2025-06-29
Horseshit
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
-
Iran Was a Main Driver of Scottish Independence Social Media Campaign.
It's really rather funny. We keep being warned against Russian interference to promote the right wing, and keep finding interference from adversaries backing the left. Go figure.
-
The objectivity of Community Notes?
Unlike previous studies, misleadingness here is determined by agreement across a diverse community of platform users, rather than by fact-checkers. We find that 2.3 times more posts by Republicans are flagged as misleading compared to posts by Democrats. These results are not base rate artifacts, as we find no meaningful overrepresentation of Republicans among X users. Our findings provide strong evidence of a partisan asymmetry in misinformation sharing which cannot be attributed to political bias on the part of raters, and indicate that Republicans will be sanctioned more than Democrats even if platforms transition from professional fact-checking to Community Notes.
Musk
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
-
How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way - The New York Times
Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the “social justice” left, they radicalized. In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay, lesbian and transgender civil rights group in the country, declared a “state of emergency” for gay men, lesbians and transgender people — the first time in the organization’s existence. It had not declared a state of emergency when gay men were jailed for having sex in private, when the AIDS epidemic killed hundreds of thousands of gay men or when we faced a possible constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in 2004. In fact, we found out, this “emergency” was almost entirely in response to new state bills proposing restrictions on medical treatment for minors with gender dysphoria; bathroom and locker room bans; and transgender issues in school curricula and sports.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
-
Nothing Phone 3 might have the weirdest camera design out there
-
Switch 2 permabans are so permanent that not even Nintendo can overturn them
-
Years of Disney efforts to replace fun story with screechy preaching is more to blame: Did 'bean mouth' kill Pixar's Elio at the box office?
-
Skype Is Gone: The FOSS Alternative
in a normal world, I’d recommend people to start with the legacy Element client, but the folks behind Element have lost their mind and decided to prevent people from creating new accounts with the legacy Element client on mobile. This means you need to use a computer to create an account in the first place, and then use the legacy Element client on phones to be able to log in. Since Matrix requires you to verify the validity of each client, this means you need to verify the account you created in the browser with the mobile account you activate in Element, which is really an extra pain in the ass, for no good reason. Decisions like them call for a facepalm.
-
Group of investors represented by YouTuber Perifractic buys Commodore
-
Yes, Your TV Is Probably Spying on You. Your Fridge, Too. Here's What They Know
TechSuck / Geek Bait
-
Linus on bcachefs: "I think we'll be parting ways in the 6.17 merge window"
-
Refurb weekend: Gremlin Blasto arcade board
At the end of this article, we'll have it fully playable and wired up to a standard ATX power supply, a composite monitor and off-the-shelf Atari joysticks, and because this board was used for other related games from that era, the process should work with only minor changes on other contemporary Gremlin arcade classics like Blockade, Hustle and Comotion
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
-
OpenAI turns to Google's AI chips to power its products, source says
-
Meta seeks $29B from private credit giants to fund AI data centres
-
Intel set to transfer marketing jobs to an AI which could run on Intel CPUs
-
Call for blanket ban on open source contribution or publishing
-
OpenAI's Unreleased AGI Paper Could Complicate Microsoft Negotiations
-
$6B Anthropic offers $10K–$50K grants to assess AI's job-market impact
-
Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos in your camera roll you haven't yet shared
-
Zuckerberg Wants to Win AI by Copying Everyone Smarter Than Him
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
-
Satellites keep breaking up in space. Insurance won't cover them
- the fine print talks about "on site inspection"
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Left Angst
-
An exceedingly rare asteroid flyby will happen soon, but NASA may be left out
-
Why Big Tech Turned Against Democrats – and Democracy
So what explains the turn away from Democrats and, given Trump’s obvious authoritarianism, democracy? A major factor may have been a shift in attitude and policy on the part of Democrats, especially Biden administration officials, who moved away from uncritical tech boosterism and toward increased regulation. This change in attitude didn’t come out of nowhere. There is growing evidence that social media can do real harm, especially to children. There were, as I’ll explain, good reasons to worry that the benefits of technology were no longer flowing to consumers and business as a whole. And the Biden administration was also reflecting a broader change in perceptions: Many Americans have turned sour on the tech sector and tech leaders. In fact, the industry’s fall from grace has been little short of spectacular.
It’s hard to believe now, but for a time some tech leaders approached folk-hero status. Mark Zuckerberg was the subject of a biopic, The Social Network, that wasn’t entirely positive but certainly fed perceptions that he was a great innovator. Elon Musk was reportedly a partial inspiration for Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, the Marvel character. More significantly, social media was widely given partial credit for the “Arab Spring” of 2010-2012. And in 2011 Americans were three times as likely to consider technology companies more trustworthy than average as they were to consider them less trustworthy. But that was then. These days Americans don’t consider technology an especially trustworthy industry. They rank it above health insurance and pharma, but that’s a pretty low bar.
