2024-10-26
cheese thieves, old comic books, Millennial snots, its all Putin propaganda, whose profits?, WaPo mute, DC flees, Kamala digs, Trump hacked (more), Israel hits Iran, boiling in water is good
etc
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Peak population may be coming sooner than we think
one after another, the projections keep missing, repeatedly underestimating the pace and duration of falls in birth rates. To give one example, just five years ago the UN estimated that there would be around 350,000 births in South Korea in 2023. There were actually 230,000, more than a third fewer.
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Fraudsters steal 22 tonnes of high-value cheddar
Hundreds of truckles of cheddar worth more than £300,000 have been stolen from London cheese specialist Neal’s Yard Dairy. Fraudsters posing as legitimate wholesalers received the 950 clothbound cheeses from the Southwark-based company before it was realised they were a fake firm. Neal's Yard said it had still paid the producers of the cheese so the individual dairies would not have to bear the costs. More than 22 tonnes of three artisan cheddars, including Hafod Welsh, Westcombe, and Pitchfork were taken, which are all award-winning and have a high monetary value.
Horseshit
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EY fires staff who took multiple online training courses at once
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Anyone Can Learn Echolocation in Just 10 Weeks–and It Remodels Your Brain
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Who Gets the TikTok in the Divorce? The Messy Fight over Social Media Accounts
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"Jurassic Park" cryo shaving cream can Look what they have on Temu
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Flying taxis cleared for takeoff under new US aviation rules
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Why ghosts wear clothes or white sheets instead of appearing in the nude
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I love comics, but it is hard to get through these
Marvel has been producing collected editions of every comic they published in a given month when a famous character or team was introduced in the 60s. This is interesting as an unbiased slice of media, versus the normal Lindy effect where your view of a period is often formed by only the things that established a strong enough cultural foothold to be called up today. I love comics, but it is hard to get through these — by modern standards, old comics are so, so bad. The same can be said for old TV shows, and to a lesser degree movies, but in contrast to books and music, where people can argue the virtues of classics head to head with the works of today.
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Everyone Online Sounds Like an Absolute Fucking Poseur Lately
you already know what Millennial snot is. It’s some overeducated shithead with an email job saying “Uh, I’ve unpacked the privilege knapsack in intersectional space, OK sweetie? Get on my level.” “Whoa, did you just say ‘handicapped’? That’s a big yikes, chief.” It’s a form of engagement, quintessentially Millennial, that’s defined by a combination of self-righteous liberal politics, out-of-date internet lingo, terms from university humanities departments that have become mimetic in the past decade, and a performative, shit-eating quality of being perpetually amused with oneself. Anyone who was on Twitter between 2012 and 2022 or so knows Millennial snot. It’s fake courage as meme, a rehearsed facsimile of self-confidence deployed by people who’ll never know the real thing.
The purveyors of Millennial snot attempt to fool themselves and the world about their level of self-belief with two primary tools: one, through embracing the preening sanctimony of contemporary left politics, acting as though they simply are the campaigns against racism or injustice or need, themselves, expressed of course in an obfuscatory academic vocabulary; two, through the language of droll disdain that has become the default idiom of the 21st century as insecurity has become the universal marinade of American elite life. It’s the fusion of modern progressivism’s self-celebratory nature, the discourse norms of our most overeducated age cohort, and the reflexive retreat into triviality as a self-defense strategy. It’s an inescapable style of online engagement even though the heyday of this way of talking is now firmly in the past, just like the heyday of the Millennials who popularized it. It’s the idiom of a failed generation, the unconvincing puffery of millions of unhappy front-of-class kids who have spent their adulthoods expecting the pure beauty of their creative souls to someday be rewarded with fame and riches, somehow, just like Orson Welles giving Kermit and the rest of the Muppets the standard rich and famous contract. It floats the ineradicable belief that success is just around the corner, exactly the way it seemed to be when they wore jumpsuits to warehouse parties in 2005.
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Redditors Trying to Poison Google's AI to Keep Tourists Out of Good Restaurants
celebrity gossip
Obit
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Russia reportedly paid Florida cop to pump out anti-Harris deepfakes
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Putin's pro-Trump trolls accuse Harris of poaching rhinos
n addition to allegedly stealing massive amounts of materials from Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, and then leaking this info to media organizations, the three are also accused of using "spear phishing and social engineering techniques to target and compromise the accounts of current and former US government officials, members of the media, non-governmental organizations, and individuals associated with US political campaigns," according to court documents.
