2024-12-13

de-civilization, Martian rivers, laser headlights, Bluesky censors, YouTube got expensive, overdraft fees capped, task scams, more Biden pardons, New Jersey drones, Oz taxes Meta, humans adapt

etc

• Malibu Fire Reminds Residents of the Perils of Living in Paradise

• Decivilization May Already Be Under Way - The Atlantic

  The brazen murder of a CEO in Midtown Manhattan—and the cheering reaction to his execution—amounts to a blinking-and-blaring warning signal for a society that has become already too inured to bloodshed.

• UnitedHealthcare CEO sold company stocks just before DOJ probe made public

• NYPD warns about threats to executives

• Luigi's Prison Inmates Yell for CEO Murder Suspect to Be Freed on Live TV

• Carbon dioxide rivers? Ancient Mars liquid may not all have been water

Horseshit

• The problem with US charity is that it's not effective enough

• He was suicidal and needed help. A 15-year-old girl pushed him to kill himself

  • see also: Death of Brandon Vedas - Wikipedia

• The C.E.O.s Are Tripping. Can Psychedelics Help the C-Suite?

• 'Ghost Gun' Linked to Luigi Mangione Shows How Far 3D-Printed Weapons Have Come

  • When a Glock Isn't a Glock: The History of the Pistol Found with Luigi Mangione

• The Battle of Laser Headlights Ends with All Contenders Exiting the Arena

  As revolutionary and efficient as they were, laser headlights are living their last moments, as neither Audi nor BMW intends to develop them further. The US regulations, specifically the US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) rule 108, severely limit the power and range of headlights, mooting any advantage laser headlights had over their LED counterparts. Specifically, headlight intensity is limited in the US to 150,000 candela, compared to up to 430,000 candela allowed by European regulations. The same regulations limit the beam range to just 250 meters (820 feet). This makes laser headlights no better than their LED counterparts, which are much cheaper. Combined with the improvements LED-matrix headlights have achieved since 2014, there simply isn't any reason for carmakers to continue laser headlight development.

• Nearly half of US teens are online 'constantly,' Pew report finds

celebrity gossip

• She Has 155M TikTok Followers. Will They Pay to See Her on Broadway?

Obit

• Entertainer and mentalist The Amazing Kreskin dead at 89 | CBC News

• Body of abducted cryptocurrency influencer Kevin Mirshahi found in Montreal park

  • Missing Crypto Influencer, Under Investigation, Found Dead in Montreal

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The Government's Disturbing Rationale for Banning TikTok

Bluesky

• I Was Canceled by Bluesky. and I Still Don't Know Why

  The best I could figure — really the only thing I could figure — this sudden quashing of my account might have stemmed from something I’d posted some days before. I linked to a piece by my colleague Nancy Scola. The headline: “Democrats Face an Existential Crisis on X.” The subhead: “Conversations with a dozen insiders point to a party that is unsure about whether to leave or engage with the increasingly MAGA platform.” I, for my part, pointed to a quote in the piece from a person identified as a Democratic communications professional: “Leaving X because you don’t like Elon is the kind of purity politics that landed Democrats in this mess to begin with.” I’m not sure I totally agree with that idea, and I offered on the site, on purpose, no additional comment. All I thought was the quote was worth thinking about. Maybe, I believed, it was something the Bluesky clientele might like chewing on. They chewed on it all right. It was more like a feeding frenzy. At last check, my post elicited more than 2,100 quote-posts and some 3,700 responses, a tally of interactions easily surpassing my number of followers. Almost all of the feedback was angry, and no shortage was directed not toward Nancy’s piece in general or the quote in particular but … me. Trigger warning here for readers with an aversion to gratuitous profanity and faceless aggression, but I was, in the words of Bluesky users, among many, many other things, a “fucking dork,” a “fucking wanker,” a “fucking moron,” a “dumb fuck” and a “bitch.” It went on this way for days.

