2024-08-13


LimpLicks

  • 2024 Paris Olympics: No, breaking shouldn’t be an Olympic sport - Yahoo Sports

    Breaking — for the love of heaven, don’t call it breakdancing — debuted Friday at the Olympics. Trying to force a countercultural artistic endeavor into a box created by the International Olympic Committee — the oldest of old-school conservatism — just ends up sawing off all the rough edges that make breaking such a vibrant force. That's exactly what we saw on Friday and Saturday nights at the circular, neon-ringed breaking stage.


Musk

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

  • Starliner astronauts may be in space another 6 months. Here's what they'll do

  • NASA is about to make its most important safety decision in nearly a generation | Ars Technica

    NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are nearly 10 weeks into a test flight that was originally set to last a little more than one week. The two retired US Navy test pilots were the first people to fly into orbit on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft when it launched on June 5. Now, NASA officials aren't sure Starliner is safe enough to bring the astronauts home. Three of the managers at the center of the pending decision, Ken Bowersox and Steve Stich from NASA and Boeing's LeRoy Cain, either had key roles in the ill-fated final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003 or felt the consequences of the accident.

    At that time, officials misjudged the risk. Seven astronauts died, and the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas. Bowersox, Stich, and Cain weren't the people making the call on the health of Columbia's heat shield in 2003, but they had front-row seats to the consequences. Bowersox was an astronaut on the International Space Station when NASA lost Columbia. He and his crewmates were waiting to hitch a ride home on the next Space Shuttle mission, which was delayed two-and-a-half years in the wake of the Columbia accident. Instead, Bowersox's crew came back to Earth later that year on a Russian Soyuz capsule. After retiring from the astronaut corps, Bowersox worked at SpaceX and is now the head of NASA's spaceflight operations directorate.

  • NASA Investigation Finds Boeing Hindering Americans' Return to Moon

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

  • Iran Emerges as the Most Aggressive Foreign Threat to U.S. Election

  • White House Crack Down on Everyday Headaches, Hassles That Waste Time and Money

    Today and in the coming months, the Biden-Harris Administration will take wide-ranging action to crack down on these unfair practices and save Americans time and money. Key actions include:

    • Making it easier to cancel subscriptions and memberships.
    • Ending airline runarounds by requiring automatic cash refunds.
    • Allowing you to submit health claims online.
    • Cracking down on customer service “doom loops.” ... the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will initiate a rulemaking process that would require companies under its jurisdiction to let customers talk to a human by pressing a single button.
    • Ensuring accountability for companies that provide bad service.
    • Taking on the limitations and shortcomings of customer service chatbots.
    • Helping streamline parent communication with schools. The Department of Education will issue new guidance to schools on how they can help make these processes less time-consuming for parents to handle, and to build effective family engagement through two-way communications.
  • Nation's best hackers found voting machine vulnerabilities – but no time to fix

    From Friday to Sunday, Voting Village hackers clustered around tables with all shapes and sizes of voting machines and equipment to verify voters’ identities or tabulate ballots, trying to get past firewalls or other security measures. Nearby, secretaries of state and other election officials gave talks on misinformation and disinformation threats facing the upcoming election. Unlike most of the other events at the conference though, the Voting Village was not on the main show floor. It was a decision organizers said was necessary in order to ensure security following years of hatred flung at the event online by those who see the hackers as undermining democracy. In recent years, individuals associated with election denialism showed up at the Voting Village to harass organizers and speakers.

Harris / TBA 2024 / Democrats Demonstrate "Our Democracy"

  • Opinion | Kamala Harris says she’ll give interviews soon. Here’s what we’d ask. - The Washington Post

    Since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris has neither given a sit-down interview nor held a news conference. Her campaign’s website lacks an “Issues” page (there’s only a biography). We get it, tactically: it’s tempting for Ms. Harris, as it would be for anyone in her position, to stay as vague on the issues as possible, for as long as possible, to avoid giving fodder to the opposition or dividing her supporters. Ms. Harris is confident she’ll win if the campaign is about the many flaws of former president Donald Trump.

    Mr. Trump makes her task easier by regularly spouting falsehoods and wild rhetoric, such as his crack about Ms. Harris’s racial identity at a session of the National Association of Black Journalists. But at least he has taken questions, including hostile ones, both from NABJ and at a long news conference on Thursday.

    If she hopes to prevail, Ms. Harris needs to present her ideas. The media and public have legitimate questions, and she should face them. This is a political necessity — Mr. Trump is already turning her avoidance of the media into an attack line. And elections aren’t just about winning. They’re about accumulating political capital for a particular agenda, which Ms. Harris can’t do unless she articulates one.

  • Kamala Harris is more trusted than Donald Trump on the US economy

  • The many, many signs that Kamala Harris' rally crowds aren't AI creations

Biden Inc

  • Biden’s manufacturing renaissance delayed as investors hit pause button

    Some 40 per cent of US manufacturing investments announced in the first year of President Biden’s signature overhaul of industrial and climate policy have been delayed or paused, according to a Financial Times investigation. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and Chips and Science Act offered more than $400bn in tax credits, loans and grants to spark development of a domestic US cleantech and semiconductor supply chain, but projects worth a total of $84bn have been delayed for between two months and several years, or paused indefinitely. Companies said deteriorating market conditions, slowing demand, and lack of policy certainty in a high-stakes election year have caused them to change their plans.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

  • New data shows violent crime dropping sharply in major U.S. cities

    New preliminary data from major U.S. cities shows a sharp drop in violent crime in the first half of the year — more than 25% in some communities — as the COVID-era crime wave recedes. The drop in violent crime puts a serious dent in one of the most frequently used lines of attack by former President Trump and his allies, who have sought to tie Democrats to the issue since 2020. It also gives Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor in San Francisco and California attorney general, a potent defense against attacks from the right on crime.

    An Axios analysis of data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found an overall 6% decline in violent crime among 69 cities during the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period last year.

  • Federal Appeals Court Finds Geofence Warrants Are Categorically Unconstitutional