2024-07-02

Worthy

• The (De)Population Bomb - by George MF Washington

  A declining population is catastrophic for the Leftist project. For one thing, it threatens to destroy the welfare state Ponzi scheme, which is dependent on an ever-growing supply of young workers to pay into the system. For another, a declining population reduces the chances that the human race will produce the sort of game-changing scientists and entrepreneurs who will one day develop the ability to solve complex environmental problems without bankrupting all the nations of the Earth and casting billions into poverty and despair. The way I see it, there’s really only one option left if we want to save the planet… Sex!

  What we need is a crash program moonshot effort to get people making babies again. And Hollywood will need to be at the tip of that spear, too. I think it’s time for the sex comedy (“Porky’s”, “Revenge of the Nerds”, “Risky Business, “American Pie”) and the erotic thriller (“Jagged Edge”, “Body Double”, “Fatal Attraction”, “Basic Instinct”) to make a triumphant return to America’s movie theaters.

etc

• Florida man sneezes his intestines out of his body at restaurant

Horseshit

• A look inside New York's historic artist lofts, the last of their kind

• Uncomfortable truth: How close is "positivity culture" to delusion and denial?

• San Francisco couples are using tech tools to optimize marriage

• Diagonalism, the Cosmic Right and the Conspiracy Smoothie – Bella Caledonia

  How do you explain the journey of many people – previously thought to be of the Left – and now turning up in far-right channels and spaces? William Callison and Quinn Slobodian describe the phenomenon as ‘Diagonalism’: “Taking a cue from one of the movements itself—Querdenken in Germany, in particular—we call the strategy behind the diverse movements “diagonal thinking” and the broader phenomenon they represent “diagonalism.”

  At the extreme end, diagonal movements share a conviction that all power is conspiracy. Public power cannot be legitimate, many believe, because the process of choosing governments is itself controlled by the powerful and is de facto illegitimate. This often comes with a dedication to disruptive decentralization, a desire for distributed knowledge and thus distributed power, and a susceptibility to rightwing radicalization.”

• Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

  Astronomers from the University of Glasgow have used statistical modeling techniques developed to analyze gravitational waves to establish the likely number of holes in one of the broken rings of the Antikythera mechanism—an ancient artifact which was showcased in the movie "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny."

• Robot cats, dogs and birds are being deployed amid an 'epidemic of loneliness'

• Grassroots campaigners on a phone-free childhood

• A mysterious bell has been ringing at a NY subway station for weeks

• Even a happy adoption is founded on an unstable sense of self

• Enough with the Fireworks Already

• A Stuff Fetish - by Robin Hanson - Overcoming Bias

  When I studied the sacred a year or so ago, I noticed that while as a social scientist I am okay with finding reasons why humans might have evolved a habit of treating some things as sacred, those most devoted to the sacred instead insist on the reason being that some things (e.g., gods) are actually distinctively sacred, and are thus naturally treated that way. And even though the evolved-habit theory I settled on predicts this very attitude, it doesn’t much persuade such devotees of the sacred. For example, if you are united with associates via seeing that particular tree as the sacred tree, it won’t do to see yourself as it seeing it that way merely as a social strategy to bind your associates together. No, to you it must seem that this particular tree has special sacred features that compel you to see it that way.

• Military horses bolt through London again after three break loose

Electric / Self Driving cars

• EVs are giving new owners more headaches, and Tesla is a big reason why: J.D. Power study.

celebrity gossip

• Warren Buffett pledges $100B for nothing in particular

• Steve Ballmer Is Richer Than Bill Gates, a First for Microsoft Billionaires

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Facebook pages linked to foreign interference in UK elections taken down

Musk

• Tesla plans to use remote control as fallback in their robotaxi fleet

• Tesla deliveries set to fall YoY for second straight quarter

• Europe smarts as Elon Musk's SpaceX wins key satellite deal

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Supreme Court rules Trump gets limited immunity from prosecution

  The court ruled against him on Monday, 6-3, stating that the president of the United States does not have the ability to be protected from any and all prosecution. However, the court holds that a former president has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers. "We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office," the decision from Chief Justice John Roberts.

  "At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient." Trump faces two federal cases, one involving the theft of government documents and the second related to the 2020 election. In the latter, Trump's lawyers motioned to dismiss the case because, as president, he has the ability to do whatever he wants without the consequence of legal prosecution."