  If, though, the idea was to create an environment to protect those seeking to flee from toxicity, in the absence of a definition the question arises: The toxin is what exactly? Unpleasant ideas? Ugly reactions? Maybe the toxin is far bigger than Bluesky could possibly address. Social media overall? People writ large? Even the notion of a safe space — as a smart Democrat texted me as this was going on, “safe for whom, and from what?”

• Threads rolls out its own version of Bluesky's 'Starter Packs'

• Bluesky tops 20M users, narrowing gap with Instagram Threads

Musk

• Elon Musk becomes the first person to reach a net worth of $400B

• SpaceX valuation surges to $350B as company buys back stock

• People Want SpaceX Shares

• Elon Musk calls homelessness a 'lie' and 'propaganda'

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Robotaxis Are Blazing the Trail for Self-Driving Cars

• Cruise employees 'blindsided' by GM’s plan to end robotaxi program | TechCrunch

  Several Cruise employees who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity said they were “surprised” and “blindsided” by the decision. One source told TechCrunch that employees learned about GM’s plans the same time the media did.

• Cruise shutdown blastzone increases – Microsoft takes $800M charge

• Postal Service's plan to electrify mail trucks falling far short of its goal

• Tesla's leasing push aims to offset U.S. sales decline

• U.S. electric and hybrid vehicle sales reached a record in the third quarter

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• As the parent of a deaf baby, should I give her an implant to help her hear?

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• LG stops making Blu-ray players, marking the end of an era

• Animation Guild board defends contract deal as some members critique AI terms

• Labor Board Classifies 'Love Is Blind' Contestants as Employees

• Mad Matt Mullenweg reportedly flipped out after a judge granted WP Engine a preliminary injunction against WordPress.

• "Do Not Track" removed from Firefox after 13 years

• BuzzFeed Survives by Selling 'Hot Ones' to George Soros

• YouTube TV Price Increase: $83 per Month

  • YouTube TV's monthly cost soars to $82.99

  • YouTube TV is hiking prices again after denying "erroneous" report days ago

• Apple Scrapped Quad-Max/Double-Ultra M-Series Chip Work in Favor of new AI chip

• Congress Pushes Apple to Remove Deepfake Apps

• Much sports content is streamed, but repetitive ads are frustrating fans

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Kate Bush joins campaign against AI using artists' work without permission

• Harvard Is Releasing a Free AI Training Dataset Funded by OpenAI and Microsoft

• Generative language models exhibit social identity biases

• Machine translation is almost a solved problem

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The secret reason the USA beat the USSR to the Moon

Crypto con games

• Why Crypto Bros Are So Obsessed with 'Debanking'

• Stablecoin Issuer Circle Expands Offering with Binance

• How Long Will the Trump Crypto Boom Last?

• Mastercard and JPMorgan Link Up to Bring Foreign Exchange on the Blockchain

• Texas House introduces bill to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve

Economicon / Business / Finance

• CFPB Finalizes Bank Overdraft Fee Cap

  • CFPB announces rule limiting bank overdraft fees

• Netflix's Extraordinary Parental Leave Was Part of Its Culture. That's Over

• Google accused of illegal layoffs in lawsuit

• Essential Element of the Power Grid Is in Critically Short Supply

  • If I start winding my own, how many will I sell, do you think?

• The Dying Language of Accounting

• Dollar's surge sparks biggest fall in emerging market currencies in 2 years

• Beware Job Offers via Text as FTC Says 'Task Scams' Are Skyrocketing

  • New FTC Data Show Skyrocketing Consumer Reports About Game-Like Online Job Scams

• NYC Grocery Prices Are High. Could City-Owned Stores Help?

• Intel executives say a manufacturing spinoff is possible

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• 29 House Republicans want Trump to scrap the IRS’s free direct tax filing tool on day one of his presidency.

  • Ask each how much money Intuit has given them this year.

• Men Sweep Congress Chairmanships as Republican Women Lose Ground

Trump

• Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Donates $1M to Trump's Inaugural Fund

  • Meta donates $1M to Trump fund

  • Meta makes $1M donation to Trump's inauguration

• Elon Musk asks if the IRS should be ‘deleted’ after agency begs for $20 billion – here’s how X users responded.

