2024-04-05

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• Where Graph Theory Meets the Road: The Algorithms Behind Route Planning

Horseshit

• The Long Jump - by John A. Lucas - Bravo Blue

  Schools let students take tests over if they do poorly the first time. Colleges ignore standardized entrance exams in the name of diversity. Companies and universities make hiring decisions that aren’t based on determining the best candidate, but to check some box of political correctness. And worst of all, every four years we vote for a candidate for president who we know isn’t honest. Why do we expect so little of ourselves?

• Washington's Lottery forced to pull site after creating AI porn of lotto user

• Amazon's "Just Walk Out" checkout turns out to be 1000 workers watching you shop

• Bridges in the US are threaten by truck drivers relying on GPS meant for cars

• French couple who kept 159 cats banned from keeping pets

• Why Big Tech's Digital Trade Rules Are Harmful

Boeing

• "An Empty Executive Suite": Insider explains what has gone wrong with Boeing

Electric / Self Driving cars

• How Hertz’s Bet on Teslas Went Horribly Sideways

  A pair of finance veterans bought the bankrupt car rental company and went all-in on electric. Too bad they got almost everything wrong.

  By the time Wagner’s hedge fund, Knighthead Capital Management, and O’Hara’s private equity firm, Certares Management, bought Hertz in a June 2021 bankruptcy auction, the company had slashed its debt and cut 15,000 jobs. Neither Wagner nor O’Hara had any experience in the industry, but to the self-styled disrupters in an archaic business, that was a virtue. They’d run financial analyses that clearly showed the future of rental cars was in electric vehicles. “We felt we could position Hertz in a completely different way,” Wagner told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview just before the IPO.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Police Scotland receives more than 3,000 complaints under new hate crime laws

• “Pink slime” local news outlets erupt all over US as election nears | Ars Technica

  The number of partisan news outlets in the US masquerading as legitimate journalism now equals genuine local newspaper sites, researchers say, as so-called pink slime operators gear up ahead of November’s presidential election. Pink slime sites mimic local news providers but are highly partisan and tend to bury their deep ties to dark money, lobbying groups, and special interests.

  Priyanjana Bengani, a Tow computational fellow at Columbia Journalism School who has tracked pink slime sites since 2019, describes Metric Media as a “convoluted network” run by a web of shell companies, non-profit structures, and corporate entities, all with links to three men: conservative businessman and publisher Brian Timpone, Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn, and Republican Party adviser Bradley Cameron. None of the three responded to requests for comment.

  Where right-leaning groups have typically dominated, more left-leaning groups are now entering the space. According to NewsGuard, this includes a network with titles such as the Pennsylvania Independent and the Michigan Independent, which it links to The American Independent, a national progressive site founded by Democratic operative David Brock with ties to a Democratic PAC.

• Let Me Rewrite That for You: NY Times Misinforms Readers About RFK and Biden

  what struck me was the article’s explanation of why RFK thinks Biden is somehow “more dangerous to democracy” than Trump. RFK (wrongly) thinks the Biden administration worked with social media to “censor” him.

  you know what the best way is to drive home to users that RFK is full of shit and spewing conspiracy theories? It’s to maybe debunk the core argument in the article, the extremely misleading conspiracy theory that President Biden “has used the federal agencies to censor political speech.” Because it simply didn’t happen. And nowhere does the article ever make that clear.

  We’ve gone over this before. Any reporter at the NY Times has the resources to look this up. As the article notes, RFK Jr. was spewing conspiracy theories and anti-vax nonsense. Some of that violated the rules of various social media sites, and they took appropriate action under their own rules not having anything to do with any government official, which is very much protected activity. Much of this happened during the Trump administration.

Musk

• Zimbabweans are modifying Starlink terminals to disguise them from authorities

• X's 'complimentary' Premium push gives people blue checks they didn't ask for

  Multiple X users on Wednesday reported seeing the familiar blue “Verified” checkmark next to their handles despite not paying for either paid X subscription tier. Musk last week announced that X accounts with over 2,500 “verified subscriber followers” would receive a free Premium membership; while accounts with over 5,000 would receive a free Premium Plus membership.

