2024-05-27
etc
Horseshit
-
Cattle-Aided Mental Health Therapy Shows Promise in New Study
women were more receptive to bovine-assisted therapy than men were. The researchers arranged for a group of 11 volunteers to spend 45 minutes each with one of two steers with varying degrees of gregariousness; the study was conducted at a micro-farm called Surrey Hills Sanctuary in New York State. Volunteers ranged in age from 13 to 79. After the sessions, they filled out a survey and discussed their experience. in an unexpected outcome, the researchers found the “steers showed a strong preference for interactions with women when compared to men and, in turn, the women reported stronger attachment behaviors toward the steers.
Electric / Self Driving cars
Musk
-
These Lawyers Found One Another on Twitter. Now They’re Suing Elon Musk. - The New York Times
Now, from his suburban family room on Long Island, Mr. Cohen, 45, is leading this small team of Twitter adepts against an almost comically outsized adversary in a $500 million lawsuit against Elon Musk.
For the lawyers, the case against Mr. Musk closes a period in their collective lives. After meeting one another on Twitter, they have now scattered to other social media platforms, including BlueSky. Legal Twitter, through which they found one another, is no longer the place to be. “It’s not what it was two or three years ago,” Mr. Lat said. Mr. Cohen softened his tone to note the irony. “Twitter was what made it possible for us to get together,” he said. “And now we’re suing it.” He blames Mr. Musk for what he considers the deterioration of a platform that had once allowed his group of square pegs to find one another and to thrive. “In a very large sense, he broke our home,” Mr. Cohen said.
-
Tesla reputation ranking in Axios Harris Poll 100
Tesla Motors' brand reputation continued to slip over the last year as the antics of polarizing CEO Elon Musk and other issues tarnished its once-impeccable image, according to new Axios Harris Poll 100 survey results. Tesla soared to 8th place in 2021's ranking of America's 100 most visible companies by their perceived image, but has since plummeted to 63rd — suggesting Musk and his company flew too high and too fast, like Icarus of Greek myth.
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
-
Trump draws mixed reactions as he urges Libertarians ‘combine with us’
-
Trump's Second Term Plans: Wildest Proposals if He Wins 2024 Election
Donald Trump reportedly did not expect to win the presidency in 2016, which isn’t surprising considering how ill-prepared he and his team were to take control of the country. He appointed established conservatives to key positions before learning some had personal principles that extended beyond indulging the president’s ego. Trump wreaked havoc on the United States for four years, but the damage might have been even greater if he wasn’t battling career public servants who tried to check his impulses, or if he wasn’t such a political neophyte.
-
WaPo Passed on the Highly Controversial Alito Flag Incident at the Time – Twitchy
The New York Times broke the news last week that the American flag was flown upside-down at one of Justice Samuel Alito's properties back in 2021. They then filled us in that this was echoed by some of the "insurrectionists" at the Capitol on January 6. The story has been big news this week. The Democrats have even called for a meeting with Alito over the shocking revelation. The Washington Post reports that neighbors tipped them off to the upside-down flag at the time, but WaPo passed on the story.
-
Trump pledges to commute sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht if elected
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
-
Cloudflare took down our website after trying to force us to pay 120k$ within 24h
We've been on the Cloudflare Business plan ($250/month) for years. They suddenly contacted us and asked us to either pay them $120k up front for one year of Enterprise within 24 hours or they would take down all of our domains. I'm a SysOps engineer at a fairly large online casino. We have around 4 million monthly active users.
-
Microsoft is killing off an iconic programming tool – farewell to VBScript
-
‘Mad Max with a Girl’ Faces Worst Memorial Day Weekend Debut in 41 Years
Anyway, the sycophants at Deadline are in a tough spot with Furiosa. The prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road earned great reviews, opened on the perfect weekend for a blockbuster, and with no competition in its action lane. What’s more, it’s based on a successful franchise and Warner’s promoted the living hell out of it. So how does Deadline explain away this breathtaking failure? How does Deadline write around the truth of how stupid it is to make a girl the star of a movie called Mad Max? In the Sycophancy Hall of Fame, this delicious piece of credibility-selling will earn a wing all its own:
Despite more movies in the marketplace, we’re still feeling the aftermath of the strikes. How is that? Many aren’t in the habit of moviegoing yet[.]
-
Young women fall out of love with dating apps
Dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble are exploring extra features and new branding to attract more Generation Z women in response to warnings that female users are suffering “burnout” on matchmaking platforms. Match Group, which has more than 40 dating brands including Tinder and Hinge, and Bumble, which also owns Badoo and Fruitz, have both said they plan to boost content moderation and introduce other tools to improve women’s experiences.
TechSuck / Geek Bait
- Burn the Pi first, give it a clean death: Oracle Linux for Raspberry Pi
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
-
CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Incorrect Info
-
Mike Davies, Intel Labs: 'We're reaching the boundaries of basic computing'
-
AI firms mustn't govern themselves, say ex-members of OpenAI's board
-
Peter Thiel says AI will be 'worse' for math nerds than for writers
-
Ex OpenAI board members write an opinion piece on governance
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
-
The Sea Change on Crypto-Regulation
crypto is becoming normalized. Ironically, the prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried, Changpeng Zhao and manipulators like Avraham Eisenberg may have convinced some U.S. regulators that crypto doesn’t have to be destroyed, it can be tamed.
