2024-12-22

Stonehenge, fuss over butts, fuss over Musk, white supremacy produced Republicanism, Google counters, DOGE predecessors, kingpin Yarvin, suspect German details, redefining healthy foods, counting spikes

etc

• Green wood, axes and oaks: how ancient skills to raise Notre-Dame's new roof

• The archaeological mystery of Stonehenge's long-lost megaliths

  In the last quick moments, the Sun disappears from a window formed by two great vertical stones and the horizontal lintel they support. It's dark and cold. Stonehenge, it feels, has swallowed the Sun. My archaeological colleagues and I are convinced that this alignment is no coincidence: it was designed by the monument's builders. But were you able to see this annual drama 4,500 years ago, the spectacle would be yet more impressive. The solstice sightline was marked by as many as six futher upright pairs. Of the greatest of these – the tallest and the most finely carved stones on the site – now just a single megalith known as Stone 56 is left. A projecting bulge on the top of this stone once fitted into a giant lintel. Now that tenon rises exposed and useless. And many more upright stones have gone. What happened to these missing stones? Who took them down and where did they go? How do we know they were once there? Can we picture what the completed Stonehenge looked like? Indeed, was it ever finished at all?

• Stonehenge may have been built to unify the people of ancient Britain

Horseshit

• Woman convicted of murdering her doppelganger when trying to fake her own death

• The Surprising Sexual Politics of Nicole Kidman's Kinky 'Babygirl'

• A tactical nuclear strike can lead to non-MAD Nash equilibrium pro striker

• Cory Doctorow wrote a prescient novella about health insurance and murder

  • Put him on TV and ask him if he feels guilty for "inspiring" these crimes then. Isn't that the standard? They did it to Tom Clancy after 9/11...

• 'Gooner 9/11' averted as Zenless Zone Zero's butt-obfuscation technology is rolled back in the face of horny outrage | PC Gamer

  I'm really not sure where to begin with this one, so I'm just going to lay it out and then try to explain later: A recent update to Zenless Zone Zero made it impossible to get a good look at character's asses, and the blowback was so fierce developer MiHoYo reverted the change less than a day later. The whole thing began with the release of patch 1.4, which included among its many updates this fairly innocuous sounding change: "Adjusts the Agents' display for certain angles: When viewed from specific angles, the Agent will appear faded." What that worked out to in practice, as noted by The Gamer, is a butt filter: When players try to zoom in for a good, up-close look at their avatar's caboose, the character in question disappears. This might seem extremely inconsequential to you (it certainly does to me) but a good chunk of the Zenless Zone Zero community felt very differently.

• The NBA's Problem Is Economics, Not Basketball

• Chicago's Newberry Library discovers rare maguey paper in collection

• Burning Man organization has $14M deficit

• This Suspension Backpack Makes Its Contents Lighter

• 'How would permanent Daylight Saving Time affect you?'

• California population jumps to near pre-pandemic levels

• Boy Scout families mass-rejecting new member-renew system

• When Your $3M Cello Gets Bumped from Your Flight

• Mapped: The strange link between obesity and corruption - Big Think

celebrity gossip

• Shaq's Lucid Air Coupe Is Not the First Car He's Modded to Fit Inside

• 'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Charles Stross is closing down his blog's comment section

  This, from Techcrunch, seems like a good summary of a bad situation facing this blog: Death Of A Forum: How The UK's Online Safety Act Is Killing Communities.

  This blog is just that: my personal blog, with comments. Over the past two decades a lively community has evolved in the discussion threads. However, the Online Safety Act threatens to impose impossible hurdles on the continuation of open fora in the UK. The intent is officially to protect adults and children from illegal content, but ... there's no lower threshold on scale. A blog with comments is subject to exactly as much regulatory oversight as Facebook. It applies to all fora that enable people in the UK (that would be me) to communicate with other people in the UK (that's a whole bunch of you), so I can't avoid the restrictions by moving to a hosting provider in the US. Nor am I terribly keen on filing the huge amounts of paperwork necessary to identify myself as the Trust and Safety officer of an organization and arrange for commercial age verification services (that I can't in any event integrate with this ancient blogging platform). And the penalties for infractions are the same—fines of up to £18M (which is a gigantic multiple of my gross worth).

  And it comes into effect on March 15th. Accordingly ... The blog will continue to exist. However the comment threads may be closed for good after March 14th.

