2025-04-17
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How can really smart people appear totally incompetent? – Daniel Lemire's blog
Such dysfunctions can be explained by many effects. But I believe that a critical one is a culture of lies. It might be fine to lie to your enemy but once you start lying to yourself, you are inviting trouble. Lies about your objectives are the worst kind.
It is not that people running colleges, Intel or Apple are incapable of succeeding. They all succeed on their own terms. They are just not sharing openly what these terms are. And if pushed, they will lie about their goals. So, how can really smart people appear totally incompetent? Because they are lying to you. What they are openly setting out to achieve is not their real goal. Given a choice, prefer people who are brutally honest and highly capable. You are much more likely to see them exceed your expectations.
Horseshit
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Earth’s Rotation as an Energy Source? - Domo Futu
Earth's magnetic field doesn’t rotate with the planet—at least not in a way that can push electrons through a conventional wire. But what if your conductor isn't a wire? What if it’s a cylindrical shell of manganese-zinc ferrite, carefully shaped so electrons can’t fully cancel out the forces acting on them? Using this clever design, the team built a tabletop experiment that produced a tiny but continuous DC voltage and current—just from the Earth turning beneath it. ... grand total of 425 nanowatts of power
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Stop Conflating Genius With Asshole
Genius doesn’t look like domination. It looks like collaboration. It looks like the humility to know you’re not the smartest person in every room, and the strength to make space for those who are. If someone needs to belittle, berate, or break others to feel powerful, they’re not a genius—they’re a tyrant in a hoodie, a bully with a pitch deck, a tantrum in search of a title. And we should stop fucking clapping.
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S.F.'s giant naked woman sculpture brought out the worst in our city
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Physical attractiveness far outweighs other traits in online dating success
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Your New Lunch Habit Is Hurting the Economy - WSJ
More employees are eating lunches brought from home than they have in years. Millions of people have been called back to work in offices, but that’s not the massive windfall that restaurants, salad bars and sandwich spots had hoped for after the Covid-19 pandemic decimated their midday business. Many workers are finding picking up lunch is too pricey, and more are schlepping in tupperware and brown bags than they did a year ago.
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The impact and aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, 30 years later
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Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Sci-Fi They Grew Up on Real
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Fate of Fyre Festival 2 up in the air after website announces postponement
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Dogs’ speech recognition: New study shows they listen beyond tone.
Obit
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Anti-Israel Harvard Law School students organized a workshop on the Ivy League campus earlier this month to edit the Wikipedia pages of more than a dozen prominent law firms, singling out some that threatened to stop recruiting at the school over its failure to rein in anti-Semitic activity. Harvard’s National Lawyers Guild chapter, a left-wing legal advocacy group, hosted the “Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon” on April 2 at Harvard Law’s WCC student center, according to an announcement on Harvard Law’s website.
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State Dept. closes office that flags disinformation from Russia, China and Iran
Musk
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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The Blue Origin flight showcased the utter defeat of American feminism
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UK Supreme Court says legal definition of 'woman' excludes trans women
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Gates Foundation Gives In and Stops Discriminating by Race - WSJ
The Gates Foundation says it will end racial exclusion in its flagship college-aid initiative, the Gates Scholarship. As of Sunday afternoon, the foundation’s website still describes the program as being limited to high-school seniors who are “from at least one of the following ethnicities: African-American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian & Pacific Islander American, and/or Hispanic American.” But in a statement to the Journal late Friday afternoon, a spokesperson said “it has been decided to expand eligibility to all Pell Grant-eligible students”—i.e., those with low incomes, regardless of race.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Mark Zuckerberg admits he considered spinning off Instagram in 2018
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Social media and map apps blamed for record rise in mountain rescue callouts
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For security, Android phones will now auto-reboot after three days
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Apple says zero-day iOS bugs exploited against 'specific targeted individuals'
In security advisories posted on its website, Apple confirmed it fixed the two zero-day vulnerabilities, which “may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals on iOS.” It’s not yet known who is behind the attacks or how many Apple customers were targeted, or if any were successfully compromised.
