2024-05-22

etc

• One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

  One person has been killed and several others injured on a Singapore Airlines flight from London that was hit by severe turbulence. What happened on board the flight is still unclear.

  “Injuries from severe turbulence are relatively rare in the context of millions of flights operated. However, severe turbulence can be dramatic and lead to severe injuries or sadly in this case a fatality," John Strickland, a general aviation expert, told the BBC.

  • One Dead After London-Singapore Flight Hit by Turbulence

  • One person dies after turbulence on London to Singapore flight

  • One dead, 30 injured as Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 encounters turbulence

  • Passenger killed and 30 injured in turbulence on London-Singapore flight

  • One dead and dozens injured after London to Singapore flight hit by turbulence

• Images that Sound: Generating spectrograms that are also images

• Nova explosion visible to the naked eye expected any day now

• Soil-Less Substrates for Greenhouse Strawberry Production

  Soil-less substrates in pots or bags can be replaced year to year, eliminating the need for crop rotation and fumigation.

  most of the structural and irrigation components of these systems can be reused for multiple years (10-15+), reducing the long-term cost and environmental impacts.

• How Long Are Eggs Good For? - The New York Times

  In the shell, they can last three to five weeks from the day they come home, and that may even outlast the date on the carton.

Horseshit

• Self-Silencing Is Making Women Sick | Time

  Why is it that women are falling ill to these diseases at a rate so much higher than men? Such jarring disparities cannot be accounted for by genetic and hormonal factors alone; psychosocial factors play an important role as well. Specifically, it seems that the very virtues our culture rewards in women—agreeability, extreme selflessness, and suppression of anger—may predispose us to chronic illness and disease.

• Del Monte Sells $395 Luxury Pineapple

• The panic over smartphones does not help teens: It may only make things worse

• In which British writers scold America on trade

• States Push Back Against Guaranteed Income with New Bans

• Need a New Cologne or Fragrance? Ask a Teen Boy. - The New York Times

  On a recent trip to Sephora, 11-year-old Lincoln Rivera asked his mom for a $125 atomizer of Yves Saint Laurent eau de parfum. He also covets scents from Jean Paul Gaultier, which he learned about from the animated movie “Megamind,” and Paco Rabanne (some of its cologne bottles are shaped like robots). “I feel fine about how I smell,” said Lincoln, a fifth grader in Westchester County, N.Y., whose olfactory experimentation has so far been limited to deodorant. “But I could smell even better.” Abby Rivera, Lincoln’s mother, first thought the designer scents sounded like overkill for her son to wear to elementary school. She was surprised by his sudden interest until she heard that some of his hockey teammates had also been asking their parents for high-end cologne, too.

  Teen boys’ annual spending on fragrance rose 26 percent in the year ending in March, according to a semiannual survey of youth spending patterns by the investment bank Piper Sandler. Axe, Old Spice and Bath & Body Works fell in its rankings of teens boys’ favorite fragrance brands, while luxury brands including Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier climbed.

• Birds Aren't Real: A Fake Conspiracy Theorist's Second Act

• More than money, open-source pros want these things from their next jobs

• The Sordid History of U.S. Food Safety Highlights the Importance of Regulation

• There's an electric salt spoon that adds umami flavor

  The idea, as Reuters puts it, is that it passes a small electric current to “concentrate sodium ion molecules on the tongue,” enhancing salty flavor. It’s like techno-umami. The company says the goal is to get people to eat healthier by letting them eat low-sodium food without being sad about how unsalty it is.

celebrity gossip

• Elvis Presley’s iconic Graceland to be auctioned amid foreclosure, granddaughter Riley Keough ‘traumatized’.

Obit

• Gordon Bell, an architect of our digital age, dies at age 89

  Bell also invented the first UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter) for serial communication during his time at DEC. He went on to architect several influential DEC systems, including the PDP-4 and PDP-6. In the 1970s, he played a key role in overseeing the aforementioned VAX minicomputer line as the engineering manager, with Bill Strecker serving as the primary architect for the VAX architecture.

  • HN comments

  • C. Gordon Bell, Creator of a Personal Computer Prototype, Dies at 89

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Note to Readers: That Eerie Silence - by Matt Taibbi

  There’s so much material that a quick global summary here would be difficult, but suffice to say that the anti-disinformation/content control world is much bigger than I thought, enjoying cancer-like growth on campuses in particular, in the same way military research became primary sources of grants and took over universities in the fifties and sixties. Some of these FOIA documents are damning, some entertaining, some just interesting, but all of them belong to the public. We’re going to start the process of turning them over, hopefully today.

