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2025-07-19

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  • (1985) New York Times on "The Gods Must Be Crazy"

  • How China Became the Biggest Shipbuilder

    China’s shipbuilding dominance didn’t happen overnight, but followed years of effort, investment, successes, and setbacks: China’s was left with little to no shipbuilding capabilities following the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and it wasn’t until the mid 1970s that China began exporting ships. In 1982 China was ranked just 16th in ship exports. Even after China became one of the world’s major shipbuilders in the 1990s (ranking 3rd behind Japan and Korea), it was still only producing a single-digit percentage of total commercial shipping tonnage. China finally surpassed Japan and Korea in tonnage produced in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Despite a collapse in the worldwide shipbuilding market following the Global Financial Crisis, China has since continued to expand its dominance. While it’s produced all kinds of ships over its history, for the most part its ship exports have consisted mostly of relatively simple ships like tankers and bulk carriers. More specialized, complex ships like liquified natural gas (LNG) carriers and cruise ships historically remained the purview of producers like South Korea, Germany, and Italy. But as China’s shipbuilding capabilities have grown, it has encroached into these areas as well. China now has 34% of the world orderbook for LNG, including an enormous order for 18 LNG carriers from Qatar which was the largest shipbuilding order in history. China’s first domestically-produced cruise ship, the Adora Magic City, first sailed in 2024.

  • The Tiny Home Construction Contest Is a Big Deal in This Texas Town

Horseshit

celebrity gossip

Obit

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

Musk

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

  • Data on How America Sold Out Its Computer Science Graduates

    This week, we took a look at job prospects for computer science graduates. If you thought prospects for engineering graduates were poor, even more recent American computer science graduates are scrambling for scraps, while a growing number of foreign workers on employment visas are being guaranteed jobs. In 2023, American colleges graduated 134,153 citizens or green card holders with bachelor's or master's degrees in computer science. That same year, our federal government handed out work permits to at least 110,098 foreign workers in computer occupations through just three major guest worker programs. That's equal to 82% of our graduating class who are guaranteed jobs even before any Americans walk across the stage for their diploma.

  • Harvard is anti-science - Washington Examiner

    Let’s first consider the medical sciences. Harvard University President Alan Garber and Harvard professor of psychology Steven Pinker, the latter in a 4,000-word New York Times op-ed, cited Harvard’s work on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease as one of Harvard’s main achievements. But Science journalist Charles Piller, in his book Doctored, showed that Harvard researchers, leaders of the so-called “Amyloid Mafia” (scientists who believe that amyloid plaques are the leading cause of Alzheimer’s disease), have prevented all other hypotheses from being tested, thereby delaying finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

    Garber also cited a Breakthrough Prize awarded to a Harvard scientist for his work on GLP-1-based drugs used to treat obesity and diabetes, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, as evidence of Harvard’s recent medical contributions. Yet, as Gary Taubes has pointed out, Harvard bears some responsibility for the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Taubes showed that Harvard nutritionists pushed food companies to replace fats with sugar, and we’ve gotten, well, fat.

    Finally, consider Harvard’s damage to physics, the hardest of the hard sciences. The 1979 Physics Nobel Prize winner, Sheldon Glashow, the greatest physicist ever on the Harvard faculty, left Harvard in 2000 for Boston University because Harvard insisted on hiring string theorists rather than scientists who believe theory should be firmly grounded in experiment. As University of Toronto physicist Lee Smolin has shown in his book The Trouble with Physics, string theory, backed by Harvard’s prestige, has gobbled up all Federal funding for quantum gravity research, preventing other approaches from being investigated.

  • Hexanitrogen Energies

    the only reason hexanitrogen can be dealt with at all is that even that (rather puny) 14.8 kcal/mol barrier to decomposition is a lot higher than you might have expected. Plenty of other hypothetical polynitrogen species turn out to have basically no barrier at all by comparison, which is why they’re still hypothetical, and you will be too if you try to make them on any kind of scale.

  • UC divests hedge funds as CIO criticizes high fees, low returns

  • Teaching Men Who Will Never Leave Prison

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

TechSuck / Geek Bait

  • CP/M Creator Gary Kildall's Memoirs Released as Free Download

  • Gnome devs say sysadmin "smeared the project" with Evolution Mail privacy report

    • Isn't it amazing how everyone who breaks with GNOME folks "attacks" them? There's no civil disagreements or "he wandered off"; people who come unstuck are always denounced as Nazis.

