2024-04-12

Worthy

• The DDoS Attack Of Academic Bullshit - Ben Landau-Taylor

  this might be hard to believe if you haven’t read much academic work from before 1990 or so, but it wasn’t always this way. Sure, it was never perfect, and you always have to read everything with skepticism. But the average quality was much better. Other people have written more deeply than I ever will about the forces that make today’s academic work so shoddy, about p-hacking and publish-or-perish and ideological fads and all that. What I know for sure is that when I read academic work published in 2014, I’m pretty likely roll my eyes and mutter about how no serious person would even bother with this crap and set it aside, whereas when I read something from 1964 then it’s much more likely to be, at the very least, a good-faith effort by a reasonably bright person saying something they care about.

  The dilution of the top experts doesn’t only mean that it’s harder for you and me and the New York Times to tell the first-rate researchers apart from the sea of mediocrities. It’s also harder for those on the cutting edge to find each other. The real ones can tell, when they look deeply at each other’s work, but that takes a ton of time and effort, so it’s not always practical. When an important new theory is published, instead of being circulated and torn apart by the two dozen people whose opinions matter, it’s sent off to some nameless apparatchik for the hollow bureaucratic ritual of peer review, so that the reviewer can demand bogus citations for himself and his friends. Every field has some real scientists doing excellent work. But twenty-nine thirtieths of their peers are cargo cultists, outright fraudsters, or at best just aren’t all that great at their jobs. Much has been made of “impostor syndrome” in academic research. The fundamental cause is that there aren’t enough non-impostors to fill all the positions.

etc

• Myrtle the 500-pound turtle passes another physical at age 95

• Paralympians urge Nike to allow single shoe sales

• One man’s artistic wonderland, created secretly in rented apartment, given protected status | CNN

  Shortly after Ron Gittins died in September 2019 at age 79, his family visited the apartment where he had lived since the mid-1980s in Birkenhead, just outside of Liverpool in northwest England. What they found inside left them totally awestruck. Gittins had decorated almost every available surface in his home and painted numerous murals depicting historical scenes. Among the artworks were paintings set in Ancient Egypt and Georgian England, as well as fireplaces in the shape of a roaring lion’s head and a giant minotaur head, and there was even a Roman bread oven.

  Together they established the Wirral Arts and Culture Community Land Trust (WACCLT), which launched a crowdfunding campaign through the website Ron’s Place, applied for listed status and eventually bought the building last year. Now, the property has been granted “Grade II” listing by Britain’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the advice of national heritage body Historic England. Ron’s Place is the first example of Outsider Art to be given protected status in England, according to Historic England.

• 3 Men Rescued from Pacific Island After Writing 'Help' with Palm Leaves

• Why School Buses Haven't Changed Much Since 1939

• Predicting solar eclipses with Python · Erik Bernhardsson

Horseshit

• Astrology influencer murdered partner and threw kids from car over solar eclipse

• Apple drops term 'state-sponsored' attacks from its threat notification policy

• America is full of abandoned malls. What if we turned them into housing?

• Woman found dead in church was searching for ghosts in Tik Tok stunt, police say

• How does the solar eclipse affect animals? Veterinarians share insights

• Couple shocked after tow truck tries to nab their moving car in SF

  An East Bay couple is detailing the terrifying turn of events when a tow truck tried to tow them while driving through downtown San Francisco. You can see in the video taken by a witness, the tow truck makes several attempts to hook onto their 2017 Toyota Corolla. Fortunately, the black car backs up, and Joanne's husband is able to drive away. You can see the tow truck giving a chase. Joanne says the truck chased them for several blocks.

• Most doxxing campaigns only last a few days. But effects can be felt for months

• Do Americans Really Have More Free Time Than They Used To? - The Atlantic

  something strange happens when we shift our attention from individual workers to households. In the 1880s, when men worked long days and women were mostly cut off from the workforce, the typical American married couple averaged just over 68 hours of weekly paid labor. In 1965, as men’s workdays contracted and women poured into the workforce, the typical American married couple averaged 67 hours of weekly paid labor—just one hour less. In the early 2000s, the typical American married couple averaged, you guessed it, almost exactly 67 hours of weekly paid labor. In 2020? Still 67 hours.

• Sotheby's next hot auction: a Picasso-backed bond

• How Did American Capitalism Mutate into American Corporatism?

Boeing

• Boeing Finds Executives Got an Extra $500k in Perks by Flying on Private Jets

  • Boeing discloses it underreported $546,000 worth of executive private jet trips

Electric / Self Driving cars

• EVs are saving Americans billions, even for people who don't drive them

• EV prices drop up to 20% as new and used inventory surges.

