2025-02-14

beer horsepower, the rules of science, "you shouldn't want that", Blue Origin layoffs, RFK Jr. confirmed, American aircraft carrier collides with merchant ship, naturalistic fallacies abound

etc

• Adults can learn perfect pitch

• Evacuation warnings issued fire burn zones as storm soaks Southern California

  • California's Problem Now Isn't Fire–It's Rain

• Learning a new language? Your mindset matters more than 'having a knack'

Horseshit

• Have we tested the "blood of slaves" version? We Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Was So Durable

• Should games have a "busy mode?" - by Callum Booth

  “Busy mode” is a simple idea. If you have a huge game filled with side quests, cut it down to its core components, the main story, and nothing else. Basically, something you can lope through in under 20 hours, hit all the salient points, and then go about your business. I’m not even asking for a discount. I’ll pay the full whack so I’m in with a chance of finishing the damn thing.

• Can Horses Drink Beer?

  Due to a horse’s size, it is unlikely that a beer a day will have a significant impact on its body. The calories and nutrients in one beer are only a small percentage of what is required for the average 1,000-pound horse.

• The story behind San Francisco's bizarre, stomach-flipping hairpin turn

• So greasy: MN senator wants to make it legal to eat beavers again

• Tennis great Steffi Graf got bitten by pickleball's 'fun factor'

• Ford Godzilla V8 Knocks on the Door of 1k HP Without Boost or Nitrous

• The US has exposed the World Anti-Doping Agency's precarious funding model

celebrity gossip

• (2004) George Soros: The 'God' Who Carries Around Some Dangerous Demons - Los Angeles Times

  When asked by Britain’s Independent newspaper to elaborate on that passage, Soros said, “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” Since I began to live it out. Those unfamiliar with Soros would probably dismiss the statement out of hand. But for those who have followed his career and sociopolitical endeavors, it cannot be taken quite so lightly. Soros has proved that with the vast resources of money at his command he has the ability to make the once unthinkable acceptable. His work as a self-professed “amoral” financial speculator has left millions in poverty when their national currencies were devaluated, and he pumped so much cash into shaping former Soviet republics to his liking that he has bragged that the former Soviet empire is now the “Soros Empire.” Now he’s turned his eye on the internal affairs of the United States. Today’s U.S., he writes in his latest book, “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” is a “threat to the world,” run by a Republican Party that is the devil child of an unholy alliance between “market fundamentalists” and “religious fundamentalists.” We have become a “supremacist” nation.

• Elizabeth Holmes' PR campaign continues

Obit

• The Prophet of Parking: A eulogy for the great Donald Shoup

• Valérie André, first woman to fly rescue missions in combat zones, dies at 102

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Russia employing sophisticated DeepFakes to influence German Elections

Musk

• OpenAI says Musk's takeover bid contradicts his lawsuit against it

• Elon Musk will withdraw bid for OpenAI's nonprofit if its board agrees to terms

  • Elon Musk says he'll drop his $97B bid for OpenAI if it remains a non-profit

• Texas county approves holding election to make SpaceX's Starbase its own city

• Her parents were injured in a Tesla crash. She ended up having to pay Tesla

• Apple Resumes Advertising on X

  • Apple is once again advertising on X, more than a year after stopping all ads

  • Apple has started advertising on X again

  • Apple Comes Crawling Back to X Like a Dog

• The Tesla Revolt - The Atlantic

  Musk had much to answer for on his recent fourth-quarter earnings call—not least that in 2024, Tesla’s car sales had sunk for the first time in a decade. Profits were down sharply too. Usually, when this happens at a car company, the CEO issues a mea culpa, vows to cut costs, and hypes vehicles coming to market soon.

• Tesla is suing drivers who complain about their cars after accidents and winning

• Royal Society will meet amid campaign to revoke Elon Musk's fellowship

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• White nationalist books planted in little free libraries across Ottawa

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Are PhDs losing lustre? Why fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

• Seafloor detector picks up record neutrino while under construction

• Do you need permission from the government to do independent research?

