2024-12-05

cybernetic socialism, UnitedHealth CEO assassinated, Amazon sub Prime, Isaacman for NASA, FBI urges encrypting calls, French government falls, Korea drama, can we do what asteroids cant?

etc

• Guardsmen deliver food to Alaska community hit by typhoon

• Dog domestication happened many times, but most didn't pan out

Horseshit

• Textual analysis to determine whether the nation has lost its mind

• Manufacturing Is a War Now

• The Tragedy of Stafford Beer - by Kevin Munger

  There has been growing interest in cybernetic socialism over the past decade, starting with Eden Medina’s history Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Evgeny Morozov’s article on Cybersyn in the New Yorker, and a chapter on the enterprise in Leigh Phillips’ and Michal Rozworski’s book The People's Republic of Walmart. Theory streetwear brand Boot Boyz Biz even put out a Cybersyn throw rug. Just this month, Morozov released an extensive and entertaining retrospective of the entire period in the form of a nine-episode podcast. Although I enjoyed the whole thing, I found the narrative account of Beer’s response to the coup and the general distrust of Allende in the UK most illuminating.

• Info Finance has a Future!

• Moon Should Be a State

• Fresno has a homeless problem. So why is it rejecting state-funded housing?

• Think boomers are most vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks? Wrong. It's Gen Z

• Can't afford a smartphone? That's going to cost you

• Why It's So Frickin' Hard to Stop Driving

celebrity gossip

• HowStuffWorks founder Marshall Brain sent final email before sudden death

Obit

• UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Fatally Shot in Manhattan

  • UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot outside of Hilton hotel

  • CEO of UnitedHealthcare Fatally Shot in New York City

  • UnitedHealthcare CEO fatally shot in midtown Manhattan

  • UnitedHealth's CEO Shot Dead

  • UnitedHealthcare executive fatally shot in Manhattan

  • Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Gunned Down in New York

  • CEO Of UnitedHealthcare Killed In Alleged Targeted Attack In Manhattan, Suspect At Large | ZeroHedge

  • Riley Walz explaining how he found where murderer of United Healthcare CEO fled

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Stanford misinformation expert accused of using AI to fabricate court statement

Bluesky

• "upstart" is one of those words you never see in a non-advertising context anymore Bluesky COO Rejects Idea Upstart Social App Is 'Left-Leaning'

• Account verification is done right in Bluesky

Musk

• Musk Signals Fresh Push to End US Daylight Saving Time

• Elon Musk Should Be Shouting About the Florida and Texas Social Media Laws

• It'd be un-American for Musk to wield political influence to harm rivals: Sama

Electric / Self Driving cars

• China's share of global electric car market rises to 76%

• Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars net-zero cities

• Hyundai Has Best Month Ever in U.S. Electric SUV Sales Suddenly Double

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• America's Role Reversal: Working-Class Blacks Make Gains While Whites Fall Back

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2024

• Nearly half of teenagers globally cannot read with comprehension

• Federal student loan borrowers in default may again face wage garnishments, collections.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Tim Cook Wants Apple to Save Your Life

• "Nightmare" Zipcar outage is a warning against complete app dependency

• Broadband Lobbies Tells FCC Their Customer Service Is Great, Nothing to See Here

• 93-year-old YouTuber back in business after being kicked off platform

• Meta to invest $10B for Louisiana data center

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI hacks leave consumers facing a perfect storm of privacy perils

• Music sector workers to lose nearly a quarter of income to AI in next four years

• Sam Altman lowers the bar for AGI

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Broken water pipe knocks out data processing for NASA sun-studying spacecraft.

• Sun Reaches Maximum Phase in 11-Year Solar Cycle

Crypto con games

• Celsius Founder And Former CEO Alexander Mashinsky Pleads Guilty To Multi-Billion Dollar Fraud And Market Manipulation Schemes

  pled guilty to one count of committing commodities fraud and one count of committing securities fraud in connection with two fraudulent schemes at Celsius, the purported “bank” of the crypto industry. In the first scheme, MASHINSKY misled Celsius’s customers about core aspects of the company he founded, including Celsius’s success and profitability and the nature of the investments Celsius made using customer funds. In the second scheme, MASHINSKY illicitly manipulated the price of CEL, Celsius’s proprietary crypto token, while he was secretly selling his own CEL token at artificially inflated prices. As part of his plea, MASHINSKY has agreed to forfeit over $48 million in proceeds from his illegal schemes. MASHINSKY pled guilty today before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl.

• Binance accused of tax evasion by India's finance department

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon Sued for 'Fake Discounts'

• Walmart Closes $2.3B Acquisition of Vizio

• Daring Fireball: Andy Grove Was Right

  It’s not just that smartphones are now a bigger industry than the PC industry ever was, and that Intel has missed out on becoming a dominant supplier to phone makers. That’s bad, but it’s not the worst of it. It’s that those ARM-based mobile chips — Apple Silicon and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon lineup — got so good that they’re now taking over large swaths of the high end of the PC market. Partly from the inherent advantages of ARM’s architecture, partly from engineering talent and strategy, and partly from the profound benefits of economies of scale as the mobile market exploded.

• Wall Street's AI-powered rally risks 'correction', Vanguard warns

• China's Ban on Rare Earth Exports Good News for Wyoming Projects

• DC accuses Amazon of excluding some residents from Prime benefits

• Amazon secretly slowed deliveries, deceived anyone who complained, lawsuit says

  • Amazon accused of cheating low-income Prime users out of two-day deliveries

• Days of disabled workers earning less than $7.25 an hour may soon be over.

