2025-01-04
free to argue, necessary mess, asocial intensive parenting, new Gods, DNA "book", productivity bad, pipe bombs, Biden's border, benefits of red tape, Carter's Iran, alcohol warnings, abandoned farms
etc
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Yemeni Coffee Shops Are Everywhere in Texas: Alcohol-Free Spaces That Open Late
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Others have retreated to comfortable echo chambers. Former Elon Musk fanboys—now haters—have debarked for Bluesky, a Twitter alternative, which almost advertises in its name: No red rhetoric here. Some simply unplug. CNN and MSNBC audiences are plummeting. Many will play Wordle for four years. But it’s better if everyone stays engaged. Despite, or maybe because of, our differences, America is still the greatest country and pulling away. We’re so free we can argue about our differences without the threat of being arrested. Our envious stock market has left the rest of the world in the dust. China seems to be languishing. In the European outdoor museum, few work. They sit at cafes and caffeinate all day. The U.S. sets the tone for the rest of the world. Not only by paying for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations but culturally. Even spiritually. On a visit to Kraków, Poland, my wife and I used the very American Airbnb to book a food tour. Highly recommend. Our guide was an engaging and overcaffeinated 20-something who couldn’t let go of her designed-in-California iPhone.
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Opinion | In Defense of Messiness - The New York Times
I’ve been preaching my gospel that being messy is not a moral failing for years now. But I want to take it one step further: Messiness can be a good thing. All communities should have some messy people. We are not all meant to be Joanna Gaines. Some of us are Molly Weasleys, our homes bursting with the cozy chaos of a loving family and cabinets packed full of odds and ends. We cannot be Martha Stewart because we are Thoreau, so consumed by capturing Walden Pond’s essence that we need someone else to bring us meals and do our laundry. And try as we might, no amount of clutching our items to see if they spark joy will turn us into Marie Kondo’s closet, for we are Albert Einstein’s desk. The parts of my brain that allow me to produce handmade Renaissance costumes are the same parts responsible for a dining room bursting with fabric scraps and sewing supplies. It’s time we admit that what makes us shine can’t be divorced from what makes us scattered.
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Turo, the Car-Share App Used in Two Attacks, Is No Stranger to Safety Concerns
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Quadrantids, 1st meteor shower of 2025, expected to peak tonight: How to watch.
Horseshit
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(PDF) Mars Exploration: How the CIA's Project Stargate Went to Mars
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Cambridge study aims to find out if dogs and their owners are on same wavelength
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Allstate CEO Tom Wilson ignited a firestorm of backlash on social media Thursday with a video statement addressing Wednesday's terror attack in New Orleans that killed more than a dozen people. In the video, Wilson suggested Americans have an "addiction to divisiveness" and must "accept people's imperfections and differences."
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Judge will not dismiss lawsuit claiming Poland Spring water is not from a spring
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The Isolation of Intensive Parenting - The Atlantic
our village thrives not despite the comically low expectations we have for one another, but because of them. And this, in turn, clarified something unexpected for me: The hovering, “intensive” approach to parenting that has steadily come to dominate American, and to some extent British, family life is simply incompatible with village building. You can try to micromanage your child’s care—whether they eat sugar, whether they get screen time, whether someone insists that a child apologize after snatching another kid’s toy—or you can have reliable community help with child care. But you can’t have both.
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To Ease Parenting Burdens, We Need Better Housing and Street Designs, Too
celebrity gossip
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Neil Young confirms he'll headline Glastonbury after 'information error' pullout
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‘It Ends With Us’ Actor and Director and His Publicists Sue The Times for Libel - The New York Times
The lawsuit, which seeks $250 million in damages, accuses The Times of uncritically accepting a “self-serving narrative” by the actress that Mr. Baldoni, his production company and their public relations team worked to harm her reputation after she complained about misconduct during the film’s shooting. It asserts that the Dec. 21 article deliberately omitted portions of text exchanges and other information that contradicted the actress’s version of events.