  Now, I know what you’re thinking: “That can’t be right! The government can’t possibly claim to regulate what me and my roommates eat at home! That would be stupid!” Yes, it would be stupid. But who says the world makes sense? Now, would you actually be prosecuted for violating those rules? Unlikely. If a prosecutor went after you and you fought them in court, you might even be able to get some of these rules declared unconstitutional. But those are the rules as written.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Apple now lets you move purchases between your 25 years of accounts

• Ploy to Trademark Hosted WordPress, Managed WordPress Derailed

• Court Decides That Use of Copyrighted Works in AI Training Is Not Fair Use

• Braille Institute’s Next Hyperlegible Font | Braille Institute

• Google will use machine learning to estimate a user's age

• Fox Pulls in $800M in Super Bowl Ad Revenue

• Apple TV comes to Android phones, tablets

• Feds want devs to stop coding 'unforgivable' buffer overflow vulnerabilities

• The Duo Lingo owl is dead

• Netflix doubled Ad rev and still raised prices on all subscription tiers

• Unofficial TikTok downloads surge in the US

• 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

• U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans, lawmakers say

• Rape under wraps: how Tinder, Hinge and corporate owner chose profits not safety

• White Hat Hackers Expose Iridium Satellite Security Flaws

• Mysterious Palo Alto firewall reboots? You're not alone

  • Palo Alto Networks Patches Potentially Serious Firewall Vulnerability

• LibreOffice still kicking at 40, now with browser tricks and real-time collab

• Official RTX 4090 power cable found melted by reviewer 2 years later

  • It's not "melted", its self welding for extra secure connections.

• TikTok Returns to Apple and Google App Stores

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• After Recent Kernel Drama, Rust for Linux Policy Put in Place

• Rust doesn't belong in the Linux Kernel

  Rust in the Linux kernel has been a source of drama for quite some time now, and while I somewhat sympathize with both sides (pro-Rust and anti-Rust), I believe the fundamental problem is that both sides don’t really understand each other (although one side more than the other), and it’s not just the technical issue of how to better write a kernel: it’s much more that the entire worldview is different. The latest chapter in the saga is the resignation of yet another maintainer because of the way one of the patches for Rust support was handled. But the issue wasn’t what was done or said by the leadership, it’s what was not done — that according to many in the pro-Rust camp believe should have been done.

  The ultimate problem as I see it is not technical, it’s the attitude that is the dead end. When I discuss with Rust advocates and mention the fact that you can’t write a simple linked list like linux does (intrusive doubly circular linked list), they say two things 1) “yes you can” (untrue), and 2) “you shouldn’t want that”. Typical “it’s not happening and it’s a good thing that it is” responses. The moment somebody tells me “you shouldn’t want that”, I stop using their software. Period.

• Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

  • Emojis and other Unicode characters can be hacked to smuggle data invisibly.

• Undergrad accidentally shreds 40-year hash table gospel

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds

• Why firing programmers and replacing them with AI is a mistake.

• The Perils of Anthropomorphizing Machine Intelligence

• Elon Musk says Grok 3 in final stages, outperforming all chatbots

  • Musk claims Grok 3 is 'outperforming' rivals, with full release imminent

• Alibaba's Tsai Says Apple iPhone Will Use His Firm's AI in China

• Larry Ellison wants to put all America's data in AI, including DNA

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA moves up return date for Boeing Starliner astronauts after swapping SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

• "Man was never meant to fly!" Can the Human Body Endure a Voyage to Mars?

• Bezos' Rocket Firm Bracing for Job Cuts After Years of Expansion

  • Bezos' Blue Origin to layoff about 10% across its space, launch business

  • Bezos' Blue Origin to layoff about 10% across its space, launch business

Crypto con games

• North Korea targets crypto developers via NPM supply chain attack

Economicon / Business / Finance

• JPMorgan CEO Dimon derides in-office work pushback, demands efficiency

• Amazon's messy push to bring everyone back to the office

• IBM return-to-office order hits finance, ops teams in push to dump staff for AI

• US companies get more latitude to bar shareholder resolutions from their ballots

• Is Microsoft Debt Is Safer Than Treasuries

• TSMC Faces Tough Choices Amid Rumors for Intel Foundry Collaboration

  • US gov't pushing TSMC and Intel to create joint venture in the US: Report

• Getaround abruptly shuts down US car-sharing operations

• WD told to pay half a billion in patent damages before company splits

• Big Tech is moving on from the DeepSeek shock

• Gold Is Worth More in New York - Bloomberg

• Honda Nissan merger talks collapse over management structure

• US Consumer Debt Delinquency Hits Highest in Almost Five Years

• Arm recruits from customers as it plans to sell its own chips

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Judge clears way for Trump’s plan to downsize federal workforce | AP News

  About 75,000 federal workers accepted the offer to quit in return for being paid until Sept. 30. U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. in Boston found that the unions weren’t directly affected, so they didn’t have legal standing to challenge the program, commonly described as a buyout. O’Toole was nominated by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

• How Health Insurers Racked Up Billions in Extra Payments from Medicare Advantage

• Govt Workers Retirement Papers Processed Manually Underground in Limestone Mine

