2024-06-03
Cool
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June 3, six planets form a straight line through the pre-dawn sky
On June 3, six planets form a straight line through the pre-dawn sky that stretches from Jupiter on the eastern end (closest to the horizon) up through Mercury, Uranus, Mars, and Neptune, to Saturn on the western end, highest in the sky before sunrise. Some 20 minutes before sunrise, all six planets should be visible, though note that Uranus (magnitude 5.9) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8) will be too faint for naked-eye observing and, although they’re present in the lineup, will need binoculars or a telescope to spot. But Jupiter (magnitude –2), Mercury (magnitude –1), Mars (magnitude 1), and Saturn (magnitude 1) will all stand out clearly to the naked eye in a line spanning some 73° on the sky.
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A single-location family-owned business that provides a living for a few people? With no plans to load up on debt or other financial engineering? Or for growth into unicorn status? No GenAI dimension? No marketing or public-relations people? In conversation with venture capitalists, you hear the phrase “lifestyle business”, meaning one that is doing nicely and rewarding the people who run it and which isn’t planning for unbounded growth. The words “lifestyle business” are always, of course, uttered in a voice dripping with contempt. Luxcious is a lifestyle business. It seems blindingly obvious that an economy with a higher proportion of lifestyle businesses is going to be more resilient, more humane, and immensely more pleasant than the one that the Leaders Of Industry are trying to build.
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Couple finds safe with estimated $100k in cash while 'magnet fishing'
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Dog breeds must be 'rebooted' to halt health problems, says expert
Horseshit
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Space-Based Solar Power: A Great Idea Whose Time May Never Come
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America's Loneliness Crisis Deepens as Work Friendships Fade in Remote Era
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(Apr 2024) This Woman Will Decide Which Babies Are Born | WIRED
God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have a regular baby or have an Orchid baby. A regular baby might grow up and get cancer. Or be born with a severe intellectual disability. Or go blind. Or become obese. A regular baby might not even make it to childbirth. Any of those things could still happen to an Orchid baby, yes, but the risk, says 29-year-old Noor Siddiqui, plummets if you choose her method. It’s often called “genetic enhancement.”
Electric / Self Driving cars
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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How Advertising Broke the World | WIRED
The internet is a cesspool of misinformation, and the biggest blue-chip brands and their ad agencies are the ones funding it—by stuffing money into a Rube Goldberg machine called programmatic advertising.
Geico is hardly the only rock-solid American brand to be funding the Russians. During the same period that the insurance company’s ads appeared on Sputnik News, 196 other programmatic advertisers bought ads on the website, including Best Buy, E-Trade, and Progressive insurance. Sputnik News’ sister propaganda outlet, RT.com (it was once called Russia Today until someone in Moscow decided to camouflage its parentage), raked in ad revenue from Walmart, Amazon, PayPal, and Kroger, among others.
Musk
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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Trump Was Convicted — But Prosecutors Contorted the Law (Archive)
The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge.
Standing alone, falsification charges would have been mere misdemeanors under New York law, which posed two problems for the DA. First, nobody cares about a misdemeanor, and it would be laughable to bring the first-ever charge against a former president for a trifling offense that falls within the same technical criminal classification as shoplifting a Snapple and a bag of Cheetos from a bodega. Second, the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor — two years — likely has long expired on Trump’s conduct, which dates to 2016 and 2017.
So, to inflate the charges up to the lowest-level felony (Class E, on a scale of Class A through E) — and to electroshock them back to life within the longer felony statute of limitations — the DA alleged that the falsification of business records was committed “with intent to commit another crime.” Here, according to prosecutors, the “another crime” is a New York State election-law violation, which in turn incorporates three separate “unlawful means”: federal campaign crimes, tax crimes, and falsification of still more documents. Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial. (This, folks, is what indictments are for.)
In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else.
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U/backcountrydrifter links between decade of global events to political intrigue
This is why trump is so desperate to get re-elected. His best case scenario is 400 years in ADX Florence. Money laundering for the dozens of Russian oligarchs that lived in trump towers with him and manafort, selling IP3 nuclear plans to the Russian/Saudi alliance, selling or giving CIA asset names to the Russians, trump is and always has been compromised. He just didn’t know when to quit. Now he just has to count on the fact that most of his voter base doesn’t know how to read and keep the ones that do so busy just surviving that they don’t have time to dive deep into his 40 year history of laundering money, fraud, and human trafficking for the Russian mob using casinos first, then commercial real estate.
It’s also why Putin is willing to throw an entire generation of Russians, including the convicts and addicts at Ukraine. Russia is dead for 40 years because he failed to fulfill his mob boss promise to Xi. China is now clearing farmland in Siberia because the typhoon floods last August and September wiped out the Chinese people’s food storage.
Xi, for his part diverted the waters from the dam away from his pet project, his mothers ancestral home, and flooded hundreds of thousands of people and drown one of his own military brigades that was helping with the flooding.
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House Dem wants pardon for Trump for the 'good of the country'
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Yes, You Can Play Duck Hunt Without a Television (but I can't)
- pre computing "duck hunt" game.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
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The Shadow of Tiananmen Falls on Hong Kong | The New Yorker
even as Tiananmen has been scrubbed from public memory, its shadow is more visible than ever in the resurgence of authoritarianism in China and abroad, in step with the nation’s expanding realm of influence. The reach of that philosophy—governance by repression—became manifest on Thursday, when a Hong Kong court, in a landmark trial, convicted fourteen democracy activists on charges of subversion. It’s the largest case yet brought under a national-security law that was imposed by Beijing in 2020; another thirty-one defendants had already pleaded guilty, and two were acquitted for lack of evidence. The trial of the Hong Kong 47, as they’re known, has its roots in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council elections that same year, when prominent activists held an unofficial primary to choose a slate of pro-democracy candidates, and drew an unexpectedly high turnout—some thirteen per cent of the city’s registered voters. The Hong Kong government postponed the election and later staged predawn raids on people involved, including the legal scholar Benny Tai, the former student leader Joshua Wong, and a number of former lawmakers. Most pleaded guilty, in hopes of having their sentences reduced by up to a third; others, who were convicted, face sentences ranging from three years to life in prison, an astonishing potential punishment that Human Rights Watch described as “blatantly erasing the basic human rights guaranteed in Hong Kong laws.”
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China turns to private hackers against online activists on Tiananmen anniversary
Health / Medicine
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Tom Weir at 70: 1984 Interview Highlights How Little Has Changed in Conservation
Tom Weir's insights from the 1980s remain remarkably relevant today. The issues he highlighted, such as environmental conservation and cultural preservation, are still pressing concerns. Today's climate change challenges and the push for sustainable living echo Weir's earlier advocacy. Moreover, the resurgence of interest in outdoor activities and heritage tourism in Scotland can be seen as a continuation of the legacy he helped build.
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Mussels downstream of wastewater treatment plant contain radium, study reports
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Peak Water: Do We Have Enough Groundwater to Meet Future Need?
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The dolphin tale: They're smart, sometimes vicious and highly sexed