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Following Layoffs, Automattic Employees Discover Leak-Catching Watermarks
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Template strings, also known as t-strings, have been officially accepted as a feature in Python 3.14, which will ship in late 2025. Template strings are a generalization of Python’s f-strings. Whereas f-strings immediately become a string, t-strings evaluate to a new type,
string.templatelib.Template. Importantly, Template instances are not strings. Templates must be processed before they can be used; that processing code can be written by the developer or provided by a library and can safely escape the dynamic content.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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OpenAI is working on X-like social media network, the Verge reports
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OpenAI in talks to pay about $3B to acquire startup Windsurf
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Google used AI to suspend over 39M ad accounts suspected of fraud
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A dev built a test to see how AI chatbots respond to controversial topics
AI companies have been focusing on fine-tuning how their models handle certain topics as some White House allies accuse popular chatbots of being overly “woke.” Many of President Donald Trump’s close confidants, such as Elon Musk and crypto and AI “czar” David Sacks, have alleged that chatbots censor conservative views. assuming the project was created in good faith and the data is accurate, SpeechMap reveals some interesting trends.
By far the most permissive model of the bunch is Grok 3, developed by Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI, according to SpeechMap’s benchmarking. Grok 3 powers a number of features on X, including the chatbot Grok. Grok 3 responds to 96.2% of SpeechMap’s test prompts, compared with the global average “compliance rate” of 71.3%. “While OpenAI’s recent models have become less permissive over time, especially on politically sensitive prompts, xAI is moving in the opposite direction,” said xlr8harder.
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AI-Enabled Coups: How a Small Group Could Use AI to Seize Power
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AI bubble versus dotcom bubble are not the same
The Internet we have today exists because the dotcom bubble lead to the infrastructure buildout of cables, some data centers, peering structures etc. that the next generation of Internet startups could be built upon. The death of the bubble fertilised or created the soil that all those social media platforms and UberForX things could flourish on. So while genAI might be a bubble, it will create all those models and integrations that will survive OpenAI’s (and Anthropic and whatever else those companies are called) financial shenanigans. I think those things are not the same.
I do agree that something will be left behind: The data centers that have been built and that are still being built will still be there and I am quite sure someone will find new use cases for the NVIDIA cards everyone is buying or will replace those machines with standard server components to add to their hyperscaler infrastructure. But does that mean that the genAI stuff will survive?
The AI crash won’t leave us with infrastructures that are useful to democratic and humane societies, with useful tools to do something productive with, but with infrastructures tailor-made to suppress it.
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Nvidia expects to take $5.5B hit as US tightens AI chip export rules to China
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Intel says it will keep Oregon campus it had considered closing
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Apple regains $3T market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones
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Lyft to enter European market with $200M FreeNow acquisition
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Trump
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The NPR, PBS Grift Has Ripped Us Off for Too Long – The White House
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Judge holds Trump administration in criminal contempt over deportation flights
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg found "the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.” “The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” the judge wrote.
Left Angst
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Two tipping points for officially becoming a dictatorship could occur this week
The Trump regime is on the cusp of a showdown with the Supreme Court. Depending on what the court does and how the regime responds, the regime could openly become a dictatorship two ways. The first way the Trump regime clearly becomes a dictatorship is by directly defying a Supreme Court order. The second way we officially become a dictatorship is if the Trump regime can accuse any American citizen of being so dangerous as to justify being sent to a foreign prison, without any independent court review of the regime’s evidence.
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"Lab leak, Hunter's laptop, Ashley's diary..." Federal Government's Growing Banned Words List Is Chilling Act of Censorship
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Kleptocracy, Inc. - The Atlantic
Once upon a time (and not even that long ago), blatant conflicts of interest, especially involving foreign entities, were something presidents sought to avoid. No previous inhabitant of the White House would have wanted to be seen doing personal business with companies from countries that seek to influence American foreign policy. Such dealings risk violating the Constitution, which prohibits government officials from accepting “gifts, titles or emoluments from foreign governments.”