• World Economic Forum Davos founder Klaus Schwab to step back from executive role

Musk

• Tesla shareholder group opposes Musk's $46B pay, slams board "dysfunction"

• Tesla's oldest factory ignites another headline by catching fire

• Elon Musk encourages consumer adoption of Linux

• 85% of Neuralink implant wires are already detached, says patient

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Trump’s trial is a stupendous legal catastrophe

  The underlying crime is seemingly a minor misdemeanour – falsifying business records – which long ago expired under the statute of limitations. In order to turn it into a felony within the statute of limitations, prosecutors will have to show that Trump falsified the records in order to impact his election, thus constituting a federal election felony. The problem is, however, that federal authorities have not prosecuted Trump for this federal election crime. Moreover, state prosecutors have no jurisdiction over federal election law. Finally, we were not even clear, when the trial began, as to precisely which federal election laws the District Attorney was relying on.

  I have been teaching, practising and writing about criminal law for 60 years. In all those years, I have never seen or heard of a case in which the defendant has been criminally prosecuted for failing to disclose the payment of what prosecutors call “hush money”. Alexander Hamilton paid hush money to cover up an affair with a married woman. Many others have paid hush money since. If the legislature wanted to criminalise such conduct they could easily enact the statute prohibiting the payment of hush money or requiring its disclosure. They have declined to do so.

• 'Vote Trump' spam that hit Bluesky in May came from decentralized rival Nostr

• FBI was authorized to use 'deadly force' in Mar-a-Lago classified docs search

• “Are You Staring Me Down?”: Judge Merchan Becomes an Oddity in his Own Courtroom – JONATHAN TURLEY

• How Michael Cohen’s past lies make him a more credible witness

• DJT: Trump Media stock falls after posting $327.6 million quarterly loss

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• New Research Reveals That Wearing Face Masks Did Not Reduce Risk of COVID Infection After First Omicron Wave.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• How the New York Times Went Woke

• IRS Racial Audit Disparities Need Accountability to Be Resolved

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Anti-Israel Harvard activists won't graduate as suspensions stand

• 40-Year old BASICA utility code for teaching | Hacker News

• College students can't -- or won't -- read, say profs

  “I have a lot of students who think they’ve already mastered the art [of writing], and other students who’ve never been required to really try,” says Gutierrez. He blames minimal writing requirements in high school and "good grades for mediocre work" for the decline in literacy. His students think writing 750 words is too much.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Microsoft's New Recall Feature Sparks Spying Concerns

  • Microsoft Recall does not perform content moderation

  • How the new Microsoft Recall feature fundamentally undermines Windows security

• Microsoft Has Lost Its Mind–$450 for a Keyboard, AI Button Included

• “Dark money” groups help private ISPs lobby against municipal broadband

  • HN comments

• How to use Google Search without AI: the 'udm=14' work around

• Google threatens to pause Google News Initiative funding in U.S.

• Pixar to Cut 14% of Workforce in Shift Away from Streaming Series

• The internet is disappearing, study says

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The AI 'Safety Movement' Is Dead

• Europe sets benchmark for rest of the world with landmark AI laws

• Electricity grids creak as AI demands soar

• The Scarlett Johansson Incident Makes OpenAI Look Desperate

• Sam Altman Is Showing Us Who He Really Is

Crypto con games

• Judge: Craig Wright forged documents on "grand scale" to support Bitcoin lie

  • 'Satoshi' impersonation 'a serious abuse of court's process' judge concludes

• Ontario's 'Crypto King' Arrested

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Want affordable housing? Take the chassis off manufactured houses

• US rules financial firms now have to disclose data breaches within 30 days

• What Entry-Level Jobs Look Like Today

• Teen fintech Copper had to abruptly discontinue its banking, debit products

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Rescheduling Marijuana Proposed Rule by DEA 05/21/24 comment period TIL 07/22/24

• Novartis, United Therapeutics Defeat US on Discount Drug Limits

• Biden Drains Entire Northeast Gasoline Reserve In Bid To Lower Gas Prices As He Trails Trump By Double Digits | ZeroHedge

  • U.S. Department of Energy Announces Sale of Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve as Americans Hit the Road for Summer Driving Season

  Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Petroleum Reserves announced a solicitation for the sale and liquidation of 1 million barrels (42 million gallons) of gasoline in the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve (NGSR). This solicitation is strategically timed and structured to maximize its impact on gasoline prices, helping to lower prices at the pump as Americans hit the road this summer.

