2024-09-26

Secular morality, Zuck's politcs, Diddy's cellmate, crime school, mad C macros, OpenAI shenanigans, Starmer promises Big Brother, Bird Flu panic don't fly, Artificial farts will save Earth

Worthy

• why we don't we have anyone asserting a secular public morality

  Thinking about transgression fetishes and queer theory leads to the next question: why is there no effective opposition to this stuff? To put it more concretely, we used to have a public morality that effectively prevented displays of triumphant perversion and transgression fetishism like the Folsom Street pride parades, even though they were technically shielded by the First Amendment. What happened to it?

etc

• Kansas water facility switches to manual control after cyber attack

Horseshit

• Intel's Turnaround Hinges on New 18A Clearwater Forest Chip

• The Art Market Is Tanking. Sotheby's Has Even Bigger Problems

• The Only 5 Bottles Your Home Bar Needs

• 'A disease in the public bloodstream': How cat memes went viral 100 years ago

• Restaurant Portions Are About to Get Smaller. Are Americans Ready?

• Family moved from US to Switzerland. The difference in quality of life is huge

• Magma in extinct volcanos may be filled with elements needed to power the future

• Desert Racers Demolish Art Carved by Ancient People in Chile

• "World-first" indoor vertical farm to produce 4M pounds of berries a year

• Neo-Nazi Telegram Users Panic Amid Crackdown and Arrest of Alleged Leaders

• Titan implosion "expected by everyone who had access to a little bit of info"

• A look under the hood of the 3D-printed, Raspberry Pi powered 'suicide pod'

• Canada's fertility rate has hit a record low. What's behind the drop?

celebrity gossip

• Brett Favre Reveals He Has Parkinson's Disease

  • apparently that affects memories of fraud first

  Brett Favre told Congress today he didn’t recall whether he knew the $1.1 million he was paid came from public funds.

• Mark Zuckerberg Is Done with Politics (Archive)

  • Mark Zuckerberg has entered his libertarian era

• P-Diddy and SBF sharing same prison cell

• Diddy's bodyguard says there are tapes of politicians at 'freak offs' and claims rapper 'learned' from other music moguls | Daily Mail Online

  Sean 'Diddy' Combs' former bodyguard revealed the disgraced rap mogul kept tapes of politicians taking part in his infamous 'freak off' sessions, and claimed his arrest is tied to an alleged corruption scandal currently gripping New York City politics. Gene Deal, a former insider who protected Diddy through the 1990s, told The Art of Dialogue podcast that the producer's indictment could expose high-profile officials and celebrities in the Big Apple.

• Sam Altman's nuclear company Oklo to start on Idaho microreactor

• Marques Brownlee says 'I hear you' after fans criticize his new wallpaper app

  Panels is meant to offer access to a curated selection of “stunning full resolution wallpapers” from digital artists, but fans aren’t happy about the subscription that comes along with it. It costs $49.99 per year (or $11.99 per month) for a Panels Plus subscription, which lets you download all the wallpapers in the app in high resolution. You can still access a more limited selection of wallpapers for free, but you can only download them in standard definition and have to watch two ads first.

  • apparently they were hosted without access controls at all.

• Elecrow responded, apologized for AI voice cloning

• Saudi prince MBS likely to use most expensive painting for a museum

Obit

• Roy Clay, a Silicon Valley pioneer who knocked down racial barriers, dies at 95

  • Roy Clay: The Story of the Black Godfather of Silicon Valley

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• ASA bans adverts for Nike and Sky for using 'dark pattern' tactics

• Social media owners top global survey of misinformation concerns

Musk

• Elon Musk calls out criminal chaos in blue city, says it reminds him of 'Joker'

• SpaceX: Every statement made by FAA Administrator Whitaker today was incorrect

• Substack's Nazi problem isn't going away

  What many people don’t know (or don’t remember) is that Cooper, the host of the “Martyr Made” podcast, was already involved in another Nazi-related controversy with a social media platform less than a year ago. He made a cameo last year when I reported on how Substack, the newsletter-hosting platform and Twitter clone2 , was promoting and profiting off of overtly white-supremacist, antisemitic, and explicitly Nazi blogs.

