2024-04-09

etc

• How to see the eclipse: Why your path of totality maps might be slightly off | CNN

  New map calculations have raised some concerns that the path of totality — where it’s possible to see the moon completely block out the sun — is slightly narrower than NASA calculated. That means some cities on the edge of the route that were expecting to experience a second or two of total darkness might be left out. NASA has not changed its predictions, but the space agency advises that there is some uncertainty involved in mapping the eclipse’s path.

  • Totality Is Worth It

  • The total eclipse shows us how important solar energy is to the US

  • GOES View of Eclipse Shadow

  • 'My eyes hurt' searches spike on Google following solar eclipse

  • No solar glasses? How to tell if you damaged your eyes during the eclipse

  • comment:

    ECLIPSE RAIN DATE: In the event of inclement weather, the eclipse will be rescheduled for Monday Sept. 14, 2099

Horseshit

• Some pet owners are advocating against rabies vaccines

• Obsolete satellite antennas in Swiss Alps are being repurposed with solar panels

• In defence of wasps: a misunderstood insect with human-like qualities

• A frozen lake and several Lamborghinis provide lessons on traction control

• 'Time is running out': can a future of undetectable deepfakes be avoided?

• Turchin's Terrifying Predictions

  Turchin’s point is that, for a rapidly increasing graduate population there is a precarious future and lots of debt. This may be exacerbated by AI, as it eats into cognitive work, so has that group as its sweet spot. This frustrated aspirant class, for Turchin, is dangerous. Always isolated from working class people, they have little in common with the non-graduate class or ideas like collective bargaining and trade unions. They have the time and support from their propertied parents to become activists and protestors and often pick up causes on campus around cancel culture, climate change, transgender issues and social justice. Poverty is not the problem, recognition of identity is.

  It was engineered by that same graduate class from their graduate business schools and MBAs. The professional classes, in positions of power across the entire system in politics, private schools, higher education, media and the arts redesigned the system around themselves and took it all. And that, my friends, is how we got Trump… and Brexit… and Milei… and Meloni… and Wilders… and a swing to the far right across the whole of Europe from Spain to Sweden and Finland.

• Rust to riches? Ohio city's fortunes set to rise with flying taxi startup

• Prototype could pave the way for constant energy all the time – from space

• Proposal to require San Francisco grocery stores to give 6 month closing notice

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Think Tesla is in trouble? Pity even more its wannabe EV rivals

celebrity gossip

• Whoops: Data Broker Data Reveals Rich Visitors to Jeffrey Epstein's Island

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Russian trolls target U.S. support for Ukraine, Kremlin documents show

Musk

• Twitter/X to defy Brazilian court's order, and lift all restrictions

  • "We kept getting demands to suspend members of parliament and journalists"

  • Endless Censorship Demands from Brazil

    • HN comments

• Musk Hypes Robotaxi in Effort to Rescue Tesla's Tumbling Shares

• Elon Musk just gave another Mars speech–this time the vision seems tangible

• Tesla's Cybertrucks were 'rushed out,' are malfunctioning at astounding rate

• Elon Musk Didn't Want His Latest Deposition Released. Here It Is

• Tesla settles with family who said Autopilot caused his fatal crash

  • Tesla settles fatal autopilot crash lawsuit

• X's AI chatbot Grok made up a fake trending headline about Iran attacking Israel

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Truth Social lost $58M last year, but Trump's stake is worth billions

• Letitia James to Begin Claiming Donald Trump's Properties

  An insurance company will not be permitted to post a $175 million bond for Donald Trump while he appeals a fraud judgment, a former federal prosecutor has said. Eric Lisann was reacting to a separate comment by another lawyer, Dave Kingman, who wrote that Knight Specialty Insurance will not be able to post the bond for Trump. Kingman wrote that, as a result, New York Attorney General Letitia James will be able to begin enforcement proceedings on Donald Trump's properties.

• Men punching random women in NYC: A desperate last gasp of the male rage fueling MAGA | Salon.com

  Whatever the excuse the angry man concocts, the impetus is always the same: The eyes of a woman are directed at someone or something that is not him, and he is indignant over it. So he will make sure she has no choice but to look at him, either by getting in her face or — in these alarming New York cases — punching her. If he cannot capture her adoring gaze, well, he will make her stare at him in fear.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Long Covid blood clues could prompt future trials

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• New NBER Study Finds Covid Eviction Moratoria Increased Racial Discrimination: Moratoria caused landlords to be less willing to rent to black tenants.

• Antifa Battered In Coolock, Their Phones Seized By Nationalists Apparently Revealing Seedy Links Between Media, NGOs, and Far Left.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• For Linguistics Influencer Adam V. Aleksic ’23, Language is Political | Magazine | The Harvard Crimson

  When I ask him how much he makes off his influencer gig, Aleksic hedges, calling his earnings “a decent starting salary for a Harvard graduate.” For reference, almost 70 percent of Harvard graduates in the class of 2023 make more than $70,000 in their first year out of college. Aleksic says he’s currently most interested in studying how social media is shaping our use of language. “There’s a lot of subtle ways that the algorithm is driving our language,” he says. “I feel that every day as a creator, my word choice is being affected and how I choose to self-censor some things.” Aleksic cites how political content, or even content that uses words or phrases the algorithm may flag as political, can be removed from certain platforms without warning. “You can’t really separate language and politics, I think,” he says.