While Iran's election operations to date seem to put it in the pro-Harris camp, Russia has increased its attacks against the Harris-Walz campaign, we're told. This includes Russian-language accounts posted on both X and Telegram showing an AI-enhanced video of vice president Kamala Harris. The deepfake depicts Harris making inappropriate jokes about assassination attempts against Trump, and received tens of thousands of views on X after an RT correspondent posted it on September 23. In an even more out-there video, another Russian crew that Microsoft tracks as Storm-1516 posted a video of a staged interview with an actor purporting to be a park ranger, claiming Harris killed an endangered rhinoceros in Zambia. Numerous Storm-1516-affiliated websites and channels amplified the fake news story after it went live on September 25.
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How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative
A separate but complementary campaign, launched after October 7 and staged from an 8,000 member-strong Discord group called Tech For Palestine (TFP), employed common tech modalities — ticket creation, strategy planning sessions, group audio “office hour” chats — to alter over 100 articles. Operating from February 6 to September 3 of this year, TFP became a well-oiled operation, going so far as to attempt to use Wikipedia as a means of pressuring British members of parliament into changing their positions on Israel and the Gaza War.
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Russia amplified hurricane disinformation to drive Americans apart
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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San Francisco will spend $212M to bid 5.25-inch floppy disks goodbye
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Amazon's Data Center Dream Runs into the Reality of Physical Limits
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Why play a fascist? Unpacking the hideousness of the Space Marine
In order to make Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 enjoyable, Saber Interactive had to make the Space Marines less like Space Marines. That's to say, less like "semi-lobotomized, hypnotically indoctrinated slave-soldiers in thrall to an uncaring (and possibly non-existent) god", in the words of Rick Priestley, primary writer for the original Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader rulebooks back in the 1980s.
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Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care much more about battery life
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San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for open source
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Lily Allen Earns More Money from Selling Feet Pictures Than Spotify Streams
- indictment of the industry, of her singing, or endorsement of her feet?
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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NASA's Crew-8 mission members return to Earth on SpaceX capsule
SpaceX launched the four astronauts – Nasa’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin – in March. Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home that had “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us … and helped us to roll with all those punches”. Their replacements are the two Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose own mission went from eight days to eight months, and two astronauts launched by SpaceX four weeks ago. Those four will remain in orbit until February.
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Boeing is still bleeding money on the Starliner commercial crew program
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Tech boom forces US funds to dump shares to avoid breach of tax rules
recent gains for the largest US tech companies means stockpicking investors that want to take even a slightly overweight position relative to an index in companies such as Nvidia and Microsoft are in danger of breaching the rules. The trend highlights the unusual nature of the recent market rally, which has driven the S&P 500 and other indices to near-record levels of concentration. It also creates yet another challenge for active fund managers, most of whom have struggled to outperform surging indices. Just five large companies — Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon — have contributed about 46 per cent of the year-to-date gains for the S&P 500.
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America’s growing profits are under threat
As interest rates come down, lending margins for banks like Mr Dimon’s are being squeezed. Yet cheaper debt also means more companies raise money and strike deals, providing juicy fees. At Goldman Sachs, for instance, investment-banking revenue in the most recent quarter was up by a fifth year on year, more than twice as much as expected. Worries of a collapse in consumer spending are also starting to fade. Pessimists may point to results from Ally Financial, the lender that was split off from General Motors, which significantly increased its provisions for bad car loans. The number of Americans not paying these off is now at levels seen during the financial crisis. Other signs, however, suggest America’s consumers remain indefatigable. Cheaper ad-supported subscriptions have buoyed Netflix; premium credit cards have boosted American Express. National retail-sales figures rose for the third straight month in September. Corporate America has been propped up in part by surging profits among its technology giants, which have yet to report their results for the quarter. Nvidia, the biggest beneficiary of the Ai boom, is expected to account for 13% of all profit growth in the S&P 500 this year. Add its six famous cousins, which together make up the “magnificent seven” stocks, and that figure rises to 62%. Exclude all seven and the S&P 500’s earnings recession ended not in the third quarter of 2023, but only in the second quarter of this year.
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US Copyright Office "frees the McFlurry," allowing repair of ice cream machines
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US existing home sales slide to 14-year low; prices stay elevated
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Microsoft boss gets 63% pay rise despite asking for reduction
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Consumer Finance Prot Bureau Takes Action to Curb Unchecked Worker Surveillance
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Secrets Of The Median Voter Theorem - by Scott Alexander
Elegant as this proof may be, it fails to describe the real world. Democrats and Republicans don’t have platforms exactly identical to each other and to the exact most centrist American. Instead, Democrats are often pretty far left, and Republicans pretty far right. What’s going on? I think at least three things. First, candidates have to win a primary. In order to win the Democratic primary, the Median Voter theorem says you should match the belief of the median Democratic primary voter.
- the argument departs from reality immediately.
