2024-12-19

cars are rough. no one has neon anymore, Roger Rabbit was real, Supreme Court to hear TikTok, make fun games, TP-Link ban, one week trip extended to March, ammunition has to be made, spent soils

etc

• Echoes of Rage: Our new age of violence looks a lot like the Gilded Age

• (2021) Why are a billion years of rock missing from the geological record?

• Forest Service: cut Christmas trees on public lands (with permits)

• Jesse Welles Eviscerates UnitedHealthcare in New Protest Song

• Health Insurance is a Racket. What value do these companies add, really?

• Auto Chip Aging Accelerates in Hot Climates

  Automotive chips are aging significantly faster than expected in hot climates with sustained high temperatures, raising concerns about the reliability of electrified vehicles over time and whether advanced-node chips are the right choice for safety-critical applications.

  • car electronics need to be robust in a way we have mostly forgotten how to do.

• Syphilis had its roots in the Americas, archaeological bone study suggests

• New York man finds Mastodon jaw while gardening in his backyard

Horseshit

• Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite warnings they won't provide protection

• The Slow Death of Neon

  Great mid-century signage is going dark all over New York, especially in Manhattan. A generation or two ago, Times Square was full of glowing glassworks in every color; now there are barely any to be seen. Elsewhere in the city, a few surviving neon signs give way every year to cut-vinyl awnings, backlit fluorescent plexi, and most especially chains of single-color LEDs. Whenever an old neon-lit business like Gray’s Papaya goes out of business, the big sign is a candidate for the dumpster.

  • It's pretty, but it's power hungry, loud, hot, and has high voltage dangers to boot. All of which are "things we don't want to deal with" for modern people.

• (2016) The True Story Behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit - The Escapist

  Even though GM was charged with conspiracy to monopolize mass transit in 1949, it suffered minimal consequences for being caught with its hands in the cookie jar. Originally it was acquitted, but the charge was upheld in a retrial in 1951. The fines were minimal, no one went to jail, and 5 years later GM got everything it could have hoped for with the American Highway Act of 1956, which set aside $25 Billion for 41,000 miles of new roadway across the country. To put that into context, there were 45,000 miles of streetcar track in America before the system was allowed to crumble. The new highways didn’t even spread as far as the streetcars once had. Although General Motors didn’t frame any cartoon rabbits for murder, it has undoubtedly guided the way that Americans get from point A to point B for a long time. Whether it is the electric streetcar or the electric car, GM’s vendetta against alternative transit has been ongoing for almost a century. Many American cities are working hard to rebuild Streetcar lines and light rail, because public transportation is a basic service that needs to be nourished and supported in the interest of the people. Likewise, the efforts of Elon Musk and others are helping us to shift away from the oil dependence that has shaped the course of world events in recent years.

• About 3 dozen high-rise buildings in South Florida are sinking

• Poll: Young Voters Diverge from Majority on Crypto, TikTok and CEO Assassination

• Moms Carry 71% of the Mental Load

• Tasty, airy baked goods with culinary foam made from peas

• 'He kept going until he couldn't': why do boomer men refuse to slow down?

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments over TikTok divestment law

  • Supreme Court to Hear TikTok's Challenge to Law That Could Ban It

Bluesky

• Attorneys, Law Professors Flock From X To Bluesky.

• Bluesky Has a Death Threat Problem

Musk

• Musk in talks over Reform UK donation, says Farage

• Elon Musk failed to report movement required by security clearance

• SpaceX wants Starbase to become an official city in Texas

• Musk's Alleged Russia Contacts Worry Air Force's Kendall

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Jaguar Land Rover electric car whistleblower sacked

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• It Pays to Have Long Hair and a Beard in Utah–Jesus Models Are in Demand

• Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why probability probably doesn't exist (but it is useful to act like it does)

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Larian boss Swen Vincke calls out pretty much the entire videogame industry at The Game Awards | PC Gamer

  "It's stupidly simple, but somehow it keeps on getting lost. A studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn't been created before. They didn't make it to increase market share. They didn't make it to serve the brand. "

• Threads starts testing scheduled posts

• U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese-Made Router in American Homes

  Investigators at the Commerce, Defense and Justice departments have opened their own probes into the company, and authorities could ban the sale of TP-Link routers in the U.S. next year, according to people familiar with the matter. An office of the Commerce Department has subpoenaed TP-Link, some of the people said.

