2024-05-20
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Horseshit
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Bestowing a name on a car, as on a child, is not to be taken lightly. By naming his newest progeny X Æ A-XII, Elon Musk has condemned the boy to a lifetime of befuddled attempts at pronunciation (“ex ash ay twelve”, for those wondering). Naming the first four models produced by Tesla, his car company, S, 3, X and Y was equally asinine.
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I Might've Been a Rocket Scientist (Like My Dad), but I Was a Girl
Outside of attending that summer engineering program during high school, I don’t remember ever being encouraged to pursue engineering by any adults in my life growing up. It was quite the opposite, actually. I was warned against pursuing a career of any kind following Ezra Taft Benson’s harsh disapproval of women working for pay outside of the home. Every single woman I interacted with in my small Utah town relayed these messages to me until I graduated from high school.
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'Laptop squatters': Cafes in Europe are fed up with space-hogging digital nomads
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The reality of our "influence" on social media
In this post, I look at a specific illustration of this principle: how social media platforms flatter our sense of importance by inflating our feeling of social influence on their platforms.
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The competition to lure affluent travelers with luxurious lounges
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Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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Trump's hush money trial makes big money for professional line-standers
Professional line-standers are a growing part of the gig economy. But the criminal trial of a former president accused of illegally covering up hush money payments to a porn star has translated into a windfall for people who get paid to wait — and who, as the trial goes on, have increasingly been hired by members of the general public with no stake in the trial other than curiosity.
Admission to the court is free, of course, but it is first come, first served, and seating is limited. The first person in line Wednesday morning had paid $1,800 to have someone else hold that spot. A little further back in line, a woman was offering up her spot for $450.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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'Scary': public-school textbooks the latest target as US book bans intensify
The wave of book bans sweeping the US, typically reserved for works of fiction deemed controversial, has hit textbooks used in public schools, marking the next step in Republicans’ war on education. The board of trustees for the Cypress Fairbanks independent school district in Houston voted 6-1 earlier this month to redact certain chapters in science textbooks, including those about vaccines, human growth, diversity, and climate change.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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MSI Claw review: an embarrassment - The Verge
No one should buy an MSI Claw. It’s not technically broken: the first 7-inch Intel Core Ultra handheld gaming PC doesn’t regularly crash or anything like that. But the Claw falls so far short of the competition that it’s effectively dead on arrival. You could get a far better experience while saving hundreds of dollars if you choose a Steam Deck OLED instead.
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Spam, junk slop? The latest wave of AI behind the 'zombie internet'
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Ask HN: Why are people so mean in the open source community? (about xz again) | Hacker News
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Very much "WTF did that get made for?" A Floppy Disk MIDI Boombox: The Yamaha MDP-10
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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First Black astronaut candidate, now 90, reaches space in Blue Origin flight
- The movie "Iron Sky" has a President with campaign posters reading "Black to Space!" ... it was funnier in that context.
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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America's class of 2024 graduates into an uncertain job market
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Zombie 2nd mortgages are coming to life, threatening homeowners
after the housing crash in 2008, like millions of other Americans, McDonough had asked for a modification of the mortgage. Back then, she says, her mortgage company told her a second mortgage she had on the house was forgiven as part of the modification. And she said that seemed to be true — she stopped getting any statements for more than 10 years. More recently, though, she'd been getting phone calls demanding money. She thought it must be some kind of scam. But now these men on her lawn were telling her, "This is a foreclosure. You are going to lose this house," McDonough said.
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Financial institutions have 30 days to disclose breaches under new rules
World
Iran / Houthi
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Iranian President Raisi's Helicopter Goes Down In Remote Area, Rescuers Trying To Reach Site
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Helicopter with Iran president Raisi suffers 'hard landing,' state TV says | AP News
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Helicopter in Iranian president's convoy crashes – state media
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Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's fate unknown after reported helicopter crash
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Iranian President’s Helicopter Suffers ‘Accident’ or ‘Incident’ — Either Way, It Went Down
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Iran helicopter crash latest: President Ebrahim Raisi aircraft in 'hard landing' - BBC News
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Iran Says Helicopter Carrying Its President Is Missing After 'Difficult Landing'
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If Raisi Is Dead: Implications for the Islamic Republic of Iran
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Who is Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi: Key moments of his presidency - The Washington Post
A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi made what state-run media called a “hard landing” in “adverse weather conditions” in the country’s East Azerbaijan province on Sunday. His condition, and that of other Iranian officials on board, is not yet known.