  • Biden releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from Northeast reserve in bid to lower prices at pump

• Hemp and Marijuana Go to War

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• The EPA is cracking down on cybersecurity threats

• Hundreds paid to be 'robbed' to gain favorable immigration status, Feds say

• Man arrested for allegedly creating AI-generated child sexual abuse material

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Olympus Has Fallen: America's decline as a superpower

• New 9/11 Evidence Points to Deep Saudi Complicity (Archive)

  That assessment now appears wrong. And if our understanding of what transpired on 9/11 turns out to have been flawed, then the costly policies that the United States has pursued for the past quarter century have been rooted in a false premise. The global War on Terror was based on a mistake.

  Saudi officials—most notably Fahad al-Thumairy, an imam at a Los Angeles mosque and an accredited diplomat at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in that city, and Omar al-Bayoumi, who masqueraded as a graduate student but was identified by the FBI as an intelligence operative—were not rogue operators but rather the front end of a conspiracy that included the Saudi embassy in Washington and senior government officials in Riyadh.

• The U.S. Planned to Resettle Guantánamo Prisoners in Oman

• Biden administration signals it will support push to sanction ICC

• U.S. Military Laser Weapon Programs Are Facing a Reality Check

World

• Apple supplier Foxconn among firms asked to cut power use in Vietnam

• India's Russian oil imports rise to nine-month high in April

• Where democracy is most at risk

• Migration has failed to drive economic growth, warns report

Iran / Houthi

• NATO, UN, and State Department Offer ‘Condolences’ for Death of Iranian President Raisi.

Israel

• "most of the US aid coming into Gaza was stolen by Palestinians

• Israeli soldiers and police tipping off groups that attack Gaza aid trucks

• UN suspends Rafah aid distribution and warns US pier may fail

• Israeli officials seize AP equipment and take down live shot of northern Gaza

  • Israel seizes Associated Press equipment, shuts down Gaza video feed

  • Israel Seizes Camera from A.P., Citing Use of Its Images by Al Jazeera

• Why Realists Oppose the War in Gaza

• I was detained at a US airport and asked about Israel and Gaza for 2 hours. Why?

• The Unpunished: How Extremists Took over Israel

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• The secretive Ukrainian drone unit tasked with dropping mines into Russia

• UN Security Council Rejects Russia-Backed Resolution on Banning Weapons in Space

• 'Our Oppenheimer moment' – In Ukraine, the robot wars have already begun

• Russia begins nuclear weapon drills

• Russia unilaterally redraws maritime borders with Lithuania and Finland

China

• China is trying to end its epic property crisis. The hard work is just beginning

  • China’s property support measures disappoint.

• ASML and TSMC Can Disable Chip Machines If China Invades Taiwan

• China rolls out large language model based on Xi Jinping Thought

• The battlegrounds that could decide a US-China war over Taiwan

Health / Medicine

• Does Legalizing Cannabis Increase Adolescent Use? Expert Found Mixed Results.

• Nestle to launch frozen pizzas, other foods targeting users of weight-loss drugs

  • Nestlé introduced a new frozen food brand aimed at weight-loss drug users

• Research finds daylight saving time spells bad news for healthy habits

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• 3.7x80 mile wobbling 'doomsday' glacier can raise sea levels by 2 feet

• Is Biodegradable Plastic a Thing?

• Bezos Earth fund has pumped billions into climate and nature projects

• Eagles changed migration route to avoid Ukraine war

  • Active European warzone impacts raptor migration

• Record low Antarctic sea ice 'unlikely' without climate change

• Feds: He masterminded a a water heist. Some farmers say he's Robin Hood

• U.S. hasn’t seen an EF5 tornado in 11 years, longest gap in history.

• Heat waves in north Pacific may be due to China reducing aerosols

• Alaska's rusting waters: Pristine rivers and streams turning orange

• It's so hot in Mexico that howler monkeys are falling dead from the trees

• Big US banks dominated fossil fuel financing in 2023, campaign report says