• It's easy to find misinformation on social media. It's even easier on X

• Elon Musk: SpaceX Will Never Reach Mars If Harris Is Elected - GreekReporter.com

Electric / Self Driving cars

• It Turns Out Charging Stations Are Cash Cows for Nearby Businesses

• Tesla Full Self Driving requires human intervention every 13 miles

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Why People Quit Religion–and How They Find Meaning Again

  First, some people leave because of cultural stagnation: They are getting more ideologically progressive, but their religious organizations are not. Often, people report intellectual reasons for leaving religion, or mention they simply outgrew their faith. Other times, respondents indicate that they cannot endorse the values of their previous religious organization, including their views on LGBTQ+ individuals, stances on gender or sexuality, or pervasive sexism and racism.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The Great AP Score Recalibration — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

• Two Nobel Prize winners want to cancel their own CRISPR patents in Europe

• Why Does Crime Go Up When School Starts? - The Atlantic

  New research complicates the uncomplicated idea that attending school is good for kids.

  “So the conclusion we came to while digging into this paper is that taking a bunch of 10-to-17-year-olds and putting them in a large building—where they’re interacting with their friends, but also maybe people who aren’t their friends—that is leading them to be engaged in crime that is reported to law-enforcement agencies, and that is leading them to be arrested at higher rates,” Karger explains. “And we have a lot of analysis showing that this relationship is causal, that these patterns occur exactly when school is in session, that they don’t happen on weekends, that they don’t happen over the summer.”

• As school threats proliferate, more than 700 students are arrested

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Overbooking – how providers divide up the bandwidth

• Apple's 80% Charging Limit for iPhone: How Much Did It Help After a Year?

• Mozilla hit with privacy complaint over Firefox user tracking

  • Firefox tracks you with “privacy preserving” feature

• Legal ping-pong in the WordPress world continues

• Hyperscalers are carving up the ocean floor into private internet highways

• Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

• Duolingo now offers a portable piano for its music course

• The Swiss government closes its Mastodon account for lack of followers

• You can pay for the brick, but you are not its master: Apple ropes off 4 GB of iPhone storage to house AI models

• Google files EU complaint about dominant Windows Server platform ties to Azure

• 11M devices infected with botnet malware hosted in Google Play

• Winamp opening up its source code to enable collaborative development

  • Winamp Releases Source Code, But Is It Really Open?

  • Winamp removed "No forking" restriction from license

• Meta acquires the Threads.com domain name

• iPhone 16 Pro's Average Screen Refresh Rate Is 80Hz, Not 120Hz

• Meta is discontinuing the Quest Pro two years after launching it

  • On the bright side, no one seems worried about "violent bigotry in the metaverse" anymore.

• Orion, Our First True Augmented Reality Glasses

  • Meta Ray-Ban's updated with real-time AI video, reminders, QR scanning

  • Why Mark Zuckerberg thinks AR glasses will replace your phone

• LG TVs start showing ads on screensavers

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• TIL: Cisco has the trademark for iOS and licenses it out to Apple | Hacker News

• So wrapped up in 'can we?' that we forgot to ask 'should we?' Cello - High Level C

  • Cello • A Fat Pointer Library

  Instead we can use the ideas behind Fat Pointers, and store our runtime information in the memory space before pointers. In essence we make all our pointers to Cello objects Fat. Then Cello pointers would be fully compatible with standard C pointers and functions (with the exception of free and realloc), but also have the information to be used by our runtime system. In this sense our runtime really does extended the language rather than create something that is conflicting.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• That Message from Your Doctor? It May Have Been Drafted by A.I.