• reporters are now calling for social media platforms to be shut down during election season

• Albania to close TikTok for a year blaming it for violence among children

  • Albania bans TikTok for a year after killing of teenager

Bluesky

• Bluesky Gets a Bit Cloudy

Musk

• Outrage as Elon Musk claims 'only AfD can save Germany'

  • Backlash builds as Elon Musk endorses Germany's far right

  • In latest threat to German democracy, dangerous fascist Elon Musk tweets six words about Alternative für Deutschland

  Today a lot of very important and influential people got out of bed and took to their keyboards to denounce Musk’s election interference. His statement might be illegal, at any rate it is very likely fascist and certainly it is beyond the pale for an American to voice an opinion about German politics. Germans absolutely never, ever, utter the slightest word about American politics and certainly would never advance negative opinions about the American president in the middle of an election campaign. Our Foreign Office would never try to fact-check an American presidential debate! Our journalists would never depict President Donald Trump dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member or offering the Hitler salute or decapitating the Statue of Liberty! That’s just not done!

• The desperate last stand to save a forest from Tesla

• Elon Musk’s X Endgame - The Atlantic

  ince buying Twitter in 2022 and turning it into X, Musk has reportedly used the platform to inflate the reach of his posts (and thereby his own influence on discourse). Since July, his posts on X have received more than 16 times the number of views as all of the accounts of incoming congressional members combined. He also appears to have transformed the platform to boost conservative posts, in accordance with his own political aims. This is how he can start posting about his displeasure over a bill and then have lawmakers capitulate. At least one Republican member of Congress reported that after Musk’s posting spree began, constituents flooded his office with calls telling him to reject the spending bill. “My phone was ringing off the hook,” Representative Andy Barr of Kentucky told CBS News. “The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk.” Some in Congress seem to have no problem with this, and actually enjoy it. Yesterday, Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee as well as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that it might be a good idea to simply make Musk the speaker of the House as a way to shatter the establishment, in Greene’s phrasing. Musk doesn’t have the support of the entire right—his calls to scrap the spending bill frustrated some Republican lawmakers and spurred a round of infighting. But the point is that he has the ear of the person the party listens to: Trump. If you have Trump, Musk probably understands, the rest of the right generally falls in line, however reluctantly.

• Elon Musk 'Crashing' Trump-Bezos Dinner Sparks Jokes, Memes: 'Cable Guy'ed'

  • Elon Musk Crashing Trump's Jeff Bezos Dinner at Mar-a-Lago Mocked as 'Deranged'

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Tesla finds 'cell-dent' issues in Cybertrucks, starts replacing battery packs

• Tesla Recalls 700k Vehicles over Tire Pressure Warning Failure

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Incarceration sentences to ponder

  My analysis reveals a significant change in political beliefs since being incarcerated. There is an increased effect of changing political beliefs for women and people of color incarcerated. The effect reveals that people of color are becoming, either for the first time or further aligned, with the Republican Party since being incarcerated. The experience of violence and abuse while incarcerated extends the tools of white supremacy in the prison system by influencing feelings of shame, hopelessness, and cultural inferiority, further aligning vulnerable groups to conservatism and whiteness.

• US spent millions creating transgender animals to experiment on

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• For Gen Alpha, learning to read is becoming a privilege

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google's counteroffer to govt trying to break it up is unbundling Android apps

  • Our remedies proposal in DOJ's search distribution case

  • Google Proposes Fix to Solve Search Monopoly

  • Google suggests fixes to its search monopoly

  • Google Says It Won't Force Gemini on Partners in Antitrust Remedy Proposal

• US judge finds Israel's NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

• Sega considering Netflix-like game subscription service

• Time to admit it: Unreal Engine 5 has been kind of rubbish in most games so far

• Bad Sign: Pocketpair Updates 'Palworld' by Nixxing Pal Spheres

• Final black and white Doctor Who to air in colour

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Next Great Leap in AI Is Behind Schedule and Crazy Expensive

• Britannica Didn’t Just Survive. It’s an A.I. Company Now.

• 'AI-powered judge' takes boxing closer to brave new world it appears to seek

• Perplexity's value triples to $9B in latest funding round for AI search engine

• AI's assault on our intellectual property must be stopped

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the Sun

Crypto con games

• Tai Mo Shan to Pay $123MM for Misleading Investors About Stability of Terra

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon sellers are in revolt over a new policy they say gives up business data

• Intel ex-CEO Gelsinger and current co-CEO sued over Intel Foundry disclosures

• Modeling Inflation Dynamics

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai says search giant has slashed manager roles by 10%

• US economic output grows at fastest pace in nearly 3 years to end 2024

• The Federal Reserve lowers interest rates again, hints at fewer cuts next year

Trump

• The Bark and Bite of Doge

  There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the end of limited-government conservatism, but the president-elect has also entrusted Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a nongovernmental advisory group on slashing bureaucracy. This harks back to the Grace Commission, an outside group of businessmen who worked as volunteers under President Reagan, issuing a massive list of recommendations on how to cut waste and improve government services. The problem then was not that the recommendations were bad but that they were largely ignored. Whether the DOGE will be able to avoid a similar fate hinges on whether it can learn from ongoing successful deregulatory efforts.

