2024-03-14
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Mass Timber is Great, but It Will Not Solve the Housing Shortage
Mass timber is exactly what it sounds like: construction that uses large, heavy timber elements as the structural frame of the building. In contrast, light-framed timber construction uses small, thin timber elements – 2x4s, 2x6s, thin sheets of plywood or OSB – as the structural frame.
I don’t have particular objections to accelerating mass timber adoption. Mass timber is an interesting technology, and it has some decided advantages over constructing buildings out of steel or concrete. And in general, I’m in favor of expanding the palette of technologies available for constructing buildings. That said, there is not much reason to think that accelerating mass timber adoption will meaningfully increase the volume of homebuilding in the US.
large mass timber elements behave differently than smaller light-framed ones during a fire. Specifically, with mass timber a layer of charred wood forms around the outside that protects the wood on the inside from further combustion. Size your structural elements correctly, and a mass timber building will survive a fire much longer than a light-framed wood building. This gives more time for people to evacuate to safety, which makes it possible to safely build much taller buildings out of wood. While light-framed wood is typically limited to 5 stories in the US, mass timber buildings have been built up to 19 stories.
Both CLT and wood trusses are made from dimensional lumber stitched together. But the mass timber framing uses four to five times the volume of wood as the light-framed wood framing. These calculations get more complex for other parts of the structure. But the basic relationship holds: mass timber uses much more wood than light-framed timber to support the same load.
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The modern economy rests on a single road in Spruce Pine, North Carolina
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Blue cheese shows off new colors, but the taste largely remains the same
Horseshit
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Your car is secretly spying on you and driving your insurance rates through the roof: report.
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Everyday products you didn't know were made using prison labor
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Clive Palmer refloats Titanic II plans 10 years after first announcement
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Boeing 777 makes emergency landing after fuel leaks in fifth safety incident in a week - Irish Star
Nazi Child Exploitation Cult
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Its Qanon second coming. There's a group of fascist, satanic child abusers online and they did Jan6 and are Nazi Trump supporters this time!
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A Vile Child Exploitation Cult Run by Nazi-Linked Teens
A three-year Unicorn Riot investigation reveals international scope of sadistic abuse and blackmail rings
On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, attempting to thwart the peaceful transition of power. One of those insurrectionists, Riley Williams, stole then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. According to her ex, “she intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.” But Williams was also part of an international, abusive extortion network.
All of these individuals are associated with an online movement spawned by a group named CVLT that originated on Discord and Telegram in 2019. The group was known for sadistically grooming and sexually exploiting children by creating an environment of unequal power dynamics. They would hunt for victims on other sites such as Instagram, Snapchat and Omegle–luring the vulnerable into an emotionally charged trap.
Although there are Nazi and Satanic ties to the CVLT movement and related phenomena, most members seem to be motivated by the inherent extremeness that represents personal and in-group identity, versus genuine belief in racist ideology. Gaining notoriety and clout by extorting the vulnerable was, and still is, the name of the game. Being the ultimate edgelord crowns you king. And desensitizing both victims and members makes it easier for the perpetrators to motivate further acts of sexploitation and violence.
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There Are Dark Corners of the Internet. Then There's 764 | WIRED
A global network of violent predators is hiding in plain sight, targeting children on major platforms, grooming them, and extorting them to commit horrific acts of abuse.
reporting consortium including Der Spiegel, Recorder, The Washington Post, and WIRED has unearthed a sprawling ecosystem that has targeted thousands of people and victimized dozens, if not hundreds, of children using some of the internet’s biggest platforms. Law enforcement believes the “com” network encompasses a swath of interlocking groups with thousands of users, including hundreds of hardcore members who victimize children through coordinated online campaigns of extortion, doxing, swatting, and harassment.
This reporting consortium has obtained and analyzed more than 3 million messages from more than 50 chat groups on Discord and Telegram. The messages expose multiple com subgroups and thousands of users in nearly a dozen countries on three continents. Our investigation found ample evidence of predatory conduct and a persistent presence across apps including Telegram and Discord, while WIRED also found com activity on Instagram, SoundCloud, and Roblox. The platforms are aware of these groups, but they have yet to successfully eradicate them.
The abuse perpetrated by members of com groups is extreme. They have coerced children into sexual abuse or self-harm, causing them to deeply lacerate their bodies to carve “cutsigns” of an abuser’s online alias into their skin. Victims have flushed their heads in toilets, attacked their siblings, killed their pets, and in some extreme instances, attempted or committed suicide. Court records from the United States and European nations reveal participants in this network have also been accused of robberies, in-person sexual abuse of minors, kidnapping, weapons violations, swatting, and murder.
The FBI issued a formal warning about the broader com network in September 2023 but did not answer specific questions regarding its investigations into the com/764 extortion network.
