2024-08-03
Worthy
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How I Got My Laser Eye Injury - Funranium Labs
After making sure everything was shut down, I assessed the scene and realized something had gone wrong beyond simply “this entire situation”. This was a sales demo for prospective customers gone horribly awry. I identified myself as the Laser Safety Officer and that I had some questions.
Bob and Customer 1 & 2 looked up to see the stripe of exposed metal on the door of the VP of Sales’ car where the paint had been burnt away. On closer inspection, we later leaned that the Quanta-Ray had burnt through the wheel well and cut the brake line. At this point, I decided I want to really rub in what a terrible idea all this was to them. How they had failed on so many levels.
- Me: That’s $VP_of_Sales’ car, isn’t it Bob?
- Bob: [groans] Yes.
- Me: Pretty sure that’s your boss, Bob.
etc
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High and low decoupling, and other matters
Looking to the future I think we as western societies face a choice, but it is not between Heaven or Hell (as the corporate press on both sides would have it) or as some classical liberals/libertarians would see it as between a sort of hipster Reaganism and a reactionary Corbynism. I think the choice western societies face is between becoming new Argentinas or new Singapores (and as of last December Argentina have chosen Singapore) and this is why so many (such as yourself Tyler) find themselves on a different political side than they expected. The establishment has failed across the West; it’s just that we keep forgetting the establishment is the cosmopolitan left.
Horseshit
LimpLicks
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Five reasons why Scott Alexander should love our definition of Cancel Culture
Two things became inevitable after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump: Some people who don’t like Trump would make edgy social media posts about it, and some people who have chafed under Cancel Culture in left-leaning spaces for the last decade would call for cancellations in response. Just as with censorship more broadly, too many folks hate it when it’s done to them but can’t wait to do it to others once they have the chance. This is the fair-weather devotion to principle and selective memory that keeps the culture war wheel spinning.
Alexander points out that you can’t persecute your way out of a cycle of persecution. If you could, there wouldn’t be a cycle in the first place. He notes that punishing individuals for the aggregate sins of people sharing their political ideology is precisely the kind of “sins of the father” collective guilt against which conservatives have fought in other contexts for years. He also cautions that most of the time, a call to cancel someone is coming from inside the house — meaning that if a group adopts Cancel Culture as a norm, the people most frequently canceled will be the ones within that group. We’ve already seen enough of “the left eating its own” to know that’s the case.
Musk
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Elon Musk’s Thoughts on Election Integrity - The Atlantic
Despite spreading voter conspiracies, Musk claims he would recognize a Harris victory. He also called me a jackass.
Yesterday, Elon Musk told me that he will accept the results of the 2024 presidential election. “Of course” he would, he said when I asked him as much by email. Ever the gentleman, he added, in apparent haste, “Don’t be jackass.” I can imagine why he wanted to get that dig in. In years past, asking someone whether they believe in the basic reality of America’s electoral process would be a little bit like asking them to acknowledge that they have to pay for groceries. But anyone who fears for the stability of American democracy might worry about how Musk—the richest man in the world, a newly vocal supporter of Donald Trump, and the owner of X, one of the most influential social platforms for political discourse—would answer this simple question. He has a tremendous following and control over a website on which (and from which) misinformation and radical messaging can quickly spread. Lately he has been spreading a lot of misinformation and radical messaging himself.
Musk has become preoccupied with posting conspiracy theories on X, claiming this week, for example, that “the legacy media engages in the mass synchronization of emotion for political purposes” on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, and that “the Biden-Harris Administration is importing vast numbers of voters.”
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Elon Musk's misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport much worse
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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GLAAD Paid For CEO’s Lavish Spending, Documents Reveal - The New York Times
The trip was part of a pattern of lavish spending at GLAAD, much of it by Ms. Ellis, that may have violated the organization’s own policies as well as Internal Revenue Service rules. The Times reviewed dozens of GLAAD expense reports and accompanying receipts from January 2022 through June 2023, as well as employment agreements, tax filings, audit reports, other financial documents and internal communications. When Ms. Ellis traveled for work, there were first-class flights, stays at the Waldorf Astoria and other luxury hotels and expensive car services. Not to mention a Cape Cod summer rental and nearly $20,000 to remodel her home office, which was outfitted with a chandelier, among other accouterments.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Gigabit capable broadband now available to 84% of UK properties
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To preserve their work, journalists take archiving into their own hands
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GameStop Shuts Down Game Informer, the Longest-Running Gaming Magazine in the US
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Legendary ROM hacking site shutting down after almost 20 years | Ars Technica
Gideon Zhi, proprietor of Time Capsule Games and member of RomHacking for more than 20 years, took issue with Nightcrawler's monologued coda. In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), Zhi acknowledged the site's technical debt, monetary cost, and the burnout in being its administrator. "But he existed as a single point of failure for the site and exerted iron-fisted control over community-created content, and categorically refused basically all offers of help over the last decade," Zhi wrote. Zhi details a near abandonment of the site last year, followed by attempts by interested members, gathered on the site's Discord chat server, to transition the site's back-end to modern storage and file serving, such as Amazon Web Services S3, and last-minute refusal by Nightcrawler to enact the changes. He also denied that the volunteers on the attempted transition threatened or doxxed Nightcrawler.
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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GM changes performance and bonus plan to attract top talent, thin poor performers
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Why the Hell Is Everyone Pretending to Be Grateful They Got Laid Off?
