2024-11-24
hope good for kids, Alabama Man!, industrial food nostalgia, Musk myths, too white schools, burrocrats dislike BDFL, bcachefs blowup, edible asteroid, Trump 2028, UK going Stalin, COP29 collapse
etc
-
Steam engines, Motors, AI? – Large tech transitions are slow
-
Parents should believe in upward mobility
researchers should not lie, but perhaps this gives some additional perspective on who exactly is harming the world. There can be a cost to publishing neurotic, untrue ideas.
-
Neon will never die: Inside the Bay Area movement devoted to the glowing art
-
‘Visibly startled’ garden gnome made of Ecstasy found in Netherlands drugs raid
Horseshit
-
The Airline Industry's Biggest Winners Are Betting You'll Pay to Fly in Style
-
Alabama, cuz the rest of the country gets toys when they is kids. Penis size ranked by US state: study
-
Inside U.S. airports, the terminal-to-gate moving sidewalk is vanishing
-
How the secretive history of weather weapons fuels conspiracy theories
-
The old ingredients aren't made now: Tunnel of Fudge cake recipe: Why is the 1960s Pillsbury Bundt so difficult to bake today?
-
Boulder’s explicit traffic safety signs are the latest real-looking fakes on Colorado roads
Obit
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
-
Canadian neurosurgeons seek six patients for Musk's Neuralink brain study
-
Elon Musk is a legendary workaholic and control freak. His biographer, Walter Isaacson, recounts how he runs his companies with brutal drive and determination. He sends his employees emails telling them that “a maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle”. He now promises to bring that maniacal energy to bear on ensuring that “small-government revolutionaries join this administration!” The question is: is Musk’s vision for the US government more Twitter or more SpaceX? Is he going to slash and burn and fill the place with toxic trolls and conspiracy theorists? Or is he going to reduce costs by a factor of 10 and halve delivery times while producing a genuinely breathtaking breakthrough in engineering that many doubted could be achieved?
-
Graphic novelist's Elon Musk book can't find UK or US publisher
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
-
Jaguar's 'inclusive' branding: now people of all backgrounds won't buy its cars
-
Segregation Academies Across the South Are Getting Millions in Taxpayer Dollars
Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs, a ProPublica analysis found. In North Carolina alone, we identified 39 of these likely “segregation academies” that are still operating and that have received voucher money. Of these, 20 schools reported student bodies that were at least 85% white in a 2021-22 federal survey of private schools, the most recent data available.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
-
How to Scare Your Contributors Away: A Veteran's View on the WordPress Turmoil
One thing is clear: the benevolent dictator-for-life model isn’t working. In an open-source community with such an impact on the web, we must have clear governance in place—a board consisting of trusted community members pushing the agenda that will benefit the contributors and the end users, not corporate interests. The governance idea isn’t new. An initiative called wpgovernance.com aimed to implement guardrails against precisely what happened.
-
The good, the bad, and the ugly behind the push for more smart displays
TechSuck / Geek Bait
-
Linux CoC Announces Decision Following Recent Bcachefs Drama
The code of Conduct Committee has determined that your written abuse of another community member required action on your part to repair the damage to the individual and the community. You took insufficient action to restore the community's faith in having otherwise productive technical discussions without the fear of personal attacks.
Therefore it looks like no pull requests from Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet will be honored for the current Linux 6.13 cycle... It stops short of ejecting Bcachefs from the mainline kernel or other actions, but remains to be seen definitively if his pull requests will then be honored for Linux 6.14+ or any other caveats.
- The offending quote at the heart of the issue (in September):
You're arguing against basic precepts of kernel programming. Get your head examined. And get the fuck out of here with this shit.
-
Kent Overstreet restricted from participation in kernel development
-
Kent's response: Trouble in the kernel | Patreon
The emails I got (there were several) also all made ominous mentions of the CoC committee - you'd almost think they were talking about the boogyman. The CoC's approach is that if something comes to their attention - determined by anonymous complaints and private proceedings - they'll demand that someone make a public apology, "or else". But, my response was to say "no" to a public apology, for a variety of reasons: because this was the result of an ongoing situation that had now impacted two different teams and projects, and I think that issue needs attention - and I think there's broader issues at stake here, regarding the CoC board. But mostly, because that kind of thing feels like it ought to be kept personal.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
-
Former Orion engineer has surprisingly credible plans to fly European astronauts
-
Ryugu asteroid sample colonized by terrestrial life despite strict control
Rods and filaments of organic matter, interpreted as filamentous microorganisms, were observed on the sample's surface. Variations in size and morphology of these structures resembled known terrestrial microbes. Observations showed that the abundance of these filaments changed over time, suggesting the growth and decline of a prokaryote population with a generation time of 5.2 days. Population statistics indicate that the microorganisms originated from terrestrial contamination during the sample preparation stage rather than being indigenous to the asteroid.