  • The Remarkable Incompetence At The Heart Of Tech

    Pointless software purchases are a comparatively minor symptom of the seething rot and stunning incompetence at the core of most companies’ technical operations. Things are bad to a degree that sounds unbelievable to people that don’t have the background to witness or understand it firsthand. Here is my thesis: Most enterprise SaaS purchases are simply a distraction – total wishful thinking – for leaders that hope waving a credit card is going to absolve them of the need to understand and manage the true crisis in software engineering. Buying software has many desirable characteristics – everyone else is doing it, it can stall having to deliver results for years, and allows leaders to adopt a thin veneer of innovation. In reality, they’re settling for totally conservative failure. The real crisis, the one they’re ignoring, is only resolved by deep systems thinking, emotional awareness, and an actual understanding of the domain they operate in. And that crisis, succinctly stated, is thus: our institutions are filled to burst with incompetents cosplaying as software engineers, forked-tongue vermin-consultants hawking lies to the desperate, and leaders who consider think reading Malcolm Gladwell makes you a profound intellectual (if you don’t understand why this is a problem, please report to my office for immediate disciplinary action).

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

Crypto con games

Economicon / Business / Finance

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

Trump

  • Epstein, Trump, and the Smokescreen

    For a long time, many of Trump’s most fervent supporters in the MAGA base have been vocal about wanting full transparency regarding Epstein’s network. Hell, many people voted for him simply due to his promises to go public with what was known in the DOJ. They’ve clamored for the release of all files, often believing there’s a larger conspiracy at play involving powerful individuals. Yet, Attorney General Pam Bondi decided not to release the Epstein investigation files in their entirety, and it sent the MAGA faithful into a tailspin. Suddenly, figures who had always stood firmly by Trump, like Tucker Carlson, Roseanne Barr, and Steve Bannon, voiced their disappointment and strong criticism. It’s a significant shift when the most ardent followers begin to question the actions of their dear leader. Their concern stems from a feeling of betrayal; they were promised full disclosure, and now they are being told that much of the material will remain under wraps. The Justice Department’s memo stating there was “no incriminating ‘client list’” and no evidence to investigate “uncharged third parties” only added to the frustration for many. The idea that “there is no there there” is sheer idiocy at this point.

    Adding another layer to this already complex picture is the recent news that Maurene Comey, a top prosecutor in the 2019 Epstein case, was fired by the Justice Department. While the official reasons for her dismissal might not be immediately clear, the timing is certainly noteworthy. Here is a prosecutor who played a significant role in bringing Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s close associate, to justice, and her removal comes at a time when the Epstein files are creating such a stir. For those who believe there’s a cover-up, this development only strengthens their suspicions.

  • Trump directs AG Pam Bondi to release ‘pertinent Grand Jury testimony’ in Epstein case.

    The Wall Street Journal late last night published a counterfeit letter it falsely accused Trump of sending to Jeff Epstein in 2003—long before law enforcement or the future president discovered Epstein pimped minors. How do I know the letter is false? Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ told me so. You see, it ran a 13,000-word expose on Epstein on December 17, 2023. The piece did not mention Trump. Not once. If the publication had the goods on Trump, it would have exposed him ahead of the 2024 presidential primary season. If the deep state had the goods on Trump, the end of him would have come years ago.

  • You'll Never Guess Who 1 of the WSJ Reporters Behind the Trump/Epstein 'Scoop' Is Connected to

    • "In the Clinton Orbit" at least

  • Trump Targets "Woke" AI

  • Trump's fab plan to let Nividia chip into China again hides a 'rare' agenda

  • With One Call, Trump Alters the Fate of a Contested Power Project

Democrats

Left Angst

  • Where Congress's Cuts Threaten Access to PBS and NPR

  • NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Pro-Palestinian Student Protester

  • Hot Dogs for Insomnia? A Kennedy Aide's Startup Can Get You a Tax Break

  • The Far Right Contagion – It's not a Trump thing. It's not a politics thing

    One of the mistakes a lot of political people make is that voters have rational and reasoned choices about which party they support; if you vote for a Far Right party you must love Far Right policies. That’s not true. Most decisions are vibe-based. We have enough data to show that the lowest of low information voters who are behind Reform have zero idea of the party’s policies. In fact, many of Reform’s aims are in direct opposition to what those voters want. While they can be considered Far Right on some fronts — massively racist, “hanging’s too good for ‘em” — in other areas they have what would be classed as socialist beliefs. Tax the wealthy till the pips squeak. Invest in public services. They’re better characterised as Smash the System voters. It’s not working for us how it used to - I’ll vote for anyone who looks like they’re going to upend the status quo.