• 'Titanic' Director James Cameron Joins Stability AI Board

  • Terminator creator James Cameron joins board of AI company

• Meta rejects EU AI pledge

• Google Paid $2.7B to Bring Back an AI Genius Who Quit in Frustration

• FTC Announces Crackdown on Deceptive AI Claims and Schemes

• Llama 3.2: Lightweight models for edge devices

• AI-Generated Malware Found in the Wild

• OpenAI CTO Mira Murati is leaving

  • Mira Murati, OpenAI Chief Technology Officer, Resigns

• OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give Sam Altman equity

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• US Space Force partners with India to open a microchip factory for next-gen tech

Crypto con games

• Why did Caroline Ellison do it?

• The Biden Admin's Plot to Destroy Silvergate and Debank Crypto for Good

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Uber's next act: taking on Amazon

• Nuclear finance will rely on consumers’ stomach for risk

  Nuclear power projects prove too tricky to fund through normal project financing methods. Upfront costs are high and construction is lengthy. If the company set up to construct the project defaulted, a half-built nuclear plant would be pretty worthless as security. The interest lenders would demand for that level of risk would simply make projects unviable, says Jens Weibezahn, assistant professor at the Copenhagen Business School.

• Judge declares NYC law on sharing food delivery customers' data unconstitutional

• US Investigating SAP, Carahsoft for Potential Price-Fixing

• Former Schwan's delivery service, Yelloh, shutting down after 72 years

• UFCW Local 7 condemns JBS for abusing immigrant workers

  Information gathered from UFCW Local 7 members who work at the JBS plant in Greeley, outlined in detail below, includes numerous cases of abusive practices both within and outside of the workplace, including management-led human trafficking utilizing the social media platform TikTok; charging immigrant workers for company-provided rent in squalor conditions, job applications, and transportation; threats and intimidation against workers and their families abroad; dangerously high production line speeds; and withholding mail including medical bills and important paperwork.

• US may exempt chip giants' billion-dollar fabs, but laws of physics still apply

• Over 30 Years, 40% of Publishing Jobs Disappeared. What Happened?

• 'Buy American' Policies Don't Help Americans

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• New California law requires one-click subscription cancellations

• Calif. Governor vetoes bill requiring opt-out signals for sale of user data | Ars Technica

• US air traffic control systems are fucked.

• Wausau mayor moves ballot box in controversial act - Wausau Pilot & Review

  “I have huge concerns about this behavior, as there is no place for elected officials to manage, alter or tamper with drop boxes, whether they agree with their use or not,” Rasmussen told Wausau Pilot. “I have voiced my concerns to the mayor about his conduct, and requested he return the box and issue a public apology to the clerk and the community, as his actions violate the public trust and likely also the law.”

• Senate unanimously holds Steward Health Care CEO in criminal contempt

Harris / Democrats

• Harris Ads featuring Trump nonvoters are lies

  The Harris-Walz campaign is running an ad in Pennsylvania claiming to depict two ordinary Pennsylvanians who are former Trump supporters and lifelong Republicans turned off by January 6th and Charlotesville, and now voting for Kamala Harris.

• Harris to visit Arizona border town to highlight immigration plan

Biden Inc

• Altman reportedly asks Biden to back a slew of multi-gigawatt AI datacenters

Trump / Right / Jan6

• Trump’s Act of Kindness at Grocery Store Sends Liberals Into a Frenzy

• The Woo-Woo Caucus Meets - The Atlantic

  Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appearance at a “health and nutrition” event hosted by a Trump ally showcased a congruence of crunchy and cranky.

• The Relative Insignificance of the Immunity Holding in Trump vs. United States

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• 24/7 Police Surveillance of Seattle Neighborhoods

• Missouri executes a man despite prosecutors' push to overturn conviction

• NFL stadiums will soon double as disaster shelters, federal officials say

World

• The state will take back control of people's lives, says Starmer

  His speech – which included the words “control” or “uncontrolled” 15 times – marked a stark contrast to his first speech as Prime Minister in July, in which he told the public he would “tread more lightly on your lives”.

