2025-04-18
etc
Horseshit
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Stay in LA campaign holds rally to encourage local film production
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A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics
A few years ago I found my Armatron, and when I opened the case to get it working again, I was startled to find that other than the compartment for the pair of D-cell batteries, a switch, and a tiny three-volt DC motor, this thing was totally devoid of any electronic components. It was purely mechanical. Later, I found the patent drawings for the Armatron online and saw how incredibly complex the schematics of the gearbox were. This design was the work of a genius—or a madman.
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She left Salesforce for defense-tech firm, faced a culture of drugs and abuse
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Lego Black Market Fetches Big Prices for Little Plastic Bricks - The New York Times
Lego kits have become a hot commodity on the black market and the target of brazen thieves. Last year, burglars hit Bricks & Minifigs outlets in California. Thieves made off with at least $100,000 worth of Lego kits and accessories. Last month, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California recovered nearly 200 Lego sets after arresting a person in connection with a burglary at Crush Comics, a comic book store in Castro Valley, Calif. Joshua Hunter, the owner of Crush Comics, said that members of his staff found the store’s stolen comic books for sale on eBay within hours of the theft.
celebrity gossip
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Charles Darwin's children drew vegetable battles on the manuscript of The Origin of Species .
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Gayle King insists she was like Alan Shepard on her space 'joyride'
It’s becoming clear that long-popular “CBS Mornings” co-anchor Gayle King and her famous friends Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez have landed at the center of one of the most spectacular public backlashes against celebrity cluelessness and rich-people hubris in a long time. The cluelessness, hubris and “audacious” display of power by “the billionaire class” came as these three wealthy celebrities made a big show about going on a “historic,” 11-minute, space-tourism ride Monday morning to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere — aboard a commercial Blue Origin space rocket owned by Sanchez’s billionaire fiancé Jeff Bezos.
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Russian Propaganda Campaign Targets France with AI-Fabricated Scandals
NewsGuard found that Storm-1516 — a Russian influence operation that includes the efforts of John Mark Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff granted asylum in Moscow turned Kremlin propagandist that uses AI to create and spread false claims — targeted France with five false narratives from December 2024 to March 2025. The disinformation spread in 38,877 social media posts, generating 55.8 million views. That compares to just one narrative targeting France in the previous four months that spread in only 938 social media posts that accumulated 845,000 views.
Musk
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Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money
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Tesla's Avoided Emissions Are Up to 49% Overstated, a Study Claims
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Tesla makes its cars lie about their mileage, lawsuit claims
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Tesla Cybertruck is in crisis: new discounts and throttling down production
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X Is Ditching DMs as News of Musk Messaging Women About Impregnating Them Breaks
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Cosplay Dystopia: Trans Individuals Are Seeking ‘Asylum’ In Canada - modernity
Immigration lawyer Yameena Ansari, who gave a presentation at the seminar, said her law practice is overwhelmed with such questions because of Mr. Trump’s policies. She said trans and non-binary Americans could have a strong case for asylum on the grounds that the U.S. is no longer a safe country for them. “Not allowing someone to identify by their correct gender marker isn’t just discrimination, it’s a form of violence,” she said.
- Why bother with the formal applications? just go there and live "undocumented" as is so honorable and desirable for US immigration...
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Zuckerberg: Snapchat would have grown faster if it accepted $6B buyout offer
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Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain
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AWS claims 50% of Azure workloads would jump ship if licensing costs allowed
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Unpowered SSD endurance investigation finds data loss, performance issues
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Synology requires own-brand drives for some consumer NAS systems
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Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'
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CISA extends funding to ensure 'no lapse in critical CVE services'
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Always worthy: Passing planes and other whoosh sounds
The cepstrum, which is the inverse Fourier transform of the estimated log spectrum, is a fascinating plot for looking at delays and echoes in complex (as in complicated) signals. While the spectrum separates frequencies, the cepstrum measures time, or quefrency – see what they did there? It reveals cyclicities in the sound's structure even if it interferes with itself, like in our case.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Germany’s military wants its own Starlink-like satellite constellation.
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Astronomers claim strongest evidence yet of extraterrestrial life
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Scientists find 'strongest evidence yet' of life on distant planet
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Astronomers have found signs of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System
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Strongest hints yet of biological activity outside the solar system
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Strongest evidence of life yet found on planet beyond solar system
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Webb telescope detects a possible signature of life on a distant world
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Is this a hint of life on another world, or just a lot of hot air?
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Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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North Dakota governor signs bill doing away with Fargo's unusual voting system
North Dakota's governor signed a bill Wednesday to prohibit the unusual voting system used by his state's largest city. The bill signed by Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong bans ranked-choice and approval voting. Ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank their preferred candidates, is used in Alaska and Maine and various cities, but not in North Dakota. Voters select as many candidates as they want under approval voting; the top vote-getters win. Fargo adopted approval voting via ballot initiative in 2018 and uses the system for electing the mayor and four city commissioners. The measure came after previous elections in which candidates won commission seats with just slivers of the overall vote in crowded races.