Democrats / Biden Inc

• We’re Already Talking about Joe Biden in the Past Tense

Left Angst

• The obscure 'dark enlightenment' blogger influencing the next US administration

  Curtis Yarvin is hardly a household name in US politics. But the “neoreactionary” thinker and far-right blogger is emerging as a serious intellectual influence on key figures in Donald Trump’s coming administration in particular over potential threats to US democracy. Yarvin, who considers liberal democracy as a decadent enemy to be dismantled, is intellectually influential on vice president-elect JD Vance and close to several proposed Trump appointees. The aftermath of Trump’s election victory has seen actions and rhetoric from Trump and his lieutenants that closely resemble Yarvin’s public proposals for taking autocratic power in America. Trump’s legal moves against critics in the media, Elon Musk’s promises to pare government spending to the bone, and the deployment of the Maga base against Republican lawmakers who have criticized controversial nominees like Pete Hegseth are among the measures that resemble elements of Yarvin’s strategy for displacing liberal democracy in the US.

• Biden's antitrust crackdown on tech M&As may linger into Trump's reign

• Justice Thomas Did Not Disclose Additional Trips, Democrats Say

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Ohio passes law letting police charge public up to $75/hour for body cam videos

• Sexually aggressive homeless people are terrifying women in Long Beach

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Seven Chinese nationals tried to illegally enter Guam as U.S. tested missile

World

• Saudi Suspect Plows Car Into German Christmas Market; U.S. Media Blames the Car.

  • 'The Vehicles Are at It Again!' Driver Plowed Through a Christmas Market and the AP Does Their Thing – Twitchy

  • Strange (Convenient) Narrative Emerges In Horrific Christmas Market Attack... | ZeroHedge

  The primary suspect in the Christmas Market terror attacks in Magdeburg, a doctor and refugee from Saudi Arabia, is allegedly also a supporter of the right-wing AfD party, Tommy Robinson, Elon Musk and Alex Jones according to authorities. 50-year-old Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy from the Saudi Arabian city of Hofuf, moved to Germany in 2006 and lives in Bernburg. He has been recognized as a refugee since 2016. Taleb is a critic of Islamist governments and a pro-asylum activist for people seeking to escape oppressive Sharia law. Reports claim the Saudi Government may have tried to extradite him multiple times, which Germany refused.

  • Suspect in Germany attack self-identified as Islamophobic, anti-immigrationist

  • Magdeburg Christmas market attack: What we know about the suspect | AP News

  Taleb’s X account describes him as a former Muslim. It is filled with tweets and retweets focusing on anti-Islam themes and criticism of the religion, while sharing congratulatory notes to Muslims who left the faith. He was critical of German authorities, saying they had failed to do enough to combat the “Islamism of Europe.” He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Some described Taleb as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum-seekers.

• Elderly activist to spend Christmas in prison because tag does not fit

• Currency Tailspin Forces Brazil’s Leader to Do the Unthinkable: Cut Spending: Brazil’s currency plunges to lowest level in 30 years after breakneck spending on pensions and social services.

• Why the DRC sued Apple over 'conflict minerals'

Israel

• Houthi Hypersonic Missile Renders Iron Dome Useless, Slams Into Tel Aviv Area | ZeroHedge

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• The Global Hunt for Putin's 'Sleeper Agents'

Health / Medicine

• FDA Rewrites Rules of 'Healthy' Foods for First Time in 30 Years

• FDA approves prescription medicine for sleep apnea

• Vibrating capsule slashes food intake in pigs–human trials possible in 2-3 years

• Commercial tea bags release millions of microplastics, entering human intestinal cells.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Why do so many people have ultra-high levels of anti-spike antibodies years after receiving Covid mRNA jabs?

  It now appears that a significant number of mRNA-vaccinated people have Covid spike protein in their bodies, or extremely high anti-spike protein antibodies, or both, years after vaccination. We need to know what’s happening, and why. This cannot be seen as a political issue, or a risk for vaccine advocates.

• Avian Flu Has Hit California Dairies So Hard They're Calling It 'Covid for Cows' (Archive

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Climate Recap 2024

• We don't know how many birds die in structural collisions

• The Magnetic North Pole Has Officially Changed Position: ScienceAlert

• New global tool measures climate resilience at the city level

• The Destructive Legacy of Failed Aquaculture

• Why sea level rise is skyrocketing across the U.S. South