Raisi, 63, is widely seen as a protégé and trusted confidant of Iran’s supreme leader, 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Raisi was elected president in 2021 after a decorated career as an ultraconservative in Iran’s judiciary. He is seen as a potential successor to Khamenei. In three years as president, Raisi has overseen a tightening of so-called morality laws governing women’s dress, a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests, efforts to expand Iran’s regional influence and, this year, the country’s first direct attack on Israel.
Israel
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How to Use Free Satellite Imagery to Monitor Expansion of West Bank Settlements
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The ghouls of Gaza - The New Neo
Shani Louk has been known almost from the start to be dead. Louk became emblematic of the barbaric violence of the Gazans on October 7 towards women. Her half-naked and twisted body was paraded through Gaza as a trophy, a symbol of conquest and domination by Hamas over Israel as well as sexual titillation for the Gazan masses who cheered her death and mutilation. However, until recently, Itzhak Gelerenter and Amit Buskila were thought to have been alive. But apparently that never was the case; they were killed on October 7 in Israel and their bodies brought to Gaza.
What does this tell us of Hamas and the Palestinians? We’ve long known they’re in the grip of a death cult, and this is further evidence of that.
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
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Composition of gut microbiota could influence decision-making
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Link between e-cigarette use and early asthma onset in US adults discovered
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The human brain has been shrinking – and no-one quite knows why
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Carnivore is a fanatical right-wing, male diet, right?
To read the stories on carnivore is to learn that the diet is the domain of toxic right-wing, muscle-obsessed men, aligned with “hustle and gym bro culture.” A typical introduction to meat-eating in these articles might be an image of a cowboy or grill-happy dude in a red state where “[S]erving beef at your cookout is as a patriotic as buying a gun” (New Yorker, 2019). Carnivores who eat mostly meat, we’re told, come “tauntingly close to…toxic, alpha-male culture (Bon Appetit); they’re “stoking a rising wave of toxic masculinity online” (Rolling Stone) and represent a “stomach-churning embrace of [the] hypermasculine” (The New Republic). Veins bulging out of their oversized arms, carnivore men who would have previously been “outcast[s], living on the fringes of society” can now use social media to inflict themselves on our attention, causing us to be “pulveris[z]ed by the worst cunts alive” (Vice).
This florid, dehumanizing language is, shockingly, the norm. Journalists have worked themselves into a frenzy of hyperbolic descriptions, which is alarming given that—can we agree?—discussions on food and health should not, as a starting point, be heavily politicized. People select what they eat often for health reasons, and as we’ll see, the choice of meat is no different.
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Wegovy is becoming too essential for its elite price
The drugs are now testing the rule that no product can be too successful. If they were as cheap and convenient as blood pressure pills and statins, they might soon be routinely prescribed. But they are far from it: Wegovy’s list price in the US is $15,600 per year, although insurers obtain discounts. There is a widening gulf between benefit and affordability.
Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist US senator, this week released a study that claimed these drugs had “the potential to bankrupt Medicare, Medicaid and the entire [US] healthcare system”. He wants Novo Nordisk to reduce the US price of Wegovy to the much lower one in Denmark but, even there, the government only provides limited coverage for severe obesity.
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Toxic "forever chemicals" ubiquitous in Great Lakes basin, study finds
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Scientific Approaches to Animal Consciousness - by mandoos
The discussion about what consciousness is, however, is not yet resolved in the scientific world, since there are no clear standards to determine what type of subjective experiences characterize it. With this letter, scientists are not stating that animals such as reptiles or insects have consciousness, but that there is a “realistic possibility” that they do, so more research should be dedicated to resolving that doubt.
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Rapidly increasing production of SUVs/Trucks threatens global climate targets
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Nitrogen dioxide exposure due to gas and propane combustion by U.S. stoves
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Canada's "Super Pig" Invasion Likely to Spread into Northern U.S.