2024-08-23
etc
Horseshit
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Sydney aquarium filled with song after sea birds mourn death of gay penguin
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Video sextortion guides and manuals found on TikTok and YouTube
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The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite
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Gastroenteritis Rates Higher in Seine Events Than in Previous Olympics
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Beyond gene-edited babies: the possible paths for tinkering with human evolution
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Plant-based meat substitutes not popular among mainstream flexitarians
celebrity gossip
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Lynch Yacht Sinking Off Sicily Proves as Baffling as It Is Tragic - The New York Times
It was a tragic and mystifying turn of events for Mr. Lynch, 59, who had spent years seeking to clear his name and was finally inaugurating a new chapter in his life. Experts wondered how a $40 million yacht, so robust and stable could have been sunk by a storm near a port within minutes. “It drives me insane,” said Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, which in 2022 bought the company, Perini, that made the Bayesian. “Following all the proper procedures, that boat is unsinkable.”
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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University of Kentucky to disband diversity office after GOP lawmakers pushed anti-DEI legislation.
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Columbia Agonistes - The Ivy Exile
when it comes to the fraught Gordian Knot that is the issue of Israel and Gaza, there can be no pivoting to some external villain. Regardless of the merits of individual scholars’ work, the overarching narrative that many of the more militant protestors have absorbed is that every conflict boils down to loveable scrappy underdogs heroically battling some odious combination of the Nazis, the Klan, the Afrikaners, and the Evil Empire from Star Wars. Nuance is irrelevant, careful parsing of historical contingencies a distraction, with so very just a cause. It's a childish, reductionist, thoroughly unproductive worldview, but it’s what they’ve been taught and, even more, it’s what’s been incentivized. For decades elite higher education has been content to hawk whatever was convenient, what brought in the grants and pacified the activists, and some of that has consisted of maligning entire ethnic groups and feeding fierce young radicals’ delusions of grandeur. It was practically inevitable that universities would come to regret dumping substance in favor of “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas,” to quote a famous Columbian. Students really deserve at least a prorated refund for at least the last year, and hopefully alumni will practice their own form of protest.
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Most community college students plan to get 4-year degrees. Few do
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Chick-fil-A is reportedly launching a streaming service for some reason
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Crowdstrike is mad that its competitors are making fun of its extinction-level own goal.
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Oh boy. Intel can extend their string of successes to cars! Intel and Karma partner to develop software-defined car architecture
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Good News, PC Games Are Starting to Ditch Annoying Launchers
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Animal Crossing mobile shuts down in November but will live on in new app
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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AATIP releases 1,500 pages of UFO-related documents via FOIA
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NASA wants clarity on Orion heat shield issue before stacking Artemis II rocket
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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Suffers New Glenn Rocket Mishaps - Bloomberg
Blue Origin LLC sustained failures in recent weeks of testing including a factory mishap that damaged a portion of a future New Glenn rocket, the long-awaited centerpiece of the Jeff Bezos-backed startup’s push to take on SpaceX. The upper portion of one rocket crumpled into itself, in part due to worker error, while it was being moved to a storage hangar, according to people familiar with the situation. In a separate incident, another upper rocket portion failed during stress testing and exploded, the people said. Repairs are underway, another person said, noting there were no injuries during either episode.
The previously unreported incidents illustrate the hurdles Blue Origin is grappling with while ramping up production of New Glenn, which is four years overdue. At the same time, new Chief Executive Officer Dave Limp has hired a slate of executives to shake the company out of a years-long R&D slump. Blue Origin is rushing to meet a tight deadline to debut the rocket in October for a NASA mission called Escapade. New Glenn’s launch is set for roughly two months from now because at that time Mars will be close enough to Earth. After October, the planets won’t align like that again for roughly another two years.
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NASA says data will guide whether astronauts return on troubled Starliner
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Spacesuits of Boeing-launched astronauts are incompatible with SpaceX craft
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style
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84% want stronger online privacy laws, but Congress's corruption stalls progress
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The Worm Turns: House, Senate Investigate TSA Surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard
Lastly, Iowa Senator and Ranking Member of the Budget Committee Chuck Grassley sent a letter of his own, demanding Pekoske “name all TSA employees who were provided information obtained through surveillance of Lt. Col. Gabbard” while explaining if “that information shared outside TSA” and “if so, which agencies?” Grassley also asked why a decision was “made to include Lt. Col. Gabbard’s congressional portrait in the TSA database,” rather than her passport photo or other government ID as usual. Grassley also asked for a broad explanation for the use of resources given an apparent total lack of investigative results:
The story of Gabbard’s surveillance was first broken by Uncover DC on August 4th. When multiple Air Marshals signed up as clients of the high-profile firm Empower Oversight, more details came out. Over the weekend, Empower president Tristan Leavitt tweeted a screenshot from the internal TSA system, appearing to show Gabbard was placed under surveillance by virtue of her inclusion in the Quiet Skies program, which is listed as the “requestor” of Special Mission Coverage.
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USPS plans rural slowdown after election to cut costs - The Washington Post
Top U.S. Postal Service officials are considering plans to allow slower mail delivery in the coming months for long-distance and rural service to cut costs at the financially troubled agency — but not until after the election. The changes would give customers within 50 miles of the Postal Service’s largest processing facilities faster delivery service, which accounts for the vast majority of mail and packages, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told The Washington Post. But the agency cannot afford to maintain the same model for deliveries into far-flung areas, he said. That could add an additional day to current delivery timetables.