• Trump's Kari Lake 'pick' sparks fears at Voice of America

• Time magazine names Trump "Person of the Year 2024"

  • Donald Trump Named Time Person of the Year Again

• NASA's boss-to-be proclaims we're about to enter an "age of experimentation"

Democrats / Biden Inc

• Patagonia Hit With FEC Complaint Alleging Straw Donor Operation That Funneled More Than $1 Million to Democrats.

• Biden commutes 1,500 sentences in biggest single-day act of clemency

  President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It’s the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history. The commutations announced Thursday are for people who have served out home confinement sentences for at least one year after they were released. Prisons were uniquely bad for spreading the virus and some inmates were released in part to stop the spread. At one point, 1 in 5 prisoners had COVID-19, according to a tally kept by The Associated Press. Biden said he would be taking more steps in the weeks ahead and would continue to review clemency petitions. The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330, shortly before leaving office in 2017.

• ActBlue Bombshell: Dem money platform tells Congress it didn’t block foreign gift cards until fall.

• EXCLUSIVE: Biden Races To Sell Off Border Wall Parts Before Trump Takes Office

  “They are taking it from three stations: Nogales, Tucson, and Three Points,” the border patrol agent, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, told The Daily Wire. “The goal is to move all of it off the border before Christmas.”

• Ex-FBI informant Alexander Smirnov pleads guilty to lying about the Bidens

  A longtime confidential informant, Smirnov told his FBI handler in 2020 that the two Bidens each accepted $5 million from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma several years earlier. The claims "were false, as the Defendant knew," according to the charging documents filed against him. The fake allegations were memorialized in an FBI document that became a central piece of evidence in congressional Republicans' efforts to investigate the Biden family.

Left Angst

• Dear Congress: If You Value National Security, Do Not Sanction the ICC

• Tech's benevolent-dictator-for-life to authoritarian pipeline

  • "Fork your own version" does kinda put an absolute limit on the authority these people can assert tho.

• Left-wing conspiracy theories and 'missing' votes in wake of Trump election win

• Most Canadians would avoid buying U.S. products post-Trump tariff

• Sundar Pichai and Jeff Bezos Head to Mar-a-Lago to Schmooze with Trump

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Man Indicted for Manipulating Five Companies and Defrauding Investors of $200M

• Appeals Court: Permanently Injuring A 13-Year-Old Because He Wouldn’t Take His Hand Out Of His Pockets Isn’t A Rights Violation | Techdirt

  Another cop given a free pass on brutality because established law had yet to inform Deputy Vincent Castoro that body-slamming a 13-year-old weighing less than 120 lbs. to the ground might violate the minor’s right to be free of immediate and permanent injuries simply because he didn’t immediately comply with an officer’s demands. And, to ensure law enforcement officers avoid having to think twice before pulverizing children, the Eleventh Circuit Appeals both (1) declined to establish this as a rights violation going forward and (2) issued this as an unpublished decision to prevent it from being used to establish similar rights violations in the future.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Coast Guard Ship Stalked by Unidentified craft, Iran Mothership Claim Shot Down

  • Rep. Chris Smith: Drones Trailed Coast Guard Ship Off New Jersey Coast.

  • Homeland Security shares new details of mysterious drone flights over New Jersey

  • Mysterious New Jersey drones appear to avoid detection by traditional methods

  • Joint DHS/FBI Statement on Reports of Drones in New Jersey

• Female Teens Don't See Themselves in the US Military. Here's Why

• Blocking Chinese spies from intercepting calls? There ought to be a law

  US telecoms carriers would be required to implement minimum cyber security standards and ensure their systems are not susceptible to hacks by nation-state attackers – like Salt Typhoon – under legislation proposed by senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). The Secure American Communications Act [PDF], if signed into law, would require the Federal Communications Commission to issue binding rules for telecom systems, following what Wyden calls the FCC's "failure" to implement security standards already required by federal law. He's referring to the CALEA of 1994 – aka the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act – which required telecom providers to design their systems to comply with wiretapping requests from law enforcement. The law also requires providers to secure their own systems against unauthorized interception – such as Chinese spies, who we recently learned did access these systems to steal communications and other sensitive information. While the feds haven't disclosed whose calls and texts were accessed by Salt Typhoon, the victims reportedly included president-elect Donald Trump and his VP pick JD Vance, people working for current VP Kamala Harris's presidential campaign, and other high-ranking political figures.