Economicon / Business / Finance
-
Some Americans live in a parallel economy where everything is terrible
tatistical anomalies probably explain part of the reason why polls show people to be remarkably dour about an economy doing pretty well, but it would be a mistake to think this is just a measurement problem. Or worse, to think many people are just too dumb to know how good they have it. This is perhaps Biden's top problem as he seeks a second term in office: convincing Americans that the economy is working for them without talking down or sounding dismissive.
-
How Americans view the economy depends on whether they rent or own
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
-
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine calls special session over Biden's ballot access
The late date of this year's Democratic convention, at which Democrats are set to certify Biden as their nominee, comes after Ohio's statutory deadline to certify presidential candidates for its November ballot. In the past, such issues have been handled with quick legislative fixes, but a number of Republican legislators have balked this year.
- So state law is supposed to bend because the Democrat Party can't meet the schedule?
-
California Senate Passes Bill Requiring Passive Speed Limiters
-
U.S. Supreme Court Deals Blow to Private Property Rights - FindLaw
he U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that was a blow to private property rights. The ruling reinforces the power of cops to seize property — not just the property of criminal suspects but of people not suspected of committing a crime. The state government of Alabama seized the cars of two women in connection with crimes that the women weren’t involved in or charged with. The cars were held for more than a year due to the slow court process of getting them back. But when the two sued Alabama, saying that its civil forfeiture process deprived them of their property in a way that violated the Constitution, SCOTUS sided against the women.
-
Secretary Bootyjuice speaks! Climate change is behind increasing flight turbulence: Transportation Secretary
“The reality is, the effects of climate change are already upon us in terms of our transportation,” Buttigieg said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, forecasting that turbulence is something that will continue to “affect American travelers, whether here or abroad.” “We’ve seen that in the form of everything from heat waves that shouldn’t statistically even be possible threatening to melt the cables of transit systems in the Pacific Northwest, to, as you mentioned, hurricane seasons becoming more and more extreme and indications that turbulence is up by about 15%,” he continued. “That means assessing anything and everything that we can do about it.”
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
-
Perez insisted he didn’t remember killing anyone, but detectives allegedly told him that the human mind often tries to suppress troubling memories. At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator. How can you sit there, how can you sit there and say you don’t know what happened, and your dog is sitting there looking at you, knowing that you killed your dad?” a detective said. “Look at your dog. She knows, because she was walking through all the blood.”
Perez’s father wasn’t dead — or even missing. Thomas Sr. was at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for a flight to see his daughter in Northern California. But police didn’t immediately tell Perez.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
-
How Should We Honor the Dead of Our Failed Wars? - The New York Times
This Memorial Day, as I get ready to take my sons to march in our local Memorial Day parade, our country is in the midst of the most divisive antiwar protests since the early days of the Iraq war, protests my friends characterize as either “objectively pro-Hamas” or as “opposing undeniable genocide.” Questions long dormant, about how we use our might and whom we help kill, feel like live political questions once again (even if we’re not talking much about actual American military deployments, or the troops who have most recently died at the hands of Iranian proxies). The debate is raw and angry.
Good. What a good, uncomfortable, painful national mood for remembering the dead. This year, when I remember them, I will not just remember who they were, the shreds of memory dredged up from past decades. I will remember why they died. All the reasons they died. Because they believed in America. Because America forgot about them. Because they were trying to force-feed a different way of life to people from a different country and culture. Because they wanted to look after their Marines. Because the mission was always hopeless. Because America could be a force for good in the world. Because Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden didn’t have much of a plan. Because it’s a dangerous world, and somebody’s got to do the killing. Because of college money. Because the Marine Corps is cool as hell. Because they saw “Full Metal Jacket” and wanted to be Joker. Or Animal Mother. Because the war might offer a new hope for Iraq, for Afghanistan. Because we earned others’ hatred, with our cruelty and indifference and carelessness and hubris. Because America was still worth dying for.
- It doesn't matter what war they served in, we honor the service, not the ways in which that service was (mis)used by the politicians of the day.
-
Mysterious shooting outside Army Special Forces residence in North Carolina raises questions.
Two Chechen men who spoke broken English were found near the soldier's home. The family alleges the suspected intruder, 35-year-old Ramzan Daraev of Chicago was taking photos of their children. When confronted near a power line in a wooded part of the property, an altercation ensued and Daraev was shot several times at close range. A second man, Dzhankutov Adsalan, was in a vehicle some distance from the incident and was questioned by authorities and then released. The Moore County Sheriff's office is leading the investigation. The FBI told Fox News, "Our law enforcement partners at the Moore County Sheriff's Office contacted the FBI after a shooting death in Carthage. A special agent met with investigators and provided a linguist to assist with a language barrier for interviews."
World
-
Britain's historic buildings are being sold off to the highest bidder
-
UK law will let regulators fine Big Tech without court approval
-
English councils: Airbnb and Booking.com allowing illegal social housing sublets
-
Vancouver council to consider supporting 'pod hotels' in vacant office space
-
incident was 2022: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like when it came up from the depths
Israel
-
Biden's $320M Gaza Pier Has Detached & Drifted Onto Israeli Beach | ZeroHedge
The recovery operation has not gone well either, as "Another ship was then sent to try and extract the stuck vessel, but also got beached," Fabian writes. And yet a second US Army vessel also got stuck in shallow waters while trying to rescue the pier section. Overnight US ships had been moving two pieces of the floating pier to the Port of Ashdod in southern Israel when the now beached section detached and drifted away. American troops can be seen in footage standing helplessly on the beach.