Crypto con games
-
Unaffiliated unofficial shitcoin: Trump, Crypto and Actioinizing Nashville
-
Child Made $30K Rugging a Solana Meme Coin–Then Crypto Degens Got Revenge
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
-
Vanga then sued the family members who sent letters to Stanford, including our client Priscilla Juarez. That is to say, he sued the family of the people killed in the accident for writing letters talking about the criminal charges brought against him as a result of the accident. He claimed Priscilla Juarez defamed him by saying that he “has violated and tainted Stanford’s Code of Conduct values, to the most extreme measure,” by using the term “murder” to describe what he did to her in-laws, for repeating things that law enforcement officers reported about Vanga’s conduct during his arrest, and for asserting he had committed a crime and should be held responsible.
Trump
-
Elon Musk is directing harassment toward individual federal workers
lon Musk is, in addition to many other things, now the co-lead of the currently nonexistent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory group. Now, before it even gets rolling, he has begun singling out individual government employees he says are emblematic of the government’s bloat and posting about them to his hundreds of millions of followers on X. Earlier this week, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, the X user “datahazard” shared a screenshot on X highlighting the role of Ashley Thomas, the Director of Climate Diversification at the US International Development Finance Corporation, saying, “I don’t think the US Taxpayer should pay for the employment” of that role. Musk reposted it, adding the comment “so many fake jobs” in a post with more than 33 million views. As the WSJ notes, Musk’s followers have responded in exactly the way you’d expect: with a flood of memes and harassment targeting Thomas, whose LinkedIn and Facebook pages are now private. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the WSJ that the posts “are aimed at sowing terror and fear at federal employees.”
-
Trump Names Billionaire Scott Bessent As Treasury Secretary | ZeroHedge
-
A Note on "Government Efficiency" - by Cass Sunstein
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is, for many purposes, the key actor here. (I headed the office from 2009-2012.) A reduce-the-regulations effort probably has to go through that Office. Its civil servants have a ton of expertise. They could generate a bunch of ideas in a short time.
-
Trump picks Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as nation’s next surgeon general
Left Angst
-
Hell Is Empty, And All The Devils Are Here
Trump’s staff picks are a rogue’s gallery of cranks, oligarchs, religious fanatics, and alleged sexual abusers. He’s not “draining the swamp,” he’s deepening it and adding more snakes.
Politics in Washington really are profoundly corrupt, and Trump is essentially correct when he says that establishment figures like Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney are warmongers who should never be allowed near power, or that the Pelosis’ stock deals seem shady. The “swamp” is a real thing, and Americans know it, which goes a long way toward explaining Trump’s electoral success. But the idea that Donald Trump is some kind of anti-establishment crusader is ridiculous. Yes, he’ll point out the rot in D.C. when it’s convenient for him. But he has no intention of actually making anything better—and you can tell by the way he’s staffing his own administration right now.
-
With DOGE, Elon Musk is promoting someone else’s idea again — in government - The Verge
DOGE could be a mechanism for a Musk shadow presidency, a nonsense job designed to keep Musk busy without giving him real power, or a curious mix of the two. In any case, Musk and Ramaswamy have proposed cutting “thousands” of federal regulations and determining the “minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.”
-
Think Trump Can’t Run Again in 2028? Don’t Be So Sure.
the Twenty-second Amendment only bars a person being “elected to the office of the President more than twice.”1 It doesn’t prohibit serving or acting as president again, as proposed versions of the amendment would have done. The amendment was simplified before Congress sent it to the states for ratification to focus on avoiding a repeat of what President Franklin Roosevelt did: running for more than two terms. But would Trump be eligible to run for vice president? The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, says “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” If the Twenty-second Amendment makes Trump ineligible for the presidency, why wouldn’t he also be ineligible for the vice presidency?
Thus, Peabody and Gant reason, even “if the meaning of ‘eligibility’ under the Twelfth Amendment was transformed with the adoption of the Twenty-Second Amendment, the Twenty-Second Amendment still does not render twice-elected Presidents ‘constitutionally ineligible to the office of President’”—because they could, through these two extant provisions, become acting President—“and it therefore cannot be said that the Twelfth Amendment prohibits a twice-elected President from serving as Vice President.”