• Chipotle is raising prices 2% in response to inflation

• It's Taking Longer to Find a New Job in the US

• Monday Americans Spent $13.3B in Biggest Cyber Monday

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• NFIB Prevails in Blocking Beneficial Ownership Requirements for Small Businesses

  “For many Main Street small businesses, they were a mere four weeks away from the deadline to file their information in accordance with the CTA. The BOI reporting requirements are a harmful invasion of small business owners’ privacy and a misuse of their valuable time. Thankfully, the Court agreed and granted a preliminary injunction, giving small business owners a reprieve from this burdensome rule.”

• USDA-FDA Seek Information About Food Date Labeling, Aim is to Provide Further Clarity, Transparency and Cost Savings for U.S. Consumers | FDA

  The RFI seeks information on industry practices and preferences for date labeling, research results on consumer perceptions of date labeling and any impact date labeling may have on food waste and grocery costs. For example, questions in the RFI include which products contain date labels and the criteria to decide what phrase to use and what date to include. The RFI also asks questions about how consumers interpret date label information, including whether consumers are confused by this information – especially if they believe the dates determine whether food is safe when in fact, they indicate quality – or whether it has impacts on decisions made while grocery shopping or discarding food.

• Supreme Court to hear challenge to ban on transgender health care for minors

• Justices hear FDA case on flavored vapes

Trump

• Jared Isaacman nominated to be NASA Administrator

  • Trump selects Isaacman to be NASA administrator

  • Trump Picks Jared Isaacman, an Entrepreneur and Private Astronaut, to Lead NASA

  • Trump nominates Jared Isaacman to become the next NASA administrator

  • Trump picks billionaire private SpaceX astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA

  • Trump picks Musk ally Jared Isaacman to head NASA

Democrats / Biden Inc

• CNN’s Kaitlan Collins calls Hunter Biden pardon a ‘political timebomb’ that left Dems in ‘the blast radius’.

• Biden meets African leaders in Angola to advance Lobito railway project

Left Angst

• Private Funds Could Hurt Americans Under Trump

• Musk and Ramaswamy Are Making a Big Mistake - The Atlantic

  They want to blame the bureaucrats, but they’re going to need those very same bureaucrats if they want to get anything done. Musk and Ramaswamy smell the same crap that I do. But I fear they’ve got a bad mental model about what’s wrong. They think we’ve got too many civil servants—their equivalent of the garbage disposal. They aren’t paying nearly enough attention to the clogs in the drainpipe, including the finicky legal and procedural rules that will predictably frustrate their reform efforts. Unless they change what they’re up to, I doubt they’ll make much progress. In Musk and Ramaswamy’s telling, the chief problem with the administrative state is that it’s full of unelected mandarins who force their diktats down the throats of a reluctant public. Worse, those bureaucrats often act without legal authority from Congress. They adopt regulation upon regulation without regard to their costs, blithely unconcerned about the drag they’re placing on the economy.

• Why did Silicon Valley turn right?

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI Tells Telecom Firms Boost Security Following Wide-Ranging Hacking Campaign

  • FBI tells telecom firms to boost security following Chinese hacking campaign

  • Telcos Struggle to Boot Chinese Hackers from Networks

  • US officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

  • FBI Warns Americans to Start Using Encrypted Messaging Apps

• Destroying an Innocent Person's Home to Arrest a Suspect

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The Navy's Amphibious Fleet Is in Bad Shape

• US Navy awards X-Bow $60M to modernize solid rocket production facilities

World

• French Government Falls After No-Confidence Vote Ousts Prime Minister Barnier - WSJ

  • French government collapses as political chaos reaches boiling point

  • France in political crisis after no-confidence vote topples government

South Korea

• South Korea martial law turmoil sparks international backlash | The Business Standard

  Yoon declared martial law in a live TV address late on Tuesday night, only to reverse course six hours later after parliament defied police and special forces cordons to vote to block the move. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who was due to hold a summit with Yoon this week, will skip the scheduled visit, his spokesperson said on Wednesday.

• Martial Law Didn't Silence South Korea's Media. It Empowered Them

Israel

• Targeted aid killings: How Israel starved a population and sowed chaos in N Gaza

• Israel threatens to ‘go deeper’ into Lebanon as strikes strain ceasefire.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia uses civilians as 'target practice' for killer drones

• Putin-controlled aircraft deported Ukrainian children, U.S. research alleges

• Russian criminals helped UK drug gangs launder lockdown cash into Crypto

China

• China's single-child generation frets over country's pension system

• China bans exports to US of gallium, germanium, antimony

• China calls on universities to provide 'love education' to boost birth rates

Health / Medicine

• New nasal vaccine shows promise in curbing whooping cough spread

  • We had this one almost gone; then the vaccine changed.

• Eli Lilly's Zepbound Beats Novo Nordisk's Wegovy in First Head-to-Head Study

• How the FDA allows companies to add secret ingredients to our food

• Lawsuit claims UnitedHealth AI wrongfully denies elderly extended care

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• House panel concludes that Covid-19 pandemic came from a lab leak

  • US lawmakers back Covid Chinese lab leak theory after two-year probe

• Sick animals suggest Covid pandemic started in Wuhan market

Health officials investigate mystery disease in southwest Congo after 143 deaths

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Geoengineering Could Alter Global Climate. Should It?

• Asteroid impacts did not change Earth's climate in the long term

• Formaldehyde Causes More Cancer Than Any Other Toxic Air Pollutant

• 5-plus feet of snow and counting: More snow is coming to the Great Lakes

• Antarctica Has Gotten 10 Times Greener in 35 Years

• Your neighbourhood gas station could be making you sick

• Becoming a vegan doesn't mean you're green

• Chinese scientists rush to climate-proof potatoes