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Chevron will move its headquarters to Houston
The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California
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America’s long consumer boom begins to falter
Consumer goods companies have been in the centre of the inflationary wave that washed over the US in the past three years. Emerging from the pandemic, they faced tangled supply lines, soaring energy prices and a strong labour market that emboldened workers to demand higher wages. Most moved decisively to raise prices, contributing to increases of more than a quarter for groceries, consumer goods and restaurant food since 2019, according to government statistics. The companies’ sales, and in many cases profits, rose in tandem.
Consumers in the US also helped feed the wave. Flush with excess savings thanks to the lockdowns and government stimulus payments of the pandemic, and then buttressed by the strong labour market, many households continued to spend freely even as goods prices rose. Even poorer households, usually the first victims of inflation, managed to keep up as wages rose faster than the inflation rate at lower income tiers. Now consumption is faltering. The shift has important implications for the largest economy in the world, two-thirds of which is driven by consumer spending.
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Cocoa Prices Slide To Five-Month Low On Demand Destruction Fears From Hershey | ZeroHedge
US chocolate maker Hershey slashed its sales and earnings outlook on Thursday, citing higher cocoa prices that have resulted in demand destruction among cash-strapped consumers. This development spooked cocoa futures, sliding to a five-month low at the end of the week. Cocoa futures in New York fell as much as 6% to $6,574 a ton, hitting their lowest level since early March following the dismal earnings report from Hershey. Prices, which peaked at $12,000 a ton in mid-April, have nearly halved and have been oscillating within a triangle formation ever since.
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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US Government sues TikTok for allegedly violating children's privacy law
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Using RFSI funding, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture will fund projects that increase access to commercial kitchens and co-packing facilities. Additional funded projects will expand processing capacity, including adding product types, increasing production volumes, and supporting new wholesale/retail product lines. The state’s priorities are informed by stakeholder engagement and outreach to underserved producers to better understand their needs. Those interested in receiving a subaward should apply directly through the Tennessee Department of Agriculture by August 31, 2024. AMS encourages applications that serve smaller farms and ranches, new and beginning farmers and ranchers, underserved producers, veteran producers, and underserved communities.
Harris / TBA 2024 / Democrats Demonstrate "Our Democracy"
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Harris' brother-in-law emerges as key campaign adviser
Vice President Kamala Harris' brother-in-law and former U.S. associate attorney general Tony West has become a powerful adviser in her new campaign, as Harris asserts control over an organization built to elect a different candidate.Many successful presidential candidates have had their family members serve as close advisers. While it created friction with his staff, Biden's family has served in close roles his entire career and his sister Valerie Biden Owens served as a confidante with no formal role in his 2020 campaign.
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Harris Has Enough Virtual Votes To Be Democratic Nominee | ZeroHedge (Archive)
Harris, who ran unopposed, secured the minimum required 2,350 votes after the roll call began at 9 a.m. on Thursday. "I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States and I will tell you, the tireless work of our delegates, our state leaders, and our staff has been pivotal to making this moment possible," Harris - or whoever wrote that, said in a Friday statement, adding that she will officially accept the nomination next week after the virtual voting period ends.
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Kamala Harris is officially crowned as the Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump
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Childless cat ladies for Kamala. I saw it so now you have to.
Trump / Right / Jan6
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Secret Service's tech issues helped shooter go undetected at Trump rally
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How an Elon Musk PAC is using voter data to help Trump beat Harris in elections
The PAC’s effort to collect information from people using the idea of “voter registration” is a critical piece to its plan to make personal contact with these voters. “America PAC is focusing on door-to-door canvassing in support of Trump,” said Brendan Fischer, a deputy executive director at campaign finance watchdog Documented. “I think it is safe to assume that the voter data gathered through these digital appeals are going to inform America PAC’s canvassing and other political activities,” he added.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Why CVS and Target Locking Up Products Is Backfiring - Bloomberg
To understand how we got to this demoralizing retail reality, we have to go back to the Great Shoplifting Freak-Out of 2021. In the aftermath of pandemic upheaval and widespread protests following the murder of George Floyd by police, an unsettled country turned its attention to a handful of viral videos showing bands of thieves ransacking stores in violent smash-and-grab robberies and making off with huge quantities of everything from shampoo to luxury handbags. According to retailers, these videos were evidence of a larger problem: More and more organized crime rings were swiping large quantities of desirable, easily resold goods from brick-and-mortar stores and listing them online. Some retailers, including Target Corp., have cited these losses as justification for the decision to close stores, often in dense cities or less wealthy neighborhoods. (Not all of these claims stand up to scrutiny—Target, for example, said that it was closing its East Harlem store in Manhattan in part because of crime, but also plans to open a new store nearby, closer to major transit lines.)
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numerous federal assets are deeply embedded within the Patriot Front
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Israel
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Israel: Armageddon? | naked capitalism
So the next question is: what is Iran’s and the Axis of Resistance’s ability to destroy, in a massive, tightly time-compressed attack, to take out all or nearly all of Israel’s ability to launch a nuclear attack? Remember, nuclear bombs don’t get up and walk to their targets. They are sent by ground or submarine launched missiles or aircraft. Israel has five nuclear subs and they are believed to carry 200 kiloton nuclear missiles. The innertubes also report that Israel has nuclear weapons buried deep enough to be able to make a second strike even in the face of a nuclear attack. So the Axis of Resistance looks unable to make a successful preemptive strike unless they were also able to interfere with targeting, and they don’t look able to do that. The only option along these lines that could work on the scale needed might be an electomagnetic pulse bomb. But there’s no evidence Iran has developed, let alone tested, one, and it would be too high stakes to try a maiden run now.
So it looks all too likely that Israel not only will use nuclear, but even worse may be trying to set up events to justify deploying them. As I often say, it would be better if I were wrong.