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Why are two TX senators trying to wrest a Space Shuttle from the Smithsonian?
Trump
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Federal agencies to prioritize off-the-shelf products over custom-built
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US judge finds administration wilfully defied court order in deportation flights
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Trump Says Fed Chair's 'Termination Cannot Come Fast Enough'
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White House confirms 245% tariff on some Chinese imports not a typo
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The Trump Administration quietly revealed it has futuristic technologies that literally bend time during a speech on 'the golden age of American innovation.' The director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratsios, declared that the US currently has the ability to 'manipulate time and space' and 'leave distance annihilated.' Kratsios made the bold statement on Monday during the Endless Frontiers Retreat, a scientific conference in Texas focused on promoting US technological innovations to maintain global competitiveness.
Democrats
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In unprecedented move, DNC official to spend big to take down fellow Democrats - POLITICO
Leaders We Deserve, which Hogg co-founded in 2023, announced plans on Tuesday to spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against sitting House members by supporting younger opponents. In an interview with POLITICO, Hogg said the group will not back primary challenges in battleground districts because “I want us to win the majority,” nor will it target members solely based on their age. “We have a culture of seniority politics that has created a litmus test of who deserves to be here,” Hogg said. “We need people, regardless of their age, that are here to fight.” It’s an unprecedented, and controversial, move from a national officer within the Democratic Party that will enrage some insiders. Democratic Party committees, like the DNC, have traditionally not opposed incumbents in their own party, focusing instead on attacking Republicans, while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is explicitly set up to protect incumbent members by providing resources, fundraising and strategy.
In a statement, Martin said that “in order to ensure we are as effective as possible at electing Democrats to office, it is the DNC’s longstanding position that primary voters — not the national party — determine their Democratic candidates for the general election.”
- "unprecedented" ... i do not think this word means what they think it means. we have seen what they think "primary" means.
Left Angst
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Whistleblower claims Musk's DOGE potentially caused significant security breach
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Administration seeks to narrow Endangered Species Act by redefining 'harm'
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The point of no return:Only days left to stop a totalitarian state in the US — Crooked Timber
Threats of conquest against friendly countries, masked thugs abducting people from the street, shakedowns of property from enemies of the state, concentration camps outside the reach of the legal system, all happening at a pace more comparable to Germany in 1933 than to the examples I had in mind. The one exception is that I expected Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act on Day 1. Instead, perhaps to preserve a veneer of legality, he has commissioned a report from the Secretary of Defense (Hegseth) and the Secretary of Homeland Security (Noem), due by 20 April. Unless he faces massive political blowback in the next few days, he will doubtless order these flunkies to recommend invoking the Act, effectively the equivalent of Hitler’s Enabling Act. Meanwhile, two other crucial issues are coming to a head. First, Trump is openly defying the courts over the illegal deportation and imprisonment in a concentration camp of legal migrant Abrego Garcia and others and is now threatening the same even for native-born US citizens. Second, elements of civil society (notably universities and law firms) that have previously engaged in shameful capitulation are now standing up. If Trump is defeated on all three fronts, there is a good chance that US democracy could survive his onslaughts, though it will take many years to recover. But a Trump victory on even one of them will spell the end
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US Government threatens Harvard with foreign student ban
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Trump administration says Harvard may lose ability to enroll foreign students
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Will Trump Do a Bob Jones on Haahvaahd? UPDATE: Here It Comes? – HotAir
How serious is this threat? That brings us back to Bob Jones University, which for decades refused to change its policies forbidding inter-racial dating. Because BJU didn't take federal funding, the federal government didn't have any financial leverage -- or so BJU thought. The IRS revoked its tax-exempt status to penalize BJU for its discriminatory conduct on the basis of race, arguing that an entity acting against public policy is not entitled to any exemption. The Supreme Court heard the case in 1982, and the following June upheld the IRS determination by an 8-1 decision.
BJU didn't get its exemption back for another 34 years -- 17 years after BJU reversed the policy that prompted the action. The IRS used the Bob Jones precedent to go after conservative 501(c)(3) orgs during the Obama administration, either in delaying the processing of applications or outright denials using different criteria than those applied to orgs that supported Barack Obama's policies.
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Nearly a Billion Dollars in Doge 'Savings' Disappeared Overnight
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We might have to re-open our own mines and process our own: Why China curbing rare earth exports is a blow to the US
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Red Flags: Has Doge Been Infiltrated by a Russian Spy Network?
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'College Protester' Isn't Real. It's an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops
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Trump admin to kill IRS free tax-filing service that Intuit lobbied against
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Musk's SpaceX is frontrunner to build Trump's Golden Dome missile shield
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How the Federal Government Is Undermining Election Security
President Donald Trump’s March executive order on elections has made headlines and drawn legal challenges, including from the Brennan Center. But the order is only part of his administration’s harmful election-related actions, and most of them are flying under the radar. Since taking office, the president has made a concerted, far-reaching effort to dismantle much of the federal support, funding, and infrastructure that has been built over the last decade to help states protect our elections from attack.