• About FEMA's political shenanigans - by Tom Knighton

• I Tried to Fix Government Tech for Years. I'm Fed Up

• California's Fair Plan Gets $1B Bailout

• The GSA Plans to Sell Hundreds of Its Federal Government Buildings

Trump

• New DOGE site update breaks down government jobs by salary/age/headcount

• X to pay Donald Trump $10M to settle lawsuit over Capitol attack – report

  • Musk's X Agrees to Pay About $10M to Settle Trump Lawsuit

• Musk Claims 150 Year Olds Receiving Social Security

• RFK Jr Will Be Confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services

  • RFK Jr., an anti-vax activist, will lead HHS following Senate confirmation

Democrats

• How Elon Musk Broke with Biden and the Democrats

Left Angst

• State Dept. Plans $400M Purchase of Armored Tesla Cybertrucks

  • US Department of State plans to spend $400M on Tesla armoured vehicles

  • Trump administration set to purchase $400M worth of armored Teslas

  • Mention of Tesla Removed from $400M State Dept. Contract

  • State Department might buy $400M worth of 'armored Teslas'

  • State Department Revises Plan to Buy Armored Teslas (Archive)

  The State Department procurement forecast was published in December, after Mr. Trump won the election but before he took office. Plans to purchase Cybertrucks were reported earlier on Wednesday by Drop Site News. Tesla would not have collected all of the $400 million order. Some of the money would have gone to firms that upgrade the vehicles to withstand attacks, such as Armormax, a company in Ogden, Utah. Justin Johnson, operations manager at Armormax, acknowledged in a brief telephone interview on Wednesday that there had been interest in the company’s product from the Trump administration, but said he was not authorized to comment further. The plan to purchase armored electric vehicles, whether Teslas or another make, is a departure for the Trump administration. Among Mr. Trump’s first actions as president were executive orders calling for the removal of Biden-era incentives and regulations that promoted electric vehicles.

  • This is the only instance of Biden era waste the media disapproves of so far. If the contract was awarded in Dec 2024, when was it begun?

• Trump's firing of the U.S. government archivist is far worse than it might seem

• Civil War Comes to the West - Military Strategy Magazine

  the major threat to the security and prosperity of the West today emanates from its own dire social instability, structural and economic decline, cultural desiccation and, in my view, elite pusillanimity. Some academics have begun to sound the alarm, notably Barbara Walter’s How Civil Wars Start—and How to Stop Them, which is concerned primarily with the dwindling domestic stability of the United States.[ii] To judge from President Biden’s September 2022 speech in which he declared ‘MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic’ governments are beginning to take heed, albeit cautiously and awkwardly.

• Republicans Reveal Trump Tax Plan Will Cost US $4.5T

• Musk staffer 'mistakenly' given ability to edit Treasury Dept payment system

• Elon Musk revoked $80M in FEMA funding from NYC bank accounts

• "Largest data breach in US history": Three more lawsuits try to stop DOGE

• Cuts to Science Funding and Why They Matter – Sean Carroll

• CNN Guest Is Cool With Nullifying Elections If He Believes Winner (Trump) Doesn’t ‘Know Anything.’

• Blind director of watchdog group funded by George Soros testifies that he does not see widespread evidence of government waste | Not the Bee

• Trump betrays Ukraine- rules based western world order implodes

  • EU criticises Trump's negotiation tactics in Ukraine peace talks

• Waste.gov locks down after people discover it's just a WordPress template

• Google Maps Admits Deleting Critical 'Gulf of America' Reviews

  • Google Maps blocks Gulf of America reviews after rename criticism

• What is Elon Musk getting up to with America’s payment system?

  Exactly what has Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency”, or DOGE, been doing inside the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, a once-obscure but sensitive area of the Treasury? This is the part of the government responsible for paying out roughly 80% of the nearly $7trn that the government spends each year. The drama broke into the open on the morning of January 31st, when David Lebryk, the bureau’s longstanding boss and a career civil servant, suddenly resigned. Until then, the bureau was among the most anonymous of federal offices. According to Don Hammond, a former official there, Mr Lebryk often told staff members that if the bureau is in the news, the country is in serious trouble. Ever since he stepped aside, it has been in the news an awful lot.

• Red Hats, Red Blood: Roleplaying The January 6 Insurrection In A Brooklyn Warehouse - Aftermath

• Can a government choose which court orders to comply with?

