2024-07-28
Worthy
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from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll,
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
etc
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(Jul 10 2024) K-9 reunites nonverbal child with family
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Toyota to Replace Every Single Engine in 100,000 Tundra Pickups and Lexus SUVs.
There are safety recalls, and then there are really time-consuming, expensive safety recalls. Toyota is experiencing the latter, having discovered earlier this year a defect in its twin-turbocharged V-6 truck engines that power the Tundra pickup truck as well as Lexus's LX luxury SUVs—at least, those 2022 to 2023 model-year variants built between November 2021 and February 2023 (or the same model years built between July 2021 and November 2022 for the LX).
Horseshit
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MI Man's Property Seized for $8.41 Tax Debt; County Keeps Profits
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Woman loses appeal over birth certificate after sperm donor has sex with ex-wife
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At last, an airline that lets women avoid sitting next to men
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Tech Billionaires Are Fighting Over Who’s the Biggest Jerk in Silicon Valley
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America was futuristic once. Now all the crazy things are from Asia
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Technology's grip on modern life is pushing us down a dimly lit path
“We are utterly dependent on systems that we don’t even know exist until they break,” said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster and historian. “We have become a little bit like Blanche DuBois in that scene from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ where she says, ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’ ”
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Summer heat is making soda cans burst on Southwest flights, injuring attendants
LimpLicks
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Athletes can expect high ozone, pollen levels at Paris Olympics.
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The French Olympic opening ceremony
perhaps the over the top, deviance-drenched modes of presentation are reflecting some longer-running strands in French culture.
Several X accounts that posted videos and/or screenshots about the absurdities of the Olympics' opening ceremonies have been hit with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints enforced by Elon Musk's social media platform.
The opening ceremony of the Olympics was a disgusting travesty, but people who center their disgust on the mockery of Christianity are missing its actual point. If we lived in, say, a predominantly Buddhist culture, there isn't any doubt at all that would have been a drag Buddha front and center.
What was on display here wasn't anti-Christianity, it was a compulsion to defecate all over any source of meaning and value in favor of a depraved narcissism.
That's why I, no friend of Christianity, found it revolting. But also insist that calling it "Satanism" is too parochial and limiting, because Satanism is merely the inversion of Christian belief rather than the insane nihilism on display in Paris.
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Canadian women's soccer team loses six points, coach banned over drone scandal
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Hosting the Olympics has become financially untenable, economists say
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Afghanistan's Hashimi sisters, who escaped Taliban to compete at 2024 Olympics
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
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Ex-Twitter dev reminisces about finding 700 unused Nvidia GPUs after takeover
They were powered on and idle, and had been for ages: the forgotten remains of a honest attempt to make a cluster within Twitter 1.0.
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Elon Musk said his trans child was 'dead.' She's calling him out
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Elon Musk Shares Manipulated Harris Video, in Seeming Violation of X’s Policies - The New York Times
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has waded into one of the thorniest issues facing U.S. politics: deepfake videos. On Friday night, Mr. Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, reposted an edited campaign video for Vice President Kamala Harris that appears to have been digitally manipulated to change the spot’s voice-over in a deceptive manner. The video mimics Ms. Harris’s voice, but instead of using her words from the original ad, it has the vice president saying that President Biden is senile, that she does not “know the first thing about running the country” and that, as a woman and a person of color, she is the “ultimate diversity hire.” In addition, the clip was edited to remove images of former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, and to add images of Mr. Biden. The original, unaltered ad, which the Harris campaign released on Thursday, is titled “We Choose Freedom.”
The version posted on X does not contain a disclaimer, though the account that first uploaded it Friday morning, @MrReaganUSA, noted in its post that the video was a “parody.”
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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How a Perfect Storm Sent Church Insurance Rates Skyrocketing
An ongoing wave of disasters — Gulf Coast hurricanes, wildfires in California, severe thunderstorms and flooding in the Midwest — along with skyrocketing construction costs post-COVID have left the insurance industry reeling. As a result, companies such as Church Mutual, GuideOne and Brotherhood Mutual, which specialize in insuring churches, have seen their reserves shrink. That’s led them to drop churches they consider high risk in order to cut their losses. Hundreds of United Methodist churches in the Rio Texas Annual Conference learned they’d lost property insurance in November last year, leaving church officials scrambling. More than six months later, some churches have found new insurance, often at a steep increase. Others still have none, said Kevin Reed, president of the conference board of trustees.