  • U.S. Weighs Ban on TP-Link, Chinese-Made Router, in American Homes

  • US Weighs Banning TP-Link Routers

  • US may ban TP-Link routers/switches over links to Chinese government

• US trade tribunal finds Lenovo smartphones infringe Ericsson patents

• Even Netflix struggles to identify and understand the cost of its AWS estate

• CrowdStrike moves to dismiss Delta Air Lines suit, citing contract terms

• TikTok's Ban: The Hidden Goldmine for Affiliates Nobody Is Talking About

• More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

• Who needs the dark web? Drug sales flourish on social media

• Substack Is at It Again

  Leaving aside all of the arguments about publication vs platform and whether Substack is a Nazi bar or not, the unfortunate truth for publications on Substack is that in order to amass the money necessary to recoup the investment pumped into the company by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz (Trump supporting billionaire oligarch wannabes who would ruin anything and everything to make one more dollar), they will continue to wedge themselves in between publications and their readers. And at some point, what you thought of as your publication turns out to merely be a tiny fraction of theirs.

• Florida's about to be kicked off one of the most visited adult websites

• Apple Halts Effort to Build iPhone Hardware Subscription Service

• AT&T Hits Texas Man with $6k Bill for Using 3GB of Data

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• AMD 3D V-Cache teardown shows majority of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is dummy silicon

  semiconductor analyst Tom Wassick (via Hardwareluxx) took apart the chip, and the findings of his first report suggest that a large part of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is just dummy silicon for structural integrity. Still, AMD has extracted a lot of performance from its second-generation 3D V-Cache design, landing a solid victory against Intel's Arrow Lake chips.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Microsoft acquires twice as many Nvidia AI chips as tech rivals

• Microsoft's Sarah Bird: Core pieces are still missing from AGI

• Perplexity's Value Triples to $9B

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Stranded Boeing Starliner astronauts face new delay in return to Earth from ISS.

  Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore had been scheduled to return on a SpaceX Dragon flight in February, after they were forced to abandon Starliner due to helium leaks and thruster issues. The pair will now return to Earth no earlier than late March, 10 months after they originally launched, as they wait for their replacements to arrive at the ISS.

  • NASA astronauts Butch and Suni's homecoming delayed again

  • NASA astronauts stuck in space since June face further delay

  • Astronauts who flew to space aboard Starliner face additional delay

• Taiwan says it is in talks for Amazon's Kuiper internet satellite system

• Power failed at SpaceX mission control before Sept spacewalk by NASA nominee

Crypto con games

• Ethereum's Ether Headed to $5K as Activity, Institutional Demand Grows

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Insurers Are Deserting Homeowners as Climate Shocks Worsen (HN comments)

• Coffee prices: Analysts warn it may take years for the rally to fade

• Grubhub to pay $25M for deceiving customers with junk fees

• Nissan, Honda confirm talks on closer collaboration but no decision on a merger

  • The antitrust hurdles Nissan, Honda may face on merger talks

• Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims

• Amazon Delays RTO Mandate for Workers Due to Space

• 2025 Will Be the Year of 'Revenge Quitting'

• Boeing Resumes Production of Airplanes, Including 737

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• China Is Halting Critical Mineral Exports to the US. An Idaho Mine Could Help—If It Ever Secures Federal Permits.

  The Chinese government in recent weeks expanded its ban on exports of a handful of minerals found in critical military and energy technologies in America. The move puts a spotlight on America's domestic mineral supplies, many of which are locked in years-long federal permitting and regulatory reviews. One such case is a project located at an abandoned gold mine in the heart of Idaho. That mine contains some of the nation's largest known deposits of the rare mineral antimony, which is among those affected by China's export restrictions. But after a staggering 14 years, the federal government has yet to give the Idaho project a green light to begin production.

• DHS announces updates to the H1B program

Trump

• And With That Post on X, It Doesn’t Look Like Jared Moskowitz Will Be Trump’s FEMA Director.

