2024-03-28
Cool
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These RC Helicopter Acrobatics Aren’t AI Fakes, If You Can Believe It
My initial reaction to seeing this video in an era of AI-generated slop that pollutes the internet was skepticism. The helis move like going to the store, putting them squarely in the uncanny valley. Looking up the name of the uploader Tareq Alsaadi though, I found more footage that showed not only these tricks are real, but also one of the ways flyers manipulate their aircraft. One video where Alsaadi performs a solo act shows a preflight check of blade pitch adjustment—bingo, that's how they reverse the direction of thrust on a dime.
etc
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Who owns the ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore? - CBS News
Called the Dali, the 948-foot vessel that hit the bridge is managed by Synergy Marine Group, a Singapore-based company with over 660 ships under management around the world, according to its website. The Dali is owned by Grace Ocean Private, a Singapore-based company that provides water transportation services. The ship was chartered by Danish container shipping company Maersk at the time of the collision.
Synergy Marine, founded in 2006, provides a range of ship management services, including managing ships' technical components and their crews and overseeing safety, according to S&P Capital IQ. Its parent company, Unity Group Holdings International, an investment holding company, was founded in 2008 and is based in Hong Kong.
- Some are saying these connections mean "the Dali was controlled by China when it hit the bridge." I find that something of a stretch, too.
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"The vessel went dead, no steering power and no electronics," said an officer aboard the ship. "One of the engines coughed and then stopped. The smell of burned fuel was everywhere in the engine room, and it was pitch black," the officer said, adding that the vessel didn't have time to drop anchors before hitting the bridge. Minutes before the crash, officers on the ship issued a mayday call to the Coast Guard.
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the only people on the bridge when it collapsed was a pothole repair crew
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Baltimore Bridge: Carriers Declare 'Force Majeure,' Leave Companies on Hook
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Three ships have hit bridges in different countries – in just three months. Should we be worried?
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Baltimore Coal Exports Blocked After Bridge Collapse | OilPrice.com
Following the bridge collapse, up to 2.5 million tons of coal exports from Baltimore could be blocked for up to six weeks, Ernie Thrasher, CEO at Pennsylvania coal trading firm Xcoal Energy & Resources, told Bloomberg. Globally, the disrupted exports are unlikely to have a huge impact on coal prices, but many coal cargoes from Baltimore are typically headed for India, so there the impact could be felt along the supply chain, Thrasher told Bloomberg.
Horseshit
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The long overdue death of the stick shift car
I cringe at the grating screech of a botched downshift, that high-pitched sequel worse than fingernails across a chalkboard. The sound upbraids and shames me for having wronged the drivetrain. But this obviously never happens to alpha men, the kind who love their engines and coax them to purr.
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How the Scarcity Mindset Holds Immigrants Back
Our parents’ generational trauma is not talked about enough (because it is culturally taboo), but it has been passed down to us in less discreet ways. Although they sacrificed everything for our generation to thrive, our parents imbued in us a scarcity mindset. A scarcity mindset is when you believe resources like time or money are limited. It views life as a finite zero-sum pie, and if someone takes a piece, there is less for everyone else. A scarcity mindset causes a hyper-fixation on what you don’t have, and leads to short-term coping instead of long-term problem-solving. It can paralyze you and cause mental health issues from anxiety and stress.
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Transport of the future? Europe's longest hyperloop center opens
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How facial recognition is changing the future of global protest
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I'm 60 and wanna live to 100. Is my years of drinking and inactivity a problem?
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New Hampshire could become the first state to limit the breeding of bulldogs
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PepsiCo makes Flamin' Hot its own brand; portfolio launches w 25 unique products
Electric / Self Driving cars
Obit
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Joseph Lieberman, senator and vice presidential nominee, dies at 82
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Richard Serra, Who Recast Sculpture on a Massive Scale, Dies at 85 - The New York Times
Richard Serra, who set out to become a painter but instead became one of his era’s greatest sculptors, inventing a monumental environment of immense tilting corridors, ellipses and spirals of steel that gave the medium both a new abstract grandeur and a new physical intimacy, died on Tuesday at his home in Orient, N.Y., on the North Fork of Long Island. He was 85. The cause was pneumonia, John Silberman, his lawyer, said.