“Because of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state, ministries are largely unregulated,” said Cutler. “And unregulated businesses are difficult to underwrite.” The church insurance market, like the insurance industry overall, has been hit with a perfect storm in recent years. Supply chain shortages for construction materials that began during the pandemic have driven up the cost of rebuilding after a disaster. When the cost of rebuilding goes up, so does the size of claims, said Cutler. That led insurance companies to raise their rates in order to cover those claims.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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There is no fix for Intel's crashing 13th and 14th generation chips - any damage is permanent.
Intel has not halted sales or clawed back any inventory. It will not do a recall, period. The company is not currently commenting on whether or how it might extend its warranty. It would not share estimates with The Verge of how many chips are likely to be irreversibly impacted, and it did not explain why it's continuing to sell these chips ahead of any fix.
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The historic computer collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen
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Good demonstration of technique: Troubleshooting: Terminal Lag
I highly doubt anyone else will find this useful, who else is using XTerm on Windows?
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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A new movement of luddites is rising up against AI
This is just the latest in a long line of walkbacks of “exciting AI projects” that have been met with fury by the people they’re meant to excite. The Prince Charles Cinema in Soho, London, cancelled a screening of an AI-written film in June, because its regulars vehemently objected. Lego was pressured to take down a series of AI-generated images it published on its website. Doctor Who started experimenting with generative AI, but quickly stopped after a wave of complaints. A company swallows the AI hype, thinks jumping on board will paint it as innovative, and entirely fails to understand the growing anti-AI sentiment taking hold among many of its customers.
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Big Tech says AI is booming. Wall Street is starting to see a bubble
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Food delivery fees are rising, and everyone's feeling the pinch
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Bill Ackman postpones Pershing Square IPO after scaling back expectations
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FedEx to cut daytime domestic flight activity by 60% - FreightWaves
FedEx Corp. plans to significantly slash daily flights and the number of U.S. cities served by air during the daytime when its air cargo contract with the U.S. Postal Service expires on Sept. 29, resulting in significant pay cuts for pilots, senior managers informed crews this week. Shedding daytime flying capacity in response to the lost postal business is part of a broader FedEx (NYSE: FDX) initiative to boost corporate profits that includes restructuring airline operations to align with lower parcel demand and improve efficiency.
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McDonald's to extend $5 value meal in most markets as diners return
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Is the U.S. in a recession? Roughly 3 in 5 Americans think so, report finds
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
TBA 2024 / Democrats Demonstrate "Our Democracy"
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LinkedIn billionaire going all-in on Harris; wants her to change FTC boss Khan
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Tucson-based World View, cofounded by now-U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly in 2012, received venture capital from Tencent — among the largest tech companies in China — both in 2013 and 2016. Tencent, like most Chinese tech giants, has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. World View president and CEO Ryan Hartman told The Arizona Republic in 2020 that Tencent had "zero access, zero input and zero control" over the company.
Trump / Right / Jan6
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Trump allies draft AI order to launch 'Manhattan Projects' for defense
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FBI is not convinced trump was struck by a bullet
What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle,” the FBI statement asserts. “The FBI’s Shooting Reconstruction Team continues to examine evidence from the scene, including bullet fragments, and the investigation remains ongoing,” the statement adds.
The statement comes following comments made by FBI director Christopher Wray earlier in the week during testimony in Congress that spurred leftist conspiracy theories that Trump was hit by glass or shrapnel. “There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel,” Wray said to Rep. Jim Jordan on Thursday.
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the degree of misinformation at the current moment is just staggering, and most intellectual commentators seem to be embracing it or at least tolerating it. For one thing, the whole couch´sofa matter just isn’t true. For another, Trump did not just say, at the end of his recent speech, that democracy will end in four years. Listen to the entirety of the very end of the speech. What he said is that he will end electoral fraud if he wins, and thus, in the future, Republicans won’t need all their supporters to vote to give them huge, fraud-proof margins. (To be clear, that claim itself involves some significant misinformation.) He was not heralding the end of democracy. Or how about the patently absurd claims from Timothy Snyder, famous historian from Yale, who cannot even get right the events from a few days ago?
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Stop Turning The Other Cheek: Too many on the Right think we should not fight back.
Stop turning the other cheek. Fight back. Power and strength is the only thing the Left appreciates and understands. You turn the other cheek out of principle and they assume you are weak and come at you even harder.
We must play by the New Rules, even when it is ugly and unpleasant. If you get off on canceling people, that's lame. But you should enjoy seeing justice done.
- Even among the right, a "Principle of Free Speech" is not widely understood to exist, and "Who makes these New Rules?" is not a valid question in this discussion.
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Grey's Law, The Republic, and You (Part 1)
Up until he was stuck by the countersniper round which ended his worthless life, the assassin does not appear to have been significantly impeded in his mission by anything the USSS did. What this means is that the USSS completely failed. The magnitude of its institutional failure is not lessened by the ineptitude of its foe… because a protection detail cannot, must not, assume that its foes will always be inept.
