2024-08-28
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(Video) Archeologists to delay most excavation of Gobekli Tepe by 150 years
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Why We Can and Should Domesticate Raccoons
The potential impact of domesticated raccoons on human society is vast and largely unexplored. As we continue to push the boundaries of genetic science and animal behavior, the domestication of raccoons represents an exciting frontier in human-animal relationships.
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Normal people are the vast majority. That’s one definition of normal: at most 2 sigmas away from the average. I found that they often don’t like anything too far from average either. They try to fix their own weirdness. They reject external weirdness. Weird people differ. Most suffer in childhood, trying to accommodate the overwhelming majority of normalcy. Some of us are lucky and able to embrace weirdness and move on to be functioning adults. Sadly, some get left behind and never adapt.
weird people are subversive. They have a healthy disrespect for rules. That’s because many rules in the world are designed for normal people. So we learn, from childhood, to circumvent those that don’t make sense for us. It’s a survival mechanism. As adults, this turns into a huge asset. Knowing that most rules suck for edge cases lets you see the world with a fresh perspective. And that’s how progress begins: weird people not tolerating “how things are done here”, and pushing for better ways. I stress it begins with weird people, because change often consolidates with hard work from normal people.
Horseshit
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50% of Freelance Linguists Have Thought About Changing Career
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Great Stagnation: When Did It Actually Begin? - Bloomberg
“What happened in 1971?” It is one of the most important and debated questions in US economic history, and new research suggests that the answer may be lurking a few decades earlier — in 1948, to be precise. At the start of the 1970s, wage growth slowed down, productivity growth rates fell, and US economic performance deteriorated. There were some interruptions in these trends, such as the cheery mid-1990s, but they mostly held for more than 40 years. Many parts of the US, especially if they have deindustrialized, continue to struggle with this legacy today.
- If you asked someone in 1948 what current event was going to be causing problems for the next century, i suspect many people would have mentioned "nuclear testing."
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Cocaine kingpin's wildest legacy: what can be done with Pablo Escobar's hippos?
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Struggling to Unlock Your Phone? You Might Have Lost Your Fingerprints | WIRED
Fingerprints are becoming a ubiquitous entry device—used for background checks, travel security, and to open car doors without keys. But this unique identifier made of ridges and furrows can fade or temporarily wear down—and an increasing number of people are finding out just how easy it is to lose their fingerprints, often with maddening consequences. It’s natural to lose our fingerprints as we age, as the skin on the hands thins and the loops, whorls, and arches degenerate and even out, says dermatologist Roger N. Haber, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago, who studies fingerprint loss. But for people of all ages, modern life also features an increasing amount of what Haber calls “microtrauma”—repeated wear on the fingertips, which possibly contributes to an increased loss of fingerprints, although this has never been formally studied, he says.
- There have been those saying "fingerprint ID has issues" for a while; but they were perceived as standing in the way of profits.
Obit
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Missouri AG's legal war against Media Matters shot down by federal judge
A federal judge ordered Missouri's attorney general to halt an investigation into Media Matters for America, a nonprofit journalism organization that earned Elon Musk's wrath when it published an article showing that Musk's X platform placed advertisements next to pro-Nazi posts.
Media Matters has also "likely shown that their reporting was not defamatory and therefore was protected speech," Mehta wrote. In its public response to the November 2023 Media Matters article, "X did not deny that advertising in fact had appeared next to the extremist posts on the day in question," Mehta wrote.
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Court to decide who can see secret evidence U.S. has filed against TikTok
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Judge acquits web dev accused of spreading fake news that led to UK riots
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Zuckerberg says Biden administration pressured Meta to censor Covid-19 content
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Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
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Mark Zuckerberg says White House pressured Meta over Covid-19 content
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Mark Zuckerberg: Covid censorship was wrong and I wish I'd fought it
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that states and individual plaintiffs who challenged the Biden administration's censorship complex don't have standing to sue because they cannot establish a clear link between the government's pressure and the platform's actions.
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Telegram
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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John Rawls and the death of Western Marxism
If one felt like putting the point polemically, one might say that the “no-bullshit” Marxists, after having removed all of the bullshit from Marxism, discovered that there was nothing left but liberalism. This is not quite right though, because what they actually discovered was that the new, modernized, reinvigorated liberalism propounded by Rawls was both expressively and rhetorically superior to the reconstructed Marxism they had been trying to defend.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Black Myth: Wukong Devs Told Streamers to Avoid Politics in Their Playthroughs
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Updates to MS Copilot to bring enterprise data protection to more organizations
- Would this be the same "protection" that keeps showing up in the news in the form of "$X hacked massive data dump" stories?
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Samsung TVs will get 7 years of updates, starting with 2023 models
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Intel has hired Morgan Stanley, other advisers for activist defense
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Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Thirty-Three: Uber Isn't Profitable Yet
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Nvidia employees can work 7 days a week until 2 a.m.But few leave because of pay
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Calif. tech companies see laid-off workers as 'table scraps,' recruiters say
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Intel board member quit after differences over chipmaker's revival plan
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Walmart Takes on Amazon by Adding Pre-Owned Watches, Collectibles to Marketplace
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Nvidia is world's 'most important stock,' adds pressure to Q2 earnings
“It’s the most important stock in the world right now,” EMJ Capital’s Eric Jackson told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” last week. “If they lay an egg, it would be a major problem for the whole market. I think they’re going to surprise to the upside.”