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Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-winning economist, dies at 90 (Archive
Musk
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Elon Musk Mandates 'Full Self Driving' Demos for Tesla Buyers in North America
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Tesla’s Pivot to China Saved Musk. It Also Binds Him to Beijing. - The New York Times
Interviews with former Tesla employees, diplomats and policymakers reveal how Mr. Musk built an unusually symbiotic relationship with Beijing, profiting from the Chinese government’s largess even as he reaped subsidies in the United States. As Mr. Musk explored building the factory in Shanghai, Chinese leaders agreed to a crucial policy change on national emissions regulations, following lobbying by Tesla that was not previously reported. That change directly benefited Tesla, bringing in an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in profits as China production took off, The New York Times found.
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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Truth Social's stock surges by 56%, as investors consider what it means for IPOs
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Small investors power Trump Media’s market valuation above $13bn
Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is riding a wave of enthusiasm from small investors as a second day of gains took the lossmaking social media group’s valuation above $13bn. Trump Media & Technology Group topped the leaderboard of most-discussed stocks in WallStreetBets, Reddit’s popular stock trading forum, for several hours on Wednesday. On Tuesday, its first day of trading after a merger with a shell company, it surpassed far larger groups to rank among the top 15 most-traded stocks by volume on Interactive Brokers. The stock closed up 14 per cent at $66.22 on Wednesday for a market capitalisation of $13.5bn on a fully diluted basis.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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Cows in Texas and Kansas test positive for highly pathogenic bird flu
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Democrats Just Won't Admit They Blew It Supporting Lengthy Covid School Closures
Republican resistance to masks and vaccines harmed and killed many more people than any policy embraced by liberals. But I don’t think I am alone in expecting greater moral clarity from Biden than from Donald Trump. And when it comes to school, it is clear that Democrats have not truly reckoned with the decisions they made in 2020 and 2021. Earlier this week, a data analysis by The New York Times summarized the effect of the closures that began four years ago: “…extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of COVID, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.” The longer schools stayed closed (or partly closed, with students only attending school in-person one or two days per week), the more children fell behind. The devastating effects of remote learning are evident today in the absenteeism crisis, the teacher shortage, and the spike in mental illness among young adults.
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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The Deaths of Effective Altruism | WIRED
Yet Sam Bankman-Fried is the perfect prophet of EA, the epitome of its moral bankruptcy. The EA saga is not just a modern fable of corruption by money and fame, told in exaflops of computing power. This is a stranger story of how some small-time philosophers captured some big-bet billionaires, who in turn captured the philosophers—and how the two groups spun themselves into an opulent vortex that has sucked up thousands of bright minds worldwide. The real difference between the philosophers and SBF is that SBF is now facing accountability, which is what EA’s founders have always struggled to escape.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Fresno High tracks student bathroom visits with app. Not everyone likes it
a 10th grader at Fresno High, is using his first bathroom privilege for the day. He inputs his student ID number into an app and if the system detects fewer than 25 students campus-wide are on bathroom trips, the screen turns green and the countdown begins. He now has seven minutes for the bathroom trip.
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English dominates scientific research – how we can fix it, and why it matters
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Teachers Are Quitting. Some States Want to Pay More to Keep Them
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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NBC News ousts Ronna McDaniel after network’s anchors launch unprecedented on-air rebellion
“There is no doubt that the last several days have been difficult for the News Group,” NBCUniversal News Group President Cesar Conde said in a memo to staff. “After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor.”
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New York City has begun paying migrants $1,400 every month for food & baby supplies
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The TikTok bill isn't just about TikTok
“There’s obviously something afoot,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who opposed the bill, told your co-host Cristiano Lima-Strong last week. “You don’t airdrop a paragraph into a piece of legislation exempting one category of business that has nothing to do with the thing that you’re supposedly banning, so for me it raises a flag. I don’t know who the exemption is for.”
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TikTok is under investigation by the FTC over data practices, could face lawsuit
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
World
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Canada clocks fastest population growth in 66 years in 2023, almost hitting 41M
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Declining population: the cause and possible solution to Japan's deflation
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Argentina’s Javier Milei Plans to Fire 70,000 Government Workers
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More than 1,600 European planes hit by mystery GPS jamming with Russia feared responsible.