  • (PDF) SCOTUS Vacates and Remands Trump vs. United States

  • Supreme Court Rules on Trump Immunity Case.

  • Supreme Court sends Trump's immunity case back to a lower court in Washington

  • Supreme Court Grants Trump Immunity in Election Case

  • Supreme Court ruling declares presidents have immunity for official acts

  • Supreme Court rules Trump has absolute immunity for some official acts, but not unofficial ones | Just The News

  • SCOTUS votes along party lines to grant Trump some immunity from prosecution

  • Supreme Court says presidents have 'absolute' immunity for clearly official acts

  • 'President can now 'assassinate a political rival' without facing prosecution

  • Supreme Court finds some immunity for presidents, complicating Trump indictment

  • Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have broad immunity

• Tiny Chain Bridge is top banker to Trump, Republican campaigns

• To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race | Editorial

  President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race. But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office. In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump. Trump, 78, has been on the political stage for eight years marked by chaos, corruption, and incivility. Why go back to that?

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Combined Covid-flu vaccines are coming: Moderna jab clears major test

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• What If the Most Notorious Murder of a Gay Man Wasn’t a Hate Crime?

• How Tractor Supply Decided to End DEI, and Fast.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Texas prosecutor drops all criminal trespass charges against UT Austin anti-Israel protesters.

• Public perception of scientists' credibility in the US has gone down

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

  • HN comments

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• HN Jobs:

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2024)

  • Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2024)

  • Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (July 2024)

• Quaternions in Signal and Image Processing

  • HN comments

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• What is 'AI washing' and why is it a problem?

• The telltale words that could identify generative AI text

• EU says Apple's decision to pull AI from EU shows anticompetitive behavior

• AI Doom as a Cult(ish) Phenomenon

• A.I. 'Friend' for Public School Students Falls Flat

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Starliner astronauts 'not stranded', but will be on the ISS for a few more weeks

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon to spend over $100B on data centers

• Samsung reportedly wants some of its teams to work 64 hours a week

• 24-Hour Stock Trading Is Booming – and Wall Street Is Rattled

• Boeing Agrees to Buy Spirit AeroSystems, a Longtime Supplier

  • Boeing Agrees to Buy Spirit Aero for $4.7B in Stock Deal

  • Boeing buys struggling supplier Spirit AeroSystems to shore up 737 production

• 'Roaring Kitty' Keith Patrick Gill Accused of GameStop Pump-and-Dump Scheme

  • 'Roaring Kitty' is sued for alleged GameStop manipulation

• State Farm seeking 30% rate hike for CA homeowners.

• It’s Home-Building Season, but No One Is Buying Lumber.

• BlackRock Buys Preqin for $3.2B in Private Data Push

• Record-High July 4th Cookout Costs: Inflation Hits the Backyard | Market Intel | American Farm Bureau Federation

• Meta layoffs: Facebook to cut 10k more employees, Mark Zuckerberg says

• John Deere Laying Off 600 Workers in Flagship Dubuque Factory for Mexico

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Supreme Court Ruling Could Put the FDA in the Cross Hairs of Its Critics

• SCOTUS Rules on Texas, Florida Censorship Laws – PJ Media

  In the court's opinion, Justice Elena Kagan cited First Amendment grounds for protecting free speech but admitted that "Today, we vacate both decisions for reasons separate from the First Amendment merits, because neither Court of Appeals properly considered the facial nature of NetChoice’s challenge. The courts mainly addressed what the parties had focused on." However, the court did lay the groundwork for lower courts to rule differently, point out that "the current record indicates that the Texas law does regulate speech when applied in the way the parties focused on below--when applied, that is, to prevent Facebook (or YouTube) from using its content-moderation standards to remove, alter, organize, prioritize, or disclaim posts in its News Feed."

  • (PDF) Moody vs Netchoice LLC

  • Supreme Court orders new look at social media laws in Texas and Florida

  • US Supreme Court throws out rulings on state laws regulating social media

  • Supreme Court rules in major internet speech cases

  • Supreme Court vacates rulings on Texas and Florida social media laws

• Ocasio-Cortez vows to file impeachment articles against Supreme Court justices

• 17 Years, $700M Wasted: The Collapse of New York's Traffic Moonshot

• Joe Biden's disastrous debate blamed on bad preparation, exhaustion

• Top aides shielded Biden, but couldn't hide the debate

  Joe Biden's close aides have carefully shielded him from people inside and outside the White House since the beginning of his presidency. The intermittent access has resulted in many current and former White House aides being shocked at the 81-year-old president's limitations at the debate Thursday night.