Obit

• O.J. Simpson dies of cancer at age 76, his family says

  • O.J. Simpson, Athlete Whose Trial Riveted the Nation, Dies at 76

  • O.J. Simpson Excited For God To Tell Him Who Real Killer Was

  • OJ Simpson, ex-NFL star who was acquitted of murder, dies aged 76

  • OJ Simpson, NFL star acquitted in 'trial of the century', dies aged 76

  • O.J. Simpson, fallen football hero and S.F. native, dies at 76

• NYC startup founder Sophia D'Antoine dies after being struck crossing street

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Brazil's Twitter Files: Independent Revelations on Online Censorship

• Jim Jordan Investigating Renewed DOJ, FBI Contacts With Big Tech, Amid Concerns Of Censorship Pressure | ZeroHedge

• (Sep 2023) British gov funded a plan for international censorship of critiques of NATO

Musk

• Elon Musk's X botched an attempt to replace "twitter.com" links with "x.com"

• Internal pre-Starlink SpaceX financials show big spending on moonshot bets

• X's Premium users can no longer hide their blue checks

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Marie Harf accuses Trump of antisemitism in heated Fox News interview.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The slavery heirs who went on an apology tour

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Lisa Cook's new plagiarism scandal was entirely predictable

• Caltech Restores Standardized Test Requirement for Undergraduate Admission

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Hollywood's Slo-Mo Self-Sabotage

• Instagram to automatically detect and blur nude images sent via DMs

• Fairphone Fairbuds review: ethically made earbuds with replaceable batteries

• The dumbphone boom is real

• AT&T: Data breach affects 73M or 51M customers. No, we won't explain

• How the O.J. Simpson murder trial 20 years ago changed the media landscape

• MS is trying to convince Windows 10 users to upgrade with full-screen prompts

• Online Games Act Like Unregulated Banks, and the US Gov't Has Noticed

• Scrabble makes historic change to game with less competitive, inclusive version

  For the first time in 75 years, Mattel is making a major change to the iconic board game Scrabble — and touting a “No More Scoring” gameplay option. The new launch is a double-sided version of the famous board game — one side with the original game for those who want to stick to the long-time traditional version, and one side with a “less competitive” version to appeal to Gen Z gamers. The flip side of the classic game, called Scrabble Together, will include helper cards, use a simpler scoring system, be quicker to play and allow people to play in teams.

• Amazon virtually kills efforts to develop Alexa Skills, disappointing dozens

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Clocks and SSL certs interact: Going in circles without a real-time clock

  • HN comments

• I Am No Longer Attending Vintage Computer Festivals

  To make this donation, I paid for the containers, filled them, put many issues in bags, and then rented a truck to drive them the roughly 70 miles to the VCF headquarters in Wall, NJ. There I dropped them off and went home. This was roughly 2017. A number of years later, I contacted the Vintage Computer Federation to ask how the magazines were doing, if they were part of a project, or if I needed to transfer them elsewhere.

  I was told they tossed them out. Every one. However, I was told, they had decided to keep the plastic boxes, and were making use of them. As a result, I’ll state clearly: I have no intention of attending the Vintage Computer Festival or doing any sort of interaction with the VCF team again.

• inMOS and the Transputer - by Bradford Morgan White

• Hackable Intel and Lenovo hardware went undetected for 5 years

• A simple algorithm to compute the square root of an integer, byte by byte – Daniel Lemire's blog

  Obviously, one can design a faster algorithm, but this one has the advantage of being nearly trivial.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Microsoft pitched OpenAI's DALL-E as battlefield tool for U.S. Military

• A.I. Is Spying on the Food We Throw Away

• Refuting Bloomberg's analysis: ChatGPT isn't racist, but it is bad at recruiting

• Adobe Is Buying Videos for $3 per Minute to Build AI Model

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA 'shocked' by how close Russian spacecraft came to hitting satellite

• Russia launches first Angara-A5 space rocket from Far East cosmodrome

• FAA: no current plans to tax commercial space launches.

Crypto con games

• Former Ethereum Adviser Intends to Sue U.S. Government for $9.6B

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US Producer Prices Rise 2.1% from Year Ago, Most in 11 Months

• Goldman Says It's Time to Take Tech Profits and Invest Elsewhere

• "Literally Gas Lighting": The Hilarious Reason For Today's PPI Miss: Seasonally Adjusted Gas Prices | ZeroHedge

  what we didn't anticipate is the amount of BS Biden's henchmen are willing to shove down our throats. And indeed, to understand how gasoline could possibly drop by 3.6% in a month where it rose over 6% we have to look at the category description, where we find the little trick beloved by propaganda ministries everywhere: "seasonally adjusted." That's right, as shown in the chart below, according to the BLS, the seasonally-adjusted gas price in March magically dropped by 3.6% even though the unadjusted, as in real, gas price rose by 6.3%, exactly what the AAA also reported in its daily summary of what gas prices across the US truly are.