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CVE register was a prototype in a world with 231 known security vulnerabilities
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In latest media crackdown, White House limits newswire access to Trump
Wire services including Reuters and Bloomberg News will no longer hold a permanent slot in the small pool of reporters who cover President Donald Trump, the White House said on Tuesday, as it moves to exert greater control over who gets to ask him questions and report on his statements in real time. The decision comes after the Trump administration last week lost a court challenge brought by another wire service, the Associated Press, over its earlier exclusion from the press pool.
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Law Firms Made Deals With Trump. Now He Wants More From Them. - The New York Times
When some of the nation’s biggest law firms agreed to deals with President Trump, the terms appeared straightforward: In return for escaping the full force of his retribution campaign, the firms would do some free legal work on behalf of largely uncontroversial causes like helping veterans. Mr. Trump, it turns out, has a far more expansive view of what those firms can be called on to do. Over the last week, he has suggested that the firms will be drafted into helping him negotiate trade deals. He has mused about having them help with his goal of reviving the coal industry. None of the firms have acknowledged any wrongdoing. They were targeted with punitive executive orders or implicit threats for representing or aiding Mr. Trump’s political foes or employing people he sees as having used the legal system to come after him.
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Nvidia, Export Controls and the Trump Team's Art of Trading on Insider Knowledge
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Why Musk, Trump and tech elites seek collapse of global order
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Revenge of the shy kids: How Elon Musk and co. went from nerds to bullies
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US SEC officials push back as Musk's DOGE seeks broad access
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Elon Musk touts $150B in savings in FY2026 – after claiming DOGE could cut $1T
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ASML CEO Warns US Tariffs Are Creating Chip Sector Uncertainty
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Russian Breach of US Data Through Doge over Starlink "Directly to Russia"
Following up on his startling revelations today about how DOGE engineers accessed MLRB databases without authority, and that Russian IP addresses were used with recently created user IDs and passwords to access them, Daniel Berulis— speaking through his lawyer—followed up with a new bombshell that DOGE systems “were also connected to Starlink”. Bakaj claims that the Department of Defense had stopped using Starlink because it’s viewed as a “direct pipeline” to Russia.
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Autism rate rises slightly; RFK Jr. claims he'll "have answers by September"
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ICE Hands Palantir Millions for Comprehensive Analysis of Known Groups
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Signal war plans messages disappear from CIA director's phone
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Early Targets of Harvard Funding Cuts: Tuberculosis, ALS Research
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What are "Nihilistic Violent Extremists"?
Inside the government, sources tell us, officials are scrambling to define the moment. They’re exploring if there’s any connection between the attempts on Donald Trump’s life; Luigi Mangione and his sympathizers; Tesla vandalism; and even earlier attacks, like the one on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. The Trump Justice Department and the domestic terrorism fighters think they have an answer: Nihilistic Violent Extremists. They’ve already got an acronym — NVEs.
The brand new term was invented to replace the Biden administration’s focus on anti-government and “anti-authority” extremism adopted after January 6. It also has the side benefit of appearing to be non-partisan, shifting the attention away from MAGA and white supremacism while pretending not to be focusing on anti-Trump activism. But here’s the beauty for any government bureaucrat or lawyer: Everyone and anyone can be NVEs, like pedophiles, according to court documents filed this month and reported here for the first time.