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Windfall: FBI Pays $2M To Strzok, Ex-Lover For Released Anti-Trump Texts | ZeroHedge
Strzok will receive $1.2 million, while Page will get $800,000 after the bureau released email exchanges that exposed their anti-Trump bias during the 2016 presidential campaign. Such bias ultimately ignited the now-defunct Russian collusion hoax probe.
The agreement ends a lawsuit Page brought, but does not fully resolve Strzok’s separate suit, allowing him to continue to press his claims that he was fired in order to please then-President Donald Trump. Page, who resigned amid the controversy, settled her own Privacy Act claim with the department Friday. Copies of the settlement agreements for Strzok and Page obtained by POLITICO indicate Page is to receive $800,000. The documents state that the U.S. government is not admitting or conceding legal liability. “The evidence was overwhelming that the release of text messages to the press in December 2017 was for partisan political purposes and was against the law,” Page’s lawyer, Amy Jeffress, said in a statement.
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Trump: 'In Four Years, You Don't Have to Vote Again' (Archive)
Former President Trump at a Friday event hosted by the conservative Christian organization Turning Point Action urged Christians to vote, saying they wouldn’t have to do it again if they got out there in November and elected him because “everything” would be “fixed.” “Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” Trump exclaimed to a cheering crowd in West Palm Beach, Fla. “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians” he added. “I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote,” Trump said.
Trump’s remarks represent an extraordinary departure from democratic norms in the United States—rarely if ever has a major party’s presidential candidate directly stated his aim to make elections meaningless, a notorious hallmark of autocracy.
There are at least two ways of interpreting this statement. First, Trump could be implying that there won’t be any future elections if he comes to power. He may imagine himself as an American Xi Jinping, the Chinese dictator he routinely praises, a leader who’s declared himself “president for life.” As he often does, however, Trump left just enough room in what he said for plausible deniability. A second and slightly more charitable interpretation of his remarks is that Trump believes his presidency will entrench so many pro-Christian policies into the United States government that no future election could realistically undo his transformation of the country. Both interpretations lead to the same conclusion: that Trump is telegraphing his authoritarian intentions in plain sight, hoping to sever the link between voters and government policy.
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Trump: I'd Oppose CBDCs, Pardon Ulbricht, and Create National Bitcoin Stockpile
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Trump says he'll fire SEC Chair Gensler and create strategic Bitcoin reserve
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Trump proposes strategic national crypto stockpile: 'Never sell your Bitcoin'
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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“It has come to my attention that, despite specific requests by the USPP for additional resources, the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the National Park Service (NPS) failed to provide adequate additional support for the USPP, such as providing additional law enforcement units from within DOI to enhance USPP’s presence within the National Capital Region,” the Arkansas Republican wrote in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
The National Park Service refuted Mr. Westerman’s claim in a statement, saying “no resource requests were declined by NPS or Interior leaders.” But the Park Police Fraternal Order of Police said they were set up for failure. FOP Chairman Kenneth Spencer said they had just 29 officers to manage a crowd of thousands of protesters, “with no additional help from the Department of the Interior.”
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Homeland Security agents searching Fuyao Glass,27 other locations in Dayton
In 2015, we began shipping glass from the World’s Largest Auto Glass Plant located in Dayton, Ohio. Fuyao has nearly doubled its need for employees just in the first year, and has already begun shipping glass several months ahead of the original plans. Additional Fuyao Group investments in the Dayton Region are already planned.
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Texas woman gets 15 years for stealing $109M from Army to buy mansions, cars
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California's Park Fire ignited by ex-con who pushed burning car into gully: DA
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Israel
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Mass Casualty Event in Israel After Hezbollah Rocket Attack – RedState
At least five people are critically wounded and six others injured after Hezbollah rockets slammed into the Golan Heights town of Majd al-Shams. Some reports put the casualty toll above 20, with some dead.
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Deadly Soccer Field Attack in Israel Raises Risk of Escalation Between Israel and Hezbollah.
A rocket strike on a soccer field full of young people in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights left a scene of carnage Saturday and threatened to escalate the already tense standoff on the Lebanese border. The strike killed 10 people aged 10- to 20-years old and injured 19, according to emergency services. The rocket carried a heavier than usual warhead, Israel’s military said.
It wasn’t immediately clear who fired the rocket. Israel’s military said it believed Hezbollah was responsible, citing its initial information. Hezbollah said the group had nothing to do with the strike. The U.S.-designated terrorist group has been exchanging fire with Israel on a near-daily basis since shortly after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel left 1,200 dead and around 250 taken hostage.