  • We could pass a law requiring the sky to be pink during working hours, too. don't think it'd work. "Mandate backdoors" open for all.

• Tony Blinken Tells Congress ‘No One Anticipated’ Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan.

• Pentagon announces new AI office as it looks to deploy autonomous weapons

World

• Schengen: Council decides to lift land border controls with Bulgaria and Romania

• Guide to Saudi Arabia's mad stadium plans for 2034 World Cup

• France's Challenge in Taxing Second-Hand Book Sales

• Australia lays fiendish tax trap for Meta – with an expensive escape hatch

  • Facebook, Google and TikTok to fund Australian journalism under new tax plan

  • After Meta signals end to publisher payouts, Australia plots Big Tech news tax

• A year in, here's how Argentina has performed under its new president

  • Milei Tames Inflation in Argentina With Painful Policies, Sparking Applause and Anger - The New York Times

  A year after becoming president, Javier Milei has been praised inside and outside Argentina for reining in galloping inflation. But his economic policies have inflicted widespread hardship.

• Hacking Rooftop Solar Is a Way to Break Europe's Power Grid

• Japan tightens cannabis laws amid rising youth usage

Israel

• Israeli strikes kill 12 guarding Gaza aid lorries, medics say

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia takes unusual route to hack Starlink-connected devices in Ukraine

• Assad's Collapse Is a Blow to Russia's Middle East Strategy

China

• Nvidia Steps Up Hiring in China to Focus on AI-Driven Cars

• Ore To Iron In A Few Seconds: New Chinese Process Will Revolutionise Smelting

• Why did China hack the world's phone networks?

Health / Medicine

• New FDA Warning Added to Popular Weight Loss Drugs

• Ultra-processed foods may drive colorectal cancer risk

  • Bowel cancer rising among under-50s worldwide, research finds

  • Lancet: Early-onset colorectal cancer cases surge globally

• Doctors Say Dealing with Health Insurers Is Only Getting Worse

• Canada euthanasia now accounts for nearly one in 20 deaths

• A.D.H.D. Diagnoses Are Surging Among Older Americans

• The FDA Hasn't Inspected This Drug Factory After 7 Recalls for the Same Flaw

• The ones who need little sleep

• Hospitals gave patients meds during childbirth, then reported them for drug use

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Government Funneled Unprecedented Amount Of Money To Criminal Gangs Through COVID Relief, Oversight Report Finds.

• Detroit Jury Awards $12M to Blue Cross Worker Fired for Refusing Covid Vaccine

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• With venerable ship's retirement, U.S.-led ocean-drilling program ends

• A simple math error sparked a panic about black plastic kitchen utensils

• Did a Terminal Temperature Acceleration Event Start in December 2024?

• As Wolf Populations Rebound, an Angry Backlash Intensifies

  • They released "Red Wolf" canines in West TN many years ago, Husky/Coyote cross things that were not viable in the wild. Someone made a lot of money providing the animals.

• How the Amazon's 'Boiling River' foreshadows a warmer world

• High-tech archaeology shows we aren't the first to endure hard times | New Scientist

  The discovery of ancient cities in Asia and the Americas point to earlier bouts of social and climatic upheavals. The good news is that humanity survived

• Google to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by crushing rocks

• Hydrogen wildcatters are betting big on Kansas to strike it rich

• Attorney General Ken Paxton sues companies over "forever chemicals"

• Despite critics, organic farming thrives in heart of US corn country

• A controversial plan to refreeze the Arctic is seeing promising results