Obit
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Women in tech earn more but represent 21% of workforce – report
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Substitute religions are reshaping the world
The enlightened Western world, which turned its back on Christianity, produces 21st century religions in which God has stepped off the stage, and humans only play a background role. Wokeism essentially reduces human beings to their skin color, gender and origin. Humans are no longer the center of the cosmos in the climate religion that deifies nature. And technicism promotes the depersonalization of humanity to such an extent that individuals are seen merely as algorithms, replaceable as more advanced ones develop in the era of AI.
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Do You Believe in Life After Death? These Scientists Study It
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The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin's Activism
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks
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YouTube laywer LegalEagle is suing Honey and wants to take the company down
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UK ICO response to Google's policy change on device fingerprinting
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Android 15 sideloading restrictions are a raw deal for users
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A TikTok Ban Looms. Creators Say They'll Believe It When They See It
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Utah AG Accuses TikTok of Knowing Minors Were Being Groomed on 'Live'
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R/agency subreddit is being auctioned for $50K and used by mods to promote scams
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In 2025, blogs will be the last bastion of the Good Internet
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Asimov Press' Latest Book, Encoded in DNA - Asimov Press
we’ve encoded a complete copy of the book into DNA, thus merging bits with atoms. This is the first commercially-available book to be written in DNA and sold in both mediums; as physical books and nucleic acids.
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Time to check if you ran any of these 33 malicious Chrome extensions
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Too soon. People haven't forgotten how lame the last wave was: Samsung is the next company to try to popularize 3D displays (again)
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Meta's AI-generated profiles are starting to show up on Instagram
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Fiber Broadband chief slams Starlink as a 'cop out' for BEAD
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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The American Worker Is Becoming More Productive
U.S. workers are getting more done. That’s great for the economy—though not always great for workers.
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Judge denies Uber's motion to block Seattle law regulating driver deactivation
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Wall Street headhunters are gearing up for a 'bonkers' hiring market in 2025
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Fintech startup Level abruptly shuts down after burning through $27M
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By 2030, more than 85M jobs could go unfilled because of lack of talent
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IBM, GlobalFoundries settle multibillion-dollar trade secret, contract lawsuits
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New Data Reveal Climate Change-Driven Insurance Crisis Is Spreading
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Venture Capitalist Sues PayPal over Funding Program for Minority Startups
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Trump
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About Those J6 Pipe Bombs... – RedState
Given the fervor with which the FBI has pursued individuals present at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, it's puzzling that their investigation into the placing of explosive devices nearby — which posed a threat to Secret Service protectees and others — has virtually stalled out. It's even more puzzling that the agency provided incorrect (false?) information regarding the data obtained from cellphone carriers.
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Trump ordered to appear for sentencing in the New York hush money case on Jan. 10
Democrats / Biden Inc
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The border was not Biden’s finest moment
They’re running about 74,000 a month when he left office and they, in fact, did shoot up. Some of it was some things Biden said and some ways that they put a moratorium, for example, on deportations. But in fact, we did get up here almost to 300,000 a month.
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Biden Returns From Vacation With Unexplained Injuries, Slurred Speech – PJ Media
Left Angst
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Restricting immigration doesnt benefit native workers: US visa lottery evidence
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The Dollar and the Trade Deficit - by Paul Krugman
if you’re nostalgic, as Trump and many of his supporters are, for the old days when the U.S. economy was dominated by heavy industry, you should know that it was Reagan, not some bunch of woke environmentalists, who brought that era to an end. hat caused the sudden Reagan-era surge in trade deficits? As macroeconomic stories go, this one is especially clear. (I used to love covering it when I taught undergraduate macro.) By cutting taxes while increasing military spending, Reagan pushed the U.S. budget into deficit. This deficit spending would, other things equal, have been inflationary; but the Federal Reserve contained this inflationary pressure by keeping interest rates high. High interest rates, in turn, attracted inflows of foreign capital, pushing up the value of the dollar.