• UTEP leaders silent as Ted Cruz accuses researchers of using 'woke DEI grants'

• Federal workers say they increasingly distrust platforms like Facebook

• DOGE to examine NASA payments

• DOGE Staffer Is Trying to Reroute FEMA Funds

• TSA facial recognition technology faces audit probe

• DOGE Has Started Gutting a Key US Technology Agency

• Trump rescinds Biden-era equal pay guidance for male and female college athletes

• Trump and Musk can't seem to locate much evidence of fraud

• Usaid funding freeze disrupts global tuberculosis control efforts

• PBS Removes LGBTQ Teaching Resources in Response to Trump's Executive Orders

• Defense stocks drop after Trump says Pentagon spending could be halved

• DOGE's Website Is Just One Big X Ad

• Federal Prosecutors in New York and Washington DC Resign

  • US prosecutor in New York resigns after order to drop mayoral case

• DOGE's Records Could Be Sealed for Up to a Decade If Musk Gets His Way

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• LA County teen and "serial swatter" gets prison time for "swattings"

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Europe cannot rely on US protection, Pentagon chief tells NATO allies

• Russia to get back jailed cybercrime boss from US

• Navy crew members eject from their jet before it crashes off the San Diego coast

• Hackers are helping their espionage counterparts and vice versa

• More victims of China's Salt Typhoon crew emerge: Telcos now hit via Cisco bugs

• USS Harry S. Truman Collides with Merchant Vessel - USNI News

  USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), the flagship of the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, collided with M/V Besiktas-M around 11:45 p.m. Wednesday near Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea, the Navy said Thursday. The carrier did not experience flooding and the crew did not report injuries, Cmdr. Tim Gorman, spokesperson for U.S. 6th Fleet said in a statement. Truman‘s propulsion plants are unaffected. The collision is under investigation with no more information immediately available. A Navy official told USNI News that damage was above the waterline of the carrier.

  • USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier collides with merchant vessel in the Mediterranean Sea near Egypt - CBS News

  • US aircraft carrier collides with ship in Mediterranean Sea - ABC News

  • USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier crashes into merchant ship near Middle East port

  • US aircraft carrier collides with merchant ship near Egypt; No injuries reported

World

• Foreigners freed from Myanmar's scam centers

• The truth about house prices and immigration

• Why is mass tourism such a problem in Spain but not in France?

• Numbers vs. narratives: Unraveling the truth behind global migration statistics

• Meta Opens Facebook Marketplace to Rivals in EU Antitrust Clash

• Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

• Adjusting to the new normal in Japanese politics

• BrewDog's James Watt Launches 'Shadow DOGE' to Take on UK Government

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• After Putin sacked Russia’s space chief, the rumor mill is running red-hot.

China

• China's fossil fuel demand may have passed its peak, IEA says

Health / Medicine

• Health Insurers Deny 850M Claims a Year. The Few Who Appeal Often Win

• Vision problems reported in patients taking Ozempic

• The deadly lottery of the snakebite antivenom industry

• Burning in woman's legs turned out to be slug parasites migrating to her brain

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Nine unvaccinated people hospitalized as Texas measles outbreak doubles

• The Unnatural History of Bird Flu

• Some people didn't know they had a bird flu infection, study suggests

• CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Transmission Between Cats and People - The New York Times

  Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets. In one household, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by The New York Times. The cat died four days after symptoms began. In a second household, an infected dairy farmworker appears to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then became ill two days later and died on the third day. The table was the lone mention of bird flu in a scientific report published on Wednesday that was otherwise devoted to air quality and the Los Angeles County wildfires. The table was not present in an embargoed copy of the paper shared with news media on Tuesday, and is not included in the versions currently available online. The table appeared briefly at around 1 p.m., when the paper was first posted, but it is unclear how or why the error might have occurred.

• H5N1 testing in cow veterinarians suggests bird flu is spreading silently

  • CDC Study Finds Silent Bird Flu Infections in Dairy Veterinarians

• Key bird flu lab threatens to strike as California cases and egg prices climb

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Natural doesn't always mean better

  Anytime you hear someone make a claim that a product or practice is superior because it is "natural", or that one is inferior (or even harmful) because it is not "natural", this is the naturalistic fallacy at work. So are arguments that something is "as nature intended", or that something is bad specifically because it is a "chemical" or "synthetic".

  n his 1874 essay On Nature, this was one of the main problems with making "appeals to nature" that philosopher John Stuart Mill pointed out. "Either it is right that we should kill because nature kills; torture because nature tortures; ruin and devastate because nature does the like; or we ought not to consider at all what nature does, but do what it is good to do." In other words: if the premise of the appeal to nature is correct that anything "natural" must be better, because it's natural, then we have to be willing to embrace everything that comes from nature. If we aren't, well, we probably don't really believe something is inherently better because it's natural.

• Seaweed farms show potential for carbon storage that gets better with age

• What is 'mirror life' and why are scientists sounding the alarm?

• Hunt for rare daffodils that are slipping from history

• Previously it would have been a "compass": Sea turtles use Earth's magnetic field as a GPS for precise ocean journeys

• Germany to test viability of building wind projects up to 280 km off the coast

• Alien-like field of mirrors in the desert was once the future of solar energy