  • Trump to sign stablecoin bill that may make it easier to bribe the president

    • If only "convict presidents for taking bribes" was something we could do...

  • The USDA Wouldn't Let Her Give Up Her House When She Couldn't Pay Her Mortgage

    Since March, the USDA has filed 56 foreclosures in the federal court system against properties purchased with a rural development mortgage. All but one were in Maine. The Maine borrowers have been in default for an average of nearly nine years, racking up more debt because of the interest and fees that piled up in intervening years. About 20% of USDA Section 502 direct loans across the nation were delinquent as of March, according to internal agency data.

  • The Number Go Up Rule: Why America Can't Fix Anything

    Just take a look at another headlines of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, and you’ll notice in this headline the flip side of the Epstein story. Health care in America is insanely expensive, unpredictable, and often low quality. And yet it’s going to get far pricier next year, largely because a network of monopolistic middlemen are pushing up costs. There’s a gossipy angle here - Diddy apparently had pharmaceutical executives at his creepy events. But it’s the impact on ordinary people that matters. Despite decades of popular anger, we just can’t seem to do anything about health care costs and the people who foist them on us. Two other headlines from the WSJ yesterday are also worth mentioning. First, rail giant Union Pacific is considering buying Norfolk Southern, a historically important merger would harm farmers and shippers, and push up prices of food, energy, and a whole set of goods on which we rely. And second, Chevron is closing its deal for Hess, completing the consolidation of the oil sector, and they are going to move engineering work to India. Things in America, in other words, are getting worse, very quickly, for most of us, while a small group does quite well. The Epstein saga is just a gossipy way to convey that narrative. The question I want to ask in this piece is why that is.

  • ICE Is Getting Unprecedented Access to Medicaid Data

  • 2024 Election Fraud Evidence: They Didn't Just Steal Votes, They Rewired the Entire System

    The 2024 election fraud evidence compiled in this investigation reveals a technological conspiracy that transcends traditional vote manipulation. This comprehensive investigation demonstrates how corporate networks, AI systems, and satellite technology created unprecedented vulnerabilities in American democratic processes.

    In March 2021, a seventy-nine-year-old electronics magnate named Barre Seid executed the largest known political donation in American history. But this wasn’t a check written to a campaign or a Super PAC—it was a $1.6 billion gift of company stock to a shadowy nonprofit controlled by Leonard Leo, the architect of America’s conservative judicial revolution. The company? Tripp Lite, a Chicago-based manufacturer of power equipment that sits at the heart of America’s election infrastructure. Three months later, Eaton Corporation completed its acquisition of Tripp Lite. By May 2024, Eaton had deepened its partnership with Palantir Technologies, giving the surveillance giant access to every connected device in Eaton’s global network. And in the final weeks before the 2024 election, Elon Musk’s SpaceX deployed a constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites that could communicate with any Internet-capable device—including the supposedly air-gapped UPS systems that power America’s voting machines.

  • DHS: Filming Cops, ICE Officers Is a 'Violent Tactic'

  • Trump admin squanders nearly 800k vaccines meant for Africa

    Nearly 800,000 doses of mpox vaccine pledged to African countries working to stamp out devastating outbreaks are headed for the waste bin because they weren't shipped in time, according to reporting by Politico.The nearly 800,000 doses were part of a donation promised under the Biden administration, which was meant to deliver more than 1 million doses. Overall, the US, the European Union, and Japan pledged to collectively provide 5 million doses to nearly a dozen African countries. The US has only sent 91,000 doses so far, and only 220,000 currently still have enough shelf life to make it. The rest are expiring within six months, making them ineligible for shipping.

  • EPA says it will eliminate its scientific reseach arm

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

  • Greek police arrest 5 in killing of UC Berkeley professor, including ex-wife

  • The Role of Blood Plasma Donation Centers in Crime Reduction

    Our findings indicate that the opening of a plasma center in a city leads to a 12% drop in the crime rate, an effect driven primarily by property and drug-related offenses. A within-city design confirms these findings, highlighting large crime drops in neighborhoods close to a newly opened plasma center. The crime-reducing effects of plasma donation income are particularly pronounced in less affluent areas, underscoring the financial channel as the primary mechanism behind these results. This study further posits that the perceived severity of plasma center sanctions against substance use, combined with the financial channel, significantly contributes to the observed decline in drug possession incidents.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

World

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

China

Health / Medicine

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

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