  • X blue checkmarks being forced on journalists who don't want them

  • Blue check marks reappear on some large X accounts

• Elon Musk's attempt to deceive the public and advertisers

  • Bust out "they changed the metric" about "record tornado season" stories and you're a "climate denier". A certain mental nimbleness is required to live peacefully in today's world.

• Elon Musk shares false allegation of voting fraud by "illegals"

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• The New York Judge Who Gagged Trump Should Recuse Himself | Gregg Jarrett

  the judge’s daughter is also fair game for criticism. Loren Merchan is a public figure who runs a prominent progressive political consulting firm that handles outspoken Trump opponents like Adam Schiff, who was infamously censured by his own colleagues in Congress for peddling endless lies about Trump and the notorious Russia Hoax. Significantly, Merchan’s daughter has a financial or economic interest in her father’s case. She and her clients raised some $93 million in campaign donations by citing the Trump prosecution in their solicitation mailings, according to reporting by The New York Post. On this basis alone, Judge Merchan was obligated to recuse himself because a member of his family —which is identified a child under strict ethical guidelines— has a private, vested interest in the outcome of the case. Yet, he refuses to step aside despite the glaring conflict of interest. Meaning, the fix is in.

• Traders Are Betting Millions That Trump Media Will Tumble (Archive)

  The demand to short Trump Media, the parent company of the social media platform Truth Social, is so great that stock lenders can charge enormous fees, making it hard for short-sellers to turn a profit unless the shares fall significantly. Still, there is a lot of interest in taking the bet. Last month, traders lost $126 million betting against Trump Media, according to S3.

  According to S3, 4.9 million of the roughly five million available shares are already on loan. As with any loan, when share owners lend their stock to a short-seller, they charge a fee, usually expressed as an annual interest rate on the stock’s current value. Typically, the fee for borrowing stock is a fraction of a percentage point. For Trump Media, it has risen to 550 percent, Mr. Dusaniwsky said. Trump Media’s stock currently trades at around $50. That means that shorting it for a month would cost more than $20 per share. For a short-seller to break even, the stock price would have to fall by almost half by early May.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• What to know about the risks of the bird flu outbreak

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Detecting gender bias in children's books

  Gender stereotypes form early in the child's development and are carried over throughout adolescence into adulthood, leaving long-lasting effects which may impact activity and career choices, as well as academic performance. Books, in particular, can have considerable influence, as their characters serve to shape role models of femininity and masculinity for young children. Thus, gender under- and misrepresentation in children's textual literature can contribute to the internalization and reinforcement of negative stereotypes.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Brands Paid for Ads on Forbes.com. Some Ran on a Copycat Site Instead

• Cable lobby vows "years of litigation" to avoid bans on blocking and throttling

• Delete history: Pornhub changed the world, but its empire faces a reckoning

• FCC's new net neutrality rules might be weaker than the ones discarded by Trump

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Google might make users pay for AI features in search results

• Meta's AI image generator can't imagine an Asian man with a white woman

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Space experts foresee an "operational need" for nuclear power on the Moon

Crypto con games

• Google sues crypto scammers for allegedly uploading fake apps to Android store

Economicon / Business / Finance

• What’s Wrong With the Economy? It’s You, Not the Data

• Amazon Sellers Plagued by Surge in Scam Returns

• Thank God It's Thursday? These companies have embraced four-day work week

• The dismantling of GE, once America's iconic everything company, is now complete

• Bank of America Racks Up Bond Losses That Could Top $100 Billion | Barron's

  At the end of 2023, the bank was sitting on $98 billion of paper losses on a $595 billion portfolio of bonds, mostly U.S. agency mortgage securities, that were classified as held to maturity for accounting purposes. That means the bank doesn’t plan to sell these assets before they mature, which leaves these losses only on paper, or, in other words, unrealized. Barron’s estimates the bank’s unrealized losses on this bond portfolio have extended to about $110 billion as of March 31, by far the largest for any company in the banking industry.

