2024-08-16

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• Please Don't Idolize Me (Or Anyone, Really)

  In the wake of the various recent allegations involving Neil Gaiman, people have been both very sad that someone who they looked up to as an inspiration has, allegedly, turned out to be something less than entirely admirable, and are now looking to see who is now left that they can rotate into the spot of “the good dude,” i.e., that one successful creative guy who they think or at least hope isn’t hiding a cellar full of awful actions. One name I see brought up is mine, in ways ranging from “Well, at least we still have Scalzi,” to “Oh, God, please don’t let Scalzi be a fucking creep too.” Which, uhhhh, yeah? Thanks?

• Have you ever wondered why there is laughing gas in your whipped cream?

• Crater formed from Earth's extinction produced by carbon-rich 'C-type' asteroid

  • Scientists discover where the dinosaur-killing asteroid came from

Horseshit

• Tech firm apologises for hostess lampshade outfits

  The largest cybersecurity company in the US has apologised for using two women posing with company-branded lampshades on their heads at a trade event in Las Vegas. They were meant to draw attention to Palo Alto Networks' sponsorship of a "CyberRisk Collaborative Happy Hour" at the Black Hat conference. But the publicity stunt has sparked a backlash, with critics calling it "sexist", "creepy" and "tone deaf".

• I Am Not My Animal's Owner. So What Am I?

• Potential terrorists can be identified from social media posts

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Google Search Results for ‘Infowars’ Now Lists infowars.com on 2nd Page Behind Hit-Pieces

• F.B.I. Resumes Communication with Facebook, X and Others On Foreign Disinformation - The New York Times

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies quietly resumed coordinating with the major social media companies earlier this year to fight what government officials warned was a coming onslaught of foreign disinformation and influence operations leading up to the presidential election in November. In at least two instances in recent weeks, the companies have taken action to remove malign content, according to the Biden administration and company officials.

  The resumption of communication between government agencies and the platforms comes as Russia and Iran have stepped up efforts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, which is entering its final months. Intelligence gathered and shared by the government has previously flagged covert influence campaigns before they could take off on social media. The F.B.I.’s communications with the platforms resumed behind the scenes in February, according to the officials and a report by the Department of Justice in July, and they have already thwarted two campaigns spreading information from Russia’s propaganda apparatus.

• Elon Musk and JK Rowling could be handed five-year sentences for cyberbullying

• Readers trust journalists less when they debunk rather than confirm claims

Musk

• X ordered to pay $600K to fired employee who didn't click yes on email ultimatum

• Ad Execs Speak Out: Musk's Lawsuit Makes ExTwitter Even Less Appealing

• Petition to FCC calls for halt of satellite launches for environmental review

  • AT&T and Verizon ask FCC to throw a wrench into Starlink's mobile plan

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Toyota bets big on hybrid-only models as EV demand slows

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Fermilab is 'doomed' without management overhaul claims whistleblower report

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Redbox app axed dashing people's hopes of keeping purchased content

• Meta struggles with moderation in Hebrew, according to internal documents

• Shimano wireless gears subject of hacking

• Miss your flip phone? people are ditching the smartphone for 'dumb phones'

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP, hire lawyers to 'clean up the mess'

• John Schulman OpenAI co-founder departs for rival Anthropic

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA acknowledges it cannot quantify risk of Starliner propulsion issues

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Mega-Rich Family's Advisers Made Fortune Despite $30 Billion in Failed Bets - Bloomberg

  Peter Harf and Olivier Goudet became billionaires while managing the Reimanns’ money. The family would have done better if they’d put their wealth in a low-cost index fund.

• Cisco slashes thousands of workers as it announces yearly profit of $10.3B

• California's most innovative pot companies are giving up on legal weed

• It's the Land, Stupid: How the Homebuilder Cartel Drives High Housing Prices

  the net effect of consolidation of homebuilders is significant, estimated at keeping 150,000 new homes from being built every year, which is roughly $100 billion of construction. So what’s the solution? Well, in this case, the answer is likely a combination of policy interventions. The most important is to equalize credit access for smaller and local developers. We should foster the creation of more local banks, or offer local subsidies or preferential treatment of local developers in buying public land. Another big part of this dynamic is a lack of knowledge. Policymakers and smaller developers need more information about who holds local land lots and who are the big builders, especially at a municipal or regional level. There aren’t great sources of data for who holds undeveloped parcels off the market. Another is to impose land limitations to prevent land hoarding, or tax the land of lot developers so they don’t hold land off the market.

• Why credit unions are buying banks

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Can online voting be secure? Experts in Las Vegas try to hack new platform

  • You can tell these aren't real shystems; looking at those gets one arrested. cf Colorado lady.

• Google confirms Iran-linked hackers targeted Trump, Biden campaigns

• FTC ban on noncompete agreements comes under legal attack

Harris / TBA 2024 / Democrats Demonstrate "Our Democracy"

• Harris campaign deceptively trims Trump post about Elon Musk interview - The Verge

  the Harris campaign’s post left out key context that Trump had released a cleaner version of the recording, making the post look purely like an excuse. “Trump blames his confused, slur-filled disaster of an interview with Elon Musk on ‘the complexity of modern day equipment,’” the KamalaHQ account wrote alongside the truncated post on Threads.