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California will sue to stop Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs
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All right, you can have one: DOGE access to Treasury IT OK'd judge
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CDC struggling to fight raging measles outbreak after deep funding, staff cuts
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China's Halt of Critical Minerals Poses Risk for U.S. Military Programs
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Government IT whistleblower calls out DOGE, says he was threatened at home
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Musk's Team Is Building a System to Sell 'Gold Card' Immigrant Visas
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Shapiro arson suspect's family sought help from authorities before attack
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Suspect in Shapiro arson attack cited plight of Palestinians
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Media is About to Make Gov. Shapiro Arson Attempt Disappear | Frontpage Mag
The media got very excited when the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was firebombed because they were hoping it was going to be somebody with the ‘wrong’ politics, but instead the perpetrator, Cody Balmer, was a self-proclaimed “socialist” who claimed that he did it to tell Gov. Josh Shapiro that he “will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”
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Copper wire theft forces closure of Oakland Coliseum DMV office
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Why are Birmingham bin workers striking and will walkouts spread?
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Alberta introduces involuntary drug treatment act, first of its kind in Canada
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Europe's Markets Are Winning from Ebbing of 'America First' Trade
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Australian PM weighs in after Toronto café ordered to remove Vegemite
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Exclusive: Saudi Arabia plans to pay off Syria's World Bank debts, sources say | Reuters
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Google sued for £5B in UK over allegations of shutting out rivals
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Japan serves Google a cease and desist order over its Android bundling deals
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Sandstorm Turns Iraq's Skies Orange and Sends Thousands to Hospitals
Iran / Houthi
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Why Drinking Coffee in Iran Has Become So Complicated
Cafés have found a way to segment customers like a product catalog. Some people just want a no-fuss coffee (good luck finding one). Others want “an experience,” like their morning brew needs a backstory worthy of a TED talk. And then there’s the Instagram crowd—more into photos than flavor. By slapping fancy names and origin stories on every cup, cafés turn a basic drink into a status symbol. It’s capitalism playing dress-up as culture.
- Starbucks Syndrome. Like they didn't already have enough reasons to hate the West.
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Iran’s Negotiating Position Gets Worse and Worse - The Atlantic
In the first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second term, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, repeatedly rejected the U.S. president’s offer of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, just as he had during Trump’s first term. Tehran would not talk to this U.S. administration, Khamenei insisted. And even if it did talk, it would only do so indirectly. Talking to Washington was “not honorable,” the supreme leader claimed. Khamenei’s objections collapsed on Saturday evening when Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, chatted with Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, in the residence of Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, in Muscat. Prior to this hallway chat, the two sides had spent close to five hours in two different wings of Albusaidi’s palatial home, exchanging written messages with Oman’s top diplomat as their mediator. The direct discussion, long demanded by Trump but rejected by Iranian officials, showed just how well the initial talks via Albusaidi had gone. But it also underscored how weak, even humiliating, a position Khamenei finds himself in.
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
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Russia's mysterious "Doomsday" radio station UVB-76 just sent out four messages
Russia’s mysterious “Doomsday” radio station, UVB-76, just sent out four eerie, cryptic messages in only 24 hours: Neptune, Thymus, Foxcloak, and Nootabu. Active since 1975, this Cold War-era shortwave station usually emits nothing but a static buzz — until something big is about to happen.
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Four Russian journalists linked to late Kremlin critic Navalny sentenced at Moscow court.
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Russians lure European diplomats into malware trap with wine-tasting invite
China
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The Chinese small businesses brought to a standstill by Trump's tariffs
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Pentagon needs China's rare earths, Beijing just put them behind a permit wall
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China posts unexpectedly strong economic growth before tariffs bite
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Why Are Samsung LG, Sony and Most Other TVs Manufactured in China Today?
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Is China the ultimate free-rider?
The inconvenient truth, for China, is that its scale relies upon American power and influence. The Chinese export machine, for instance, requires a relatively free world trading order. The recipe to date has been “mercantilism for us, free trade for everybody else.” Yet Trump threatens to smash that framework. If the world breaks down into bitterly selfish protectionist trading blocs, China will be one of the biggest losers. After all, where will the Chinese sell the rising output from their factories?
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China Pivots from US to Canada for More Oil as Trade War Worsens