2024-08-30

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• Deeper into defining 'Cancel Culture' with Scott Alexander

  The success of a coalition to oppose Cancel Culture won’t be defined by fringe cases. At its core, free speech culture is about tolerating difference; so the ability to disagree about fringe cases and still work together is the great virtue of free speech culture over its alternatives. If, for reasons of conscience or uncertainty, not everyone pulls in the same direction on every individual case, it shouldn’t stop us from fixing the problem overall.

  we want to thank Scott Alexander once again for engaging in this topic so thoughtfully, and for giving us the opportunity to dig deeper into our definition of Cancel Culture so we can, hopefully, all achieve more clarity.

Horseshit

• Boston suburb residents raised $20K after officials shut down boy’s ice cream stand - ABC News

  Bored and looking for something to do this summer, Danny Doherty hatched a plan to raise money for his brother's hockey team by selling homemade ice cream. But a few days after setting up a stand and serving up vanilla, shaved chocolate and fluffernutter to about 20 people, Danny's family received a letter from the Norwood Board of Health ordering it shut down. Town officials had received a complaint and said that the 12-year-old's scheme violated the Massachusetts Food Code, a state regulation.

• The truth behind US firm's sci-fi plan of providing sunlight after dark

• 'They handled me like a carcass ': why are so many men now 'manscaping'?

• Family fishes out unexpected AirTag in child's pocket at Tennessee Aquarium

• MTA Says No More Free Bus Rides for Fare Evaders

• Worker rescued after allegedly left stranded on Colorado mountain by colleagues

• Wells Fargo employee found dead at desk after 4 days

Obit

• R.I.P. Journalist, Editor and Counterculture Enthusiast, Steve Silberman

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Brazil Threatens to Block Access to X Within 24 Hours Due to Refusal to Censor

• 3rd circuit rules companies are liable for their algorithms

Telegram

• Pavel Durov is released under 5M euro bail

• Let's talk about free speech after Pavel Durov's indictment

• Former Employee Claims Durov Took Money from the Russian Oligarch He Criticized

Musk

• Can Nostr Make Twitter’s Dreams Come True?

  Invented by a pseudonymous programmer and overwhelmingly funded by grants from non-profit foundations, this decentralized, free, and open-source protocol has been quietly evolving for the past three years. Like bitcoin, Nostr is a community-run digital network highly resistant to censorship and corruption. It has 40,000 weekly active users and a growing ecosystem of clients and applications ranging from social media to long-form publishing to payments.

  Nostr is only necessary because our existing internet is so broken. Fifteen years ago, social media seemed destined to decentralize the world and give power back to the people. In 2009, we watched as Arab Spring activists used Twitter and Facebook to organize, coordinate, and help topple several long-standing dictatorships. The promise was that these new social platforms, designed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, could help liberate the masses. It was intoxicating—but turned out to be a mirage. The Arab revolutions stalled out when brutal military regimes cracked down. These platforms became tools for spying and censoring their users. X and Facebook have helped journalists and human rights activists reach bigger audiences, but they haven't fulfilled their revolutionary promise.

• Climate scientists flee Twitter as hostility surges

• Brazil Threatens to Ban Elon Musk's X

  • Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts

  • Brazil judge blocks Starlink accounts as X suspension deadline looms

• Third Documented Tesla Cybertruck Fire in Less Than a Month Raises Questions

Electric / Self Driving cars

• NYC will build 600 new curbside EV chargers across city

• Jaguar tells owners of older I-Pace EV to park outdoors due to battery fire risk

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• What to do with unwanted political spam texts

• Yelp sues Google for antitrust violations

• India approves $8.5B Reliance-Disney entertainment mega-merger

• Threads deepens its ties to the open social web, a.k.a. the 'Fediverse'

• State-backed attackers and commercial surveillance vendors use the same exploits

• AT&T just had another outage. Why does this keep happening to them?