-
New Immigration Policies Will Increase Prices for Americans
- "FWD.us is a lobbying group founded by Mark Zuckerberg nominally to - among other things - promote improved border security."
-
The Mystery of Richard Posner – Law & Liberty
Posner departed the judiciary in 2017 and laid down his pen. Last year, the world learned that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He leaves behind a towering body of work, but also a gnawing question. What drove him to produce it?
Posner had never been one to restrict himself to the issues and arguments presented by the parties. His opinions had always meandered, usefully but inappropriately, down whatever paths caught his attention. In his later years, though, he began to disregard fundamental tenets of judicial conduct. For instance, he took to supplementing appellate records with his own internet research. In a case about inflatable rats that some unions had placed by the side of the road, Posner delved into his personal experience. (“… my Chicago rat was only about three feet from MLK Drive … Here are [my] two photos …”) In a case about workers’ donning and doffing of sanitary gear, he bought the gear in question and timed a clerk putting it on and taking it off. (The dissenting judge was “startled, to say the least,” by this stunt.) Toward the end Posner became a caricature. In a 2016 interview he asked, rhetorically, whether the Supreme Court’s nine justices are among “the thousand best lawyers in the country,” and then answered with an emphatic “No!” A judicial ruling need not “be supported by ‘reason,’ whatever that means exactly, to avoid lawlessness,” he told another interviewer in his final months on the bench. Most “legal technicalities,” he added for good measure, “are antiquated crap.” He urged judges to wield “common sense” (something he once derided, in the same breath as theology, for being untestable by observation).
-
ICE arrested a 6-year-old boy with leukemia at immigration court
-
Senate Republicans make steep cuts to wind and solar in updated megabill text
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
-
Washington Post journalist busted by Jeanine Pirro for allegedly possessing child porn
A Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist was arrested and charged after authorities allegedly discovered child porn on his work computer, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday. Thomas Pham LeGro, a 48-year-old video editor at the news outlet, was taken into custody on Thursday after FBI agents raided his Washington, DC, home and discovered a folder on his work laptop which contained 11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material, according to Pirro’s office. FBI agents also discovered “fractured pieces of a hard drive in the hallway outside the room where LeGro’s work laptop was found,” during the execution of the search warrant.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
-
(Dec 2024) We need to talk about Saudi Arabia
In the spirit of an agony aunt, Jeremy Till responds to the most common justifications made by architects and consultants working in Saudi Arabia. Anyone working in KSA should inform themselves about the human rights, environmental and political context and then face these conditions from an ethical viewpoint. Architecture does not stand outside these moral conflicts; it is part of them. I applaud the UK practices that have decided on ethical grounds not to work in KSA, and despair of those who try to justify their engagement with spurious arguments.
-
Canada's Digital Services Tax Stays in Place Despite G-7 Deal
-
Swiss cocaine so cheap and widely used they're considering legalising it
Israel
-
IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites
-
As flagged by @YairElsner and posted on X by the relentlessly excellent Eitan Fischberger, Haaretz’s English edition claims that IDF soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, but the original Hebrew version? It states they were told to fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites. This represents a significant difference in intent, legality, and moral implications. That is only the start of Haaretz’s deceptive sleight of hand in this grotesquely misleading piece of propaganda masquerading as journalism.
The author admits they don’t know who is shooting at civilians near these aid distribution centres. Still, rather than consider the possibility that, for example, Hamas might be involved, the article shifts with the loaded line: “The IDF does not permit armed individuals in these humanitarian zones without its knowledge.” Get it? If someone’s firing, and the IDF doesn’t permit any shooters other than themselves in the area, well... wink, wink. Conspiracy complete. There’s no mention of the possibility that gunmen (Hamas, criminal gangs, or rogue actors) could infiltrate these chaotic areas without IDF permission, nor is there any curiosity about how IDF soldiers are getting wounded near those same food sites. Not exactly an idle question, especially in light of some of the video footage released in recent weeks showing Hamas opening fire on their own people.
-
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says Hamas attack has killed multiple aid workers
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
-
Photographer Captures the Terrifying Things Humans Have Done to the Planet
-
Most of the recent increase in natural disasters is due to improved reporting
-
Beneath the canopy: Pioneering satellite reveals rainforests' hidden worlds
-
Saudi Arabia's Role in Slowing Progress in Climate Negotiations
-
New 'risk-mapping tool' aims to prevent bird deaths from powerlines
-
If only there was some way to predict these things, and maybe build more power generation capacity to be ready when it happens... Electricity Demand in the Eastern United States Surged from Heat Wave
-
Are we doing enough to save Earth from a devastating asteroid strike?