2024-08-18

etc

• Newly Found Pompeii Victims Had 'Monstrous' Deaths

Horseshit

• Homebound: The Long-Term Rise in Time Spent at Home Among U.S. Adults

  Results show that from 2003 to 2022, average time spent at home among American adults has risen by one hour and 39 minutes in a typical day. Time at home has risen for every subset of the population and for virtually all activities. Preliminary analysis indicates that time at home is associated with lower levels of happiness and less meaning

• What happens to all the temporary air conditioning units at the Olympic Village?

• Most-expensive cities to raise kids in US. $40K a year in San Francisco

• Burning Man tickets sold at losses by desperate Burners

• Troubled Amazon drone delivery program faces latest challenge: Annoyed residents

• Britain to trial use of drones in deliveries, emergency services

• Space beer may taste better than Earth beer

• Ambulances called to Amazon's UK warehouses 1,400 times in five years

• Is Western culture stopping people from growing up?

• Extreme renters who own nothing

celebrity gossip

• Raygun is the internet's newest villain — and memes about her have paved the way for a wave of gleeful misinformation

• Palantir’s Alex Karp Talks About War, AI and America’s Future - The New York Times

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Can Taiwanese activist turned politician Audrey Tang detoxify the internet?

• Meta kills off CrowdTangle despite pleas from researchers, journalists

Musk

• X to close operations in Brazil 'effective immediately'

  • X: We have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil

  • Elon Musk says X will pull operations from Brazil after 'censorship orders'

  • X suspends business in Brazil over censorship row

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• High School Starts Replacing Teachers with AI

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Fortnite is back on the iPhone – with a whole app store in tow

• Google Under Fire After Influencers Were Asked to Prefer Pixel Phones

• German Agency Wants Changes in Microsoft, CrowdStrike Products After Outage

• Actors demand action over 'disgusting' video game sex scenes

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Why didn't the Apple IIGS launch with the 8GHz 65816?

• Python Bans Prominent Dev for Enjoying the Wrong Old SNL Sketch | Hacker News

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• 'Kafkaesque': bank blocks cash transfer, saying it could be an AI scam

• Every Leading Large Language Model Leans Left Politically

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Alien Civilizations Might Be Too Advanced for Us to Detect

• Boeing, Lockheed Martin in Talks to Sell ULA to Sierra Space

• NASA Has Some Bad News for Its Stranded Astronauts | TIME

• The invisible problem with sending people to Mars

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Intel: Our balance sheet is a smoking ruin, but we think our new chips work

• More Than 90% of 2021 Venture Funds Have Had Zero Distributions Thus Far

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Supreme Court keeps new rules about sex discrimination in education on hold in half of US

Harris / TBA 2024 / Democrats Demonstrate "Our Democracy"

• What is 'price gouging' and why is VP Harris proposing to ban it?

  • Harris lays out economic plan

• Chicago Police Say Democratic Convention Won't Replay 1968 Protest Chaos

• Ahead of DNC in Chicago, Locals Have Mixed Feelings About the Event - The New York Times

Trump / Right / Jan6

• Vance plane makes emergency landing due to malfunction

• Trump's finances boosted by crypto and sales of branded Bibles

  • Trump made $300k from selling bibles - but owes $100m

• Trump ropes Tulsi Gabbard for debate prep, in hopes of having a fighting chance against Harris

  • Trump Is Pissed at Harris for Trapping Him in Two Debates

• Did Federal Prosecutors Suborn Perjury? - by John A. Lucas

  As Tartaglione tells it, Epstein returned to their shared cell after a meeting with the federal prosecutors. He told his cellmate that the prosecutors were fishing for a plea deal with him if he would provide damaging information about Trump that would support his impeachment. It didn’t matter whether it was true or not. Tartaglione asked whether Epstein knew Trump. Epstein acknowledged that although he did know Trump, they didn’t like each other. When Tartaglione asked why, Epstein described how Trump had kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago because he, Epstein, was there with an under-aged girl.

• New Video Appears to Show DC Police Units Planting a J6 Pipe Bomb - The Last Refuge

  Shortly after 12:51pm a DC police SUV appears next to the park bench where the pipe bomb was discovered. A man with a bag exits the SUV, points to the bench, pulls up his right coat collar to obscure his face from the camera located across the street, then walks to the bench with the bag. The “pipe bomb” device allegedly was found at 1:05 p.m. by a plainclothes officer from the Capitol Police.

• (21 Jun 2024) There’s a problem with that ‘bullet in flight’ photo of Trump. | by Haje Jan Kamps | Jul, 2024 | Medium

  I haven’t seen the EXIF data of the photo, but in a NPR interview, the photographer tells NPR he was shooting at a1/8000th of a second shutter speed. That seems consistent with the photo: The people in the background are thrown out of focus,

  The bullet flying 18cm in 1/8000th of a second, would indicate a speed of 1,440 meters per second or 4,724 ft/s (feet per second). For 20cm, the same numbers are 1,600 m/s or 5,249 ft/s. There’s a problem: Whether chambered in .223 or 5.56, the muzzle velocity (i.e. the speed of the bullet as it leaves the barrel) is around 3,200. And most sources say that the shooter was around 450 feet away.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• A woman is arrested for allegedly trying to steal Elvis' Graceland

World

• Five days inside the Darién Gap, one of the most dangerous journeys in the world

Israel

• Hezbollah Touts Rocket Cave Network Capable of Underground Launches

• Israel expects UK, France to help hit Iran if Tehran attacks, Katz tells counterparts | The Times of Israel

  Israel expects Britain, France and other US allies to join it in taking military action against Iran should the Islamic Republic launch a promised assault on Israel to avenge the killing of Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh, Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Friday. Katz made the comments as he met with the British and French foreign ministers making a joint trip to Israel, as international efforts to mediate a ceasefire in Gaza intensified, amid heightened fears in Israel that Iran and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon could attack Israel in retaliation for last month’s killings of Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr. Katz told British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné “that Israel expects France and Britain to publicly clarify to Iran that it is unacceptable for it to attack Israel and that if Iran attacks, the US-led coalition will join Israel not only in defense but also in an attack against significant targets in Iran,” his office said in a Hebrew-language statement after the meeting.

• Israel feared legal trouble over US advocacy efforts, leaked files suggest

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine Destroys Key Russian Bridge as It Presses On With Offensive

• Ukraine says it downed 14 Russian drones overnight

• Ukraine Destroys Key Bridge In Kursk Region Using US-Supplied HIMARS | ZeroHedge

China

• China's Youth Unemployment Climbs for First Time Since February

Health / Medicine

• Addressing Dementia Risk Factors Could Reduce Dementia Rates by 45 Percent

• Uterus transplant trial ends with bundles of joy

• Humans undergo midlife molecule changes in 40s and 60s

• Lawsuit claims Emory lost part of patient's skull, billed $19K for replacement

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• What is mpox, where are the outbreaks and will the virus spread?

• Another global health warning

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Zombie Wells: A $280B Problem the U.S. Can't Ignore

• Florida is building the largest environmental restoration project

• The superstorms from space that could end modern life

• Study finds lands used for grazing can worsen or help climate change