• Verizon taps another satellite operator to make texting from anywhere easier

• Major publishers sue Florida over 'unconstitutional' book ban law

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI and Anthropic sign safety agreement with US Government

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Astronomers back review of satellite swarms flying without environment checks

• SpaceX Falcon 9 booster 'tipped over' into the ocean during landing

• FAA grounds SpaceX after rocket falls over in flames at landing

Crypto con games

• Why Texas Republicans are souring on crypto

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Q2 GDP Unexpectedly Revised Higher On Bizarre Surge In Personal Consumption | ZeroHedge

  Just two hours after (ultra) discount retailer Dollar General reported catastrophic earnings, moments ago the Biden Bureau of Economic analysis decided to pull a BLS, and reported in its first revision of Q2 GDP that the US actually grew much stronger than expected on the back of - drumroll - an unexpected surge in personal consumption.

• Dollar General shares crater 20% as retailer cuts outlook

  • Dollar General warns poorer US consumers are running out of money

  Lower-income American households are running out of money at the end of every month, the discount retailer Dollar General said as it released dismal results that drove its shares down almost 30 per cent. Chief executive Todd Vasos said that these core customers, who account for about 60 per cent of Dollar General’s sales, come predominantly from households earning less than $35,000 a year and were now feeling “financially constrained”. “The majority of them state that they feel worse off financially than they were six months ago as higher prices, softer employment levels and increased borrowing costs have negatively impacted low-income consumer incentive,” he said.

• Subway’s $6.99 Foot-Long Deal Sparks a Revolt Among Largest Franchisee.

• Amazon is using my grocery purchases to sell me prescription drugs

• Hindenburg Target Tingo Fails to Respond to SEC Fraud Lawsuit - Bloomberg

  On Wednesday, US District Judge Jesse Furman granted the SEC’s request for a default judgment in the case, saying that the fraud is “brazen.” The SEC was seeking to force the corporate defendants to pay a penalty of more than $1.15 million each and Mmobuosi almost $32 million — reflecting the $25 million he misappropriated and three times the more than $2.1 million he made from insider trading. “The magnitude of the fraud is quite something,” Furman said at a hearing. While lawyers for the corporate defendants initially appeared in the case, they didn’t respond to subsequent orders from Furman. Robert Horowitz, an attorney for Tingo Group, told the SEC in a letter in March that he was awaiting the completion of a probe by police in Nigeria that could exonerate the companies. A judge in Delaware found Tingo Group in contempt Tuesday for failing to produce internal files.

• Why are online returns so hard?

• Volkswagen Plans to Shift from Selling Cars to Offering 'Vehicles on Demand'

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• How California Became a New Center of Political Corruption - The New York Times

  A heavy concentration of power at Los Angeles City Hall, the receding presence of local news media, a population that often tunes out local politics and a growing Democratic supermajority in state government have all helped insulate officeholders from damage, political analysts said.

• From 'Israel Has a Right To Defend Itself' to 'Immediate Ceasefire': Rep. Susan Wild Caught Sending Contradictory Letters to Constituents, Stating Dueling Views on War

  When two of Rep. Susan Wild’s constituents, a mother-daughter pair, wrote the Pennsylvania Democrat urging her to support Israel in its fight against Hamas, they received not one but two letters in response. One declared support for Israel and its "right to defend itself." The other called for international pressure on the Jewish state and an "immediate ceasefire." The dueling letters, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, were both sent on May 21 and signed by Rep. Wild herself. They appear to be stock letters drafted by Wild's office. While pushing out such letters to constituents is standard for a member of Congress, Wild's letters provide drastically different assessments of the war that are now public after Wild inadvertently sent one version to the mother and the other to the daughter.