• Kamala Harris is among 1 in 8 Americans who have worked at McDonald's

• Will Chicago Become A War Zone?

  Things are quickly heating up in Chicago. Nervous Democrats are wondering if the city might come under siege by swarms of pro-Palestinian protesters and/or if they will face riots by extremists - with the explicit goal of defeating Kamala Harris. Public estimates are that between 30,000 to 50,000 protesters are expected to enter the city. A vast coalition comprising of more than 200 Palestinian, Marxist, anti-imperialist and progressive organizations have signed on to join the “March on the DNC 2024” which is planning marches and rallies between August 19 and 21.

  Meanwhile, Chicago authorities have opened a defunct courthouse to streamline arrests and have cleared 30 additional courtrooms if there are mass arrests, according to NewsNation. The city has postponed all criminal jury trials scheduled for next week and “criminal judges from other divisions of Cook County have been asked to clear their calendars in case they need to be called into action to help process those arrested,” according to the news channel. The convention grounds now are officially considered a “national special security event.” This means the Secret Service will oversee security inside the convention grounds.

Trump / Right / Jan6

• Why it matters that Trump falsely said a Harris rally was fake

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• New Zealand to extradite internet mogul Kim Dotcom to the US

  • Kim Dotcom to be extradited from New Zealand

  • Kim Dotcom to be extradited from New Zealand

• US judge has girl handcuffed for sleeping during court field trip

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The Little-Known U.S. Agency Behind the Coups Against Mexico's Druglords

• Are Underwater UFOs an Imminent Threat? The U.S. Government Sure Thinks So

World

• Venezuela's government turns to tech to curb election protests

  • Venezuela security forces swoop on activists as repression worsens

• Pakistan deploys the great firewall for internet

• NZ police race to recover meth-laced sweets distributed by charity

  Police in New Zealand are racing to trace sweets containing "potentially lethal levels of methamphetamine" after they were distributed by a charity in Auckland. Up to 400 people may have received the sweets from Auckland City Mission as part of a food parcel, said the anti-poverty charity. The sweets were donated anonymously by a member of the public in a sealed retail package, it added. "We did not know that the lollies contained methamphetamine when they were distributed," the charity's spokesperson told the BBC. Each individual sweet could have a street value of around NZ$1,000 ($601; £468), according to the New Zealand Drug Foundation. In a statement, the foundation said they found about 3g of methamphetamine in a sweet that was sent for testing. “A common dose to swallow is between 10-25mg, so this contaminated lolly contained up to 300 doses,” says its head Sarah Helm, adding that swallowing such amount of the drug is "extremely dangerous and could result in death".

Iran / Houthi

• Iranian backed group steps up phishing campaigns against Israel, U.S.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• The Veterinarians Preventing the Next Pandemic

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• they're talking ~95F. I lived and worked through several summers with hotter days, as did many others. What is the hottest temperature humans can survive?

  In a 2021 study, Kenney and his colleagues provided a better estimate: a WBT survival limit of around 31 °C. They calculated it by tracking the core body temperature of young, healthy people under different combinations of temperature and humidity while they were cycling. “You do still see the 35 °C wet-bulb temperature tossed around, but people are starting to come around to the limit defined by Kenney’s lab,” says Robert Meade, a heat and health researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• When Is "Recyclable" Not Recyclable? The Plastics Industry Defines

• Highest ocean heat in four centuries places Great Barrier Reef in danger

• Climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating

  • The oceans are weirdly hot. Scientists are trying to figure out why

• Food banks prevented 1.8M metric tons of carbon emissions last year

• "Thermal Creep" discovered by propagandists: America Has a Hot-Steel Problem - The Atlantic

  A basic fact of thermodynamics is coming to haunt every foot of train track in the United States. Heat makes steel expand, moving its molecules farther apart, and as hot days become hotter and more frequent, rail lines are at risk of warping and buckling more often.

  Our infrastructure is simply becoming too hot to function, or at least function well. High heat can also cause bridges to fail, for the same reason as with train tracks. Roads can buckle, thanks to the thermodynamics of concrete and asphalt. In Alaska, where permafrost is thawing into a substrate more akin to a waterbed, roads can resemble an undulating line of ribbon candy. Heat has two effects on power transmission, and “both of them are bad,” Bilal Ayyub, a civil-engineering professor at the University of Maryland, told me. One, heat reduces how much electricity power lines can deliver. Two, heat increases demand—everyone turns on their air conditioners in unison—further straining an already heat-strained grid, sometimes to its breaking point. (And those air conditioners need more power to run, because they’re also less efficient in high temperatures.) Phone and car batteries drain more easily when heat speeds up their internal chemical reactions.

• German climate activists stop air traffic after breaking into four airport sites

• Shell oil non-profit donated to anti-climate groups behind Project 2025