• Thailand legalizes same-sex marriage, allows couples to wed starting in January

• Mexico's datacentre industry is booming – as are droughts and blackouts

Israel

• Irish Government secret call with Israeli finance minister

• Hezbollah launches Qadr 1 ballistic missile towards Tel Aviv

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia has secret war drones project in China, Intel sources say

China

• US investigates China-backed venture firm over Silicon Valley dealmaking

• China test launches intercontinental ballistic missile for first time in decades

  • China holds rare test of long-range missile into sea

• Yet another one of China's elite has disappeared after criticizing Xi Jinping

  • Top economist in China vanishes, after criticizing the regime

Health / Medicine

• Gut Microbiome Disruption Linked to Aggression

• Measles “Outbreak” In Maine Was Vaccine-Induced All Along

  it is unclear why the Maine CDC raised the alarm and then took so long to confirm the specific strain. The child was diagnosed on May 3, but it took the Maine CDC five days to ship the sample to the CDC. It then took the CDC seven days to report the results and for the Maine CDC to announce the child was not infectious. ICAN, through its attorneys, requested relevant records and received them. Incredibly, they reveal that the positive measles test was “[c]onsistent with vaccine strain,” which is apparently an “acceptable” form of measles because, as the Maine CDC announced, the strain that the child tested positive for was not considered “an infectious strain of the virus,” despite causing traditional symptoms of the disease. Decidedly absent from Maine’s announcement was the fact that the child got measles as a result of the vaccine. Maine and the CDC simply hid this fact from the public.

• Patients Are Turning to Vibrators to Relieve Their Migraines

• Why do obesity drugs seem to treat so many other ailments?

• Science Says Everything You Know about Food, Diet and Drugs Is Wrong

• Chronic diseases cause 75% of all deaths globally. The toll is likely to rise

• Seasonality in mood disorders: Probing association of activity with daylength

• EPA must address fluoridated water's risk to children's IQs, US judge rules

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Avian flu outbreak devastates Michigan dairy

  During the first three weeks of infection, milk production fell to 75 pounds a head and has been slow to recover.

  • Avian Flu is Bad for Cows

• Experiment confirms that bird flu in the US is spread by milking procedures

• Bird flu may be 'evolving under the radar', scientists say

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• NASA, IBM just open sourced an AI climate model

• Global heating 'doubled' chance of extreme rain in Europe in September

• Europe's deadly floods are glimpse of future climate

• Deja vu comes to Arkansas as lithium follows oil

• Tripling renewable energy capacity is 'within reach,' report says

• Oregon Dept. of Forestry runs out of funds after $250M spent on wildfire season

• California Bans All Plastic Bags After Its First Effort Backfired

• Carbon Capture Under the Microscope: Last Hope or False Promise?

• Climate change made Europe's deadly flooding twice as likely, scientists say

• New Jersey hits pause on an offshore wind farm that can't find turbine blades

• Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Is the Only Way to Protect Our Future | TIME

• In Silicon Valley, a Rogue Plan to Alter the Climate - The New York Times

  With their jury-rigged equipment and the confidence that comes with having raised more than $1 million in venture capital, they were executing a plan to release pollutants into the sky, all in the name of combating global warming. “We’re stealth,” said Luke Iseman, one of the co-founders of Make Sunsets, delighting in their anonymity as he rode in the back. “This looks like just another R.V.” Make Sunsets is one of the most unusual start-ups in a region brimming with wild ideas. Iseman, 41, and his co-founder, Andrew Song, 38, claim that by releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, they can reflect some of the sun’s energy back into space, thereby cooling the planet.

• 'Short corn' could replace the towering cornfields rolled by a changing climate

• Why California is suing ExxonMobil for perpetuating the lie of plastic recycling