2024-09-09

Horseshit

• NASA discovers Earth's electrical field at last after 60-year search

• Older cars, trucks with dangerous defects aren't getting fixed

• For security, we have to stop picking up the phone | TechCrunch

• Lamar Jackson, Ravens disagree with overturned TD call vs. Chiefs - Yahoo Sports

• Different universe: Elite Human Capital Is Not Just IQ

  Recently, I wrote about how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was caught red handed being corrupt, and MAGA rallied around him. Democrats, in contrast, are more likely to dump politicians when their crimes become too obvious, as did the GOP before the descent into Trumpism. The fact that EHC types are more reflective people makes them care more about truth and avoiding hypocrisy and the most blatant forms of corruption.

  Although EHC types can make a lot of mistakes, it’s inevitable that they will rule and it’s mostly a good thing that they do. I think a society where most elites could stomach someone like Trump would have so much corruption that it would head towards collapse. This is why conservatives cannot build scientific institutions, and only a very small number of credible journalistic outlets. Right-wingers are discriminated against in academia and the media, but they mostly aren’t in these professions because they select out of them, since they lack intellectual curiosity and a concern for truth. If it doesn’t make them money or flatter their ego in a very simplistic way — in contrast to the more complicated and morally substantive ways in which liberals improve their own self-esteem — conservatives are not interested. Conservatives complain about liberals “virtue signalling,” but one way to avoid that is to not care about virtue at all. And only by forsaking any ideals higher than “destroy the enemy” can a movement fall in line behind someone like Donald Trump.

Musk

• The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years

• Musk now controls two thirds of all active satellites

• Brazil's X ban drives outraged Bolsonaro supporters to rally for free speech

• Twitter Runs on Hate – But Its Users Don't Reflect Real Life

• 'Can't live without it': alarm at Musk's Starlink dominance in Brazil's Amazon

• Elon Musk on pace to become first trillionaire by 2027, report says

Electric / Self Driving cars

• UK electric car drivers should be charged per mile, say campaigners

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Exclusive | Animal sacrifices on the rise in Queens: 'It's open season'

  Animal sacrifices are surging in Queens, with chickens, pigs and rats being tortured, mutilated or killed in “twisted” religious rituals in parkland surrounding Jamaica Bay, The Post has learned. In a little over a month, at least nine wounded animals or carcasses have been discovered in the federally-managed Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Broad Channel — including five live pigs with partially severed ears. Creatures recovered from the revolting scene also include a near-dead baby rat tied up in a bag with chicken bones; a freshly-decapitated chicken head; a live hen in distress; and a dead dog with its neck snapped.

• There Are Only Two Shakers Left. They’ve Still Got Utopia in Their Sights. - The New York Times

  The youngest Shaker in the world is 67 years old, and his name is Arnold. He lives alongside Sister June, 86, in a magnificent brick building designed to sleep about 70 — the dwelling house of the last active Shaker village in the world, at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. Together they constitute one of the longest-running utopian experiments in America.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• 70-year-old retiree just graduated med school. He has this advice for others

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google is losing its status as a verb

• 2nd Circuit says libraries disincentivize authoring books by lending for free

• Inside Disney’s Succession Struggle and Bob Iger’s Return to Power - The New York Times

• Goodbye Tinder, hello Strava: have 'hobby' apps become the new social networks?

• In dispute, DirecTV pushes viewers to Fubo and Sling streaming, Disney to Hulu

• Nikon sold more Z9 cameras in its first year than any flagship in past 15 years

• With more legal action on the horizon, how long before Archive.org closes?

• Cox Media Group Reveals Its 'Active Listening' Software Spies on User Convos, Clients Include Meta, Google | Tech Times

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• OS/2 2.11 SMP Woes | OS/2 Museum

  After analyzing the OS2APIC.PSD code a little, I found that it is not going to run on any SMP hardware made after 1994 or 1995. In short, the PSD refuses to install itself because it expects to find very old APIC hardware. There are likely multiple reasons why the old OS2APIC.PSD refuses to load.