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A Nigerian woman reviewed some tomato puree online. Now she faces jail
Okoli, a small-scale importer of children’s wear, told CNN that on September 17 she asked her 18,000 followers on Facebook to share their opinions about a tomato puree she bought in place of her usual brands, saying she found it too sweet. In legal filings seen by CNN, the Nigeria Police Force alleged that Okoli used her Facebook account “with the intention of instigating people against Erisco Foods,” adding in a statement on March 7 that it had “unearthed compelling evidence” against her from its preliminary investigations.
Israel
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Open Letter to Anti-Zionists on Twitter
I understand the charges against me. Namely: that if I don’t call for Israel to lay down its arms right now in its war against Hamas (and ideally: to dissolve itself entirely), then I’m a genocidal monster on the wrong side of history. That I value Jewish lives more than Palestinian lives. That I’m a hasbara apologist for the IDF’s mass-murder and apartheid and stealing of land. That if images of children in Gaza with their limbs blown off, or dead in their parents arms, or clawing for bread, don’t cause to admit that Israel is evil, then I’m just as evil as the Israelis are.
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Critical Analysis of Hamas's Women and Children Casualty Figures
According to a 29 February MoH report, of 30,228 total deaths, only 17,285 were identified and registered in hospitals. The other 12,943 (43 per cent) were unregistered and collected solely from ‘reliable media sources,’ ‘though the ministry doesn’t cite or say which sources those are,’ as emphasised by Aya Batrawi, an NPR journalist covering the conflict. She reported that this reliance on public sources of information is partly ‘the result of multiple communication blackouts, in which phone lines and internet service were cut in Gaza … This made it difficult to communicate with hospitals and upload the number of casualties to the ministry’s database.’
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
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Yellen to Warn China Against Flood of Cheap Green Energy Exports (Archive)
n a speech on Wednesday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen will lay out her plans to raise the issue of overcapacity with her Chinese counterparts. At the Suniva solar cell factory in Norcross, Ga., she will warn that China’s export strategy threatens to destabilize global supply chains that are developing around industries such as solar, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries, according to a copy of her prepared remarks reviewed by The New York Times. “China’s overcapacity distorts global prices and production patterns and hurts American firms and workers, as well as firms and workers around the world,” Ms. Yellen will say. “Challenges for individual firms can lead to concentrated supply chains, negatively impacting global economic resilience.”
Health / Medicine
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Stop asking me why I care about tuberculosis
The phrase “treatment nonadherence” smacks of patient-blaming language that ends up concealing the true factors behind this crisis. How, for instance, is it a patient’s fault that they live up to 15 miles away from the Kalangba community health center and have no reliable transportation to pick up their medicines? Bangura said that others will complain the drugs are “heavy” and struggle to keep the medicine down or feel exhausted. In many cases, they don’t have access to healthy, fulfilling food. The treatment can interfere with people’s ability to go to work or provide for their families.
“We are having so many challenges because of this, because we are not supporting food and transportation,” he told me, adding that it’s not uncommon that a person with drug-susceptible tuberculosis doesn’t finish their treatment and comes back months later with a resistant infection.
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Some Couples Are Choosing to Skip Sex and Go Straight to I.V.F. - The New York Times
Well aware of how difficult conception or carrying a baby to term can be, some couples who hope to exercise a bit of control over an unpredictable experience are opting to do in vitro fertilization first.
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Two nights of broken sleep can make people feel years older, finds study
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Weed and Exercise: Why Some People Use Cannabis Before a Workout - The New York Times
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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'Everybody has a breaking point': how the climate crisis affects our brains
Are growing rates of anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, Alzheimer’s and motor neurone disease related to rising temperatures and other extreme environmental changes?
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Connecticut, USA wants to penalize insurers for backing fossil-fuel projects
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Polar ice is melting and changing Earth's rotation
Melting polar ice is delaying the leap second by three years, pushing it from 2026 to 2029, the report found. “Part of figuring out what is going to happen in global timekeeping … is dependent on understanding what is happening with the global warming effect,” said Duncan Agnew, professor of geophysics at the University of California San Diego and the study’s author.
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Feds propose killing thousands of owls to save Calif. spotted owl