the trademark application on March 16, 2022, under the name of the soldier — with his family's permission — who first uttered the phrase. The lawyers said this was a “unique opportunity to do something bigger" and a way to get ahead of what they say from experience would inevitably happen: someone else swooping in and claiming the trademark.
In a letter sent in July 2022, EUIPO said the slogan would be perceived as “contrary to accepted principles of morality as it seeks financial gain from what is universally accepted to be a tragic event” — Russia's all-out war in Ukraine. To get around the accusations of war profiteering and due to security concerns related to exposure of the soldier’s name, Bukovnik and Kulbaba transferred the application to Ukraine’s Border Guard. Nonetheless, the office rejected the application again in December 2022, and went further, objecting that it uses “vulgar language with an insulting sexual connotation.”
- "Intellecual Property War Crimes" might rejuvinate that area of lawerydom and distract some of the pesky patent trolls for a while.
Health / Medicine
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Keep your home powered during an outage? Try a big battery that lasts 3 days
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But muh "Invasive Species!" Moving trees north to save the forests
A mature red pine, also called Norway pine, is a tall, straight overstory tree that thrives in cold winters and cool summers. It’s the official Minnesota state tree and a valued target of its timber industry. But red pine’s days of dominance here could fade. In coming decades, climate change will make red pine and other Northwoods trees increasingly vulnerable to destructive combinations of longer, warmer summers and less extremely cold winters, as well as droughts, windstorms, wildfires and insect infestations. Climate change is altering ecological conditions in cold regions faster than trees can adapt or migrate.
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Vehicle brakes produce charged particles that may harm public health
“We found that up to 80% of aerosol particles emitted from braking are electrically charged, and that many of them are in fact highly charged,” saidAdam Thomas, a doctoral candidate in the lab of Jim Smith, professor of chemistry, who led the study alongside UCI postdoctoral researcher Paulus Bauer. Because the particles carry an electric charge, this should make it relatively easy to remove from the air.“If they are charged, they can be removed easily from the air before they have a chance to have an impact at all on health,” said Smith. “All you would need to do is to collect them with an electrostatic precipitator – a device that exposes the charged particles to an electric field and efficiently sweeps them away.”
The public health risk posed by brake emissions is not borne equally by a population – lower-income parts of cities tend to be more traffic-heavy than others, which creates an environmental justice issue wherein certain socioeconomic classes are more exposed to brake emissions than others. According to Professor Barbara Finlayson-Pitts, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of chemistry and the principal investigator of the project at UCI, emissions from braking are not well-characterized but are potentially significant in high-traffic areas. “These areas are often in poorer communities and highlight an important aspect of environmental justice that has been largely overlooked,” Finlayson-Pitts said.
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Not mentioned: brakes are close to the ground, which is electrically grounded, and charged particles will be attracted to.
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Automotive braking is a source of highly charged aerosol particles
We find that brake wear produces both positive and negative charged particles that can hold in excess of 30 elementary charges and show evidence that more negative charges are produced than positive.
- Certainly it's no mystery that the consumable brake parts are consumed; where did anyone think they were going? How many pounds of brake pads are sold a year? that's probably not far from the amount that winds up as road dust. Seems querying the manufacturers and parts stores might be a good data source.
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Mars could be driving 'giant whirlpools' in the Earth's deep oceans, new study