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On popular online platforms, predatory groups coerce children into self-harm - Washington Post
Unlike many “sextortion” schemes that seek money or increasingly graphic images, these perpetrators are chasing notoriety in a community that glorifies cruelty, victims and law enforcement officials say. The FBI issued a public warning in September identifying eight such groups that target minors between the ages of 8 and 17, seeking to harm them for the members’ “own entertainment or their own sense of fame.”
Electric / Self Driving cars
celebrity gossip
Obit
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Trump supporting singer, songwriter dies
Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Eric Carmen has died. He was 74.
- (Video) Go All The Way
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Gerald M. Levin, Time Warner Chief in a Merger Debacle, Dies at 84
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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Judge for Georgia election case dismisses some charges against Trump | AP News
The six challenged counts charge the defendants with soliciting public officers to violate their oaths. One count stems from a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021, in which Trump urged Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.” Another of the dismissed counts accuses Trump of soliciting then-Georgia House Speaker David Ralson to violate his oath of office by calling a special session of the legislature to unlawfully appoint presidential electors. McAfee said the counts did not allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of the violations. “The lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned’s opinion, fatal,” McAfee wrote. “They do not give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently.”
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“Make the RNC white again”: Minority outreach cut, Trump election lawyer installed in MAGA takeover
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Nvidia rival Cerebras says it's revived Moore's Law with 3rd-gen waferscale chip
900k cores and 44GB of SRAM, good for 125 AI petaFLOPS of performance, which in this case refers to highly sparse FP16
- great headline. If they made chips as good as PR bullshit they'd have the world by the balls. But until its in the hands of hackers, who can get documentation on its depths; its not even a real product, much less "Nvidia rival" grade.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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Let's not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media
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Today, fewer than 1,000 zebras remain, crowded out by farmers’ fields and cattle ranges, and still hunted for their skins and meat. By the time Berger-Wolf learned about their plight, scientists were predicting that the iconic species might die out within two decades.
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An AI that can play Goat Simulator is a step towards more useful AI
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NYT: OpenAI's claim we 'hacked' its products both 'irrelevant' and 'false'
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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SpaceX tentatively targets March 14 for third Starship flight
SpaceX's Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster will take off from the Starbase test site on the Texas Gulf Coast, a few miles north of the US-Mexico border. The launch window for the nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) rocket opens at 7 am CDT (12:00 UTC) Thursday and extends for 110 minutes.
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Airbus widens aircraft delivery lead over Boeing as Max crisis deepens
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Dollar Tree misses holiday-quarter estimates, to shut nearly 1,000 stores | Reuters
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Last week, a federal judge in Texas issued a ruling that struck down a new joint-employer standard by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would have classified numerous companies as “employers” of specific contract and franchise employees, obligating them to negotiate with unions representing those workers.
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Why inflation is staying high: The economy is increasingly uninsurable
Troublesomely high inflation rates may have an overlooked metric at their source: soaring insurance costs. But don't take our word for it, just listen to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Several types of insurance, including home and car insurance, have surged over the past few years, and it’s hurting the Fed’s effort to get interest rates down to its 2% target, Powell said in congressional testimony last week.
Driving the increases in insurance are factors such as climate change and rising prices for car parts, experts say. The more frequent extreme weather caused by climate change is leading to higher risk for insurance companies, which has led them to increase their prices, according to a study from Bankrate. Over the past decade, the U.S. has experienced a record $1.1 trillion in damage from severe weather, the most on record, which has contributed to higher insurance costs, the study claimed.
- Not only is the cart before the horse, its speaking from the wrong end.
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Food prices hold steady, but Americans have a beef with the cost of a burger
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Homebuyers need to earn 80% more than in 2020 to afford a house in this market
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Avian apocalypse is leading to egg-stravagant prices in some areas
You can try and pin this on grocer greed, but that’s a wasted accusation. The higher prices of eggs in the U.S. are actually due to several factors. There has been a significant reduction in the supply of eggs as a result of the avian influenza outbreak, which has resulted in the euthanasia of millions of chickens and ducks.
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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While it's not technically a done deal just yet - between the three states there are 142 delegates, of which Trump needed 137 to secure a majority within his party, and an overall count of 1,215, and positioning him to become the Republican party's presidential nominee once a vote is held at the convention in Milwaukee. President Biden, meanwhile, cleared his party's 1,968-delegate threshold earlier in the evening after AP projected him to win Georgia.
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IRS has launched its free tax filing service, Direct File, in 12 states
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House Passes Bill to Force TikTok Sale From Chinese Owner or Ban the App (Archive)
Prior to the vote, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took to the floor to rail against the bill, saying that "there's some of us who feel that - intentionally, or unintentionally, this legislation to ban TikTok is actually a trojan horse. "Some of us are concerned that there are First Amendment implications here. Americans have the right to view information, and don't need to be protected by the government from information."