  • Bank of America faces 'rate trap'

• Amazon resumes construction on office in Seattle suburb after yearslong hiatus

• Dow closes 500 points lower, worst day since March 2023

• Samsung flags 10-fold rise in first-quarter profit as chip prices recover

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• USPTO Significantly Increases Fees Across the Board

• Tennessee passes 'chemtrail' bill banning airborne chemicals

• The New York Times vs. RealClearPolitics | RealClearPolitics

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Millions go missing from money storage facility in LA-area on Easter

• DOJ seeks harsher penalty for Ashley Biden diary thief after missed hearings.

  The Department of Justice asked a judge on Tuesday to sentence the woman who stole Ashley Biden’s diary to four to 10 months in prison, a tougher penalty than the six months of home confinement that the government had initially sought.

• Microsoft blew it, says government report on Chinese hacks

• Feds probe massive alleged classified US govt data theft and leak

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Russian ship with nuclear material for the US held in Germany

• Biden administration cancels purchase for Strategic Petroleum Reserve, citing high prices.

• Blinken Bombshell: "Ukraine Will Become A Member Of NATO" | ZeroHedge

  Secretary of State Antony Blinken just dropped an ultra-provocative bombshell statement which is sure rile Moscow further. He told reporters Thursday in Brussels, where foreign ministers are meeting to prepare for the alliance's annual meeting in July: "Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership."

World

• Botswana threatens to send 20000 elephants to Germany

  Germans should "live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to", Mr Masisi told German newspaper Bild. "This is no joke." Botswana is home to about a third of the world's elephant population - over 130,000 - more than it has space for. Herds were causing damage to property, eating crops and trampling residents, Mr Masisi said. Botswana has previously given 8,000 elephants to neighbouring Angola, and has offered hundreds more to Mozambique, as a means of bringing the population down. "We would like to offer such a gift to Germany," Mr Masisi said, adding that he would not take no for an answer.

  • Botswana threatens to send 20k elephants to Germany in trophy hunting dispute

• Tories planned to make millions from members' data with 'True Blue' app

• Vigilante Hacker Took Down North Korea's Internet. Now He's Taking Off His Mask

• Taiwan emerges remarkably unscathed after earthquake

• Mini-nukes to be built in Hartlepool under multimillion-pound proposal

Israel

• "We Were Targeted Deliberately," IDF Attack That Killed Seven Gaza Aid Workers

• Chinese weapons found in Gaza, report claims

• Tide turns sharply against Israel's war in Gaza

• Biden's challenge: How to rein in Netanyahu

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• US sanctions hamper Russian efforts to repair refineries

• Ukraine gives award to foreign vigilantes for hacks on Russia

• Russian military 'almost completely reconstituted,' US official says

China

• Alibaba to test rocket parcel delivery service to ship goods anywhere in an hour

Health / Medicine

• Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression

  • HN comments

• The sudden rise of AuDHD: what is behind the rocketing rates of this life-changing diagnosis? | Health & wellbeing | The Guardian

  Dr Sadiq has qualified as a consultant psychiatrist, been diagnosed with both autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), specialised in autism and ADHD psychiatry and met hundreds of patients with struggles similar to his. He is now trying to spread what was once an unbelievable message: that both autism and ADHD can coexist in the same person simultaneously.

• Otsuka's digital treatment for depression cleared by FDA

• Why loneliness is bad for your health

• Flotation therapy may help your mental health

• Recipient of first pig kidney transplant discharged from Boston hospital

• HHS warns schools against performing sensitive exams without patient's consent - UPI.com

  Becerra said HHS was aware of media reports and medical journal articles that have described such incidents where procedures were performed by the patients under anesthesia, including pelvic, breast, prostate and rectal exams. "Informed consent includes the right to refuse consent for sensitive examinations conducted for teaching purposes and the right to refuse to consent to any previously unagreed examinations to treatment while under anesthesia," he said in his letter,

• Stool transplant shows promise for Parkinson's disease

• Let People Sell Their Kidneys. It Will Save Lives

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• US court blocks EPA order to eliminate PFAS in plastic containers

• The right weapon: Why the movement for climate action should reject violence

• New U.S. agroforestry project will pay farmers to expand 'climate-smart' acres

• Beavers can help stop wildfires; more places in California are embracing them

• Early look at hurricane season calling for more storms than it's ever predicted

  • Forecasters predict an extremely active 2024 Atlantic hurricane season