• Judges Rule Big Tech's Free Ride on Section 230 Is Over

  Want to know why it’s so difficult to touch the business models of extraordinarily powerful big tech firms? Well, for years, a law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act granted them a de facto Get Out of Jail free card, as long as they could say ‘the algorithm did it.’ I don’t tend to expect good things from the Federal judiciary, but on Tuesday, the Third Circuit issued a shocking opinion rolling that law back, and ending the liability shield that large tech firms use to commit bad actions without consequence. “This is a really substantial and important decision,” wrote legal scholar Zephyr Teachout. I emailed a political contact who has worked in this space and has tangled with big tech for more than ten years to ask how important this decision is. His response? “HUGE.”

  this Third Circuit decision just dropped on a random Tuesday. No one expected three judges to upend the business model of large tech firms, and shake up decades of precedent. But they did just that. For sure, this news will trickle out, every big tech CEO is or will get a briefing from their panicked general counsel. Every law firm in the country is likely writing a client alert about this opinion. Plaintiff lawyers are sharpening their pens and examining new legal theories to go after tech platforms. Academics are ripping up their lectures on internet law. Big tech-friendly scholars are very upset. Supreme Court watchers are or will consider when and how this gets to the highest court. But it’ll take a few days, or maybe weeks, to internalize what just happened.

  Because TikTok’s “algorithm curates and recommends a tailored compilation of videos for a user’s FYP based on a variety of factors, including the user’s age and other demographics, online interactions, and other metadata,” it becomes TikTok’s own speech. And now TikTok has to answer for it in court. Basically, the court ruled that when a company is choosing what to show kids and elderly parents, and seeks to keep them addicted to sell more ads, they can’t pretend it’s everyone else’s fault when the inevitable horrible thing happens.

  • Third Circuit's Section 230 TikTok Ruling Deliberately Ignores Precedent

• Harvard Professor Has Plan to Persuade Supreme Court Justices to Retire

Harris / Democrats

• Joe Rogan blasts MSNBC for ‘deceptively editing’ comments that made it seem like he backs Kamala Harris.

Trump / Right / Jan6

• Photos of European influencers used for pro-Trump propaganda on fake X accounts

• Trump Threatens to Jail Mark Zuckerberg for Life Over Election: Book

  According to Politico, the coffee table book — titled Saving America — accuses Mark Zuckerberg of plotting to usurp the 2020 election in favor of President Joe Biden, and warns that the Meta CEO will “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he crosses Trump again.

  The former president is referring to a conspiracy theory spread in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, had used a $350 million investment in the Center for Tech and Civic Life — a Chicago-based nonprofit helping provide election administration resources to thousands of precincts during the Covid-19 pandemic — to help rig the election against him.

  While Zuckerburg can grovel for the forgiveness of House Republicans, it clearly won’t stop Trump from continuing to use him as a scapegoat in his election conspiracies — especially if he once again loses in November.

  • Trump Threatens Mark Zuckerberg with Life in Prison If He Uses Facebook to Cheat

  • Trump threatens to send Meta's Mark 'Zuckerbucks' to prison if reelected

• X flags NPR story on Trump, Arlington as unsafe

  Trump was at the cemetery Monday to mark the anniversary of the Kabul airport attack that killed 13 U.S. service members amid the withdrawal from Afghanistan. His campaign disputed NPR’s account of the incident, denying there was any physical altercation “as described.” The Army defended the cemetery official after the incident, saying the employee was only trying to enforce the rules that prohibit political activity on the cemetery grounds when they were reportedly shoved aside.

  NPR has been a frequent target of Republicans and other conservative critics for years. The public broadcaster recently faced a slew of internal turmoil and external backlash after a top editor at the outlet publicly criticized its editorial practices, accusing it of left-leaning bias.

  • X labeled an unflattering NPR story about Donald Trump as 'unsafe'

• JD Vance urges billionaire Peter Thiel to help bankroll Trump campaign

  Vance’s plea to Thiel, his former Silicon Valley boss, came in an interview with the Financial Times in Wisconsin, one of the swing states that could decide November’s presidential election. Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has been reluctant to support any candidates in this year’s election despite donating to the Republican campaign in 2016 and sponsoring Vance’s US senate bid in 2022. “I’m going to keep on talking to Peter and persuading him that — you know he’s obviously been exhausted by politics a little bit — but he’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose and if Kamala Harris is president,” Vance told the FT.