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Many expect post-election violence, most blame media - Washington Examiner
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The Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president (Archive)
The Washington Post’s editorial board announced Friday that it will not make an endorsement in this year’s presidential contest, for the first time in 36 years, or in future presidential races. The decision, 11 days before an election that most polls show as too close to call, marks the second time this week that a major media organization has declined to issue an endorsement in the race between the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, after years of making such endorsements. Earlier this week, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked a planned endorsement of Harris, prompting the resignation of the newspaper’s editorials editor. An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources. “This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners),” former Post executive editor Martin Baron, who led the paper while Trump was president, said in a text message to The Post. “History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
The first prominent journalist, editor-at-large Robert Kagan, resigned Friday in response to the decision, Semafor first reported. But there may be more: “people are shocked, furious, surprised,” said an editorial board member, citing internal discussions around resignation. “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.” One person familiar with the figures told Semafor that the decision already seemed to be impacting subscriptions. In the 24 hours ending Friday afternoon, about 2,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions, an unusually high number, an employee said. Another email that the Post sent out to subscribers on Friday also prompted a flurry of complaints from readers about the paper’s lack of an endorsement.
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Petrified DC Residents Are Already Fleeing Town for Election Week - POLITICO
“I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen,” Brown said. “My best friend in the world was on Capitol Hill on January 6. He’s in a wheelchair. I was very worried. You think about stuff like that. Do I think there’s going to be another January 6? Honestly, I’m also a bit worried about if the other side wins. People really hate Trump. I just don’t know.”
Harris / Democrats
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The recriminations that follow a Kamala defeat will be delicious
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Republicans keep saying Kamala Harris speaks in “word salad” because she speaks in an intellectual, nuanced manner. They are so used to hearing first grade level vocabulary that anything more educated than that is confusing for them
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Donald Trump has been very clear that he would weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies. You know who does that?
- how many political investigations has Trump undergone / are currently active?
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Women are dying because of Donald Trump’s Abortion Bans—and he refuses to take any accountability for the pain and suffering he has caused.
- if only the incumbent administration had been able to do something about that in the last 4 years...
Trump / Right / Jan6
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13 former Trump administration officials sign open letter backing up John Kelly's criticism of Trump
Thirteen former Trump White House officials signed an open letter backing up former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times that Trump fits the definition of a fascist.“We applaud General Kelly for highlighting in stark details the danger of a second Trump term. Like General Kelly, we did not take the decision to come forward lightly,” the letter said. “We are all lifelong Republicans who served our country. However, there are moments in history where it becomes necessary to put country over party. This is one of those moments.”
Politico was first to report on the letter.
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Chinese Hackers Are Said to Have Targeted Phones Used by Trump and Vance - The New York Times
Chinese hackers who are believed to have burrowed deep into American communications networks targeted data from phones used by former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, people familiar with the matter said on Friday. Investigators are working to determine what communications data, if any, was taken or observed by the sophisticated penetration of telecom systems, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an active and highly sensitive national security case.
The Trump campaign team was made aware this week that the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate were among a number of people inside and outside of government whose phone numbers had been targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems, the officials said. It was unclear whether the hackers could have gained access to text messages, especially those sent through unencrypted channels.
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Accused Iranian hackers successfully peddle stolen Trump emails
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Iran / Houthi
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Israel-Hamas war latest: Secret Hamas documents reveal Sinwar’s ‘last orders’
Russia has been helping Yemen’s Houthi rebels to target British ships in the Red Sea, European defence officials have said. The Iran-backed militia, which began their missile and drone attacks against Western shipping vessels late last year, has more recently relied on Russian satellite data to expand their strikes. The data was then passed through members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who were embedded within the Houthis, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing official sources familiar with the matter.
Israel
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How the Israel lobby fueled the rise of Britain's top anti-Muslim chaos agent
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Israel launches air strikes on Iran
Israel says it is conducting "precise strikes on military targets" in Iran. Syrian state news agency says Israeli air strikes have also targeted some military sites in central and southern areas of Syria.
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
Health / Medicine
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Effects of antimicrobial exposure on the risk of Parkinson's disease
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The brain's waste clearing lymphatic system shown in people for first time
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Florida Eases Licensing Requirements for Foreign Trained Doctors
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Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King Pull Onions Amid McDonald's Outbreak
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Older adults keep their cool: age may moderate emotional responses to heat
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It's not just obesity. Drugs like Ozempic will change the world
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Food fad or science – or both? Why cooking with water may help slow ageing
Dr Michelle Davenport says her grandmother is 95 and doesn’t have any wrinkles. Skin smooth as a dewdrop. She came to America from Vietnam, and attributes her youthful complexion to rarely, if ever, eating out at restaurants: not on birthdays, anniversaries or other special occasions. “She was always telling me: ‘Don’t ever eat out, eating out is super bad for you,’” says Davenport on the other end of a Zoom call. “So we always had to cook at home. And when she did cook, it was always water-based: steamed meat, stews and lots of vegetables.”