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Deep summary; excellent reporting: On the Latest TikTok Bill
My view of the current bill, after a close reading, is that it is vastly better, and about as good as we could reasonably expect. It seems positive and I hope it passes, whether or not ByteDance folds and agrees to divest. I expect it to pass constitutional muster, although one cannot be sure.
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Beneficial Ownership Information You Need to Know | H&R Block
Beginning on January 1, 2024, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) will require many small businesses to report beneficial ownership information. People can be beneficial owners if they report their stakes and income from their companies. The problem is that many don’t, so FinCEN intends to use BOI reporting to create beneficial ownership transparency.
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Google & Meta Function as Extensions of the US Intelligence Community
The question I’ve pondered for over a year now is: Why have tech giants like Google and Meta been on a hiring spree for ex-Intelligence Community personnel since 2018? The answer appears clear. With a majority of the American electorate turning to social media as a primary source of news consumption, the CIA found itself compelled to orchestrate a modern-day Operation Mockingbird. This initiative encompassed not only the censorship of dissenting opinions but also the amplification of establishment narratives and the dissemination of various disinformation campaigns. In essence, they sought to control the flow of news on social media to influence electoral outcomes.
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Hunter Biden Skewers GOP as He Turns Down Invite to Publicly Testify
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Montana Man Pleads to Federal Charges for Efforts to Create Giant Hybrid Sheep
Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 80, of Vaughn, Montana, Worked to Traffic Marco Polo Sheep Parts from Kyrgyzstan, Clone Sheep, Illegally Inseminate Ewes to Create Hybrids and Traffic Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Parts
Schubarth sent genetic material from the argali parts to a lab to create cloned embryos. Schubarth then implanted the embryos in ewes on his ranch, resulting in a single, pure genetic male Marco Polo argali that he named “Montana Mountain King” or MMK. Court documents explain that Schubarth worked with the other unnamed coconspirators to use MMK’s semen to artificially impregnate various other species of ewes – all of which were prohibited in Montana – and create hybrid animals. Their goal was to create a larger and more valuable species of sheep to sell to captive hunting facilities, primarily in Texas.
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Inside organized crime rings targeting retailers Ulta, TJX, Walgreens
- As companies continue to call retail crime an industrywide dilemma, CNBC has spent about eight months investigating organized retail crime rings, getting a rare glimpse into the complex layers of the organizations.
- In some cases, CNBC witnessed low-level shoplifting incidents involving people who appeared to be homeless, and in other cases saw takedowns of alleged organized theft groups that police said were reselling stolen merchandise at flea markets.
- One group, in operation for more than a decade, made millions reselling stolen cosmetics on Amazon, police said.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Why firms are bringing their manufacturing back home
The motives for this shift are complex and varied, but break down into three main groups - economics, risk and politics.
Haiti
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The US DEI regime failed Haiti - Washington Examiner
Haiti has benefited for decades from billions of dollars in foreign aid from the United States government, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Last year alone, the U.S. allocated $344 million in aid to Haiti, the most since 2016. Aid peaked at $1.3 billion in 2010 following the earthquake. This cascade of funding has been largely spent on programs meant to address food shortages and healthcare infrastructure. But despite the millions spent, there has been no improvement in the quality of life of the people of Haiti.
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Pentagon officials anticipate ‘mass migration’ of Haitians amid chaos in Caribbean
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US Urgently Deploys Elite Counterterror Marines To Haiti To Protect Americans | ZeroHedge
This week, the Department of Defense doubled our funding for the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, and we are working with Haitian, Kenyan, and other partners to expedite its deployment to support the Haitian National Police and to restore security in Haiti. The Department of Defense is postured to provide enabling support for the MSS, including planning assistance, information sharing, airlift, and medical support.
Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean
Israel
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
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Opinion | Yulia Navalnaya: Putin isn’t a politician, he’s a gangster - The Washington Post
On Feb. 16, one month before the scheduled “presidential elections” in Russia, my husband, Alexei Navalny, was murdered in prison on Vladimir Putin’s direct order. I never wanted to be a politician, I never wanted to speak from the rostrum or write for international media. But Putin left me no other choice. Therefore, I want to tell you a few important things that Alexei had been trying to say all these years.
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'Jamming': How Electronic Warfare Is Reshaping Ukraine's Battlefields
Health / Medicine
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Doctors are worried about the ideas bots are putting in patients' heads
- WebMD made everyone think they had cancer, too. "$newthing Bad" sub-flavor "Wise Doctors' time wasted by Foolish Supplicants"