• Ivy League College Costs Soar to More Than $90k a Year

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Spotify has demonetised all tracks that have been played less than 1000 times.

• It's getting hard to use and recommend Firefox, I'm afraid for the free web

• Forget a Ban – Why Are Journalists Using TikTok in the First Place?

• After pushing cloud storage,TV provider to auto-delete 61-day-old DVR recordings

• Twilight of the Domain Name - The Atlantic

  Today, value lies in the ability to link, not the name of the place linked. QR codes allow people to access a catalog, a menu, or an ordering form by pointing a camera at a sign rather than typing an address. Instagram users, free to put links on their profile pages but unable to place them in the captions of their images, began using and referencing “Link in bio” services. Often, links in bios point to other services, such as Linktree, which branch out to more profiles elsewhere—YouTube, TikTok, and so on, an endless slink between places that incidentally have names, rather than named places. Domain names were invented because people couldn’t be expected to remember numerical server addresses as the internet grew. Now one doesn’t even have to remember the names.

• Nintendo's online servers for Wii U and 3DS shut down today | Hacker News

• Threads invites developers to sign up for API access, publishes docs

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• How Freedesktop/RedHat harass other projects into submission

• The Xz Issue Isn't About Open Source

  If an authentication process in Windows got slower, we would all shrug and mutter “Microsoft” under our breath. Because, really, what else can we do? We have no agency with Windows. If an authentication process in Linux gets slower, anybody that’s interested — anybody at all — can dive in and ask “why” and trace it down to root causes. Some look at this and say “FLOSS is responsible for this mess.” I look at it and say, “this would be so much worse if it wasn’t FLOSS” — and experience backs me up on this.

• DRAM mfgrs stop publishing contract DRAM prices after quake, price hike expected

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• 'Social Order Could Collapse' in AI Era, Two Top Japan Companies Say

  • 'Social order could collapse': Two of Japan's top firms fear unchecked AI

• AI could be as consequential to the economy as electricity, says Jamie Dimon

• AI Doomerism as Science Fiction

• Tesla's Musk predicts AI will be smarter than the smartest human next year

Crypto con games

• Bored Ape-themed fast food restaurant shuts down

Economicon / Business / Finance

• EU jobs crisis as employers say applicants don't have the right skills

• Retiring in your 60s is becoming an impossible goal. Is 75 the new 65?

• Using your phone to pay is convenient, but it can also mean you spend more

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Committee Chairs Unveil Historic Draft Comprehensive Data Privacy Legislation

• The Unification Church Infiltrated Japan's Govt, Now Sets Sights on the US

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• USPS jumps to first place as most imitated brand in phishing attacks

• California criminal justice battle intensifies with reformers' counteroffensive

• Woman shoots interstate drivers, says God told her to because of the eclipse

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US will not accept Chinese imports decimating new industries, Yellen says

• France has a military drone radar everyone's desperate to get

World

• 'Panama Papers' trial to begin eight years after tax evasion scandal

• President Javier Milei fires 24,000 government workers in Argentina: ‘No one knows who will be next.’

• Canada's Federal Government Not Interested in Investing in LNG

• How the U.K. Will Test Its New Nuclear Warhead Without Setting One Off

• Slovakia Turns Away from Ukraine as Fico Ally Pellegrini Wins Presidency

Israel

• Israel Facilitated the Guatemalan Genocide

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Battling Under a Canopy of Russian and Ukrainian Drones | The New Yorker

• Drone Strikes Hit the Site of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant

China

• ‘3 Body Problem’: What Social Media Reaction Says About China - The New York Times

• Yellen Warns China Against Flood of Cheap Green Energy Exports

Health / Medicine

• Practical Tips for Dodging a Norovirus Outbreak.

• Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead

• How much coffee is OK for me to drink in a day? I asked the experts

• Many cancer drugs remain unproven 5 years after accelerated approval

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The Polar Vortex Has Shifted into Reverse – and Is Now Spinning Backwards

• THE COLUMN: Total Eclipse of the Brain | The Pipeline

  In California last week, we now learn, "scientists" have surreptitiously launched "microscopic salt particles" into the skies above the Bay Area, in an effort to block out the sun. Because legitimate science is always conducted under tight secrecy, to keep it away from the prying eyes of "critics." But who, really, is surprised by this? Post-Christian revolutionary France had its atheistic Cult of Reason; today we have the Cult of Science, as arbitrary as it is bogus.

• Federal dollars meant to fight climate change could end up boosting fossil fuels

• The surprising carbon footprint of an Amtrak trip across America

• Injecting Sulfur Into The Atmosphere Could Pose Dangerous Risks.

• Antarctic meteorites threatened by climate warming

• Clearer skies may be accelerating global warming