  Biden's behavior stunned many in the White House in part because Biden's closest aides — often led by Jill Biden's top aide, Anthony Bernal, and deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini — took steps early in his term to essentially rope off the president. Even the White House's residence staff, which serves the first family in the mansion's living quarters, has been kept at arm's length. A former residence official told Axios that Jill Biden was "so protective of the president, and then Anthony just protects her, and they often wouldn't let us do anything for them." "The separation between the family and the residence staff was so big, so divided," the former official said. "It's not supposed to be and usually isn't, even in the Trump White House." A White House official said the president "is deeply appreciative of the residence staff's work, but is unused to being waited on regularly or having butlers, so some staff are often allowed to go home early."

• Biden’s Family Tells Him to Keep Fighting as They Huddle at Camp David - The New York Times

  President Biden’s family is urging him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite last week’s disastrous debate performance, even as some members of his clan privately expressed exasperation at how he was prepared for the event by his staff, people close to the situation said on Sunday.

  One of the strongest voices imploring Mr. Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son Hunter Biden, whom the president has long leaned on for advice, said one of the people informed about the discussions, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the version of his father that he knows — scrappy and in command of the facts — rather than the stumbling, aging president Americans saw on Thursday night.

• First Lady Jill Biden on What’s at Stake in 2024 for Vogue’s August Issue | Vogue

• Gretchen Whitmer: I Won’t Run, but Joe Biden Has Lost Michigan After Debate

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• DOJ readying criminal charges against Boeing for deadly 737 MAX crashes

  • The US Department of Justice is planning to charge Boeing with criminal fraud over the ongoing 737 MAX debacle.

• The Hidden History of Robert Mueller’s Right-Wing Terror Factory

  Thanks to a trove of previously unpublicized law enforcement records and interviews with several players involved, Headline USA can reveal that the Orlando neo-Nazi rally was indeed organized by the FBI. The Orlando event also seems to have been part of a larger program to hold Nazi rallies across the country. And according to FBI records, the bureau sponsored those events despite knowing they led to an increase in the number of card-carrying Nazis in America.

• Robert Robertson execution day set in Texas shaken baby case

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US examines carbon pricing on imports, climate envoy says

  The US is examining a potential carbon pricing system on imports among a “range of options”, its most senior climate diplomat said, in what would be a key policy shift as it looks to combat Chinese industrial competition and cut emissions. John Podesta said the US would fight against “freeriding” by foreign producers of carbon-intensive industrial imports, in an interview with the Financial Times in London. “We’re not going to just give up our industrial base to people who are dumping carbon and freeriding on a system that doesn’t account for, and in fact, kind of subsidises the dumping of high carbon production cost into open markets,” he said.

• Washington replaces reconnaissance drones over the Black Sea with manned Jet

World

• How the German welfare state punishes performance

• Korea's Angry Young Men Swept a President into Office

• Pakistani court sentences man to death for social media post

• Mexico may legalize magic mushrooms

• Turkey Turns to AI to Crack Down on Rampant Tax Evasion

• French antitrust regulators preparing Nvidia charges

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's 'people's satellite' wreaks havoc on Russian targets

• Russian army develops motorcycle assault units to carry out lightning attacks

China

• China is turning to private firms for offensive cyber operations

• Chinese space rocket crashes in flames after accidental launch

• We Can't Sit Back and Watch China Shock 2.0

• Beijing says state owns China's rare earth metals

• China's Secret Weapon in the Global Copper War

Health / Medicine

• New findings may fix the replicability crisis in microbiome research

• Scatterbrain: The Explosion of Adult ADHD

• Din't work on COVID or anything else, yet; but if we keep feeding it to people, eventually we'll get the FDA to let us feed to everyone Rapamycin may slow aging. Here's one way the drug will be tested

• And in small portions: To Follow the Real Early Human Diet, Eat Everything

• Decision to offer sedation for often-painful IUD insertion is ‘groundbreaking,’ health experts say.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Trees Have Become a Hidden Source of Air Pollution in Los Angeles

• Sicilian farmers are trading olives for papayas

• The controversial field of solar geoengineering is hitting its stride

• Arctic 'dirty fuel' ban for ships comes into force

• Fish-safe hydropower technology could keep more renewables on the grid

• EU Hits Record 74% Zero-Emission Power Generation