  The solution is copying OS2APIC.PSD from Warp Server Advanced SMP or Warp Server for e-Business to a floppy and pointing the installer to that. The newer driver will load successfully, the installer will copy it and enable, and on the next boot, SMP support will be available.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• A review of humanity's planned expansion between the Earth and the moon

• NASA Invites Public Input on Low Earth Orbit Microgravity Strategy

• Why the return of Boeing’s Starliner is a hollow victory for crisis-hit company: There is a wider culture problem at Boeing, with staff leaving in droves for the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin, experts say.

Crypto con games

• When the Bitcoin Scammers Came for Me

Economicon / Business / Finance

• The Mysterious, Meteoric Rise of Shein

• Gen Xer with MBA can't get job despite 1,500 applications. Degrees useless

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Top US Officials Discussed Minting Trillion Dollar Coin, Memo Reveals

Harris / Democrats

• How Harris dodges scrutiny

  Over the past seven weeks, Trump has largely stuck to friendly interviewers in the right-wing bubble. This frustrates some Harris allies, who say Trump isn't getting true scrutiny. During that same period, he also held two press conferences with mainstream reporters, with a third scheduled Friday. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), routinely sits for tough interviews with mainstream reporters. Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, hasn't done a solo TV interview.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Mother of Mass Shooting Suspect Called High School with Warning.

World

• Everyone is terrified of a far-right return in Germany. It won't happen

  At the last Thuringian election in 2019, the AfD won 23.4% of the vote. This year, it won 32.8%. Consider those five years: Covid, the Ukraine war and the energy crisis caused by Germany’s blind dependence on Vladimir Putin’s gas. A country led by a fractious coalition under a chancellor whose party got less than 26%, and who seems to do whatever he does (if anything) late and unwillingly. Five years of an ideal breeding ground for anti-“system” populism and conspiracy theories – at the end of which the AfD has managed to convince less than 10% more voters in its strongest state.

  And in Germany, of course, being the biggest single party doesn’t mean you’ve “won”, because (imagine the rationality!) your seats are in proportion to your vote. Without an absolute majority, all you win is first dibs at a coalition. If everybody refuses to work with you (say, because you’re a pro-Putin fascist), tough. So the AfD won’t actually govern little Thuringia (home to only 2.5% of the German population, and falling), there’s no path for it into central government (the latest national polling last week puts it on 17.4%),

  • German businesses fear far right success will scare off much-needed workers

• It seems many Swiss referenda are based on phony signatures

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia throttles YouTube, popular with kids, celebrities and dissidents

• 'Dark fleet' suspected of transporting Russian liquefied natural gas from Arctic

China

• China "dissatisfied" with new Dutch export controls on ASML chipmaking tools

• China Will Launch Its Mars Sample Return Mission in 2028

• China's Spaceplane Lands in Gobi Desert, Ending Secretive 268-Day Mission

• China's Connected Car Collapse Is a Warning for the American Market

Health / Medicine

• Biology's a B*Tch: Reasons It's So Hard to Keep Weight Off

• The Great Escape: How Adults Are Turning to Psychedelics and Pot at Record Levels.

• Sitting All Day Can Cause Dead Butt Syndrome

• Medical clowns shorten hospital stays for children with pneumonia

• That's the point, innit? Chlorine-Treated Drinking Water Might Change Species Diversity in Gut Microbiota

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Poliovirus that infected a Chinese child in 2014 may have leaked from a lab

• CDC Confirms Human H5 Bird Flu Case in Missouri

• Fur farming a 'viral highway' that could spark next pandemic

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Metal from space junk polluting the upper atmosphere

  They found many of these particles included dust from meteors that have fallen from space, which was expected. But they were surprised to find around 10 per cent of the particles were contaminated with more than 20 elements such as copper, aluminum, lithium, niobium and hafnium, which are used in the construction of spacecraft. So far, the effects of these elements on the environment are unknown, but aerosols are involved in the formation of stratospheric ice clouds. Scientists don't know whether the metal content will change particle size or how they might interact chemically with ice and other elements floating at the top of the atmosphere.

  • (April 2021) 5,200 tons of space dust falls on Earth each year, study finds | Space

• The Texas Billionaire Who Has Greenpeace USA on the Verge of Bankruptcy

• How did volcanism trigger climate change before the eruptions started?