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The Most Reliable Scapegoat in Politics? Red Tape. - The New York Times
Just before the November election, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from Washington’s Third Congressional District, posted a video explaining why she was running to keep her seat. Unlike many other Democrats, she didn’t talk about Donald Trump or the state of democracy. She talked about fruit. She dressed casually and spoke directly, like one parent sharing a grievance with another at the playground. It all started, she said, when a constituent who worked at a day-care facility complained to her that she was not “legally allowed to peel bananas or oranges for the kids.” Why not? “She said peeling fruit is considered food prep.” (Here Gluesenkamp Perez tightened her eyebrows, as in: Can you believe it?) Even worse, while peeling a healthful banana was against the rules, opening a bag of potato chips was apparently fine. The congresswoman looked into it. At first, she said, the regulators she talked to gave her the runaround, insisting that this wasn’t what the rules said. But eventually she concluded that it was true: This day care would need to install “like six more sinks” to meet the legal requirements to serve fresh fruit. To Gluesenkamp Perez, this was an absurd example of how regulations that made “good reading on paper” easily went awry in “the real world,” a policy emblematic of “an ingrained disregard for working people by policymakers in D.C.”
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Elon's IQ Shredder: Our immigration strategy accelerates Idiocracy
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Why I'm quitting the Washington Post - by Ann Telnaes
I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now. The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.
- I feel like the current political situation in the US is going to accelerate the demise of traditional media. They have not been able to adapt to a changing information landscape and were stuck on models that worked in the past, like "both sides"ing issues sort of reflexively.
- Wapo and the New York Times definitely play with kid gloves on when dealing with the insane shit republicans get away with.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Ohio Gov. DeWine signs bill into law to charge public for police video
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Barriers to stop vehicle attacks were in the process of being replaced in New Orleans
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The FBI had been looking into the possibility that the bombing was politically charged because it occurred outside a hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump and inside a vehicle made by the company of Trump’s close ally Elon Musk, according to FBI officials. “It’s not lost on us that it happened in front of the Trump building and a Tesla vehicle was used,” said Spencer Evans, the FBI special agent in charge.
But Livelsberger, who was an active member of the Army’s elite Special Forces, was known to be a “Rambo-type patriot” and staunch Trump supporter — and law enforcement officers are investigating if he had purposefully picked a Cybertruck to limit civilian casualties, rather than for political reasons, the sources said. If he had used a normal vehicle, the explosion would have likely taken out the glass doors of the building and possibly the lobby — potentially killing innocent bystanders. The Cybertruck’s impenetrable steel design contained the explosion, while still giving off large flames, according to the sources — and Musk himself.
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ISIS-inspired New Orleans terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar kept a bomb-making workbench in his ramshackle Texas trailer home — where a Quran was left open on a page about “slaying” in the name of Allah, exclusive photos obtained by The Post show. Jabbar’s north Houston home was filled with chemical residue and chemical bottles, while an inventory of items seized by the FBI — left behind by investigators who raided his house on Wednesday — included a long list of compounds used in bomb-making. His Quran was propped atop a bookshelf, a centerpiece in his living room, and open to a passage reading, “they fight in Allah’s cause, and slay and are slain; a promise binding…”
- the question of why the Post beat the FBI was asked yesterday, today the question is: why is the FBI allowing press to tour a suspect's home? with apparently relevant evidence on display?
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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Jimmy Carter vs. Iran: The Untold Story Revealed in the Archives - WSJ
No American tried harder to thwart the revolution than Carter. And when that failed, he plotted to subvert the Islamic regime.
Carter was made of tougher stuff than his liberal aides and usually sided with his more hawkish deputies. For a president who often blended idealism with pragmatism, preserving the shah’s regime was not a difficult call. It is rare for an American president to tell a sovereign leader to repress his rebellious subjects. But in November 1978, Carter instructed his ambassador, William Sullivan, to inform the shah, “We have confidence in the shah’s judgment…. We also recognize the need for decisive action and leadership to restore order and his own authority,” according to then-National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s memoir.
