2025-03-31
etc
Horseshit
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Why a plane turned around when a passenger lost a phone midflight
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'Just stop buying lattes': The origins of a millennial housing myth
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Kite confiscated after apparently hitting United plane in Washington area
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America's Missing Men - Commonplace
One Friday night, a few years before his death, Mark sat at his parents’ house, where he lived, playing cards by himself and ruminating. “When my dad was my age, I was already six years old. You know what I’m saying? It’s crazy to think about that.” He thought about that for an hour that night as he dealt and redealt hands to himself. I let so much time slip away. He added, with conviction, “That’s why it’s time to shit or get off the pot. That’s why I know I need help.”
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Humanoid Robots Are Lousy Co-Workers. China Wants to Be First to Change That
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Can Earth's rotation generate power? Physicists divided over controversial claim
- I don't see how; but I'd love to be wrong. If power can be pulled this way then with sufficient power input we could straighten the Earth's axis of rotation and banish winter to the benighted polar lands where they likes that sort of thing.
celebrity gossip
Obit
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Amateur photographers hope to fix Wikipedia's 'terrible' pictures
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Vanity Fair's Heyday: I was once paid six figures to write an article–now what?
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- How would "not flop" have looked? Was there ever a criteria for success?
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Ex-Google exec: Giving traffic to publishers 'a necessary evil'
- Parasites that kill their host do not thrive.
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Requesting formal removal of all anaconda posts for copyright violation
Problem: Questions and answers were written at a time when the ecosystem was free to use with no limitations. The vast majority of them represent that the tools are free to use, either in direct terms or implied terms. That existing content on stack overflow (and related stack exchange websites) is misleading millions of developers and readers into adopting anaconda tools, even though they are not permitted to use said tools.
it’s likely that some of the older questions and answers promoting the Anaconda ecosystem were posted by Anaconda employees or assimilated. Anaconda Inc profited massively from Stack Overflow promoting its ecosystem as free, even when it was no longer free. Anaconda Inc never did any effort to maintain or keep the information up-to-date. Now Anaconda Inc is in proceedings against a parent or related company of stack overflow, that may have been misled in no small part by the information posted on Stack Overflow.
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Reddit will replace Private Messages with Reddit Chat and inbox notifications
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23andMe's DNA database is up for sale. Who might want it, and what for?
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A Billionaire and an Oscar Winner Have Made a Hit Movie. It's About Investing
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Startup founder convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase of $175M, faking success
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Move fast, kill things: startups reinventing defence with Silicon Valley values
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Smaller, cheaper nuclear reactors send US states racing to attract the industry
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Joann Fabrics went from a cult-favorite retail darling to a bankrupt disaster
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Private Equity Is Coming for America's $12T in Retirement Savings
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Trump
Left Angst
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Cryptocurrencies, Tariffs, Oil and Spending in Trump's Executive Orders
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A PhD student was snatched by masked officers in broad daylight
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'Catastrophic': Canadian bookings for U.S. travel drop sharply
data from aviation analytics company Cirium shows that bookings are down – a bit – but nothing like the outlier numbers that OAG reports and are dominating headlines… while noting that we don’t have a full window into bookings through direct channels. Airlines are pulling back on their transborder schedules a bit – around 3.5% for summer – and pricing has turned more attractive. Journalist Brian Sumers notes that Air Canada says the OAG report is simply untrue.
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RFK, Jr. Laying Off Entire Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/Aids Policy
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America’s Librarians Became Militantly Political, And Now They Suffer The Consequences
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Will the oil industry's tax breaks skate by in the search for trillions in cuts?
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DOGE wants businesses to run government services 'as much as possible'
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Doge wants businesses to run government services 'as much as possible'
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ICE Arrested and Detained a US Citizen for Hours Because He Looked Mexican
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China Miéville says we shouldn't blame science fiction for its bad readers
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Montreal doctor says NYU cancelled her presentation fearing Trump retaliation
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Hyundai faces legal action over car that can be stolen 'effortlessly in seconds'
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FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why. Xiaofeng Wang has a long list of prestigious titles. He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a tenured professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. According to his employer, he has served as principal investigator on research projects totaling nearly $23 million over his 21 years there. In recent weeks, Wang's email account, phone number, and profile page at the Luddy School were quietly erased by his employer. Over the same time, Indiana University also removed a profile for his wife, Nianli Ma, who was listed as a Lead Systems Analyst and Programmer at the university's Library Technologies division.
Searches of federal court dockets turned up no documents related to Wang, Ma, or any searches of their residences. The FBI spokeswoman didn't answer questions seeking which US district court issued the warrant and when, and whether either Wang or Ma is being detained by authorities. Justice Department representatives didn't return an email seeking the same information. An email sent to a personal email address belonging to Wang went unanswered at the time this post went live. Their resident status (e.g. US citizens or green card holders) is currently unknown. Fellow researchers took to social media over the weekend to register their concern over the series of events. "None of this is in any way normal," Matthew Green, a professor specializing in cryptography at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Mastodon.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Icebreaking Explained – Finland: Europe's Icebreaker Superpower
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New data show that the class divide in Britain may not be so wide
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Canada: Mark Carney Faces Plagiarism Accusations for 1995 Oxford Doctoral Thesis.
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Met smash down door of Quaker meeting house to arrest activists
More than 20 Metropolitan Police officers broke down the front door of a Quaker meeting house to arrest six women who had met to discuss climate change and Gaza. It is thought to be the first time in the history of the famously pacifist Quakers that police have forced their way into one of their places of worship. The women, aged between 18 and 38, were sitting in a circle eating hummus and bread sticks on Thursday evening as part of a “welcome meeting” for Youth Demand, which calls itself a non-violent protest group. The police, some armed with Tasers, handcuffed the women, confiscated their belongings, took them to the police station and later raided some of their student accommodation. A Met spokesman said six women had been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, amid fears of a sit-down protest in the capital. None have been charged. The spokesman said: “Youth Demand has stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the [coming] month. While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
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Kyoto so packed with tourists that Japanese are staying away
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
Health / Medicine
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Population stratification led to a decade of false genetic findings
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Artificial sweetener in diet drinks linked to brain changes increasing appetite
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Pregnancy's true toll on the body: birth study paints detailed picture
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A ban on food dye in West Virginia has forged an unlikely alliance
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FDA recalls thousands of pounds of ground coffee mislabeled as decaffeinated.