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Who Really Is Barack Obama? A Counterintelligence Inquiry
what happens when you employ a professional counterintelligence eye and look at today’s Democrats?
What jumps out immediately is the shocking extent to which foreign spies and extremists have gained a foothold at the upper echelons of the Democrats. Over the past 15 years, people possessing connections and views which would have been show-stoppers until quite recently have instead risen to the commanding heights of the Democratic party. President Bill Clinton endured a scandal relating to Chinese Communist money and his 1996 reelection campaign, a troublesome impropriety that’s been largely forgotten. But it’s not like the Clinton cabinet included people with questionable ties to Beijing and its spies.
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TX home raids in voter fraud inquiry aim to intimidate, civil rights group says
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No smoking in your own home, California city orders residents
Harris / Democrats
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Democrats Still Hope to Remake the Supreme Court in 2025 - The Dispatch
If Democrats capture the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, Whitehouse said, Senate Democrats would be “virtually certain” to pass a “Supreme Court reform” bill by a simple majority, evading the current 60-vote requirement for legislation. The senator said Democrats would tie their Supreme Court legislation—imposing 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and establishing ethics and recusal rules—to an omnibus package that would include a bill creating a national right to abortion and other top Democratic priorities.
- and unicorns and marshmallows for all, too!
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The Democratic convention's surprise guest: Covid
They came hoping for Beyoncé. They left with Covid. Fresh off of a jam-packed week of Democratic National Convention events, reports of attendees’ testing positive for Covid are rolling in. They include members of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign staff, who are now contending with sickness from Covid, according to two sources close to the campaign with knowledge of the cases. There is at least some concern the developments could affect staffing at events this week, they added.
Trump / Right / Jan6
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The Far Right Is Becoming Obsessed With Race and IQ - The Atlantic
That term—noticer—has become a thinly veiled shorthand within segments of the right to refer to someone who subscribes to “race science” or “race realism,” the belief that racial inequities are biological. In his interview with Kirk, Sailer noticed that “Blacks tend to commit murder about 10 times as often per capita as whites, and it’s not just all explained by poverty.” Sailer, one of the most prominent peddlers of race science in the United States, has made a career out of noticing things. (Last year, he published an anthology of his writing titled Noticing.) He has claimed that Black people tend to have lower IQs than white people (while Asians and Ashkenazi Jews tend to have higher IQs). Sailer says that nurture plays a role, but generally concludes that differences between racial groups exist in large part because of inherent traits.
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Ronald Reagan was more doctrinaire – and pragmatic – than you remember
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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Marine Corps infantry's secret weapon: A $9.95 unofficial website
“The doctrine always lags somewhat,” Mills told Marine Corps Times. “Our standard infantry company and platoon publications are several years old, maybe even a decade old. So, they don’t talk a ton about small tactical [drones].” McBreen said he’s occasionally noticed spikes in the site’s popularity over the years, notably around 2005 when he published “Night Warrior,” a training guide for nighttime combat. Most of the time, he said, he can’t tell what’s driving a new surge in traffic.
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Green Lights and Red Lines: Responding to Iran's Election Hacking
The attack on the Trump campaign is not the first time Iran has attempted to interfere in a presidential election. In 2020, Iranian-sponsored hackers compromised a state voter website. Then, posing as a far-right group, they emailed Democratic voters, threatening violence if they did not vote for Trump. They also sent Facebook messages and emails to Republican members of Congress and the Trump campaign, claiming to be volunteers for the Proud Boys. The messages claimed that Democrats were going to use “serious security vulnerabilities” in voter registration websites to “edit mail-in ballots or even register non-existent voters.” These messages included a video claiming to portray the fraudulent casting of ballots via the Federal Voting Assistance Program for military and overseas voters. This effort was caught quickly and exposed before it could do damage. But it demonstrated both Iran’s will to undermine Americans’ faith in their election systems and also the capability to use domestic flash points, like the Proud Boys, as a wedge.
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U.S. Ambassador says Canadians are consuming 'unhealthy' amount of American news
World
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Macron "Rejects Yielding Power" Following Left's Victory in French Election - accuracy.org
Update: it's now official, in a just-released communiqué Macron has rejected a government led by the New Popular Front (NPF). It's an unprecedented situation in the history of the 5th French Republic: the loser in the election effectively rejects yielding power to the winner. He explains it by the fact that his "responsibility is to ensure that the country be neither blocked nor weakened", arguing that were he to nominate a NPF government they'd soon be censored by parliament and destituded.
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France to trial ban on mobile phones at school for children under 15
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Korea's birth rate drive struggles to sway 'YOLO' generation
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
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(Jul 2024) Genetics can predict height, cancer risks, neuropsychiatric diseases but not IQ?
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Pfizer Follows Lilly with Website Selling Directly to Patients
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Living in tree-filled neighborhoods may reduce risk of heart disease,study shows
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Tattoo ink sold on Amazon has high levels of weird and rare bacteria