World
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"A Digital Prison": Surveillance and the suppression of civil society in Serbia
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'It didn't come as a surprise': UK workers on being forced back into the office
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Musk, a vocal critic of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government, took to X to accuse Phillips of shielding Starmer from scrutiny. Musk pointed to Starmer’s tenure as head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from 2008 to 2013, during which he argued "rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice." He claimed Phillips’ refusal to investigate Oldham’s abuse cases was an attempt to protect Starmer, suggesting the trail of accountability would lead back to his time at the CPS.
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Myanmar Military Junta Enacts Repressive New Cybersecurity Bill
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Drugs, scams and sin: Myanmar's war has made it the global crime capital
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South Korea's Impeached President Fends Off Arrest over Martial Law Decree
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South Korea: North Korean troops suffer 100 deaths, struggling in drone warfare
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Drunken Zambian policeman freed 13 suspects to celebrate New Year
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After World War II, the Truman administration rejected the notion of a pastoral, deindustrialized, and insecure Germany as a cruel prescription for poverty, hunger, and depopulation. But now the German people themselves voted for their own updated version of Morgenthau’s plan—as they willingly reduced factory hours, curtailed power and fuel supplies, and struggled with millions of illegal aliens and porous borders. Germans accept that they have no military to speak of that could protect their insecure borders—without a United States-led NATO. Eighty years ago, Germany’s former conquerors rejected wrecking the defeated nation as too harsh. But now Germany is willfully pastoralizing, disarming, deindustrializing—and destroying—itself.
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Poland's minimum wage exceeds US federal rate for first time
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Timeline of suspected underwater sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea
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Congo files criminal complaints against Apple in Europe over conflict minerals
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Europe needs space and resources, Canada needs people. Let’s deal
Mr Trump is goading his neighbour by suggesting it is about to become America’s 51st state and referring to its prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau”. Officials from Ottawa and EU capitals have been trading notes on how to handle another bout of Mr Trump. Charlemagne, who enjoys both European and Canadian heritage, has a ready solution to both places’ woes: the EU should invite Canada to become its 28th member.
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
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Loneliness linked to ill health through effect on protein levels
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Dartitis: The condition where you try to throw a dart – but can't
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Zyn's Online Hype Risks Leading to the Nicotine Pouches' Downfall
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Shaken Baby Syndrome Has Found New Life as Abusive Head Trauma
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Chronic Pain Can Cause a Kind of Madness. I Know This Personally.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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North Carolina's coastal tourism could decline due to salty tap water
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Feral hogs represent an immediate threat to peyote
When licensed Peyote dealers known as "Peyoteros" harvest Peyote, they merely cut it above its underground stem, leaving the stem intact so that dormant buds can re-sprout new "heads" (stems). When feral pigs eat Peyote, exploiting its water stores but apparently unbothered by the bitter alkaloids, they dig up the plants and leave them half-eaten to die slowly on the soil surface. The pigs also damage Peyote's nurse plants like Guajillo (Senegalia berlandieri) by chewing on the roots, causing it to die.
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Feds Say the Technology They Use to Control the Weather Doesn't Work
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'We need to start thinking about this as a real public health concern'
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Farmers are abandoning their land. Is that good for nature?
"Somebody poured their heart and soul in creating a home, and now it's just collapsing," she says. "My family has fields that we inherited from my grandparents, [but] I don't know where they are," Daskalova says.
This is a common situation in Bulgaria, and in a surprising number of rural villages around the world. Even while large farming enterprises clear forests in Brazil or Bolivia in order to graze cattle or grow crops, some farmers elsewhere are walking away from their land, letting nature reclaim it. Abandoned farmland "is a worldwide phenomenon," says Peter Verburg, a researcher on land use at the Free University Amsterdam. Small-scale farmers with rocky soil, steep hills, or scarce water "give up because they cannot compete," Verburg says.
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The EPA Is Letting a Company Build a Road Using Radioactive Waste