• 1950's Ireland was what Project 2025 wants the USA to be

• Trump's Truth Social spree: QAnon, sexism and threats of vengeance

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Jaws of Life stolen from Oakland firefighters responding to a call - Los Angeles Times

• Man posing as teen YouTuber gets 17 years for global sextortion scheme

• The FBI is failing to report child sex abuse cases, watchdog finds

• Alaska man busted with 10K+ child sex abuse images despite his encrypted apps

World

• New Taliban Law Bans Women From Speaking in Public.

• Violent Drug Gangs Bring Mayhem to Western Europe

• French left torn after Mélenchon threatens procedure to remove Macron from office

  In an open letter published in the newspaper La Tribune dimanche, Mélenchon and his top deputies accuse President Emmanuel Macron of an "institutional coup de force" and "abuse of power." In their "solemn warning," they call on the president to "accept the results of the legislative elections" and appoint the NFP's candidate Lucie Castets as prime minister, failing which LFI would trigger Article 68 of the Constitution, which allows the president to be removed from office in the event of a "dereliction of duty."

• What is Happening in France? - by Cyril Hédoin

  if Macron’s refusal to nominate Castets is not unconstitutional or “undemocratic,” it is probably a political mistake. If the current situation benefits anybody, it is to the far-right populists. They are not involved in the bargain since nobody wants to govern with them. But now it will be easy for Le Pen and Co to argue that the “elites” have conspired to make sure that the RN would not take office while not having any constructive program to propose. The mess that results only strengthens the far-right’s narrative that they are not only legitimate to govern but also the only ones able to do so. It does nothing to lessen the resentment that led a significant part of the electorate to vote for the far-right.

Israel

• Israel agrees to pauses in fighting in Gaza for polio vaccination

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Notion to terminate accounts with Russian billing history regardless of location

• Top Ukrainian pilot killed when US-made F-16 fighter jet crashed

  • Newly delivered Ukrainian F-16 crashed

China

• Top Chinese general tells US to stop colluding with Taiwan

• US Government funding yielded patents for China-based researchers

• As China creates more space junk the US military still plays orbital traffic cop

Health / Medicine

• Type 2 diabetes drug associated with 35% lower risk of dementia, study finds

• Bugs, mold, mildew found in Boar's Head plant linked to deadly listeria outbreak

  • CDC warns against eating recalled deli meat as deadly listeria outbreak expands

• Nursing doubts: Is breastfeeding good?

  the evidence for breastfeeding is overwhelmingly observational: It’s not based on experiments, but rather looking at the existing population and “observing” that breastfeeding is correlated with having mildly fewer infections (of many kinds) and slightly lower obesity. It may also be correlated with better outcomes in terms of allergies, diabetes, lymphoma, colitis, Crohn’s disease, or later IQ. Observational evidence is disturbing because correlations are bad. Even if breastfeeding did nothing, people think it’s good, so the same parents who breastfeed more tend to have higher socioeconomic status and provide lots of other goodies too. Babies that wear baby Rolex watches are probably healthier on average. But that’s because their parents are rich, not because Rolexes are good for you. Could breastfeeding be like that?

  Why is breastfeeding sacred? Why do I feel so uncomfortable even examining the evidence? I mean, ultrasonic humidifiers might be bad for you, but you run 3 ultrasonic humidifiers in your house and no one bats an eye! I think breastfeeding is different because… public health people decided it should be, and we’ve internalized their messaging. But just because the public health people might be over their skis doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

• How to Solve Our Obesity Crisis

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Summer COVID surge shows we may have to return to 2020 pandemic measures

• Increasing Mortality Rates in the US, but Not from Covid-19

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Water buffalo Giant 'living tractors' are bringing nature back to post-industrial wastelands

• California Is Turning to Robots for Wildfire Prevention

• Bioceres' GMO Wheat Is Safe for Production, US Says

• EPA Rejects Plastics Industry's Fuzzy Math That Misleads Customers

• Are Meta's carbon emissions shrinking? Depends on how you look at it

• New research suggests a major earthquake on the West Coast could be imminent

• Lego plans to ditch oil in its bricks for pricier renewable plastic

• Rare deluge could hit parts of Sahara that never get rain this time of year

• You just lived through the most humid summer on record