-
Just how big was Donald Trump's election victory?
His communications director Steven Cheung has called it a "landslide" victory. Yet it emerged this week that his share of the vote has fallen below 50%, as counting continues. "It feels grandiose to me that they're calling it a landslide," said Chris Jackson, senior vice-president in the US team of polling firm Ipsos. The Trump language suggested overwhelming victories, Jackson said, when in fact it was a few hundred-thousand votes in key areas that propelled Trump back to the White House. That is thanks to America’s electoral college system, which amplifies relatively slender victories in swing states.
- for comparison: (2020) Electoral college confirms Joe Biden's presidential victory
-
TikTok CEO Seeks Elon Musk's Counsel on Incoming Trump Administration
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
-
A New World Order Is Here, and It Looks a Lot Like Mercantilism
-
Indian Charged with Conspiring to Illegally Export U.S. Components to Russia
-
Emerging Details of Chinese Hack Leave U.S. Officials Increasingly Concerned - The New York Times
They now believe the hackers from a group called “Salt Typhoon,” closely linked to China’s Ministry of State Security, were lurking undetected inside the networks of the biggest American telecommunications firms for more than a year. They have learned that the Chinese hackers got a nearly complete list of phone numbers the Justice Department monitors in its “lawful intercept” system, which places wiretaps on people suspected of committing crimes or spying, usually after a warrant is issued. While officials do not believe the Chinese listened to those calls, the hackers were likely able to combine the phone numbers with geolocation data to create a detailed intelligence picture of who was being surveilled.
World
-
UK Farmers Trigger the Revolution – Politely. - Blain's Morning Porridge
I love UK farmers. I think UK farmers produce the best food on the planet, and they are wonderful, dedicated people! But… they are being manipulated. The farmer’s revolt is angry – but like most revolutions is directed at all the wrong issues by actors with other agenda. Elon Musk, displaying an intimate knowledge of 1920’s Soviet purges of the wealthy Kulak peasant class (especially in the Ukraine), has weighed in accusing Sir Keir of going “full Stalin” by imposing Inheritance Tax on Farms worth more than £1mm. Farmers above the threshold – which will be higher after allowances – will pay 20% IHT, half the normal rate which kicks in at £325k for everyone else. (Fewer than 5% of UK estates pay any IHT at all.)
While Putin threatens to Nuke the West… the current furore about Farmers paying Inheritance Tax, Allison Pearson (the well-known, and mostly harmless Telegraph Journalist) being accused of a hate-crime for calling Muslim flag-wavers “Jew-Haters” (apparently), or Premier Sir Keir Starmer spending too much time on Global Conferences…. dominate the news flow. We have real issues to worry about! Unfortunately, all the noise is undermining confidence in the UK.
-
Great Britain Cracks Down on “Non-Crime Hate” Speech, Including Playground Taunts – JONATHAN TURLEY
“The victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of the hostility is not required.”
-
Blueprints of prisons in England and Wales leaked on dark web
-
To Challenge China, India Needs to Get Out of the Way of Its Factory Owners
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
-
Early adult binge drinking has lasting impact on aging brain in mice
-
Four Oregon cities vote to ban psychedelic mushroom compound psilocybin
-
On the deep crisis in American medicine – and the broad societal anger and cynicism it is driving.
Healthcare is the place where scientific expertise meets lived experience most intimately. The problems have no easy answers, but we can all see for ourselves how badly the system is failing.
The fact that so many people are looking forward the potential elevation of Robert F. Kennedy - who isn’t even convinced that HIV causes AIDS to the most important job in American healthcare is proof of how angry we’ve become.
-
Cannabis smoke and oral THC enhance working memory in aged subjects
-
What Happens When US Hospitals Go Big on Nurse Practitioners
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
-
Italian supervolcano "Phlegraean Fields" is showing signs of waking up
-
With a shift to renewables, will oil production's end come sooner than we think?
-
Saudi Arabia accused of modifying official Cop29 negotiating text
-
The Island Where Environmentalism Implodes | The New Yorker
“My island is four hundred kilometres long by sixty kilometres wide. It’s all nickel.” Ate, who works for a mining company, was exaggerating—but not by much. About a third of the soil on the country’s main island, Grand Terre, contains the metal, giving New Caledonia, according to some recent estimates, more than a quarter of the world’s nickel resources.
-
Who's to blame for climate change? It's surprisingly complicated