• Amazon CEO spurns regulators after failed iRobot deal: 'It's a sad story'

• The Costs of Homeownership Are Skyrocketing

• ‘Serious possibility’ that Fed’s next rate move is a hike, warns Larry Summers.

• The Fed may have no choice but to tip the US into recession, economist says

• Spirit Airlines to furlough 260 pilots, defer Airbus plane deliveries

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• USPS Proposes Raising Prices of Stamps to 73 Cents.

• Why might conservatives have beef with lab-grown meat?

• Activism is not a Social Club - by Jeremiah Johnson

  There’s a surprising amount of resistance to the obvious, clear logic that Sotomayor should retire and allow a younger liberal justice to take her place. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s failure to retire in a timely way cost Democrats her seat for at least a generation. If Sotomayor has an untimely death, Democrats could realistically be facing 30-40 straight years of conservative control of the Supreme Court. But you still see arguments like this one all over the place saying “Calls for Sonia Sotomayor to retire are ‘ableism, pure and simple’”.

  Activism is not a social club where the most important thing is to be morally righteous. Activism is not about looking cool to other activists. Activism is not dunking on people on social media. It is not when you ratio someone. Activism is not a participation trophy. You know what mostly doesn’t matter? Having a Latina woman on the Supreme Court. You know what does matter? Improving the lives of millions of real Latina women all over America. Any real activist would trade the former for the latter in a heartbeat. Activism is about standing up for real, everyday people, not standing up for Sonia Sotomayor’s specific right to keep her job.

  Activism is about winning. It is about power. It is about changing the world. If what you’re doing doesn’t lead to concrete change, if it doesn’t WIN, if it isn’t about seizing real power and using it in the messy real world, it’s not activism. It’s political masturbation. It makes you feel good but accomplishes nothing, and it probably makes a mess in the process.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Justice Dept. finalizes rules to close 'gun show loophole'

• She's reported over 100 short-term rentals. Others want to do the same

• (May 2023) Fraudsters feel the fear: why prison sentences may deter white collar crime

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US Navy warship commander mocked for holding rifle with scope mounted backward.

  • Includes comparison pic of well configured rifle: "We're Going To Lose A Major War": US Navy Deletes Photo Of Ship Commander Shooting Rifle With Backwards Scope  | ZeroHedge

• US says Russian hackers stole government emails during Microsoft cyberattack

World

• British farmers want basic income to cope with post-Brexit struggles

• Vietnam tycoon sentenced to death in $12B fraud case

  • Vietnam sentences real estate tycoon Truong My LAN to death for largest fraud

  • Truong My Lan: Vietnamese billionaire sentenced to death for $44B fraud

• Is Europe's energy crisis over? Falling gas prices conceal wider problems

• Courtier demanded assurance king could not be prosecuted under new Welsh law

• Mexico asks UN to expel Ecuador after raid on its embassy

  Mexican officials said on Thursday that they had filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice, the UN’s top court, asking the organisation to suspend Ecuador pending a public apology for the raid last Friday on the Mexican embassy, in which officials captured Ecuador’s former vice-president, Jorge Glas. "The court, in accordance with the United Nations charter, should approve the expulsion, and there should be no veto [from the UN Security Council],” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at a press conference.

Israel

• Famine Has Begun in Northern Gaza, U.S. Official Says

• Hamas May Not Have Enough Living Hostages for Cease-Fire Deal

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia's army is now 15% bigger than when it invaded Ukraine, says US general

China

• America's Competition with China Must Be Won, Not Managed

• Kyle Bass Says Email Hacking By China Follows Exposé On Secret ChiCom Hypersonic Space Station Base In Argentina | ZeroHedge

  Dallas-based hedge fund manager Kyle Bass claims the Chinese government hacked his email account after he quoted an article on X about a 'secret' space station base in the Patagonia region of Argentina that the Chinese military use "to steer their hypersonic weapons over the pole." "The Chinese need this 'secret' space station in Argentina to steer their hypersonic weapons once over the pole. Milei should take it down (or somebody else will)," Bass wrote on X.

Health / Medicine

• Many Patients Don't Survive End-Stage Poverty (Archive)

• Deaths of despair skyrocket among Black and Native Americans.

• Ozempic Babies: Weight Loss Drugs May Be Causing Unplanned Pregnancies

• With rising measles cases, CDC warns the virus could be here to stay

• Discovery of mechanism behind asthma may help find an effective treatment for it

• Global Stockpile of Cholera Vaccine Is Gone as Outbreaks Spread

• Texas Surgeon Is Accused of Denying Liver Transplants

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Cloud engineering could be more effective 'painkiller' for global warming

• Activists Want Energy Companies To Pay Climate Damages. That Could Imperil US National Security, Former Joint Chiefs Say.

• Beyond 18-wheelers: How the EPA wants to clean up trucking around the US.

• Coal power capacity rises despite climate warnings

• Maine Is a Warning for America's PFAS Future