- Of course these people do not see votes from non-citizen, non-living, and non-existing as a problem that needs fixing; they like things the way they are.
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Trump Team Eyes Politically Connected Startup to Overhaul $700B Payments Program
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FCC chief targets Comcast-owned outlets over 'news distortion'
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25 million deaths: what could happen if the US ends global health funding
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Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog
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GOP Senator says fear of retaliation from Trump administration is 'real'
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In the middle of a hepatitis outbreak, US shutters the CDC lab that could help
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USDA's Regional Food Business Centers Caught in Federal Funding Freeze
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Federal cuts force Head Start program with 400 kids, 70 jobs to close
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Intel faces potentially significant impact from China's import tariffs
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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The straphanger whose body was sexually violated after he died on an R train last week was a hardworking dad whose presence is dearly missed by loved ones, his estranged wife said Tuesday — stressing that he wasn’t “just a random person.” Jorge Gonzalez was remembered as a committed family man who had “so many dreams” before the 37-year-old mysteriously died and his corpse was sexually abused by another man on a Manhattan subway train last week.
- the reports were positive from the start that the necro-rapist had not killed the guy... so just how did he die? Would anyone have ever asked if he had not received other unwanted attention?
World
Israel
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Trump blocked a planned Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites, NYT reports
U.S. President Donald Trump blocked a planned Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites in favor of negotiating a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing administration officials and others. Israel had developed plans to attack the sites in May, according to the newspaper, which added that the goal was to set back Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon by a year or more.
China
Health / Medicine
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Daily Pill May Work as Well as Ozempic for Weight Loss and Blood Sugar
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Toothpaste widely contaminated with lead and other metals, US research finds
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Do taurine and glycine provide answers to the mammalian gallbladder and kidney mysteries?
The nephrotoxicity hypothesis falls apart with rats, given that rats don’t use taurine at all and still don’t have a huge problem with nephrotoxicity. The gallbladder hypothesis falls apart with mice having gallbladders and rats lacking them, given they both use glycine exclusively. And the supplementation hypothesis falls apart with pigs needing glycine supplementation and humans seemingly not needing it. My hope is that the data is wrong somewhere, given that I like my hypothesis. As my dad puts it, it’s always a tragedy when a beautiful theory is destroyed by a gang of vicious facts. And it doesn’t seem impossible for this data to be wrong, given that this is a relative backwater of science. But I don’t have much hope. For now, the gallbladders and kidneys will have to remain mysteries.
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Why Can't We Be Honest About the Rise of Mental Disorders as Consumer Products?
there’s just about zero consideration of ADHD as a social contagion, any recognition that there is now a vast and deeply annoying ADHD culture online that acts as a kind of evangelical movement for a neurodevelopment disorder. There are millions of people on ADHD TikTok and ADHD Tumblr and ADHD Twitter. There’s a vast universe of facile memes, dubious statistics, and self-flattering nostrums about ADHD floating around out there, and increasingly they’re penetrating into broader internet culture. (I am genuinely unaware of a subculture that is more directly and shamelessly self-celebrating than the online ADHD community, and I’ve read the comments at LessWrong.) Unsurprisingly, a big subsidiary industry has sprung up, with all kinds of products and services for sale, books and apparel and tchotchkes and conferences and boutique forms of therapy and exclusive members-only Discords…. Whether neurodevelopmental disorders should have merch is an open question.
With ADHD you can add the fact that amphetamines and their analogs are fun to take (hence their status as drugs of abuse) and that making the consumer choice to have ADHD gives you access to amphetamines; with both you can add the fact that a growing number of employers seem to view them as professionally advantageous traits in job applicants and employees, at least among dubiously-afflicted applicants. (An inevitable and ugly part of the popularization and casualization of these disorders is that the people who are actually badly afflicted by them become marginal in their spaces, the gentrification of disability.) Under these conditions, how could we not expect to see spiraling diagnosis rates? How could anyone think that the relentless upward trend is mysterious? I understand the temptation to dismiss this all as internet nonsense. But there are literally millions of people in these communities, they are aggressive in their messaging, they are very sophisticated in using online networks, and they are shameless about attacking critics as “ableist.” It all adds up and it all matters.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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The complex origin story of domestic cats: Research points to Tunisia
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Peru's ancient irrigation systems turned deserts into farms because of culture
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Startup Faces Scrutiny over Sulfur Dioxide Balloons
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a formal information request to a controversial startup known as Make Sunsets, which has launched over 120 sulfur dioxides (SO₂)-filled balloons into the atmosphere as part of a private geoengineering effort intended to cool the planet and generate climate “cooling” credits for sale.
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When dogs return to nature – just how domesticated are our pooches really?
- In my experience, feral dogs are rarely able to survive competition against coyotes. Only seen a couple of packs last more than a season and both of those were because of exceptional leader dogs. the packs did not survive the loss of their leader.