  "I appreciate the speculation but I am staying in Congress and running for re-election. It’s an honor to serve the people of Florida’s 23rd district," Moskowitz wrote on Tuesday afternoon. That sure looks like it's a no, then.

• Argentinian President Javier Milei plans to attend Trump inauguration.

Left Angst

• Climate politics could be about to go into reverse

  not just Trump — elections around the world may produce a new crop of net zero critics in 2025

• ING says Germany's auto sector significantly exposed to Trump's tariff threats

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Man Sentenced to Prison for Operating 'Birth Tourism' Scheme for Chinese Clients

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Top Marine says combat experience gives US the edge over China's military

• U.S. Navy Wasted $2B on Failed Cruiser Modernization Effort

• The Crumbling Foundation of America’s Military - The Atlantic

  The Iowa production line is at once essential and an exemplar of industrial atrophy. It illustrates why the richest military on Earth could not keep up with the demand for artillery ammunition after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. At that time, the U.S. was manufacturing about 14,000 shells a month. By 2023, the Ukrainians were firing as many as 8,000 shells a day. It has taken two years and billions of dollars for the U.S. to ramp up production to 40,000 shells a month—still well short of Ukraine’s needs. A big part of the reason is that we still make howitzer rounds the way our great-grandparents did. There are better, faster, safer ways. You can watch videos online of automated plants, for example, operating in Europe. Some new American facilities are starting up, but they are not yet at capacity. The problem isn’t just howitzer shells. And it isn’t only that the U.S. can’t build drones, rockets, and missiles fast enough to meet the needs of Ukraine. America itself lacks stockpiles of the necessary components. A massive rebuilding effort is now under way, the largest in almost a century, but it will not—cannot—happen fast. And even the expanded capacity would not come close to meeting requests the size of Ukraine’s, much less restore our own depleted reserves.

• US airspace closures, lack of answers deepen East Coast drone mystery

• Ottawa proposes 24/7 surveillance of Canada-U.S. border

World

• Horizon Inquiry: Fujitsu told Post Office about system problems at highest level

• 7-Eleven battle shows resilience of Japan Inc.'s family ties

• Vietnam court may commute tycoon's death sentences if she repays $11B

• Who is Yoon Suk Yeol, the leader behind the crisis that shook South Korea?

• Europe's carmakers discount EVs, hike petrol car prices as emissions rules loom

• Top lawyers question law that stops Operation Ironside High Court challenge

• Canada Axes Key Incentive for Scammers to Sell Migrants Low-Wage Jobs

Israel

• How Facebook restricted news in Palestinian territories

• Meta has been suppressing Palestinian content by up to 77%

China

• New Neutrino Detector in China

• China kicks off homegrown Bluetooth alternative

• The Solar Power Enthusiasts Importing Their Own Equipment from China

• China took a great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing of everything

Health / Medicine

• Why heart attacks spike during the winter holidays

• New study links too much seed oil to colon tumors

• The first lawsuit against ultra-processed foods

• Ancient clay remedy may have potential to boost modern gut health

• DOJ Sues Alleging CVS Knowingly Dispensed Controlled Substances

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• CDC confirms first case of bird flu in US

• Bird flu case in Louisiana is in critical condition, health officials reveal

• Newsom Declares Bird Flu Emergency in California as US Confirms First Case

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Expert warns of public health emergency as India's Capital toxic air returns

• When Two Hemispheres Collide: Where to Now for Rewilding in Ireland?

• Carnivorous Squirrels Documented in California

  • Vole hunting: predatory and carnivorous behavior by California ground squirrels

• Grocery prices set to rise as soil becomes 'unproductive'

  Experts are warning of a looming increase in grocery prices as agricultural soil becomes increasingly unproductive. In a concerning trend that could impact households across the globe, the combination of overfarming, climate change and insufficient sustainable practices has left vast swaths of farmland degraded and unproductive, threatening food supply chains and driving up costs.

• World coal use to hit record high in 2024: IEA report

• How balcony solar is taking off

• Can everyone eat for the planet? I shopped at DollarStore for a week to find out

• Perc, commonly used in dry cleaning, now banned by the EPA

• Youth Climate Activists Get Major Win in Montana Supreme Court

• Invasive ‘murder hornets’ are wiped out in the US, officials say.