2021 - Wk 31 - Notes and Links

Andy's Newslather

I am still working on the new template. I have decided to stop bolding the first few words of the links this week. Tell me what you think. I want to make the list easy to scan so you can find the bits you find interesting.

-- AG

Ten things in the news

1. They sell everything in America - https://reno.craigslist.org/lbg/d/south-lake-tahoe-after-school-satan/7358666230.html

2. Olympic copyright craziness - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210805/10212647310/olympics-copyright-insanity-rules-again-gold-medal-winner-blocked-sharing-her-own-victory.shtml

3. A social media site where creatives rate the ability of brands to pay for work: The best part is the name - https://petapixel.com/2021/08/03/fck-you-pay-me-is-a-glassdoor-like-platform-that-reveals-scummy-brands/

4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/03/us-to-return-17000-looted-ancient-artefacts-to-iraq

5. Man claiming to be Jesus stabs 3 in home near Pittsburgh  - https://local21news.com/news/local/man-claiming-to-be-jesus-stabs-3-in-home-near-pittsburgh

6. Poll of the people to blame for the surge of Covid cases in the US show they certainly don't blame themselves for the surge of Covid cases in the US splitting the blame between foreigners, the media, and Biden instead - https://news.yahoo.com/whom-unvaccinated-americans-blame-covid-214059113.html

7. The planned bill is supposed to address five categories of content: terrorist content, incitement of violence, hate speech, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and child sexual exploitation material. This apparently noble goal masks a wide range of utterly disastrous plans for stringent regulation that belong in the hall of fame for bad internet policy - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210802/08443047289/canadian-government-continues-war-internet-freedom-with-new-online-harms-legislation.shtml

8. Rough day: One of your country's prized nuclear submarines breaks down. Someone's getting executed: Sub breaks down while surfaced and being escorted through an enemy country's waters - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41835/russian-nuclear-submarine-broke-down-in-danish-waters

9. Man imprisoned in a mental institution for two years because of a mistake in identity - https://news.sky.com/story/man-locked-up-in-hawaii-mental-hospital-for-two-years-in-case-of-mistaken-identity-12372277

10. Well, there’s a metric. Maybe they could add it to the UK political measure of a Milliband - https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/the-digby-jones-index/

This week in data

• Stop buying bottled water - https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/08/05/bottled-water-is-3-500-times-worse-for-the-environment-than-tap-water-say-scientists

• Gap in Boys' High School Graduation Rates Still Widening, Study Finds - https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gap-in-boys-high-school-graduation-rates-still-widening-study-finds

• US secondary school drop out rates - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16

• At the start of the pandemic, remembers MIT Technology Review's senior editor for AI, the community "rushed to develop software that many believed would allow hospitals to diagnose or triage patients faster, bringing much-needed support to the front lines — in theory. "In the end, many hundreds of predictive tools were developed. None of them made a real difference, and some were potentially harmful." - https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/30/1030329/machine-learning-ai-failed-covid-hospital-diagnosis-pandemic/

• Study finds no robust evidence couples’ communication quality predicts relationship satisfaction over time - https://nordot.app/793651183538782208?c=716744410777616384

• Anti-vaxxers live in a weird world of fear and paranoia. According to a 2019 study of 700 or so people responding to a facebook anti-vax video they believed that polio viruses don't actually exist and that it's pesticides that caused polio. I don't think they've considered polio existed before agricultural pesticide chemicals were created -http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/36001/1/HoffmanB_Thesis_April2019.pdf

• People who purposefully breach COVID-19 regulations tend to share certain characteristics, finds a study of attitudes and behaviours in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada. https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/07/30/what-psychology-says-about-covid-non-compliers.html

This week in science and tech

• Preliminary evidence of the association between erectile dysfunction and COVID-19 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33742540/

• Remember how the No-Fly list would only ever catch bad guys and it ended up with German businessmen getting kidnapped and sent to Gitmo. Well, they're building a child porn list that will never get automated because it generates waaaay too much data to be scanned by people, and will result in warrants being issued for unexamined ‘evidence’ that turned out to be photos of your daughter’s Barbie. Don't want to be thought of as a pedophile? Buy an iPhone today! Is your child safe at school? Vote to require iPhones for all public employees! How long until China starts demanding the same feature, only to detect pictures of Tank Man or the Dalai Lama or other crimethink? Apple has long had a policy of appeasement within China. - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/apple-plans-to-scan-us-iphones-for-child-abuse-imagery/

• Single Hull Vs Double Hull Tankers - https://www.marineinsight.com/naval-architecture/single-hull-vs-double-hull-tankers/

• I’m going to live forever! - https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/3381486/can-masturbating-boost-your-immune-system-fight-covid/

• Words Musk needs to heart more often - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/07/30/elon-musk-wanting-to-become-apple-ceo/

• Russia's 'Nonsensical, Impossible Quest' to Create Its Own Domestic Internet  - https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/08/01/1847251/russias-nonsensical-impossible-quest-to-create-its-own-domestic-internet

• 2000-year-old border stone unearthed in Rome, and it's incredibly important because it was found in its original location. Archeologists immediately move it - https://www.thedailybeast.com/big-stone-found-in-rome-gets-everyone-all-excited

• Atlantic Ocean current system seems to be approaching a tipping point. Good thing we were warned - https://phys.org/news/2021-08-ocean-current-approaching.html

This week in listening pleasure

• Water Woes: The slow-creeping disaster of drought - https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-429/clip/15858210 

• The Dropout. The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos - https://abcaudio.com/podcasts/the-dropout/

• This Podcast Will Kill You. Two scientists discuss a different disease every episode - https://thispodcastwillkillyou.com/episodes/

• Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's. It is satirical investigative journalism. The actual answered to the question is answered within a few episodes, yet the podcast has released over 200 and counting. The episodes are short and simple. It centres around journalist Brian Thompson's character and gradually gets weirder and funnier - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/whatever-happened-to-pizza-at-mcdonalds/id1152856686

• For the 25th anniversary of I Shot Andy Warhol, Canadian filmmaker Mary Harron joins us to talk about the film's legacy, Andy Warhol's life and work, and her personal fascination with Valerie Solanas — the woman who shot Warhol in 1968 - https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/thursday-aug-5-2021-mary-harron-kwame-mbalia-and-more-1.6128035

This week in viewing pleasure

• This seems like way too much work. How the heck did women even pee in olden times? - https://gfycat.com/jauntyquainteeve

• A retired British undercover policeman reflects upon his time infiltrating drugs gangs and what he thinks should be done - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_TV4GuXFoA

• A helpful video to get you through these difficult times - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URwmZq70_DU

• Five things that make a film look low budget - https://youtu.be/SySuowyE9ME

• What if all of the Cluster B personality disorders were in fact a single thing? - https://youtu.be/889Q6aH5HeU

• Logan’s Run: The TV Series. Yeah they mention that Man out of Time episode that was written David Gerrold - https://youtu.be/msgRKPc6ReI

• The FBI Art Theft Squad - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZHoNwOMm8

• About Australia’s defence strategy summarized - https://youtu.be/MTCqXlDjx18

A tepid distopia

• Police just a little too honest in a recruiting ad - https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2021-08-04/manchester-police-qualified-immunity-facebook-recruitment

• Astroturfing and the trans ‘movement’: follow the money- https://archive.is/9vaRd#selection-339.0-339.124

• You see, my brother lived his life in denial of COVID, and now that he's gone we need you to... "Fudge his autopsy report to reinforce that narrative? Oh yeah, no sweat" - https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/county-coroner-missouri-says-he-omits-covid-19-some-death-n1275929

• Murder conviction overturned after after evidence of innocence is found in police files. 30 years after the initial trial. And if you wondering what took so long, go ahead and guess the skin tone of the accused - https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/31/us/curtis-crosland-philadelphia-murder-exoneration/index.html

• A Coroner Said a Black Missouri Teen Committed Suicide In the Attic of a Man Known for Racist Social Media Posts. A Jury Disagreed - https://www.theroot.com/a-coroner-said-a-black-missouri-teen-committed-suicide-1847408653

• Um, what? - https://twitter.com/WendyRogersAZ/status/1423051565506699268

• Someone forgot to run spell check - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-asks-dedicated-supporters-to-pay-to-carry-misspelled-trump-offical-card/ar-AAMYQ6F

This week's headlines

• The vagina museum needs a new home - https://boingboing.net/2021/08/04/the-vagina-museum-needs-a-new-home.html

• Two die when struck by a train at a memorial for a man who died from ... guess what? - https://www.wspa.com/news/2-killed-by-train-in-charlotte-at-memorial-for-man-struck-killed-in-same-location/

• Rising Republican Party Influencers Got Their Start At Talent Agency Run By Israeli Pornographer - https://national-justice.com/national-justice-investigates-rising-republican-party-influencers-got-their-start-talent-agency-run

People watching

• Byzantine art and their cultural appropriation - https://smarthistory.org/cross-cultural-middle-byzantine/

• Plandemic Revisited: A Product of Planned Disinformation Amplifying the COVID-19 “infodemic” - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.649930/full

• That there was a restaurant in Tokyo called “The Restaurant of Order Mistakes” that hires waiters with dementia and Alzheimer’s. They may or may not get your order right - https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2017/06/05/the-restaurant-of-order-mistakes-employs-waiters-with-dementia/

• Meet the Modern-Day Pagans Who Celebrate the Ancient Gods - https://getpocket.com/explore/item/meet-the-modern-day-pagans-who-celebrate-the-ancient-gods?utm_source=pocket-newtab

• What was the best accidental nudity you've seen in person? - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ouhdwa/what_was_the_best_accidental_nudity_youve_seen_in/

• The Russians and the Central and South American narco mobs will have to move their gold kilobars through Pakistan for the next few months.-  https://asiatimes.com/2021/08/indias-gold-trade-in-meltdown-over-new-hallmarking-rules/

• After three terrible seasons, and having taken the viewership from ten million per episode to two and a half million, Dr Who’s show runner and lead actress declare victory and leave - https://www.doctorwho.tv/news/?article=jodie-whittaker-chris-chibnall-leave-doctor-who 

• Ever help out a Make a Wish project for a kid? I bet you were not considering that some kids just want to visit pickle factories - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ovnbun/make_a_wish_employees_what_was_the_most_strangest/

• 70 years ago Walter Plywaski fought for atheists’ right to become citizens - https://theconversation.com/70-years-ago-walter-plywaski-fought-for-atheists-right-to-become-citizens-heres-why-his-story-is-worth-remembering-164758

Post of the week

Virtually every vaccine ever made has made evident that any detrimental side effects show up in first two months after administration. This is because the vaccine itself is cleared quite quickly by the body. All that remains afterward are the antibodies.

History tells us that severe side effects are extremely rare, and if they if do occur, they usually happen within the first two months.

The mRNA molecules used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are especially fragile, he notes, so “they are out of your body in a day or so.” A stroll through vaccine history confirms that even the most damaging side effects have indeed taken place within a six-week window.

• https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/how-do-we-know-covid-19-vaccine-wont-have-long-term-side-effects

• https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/vaccines-are-highly-unlikely-to-cause-side-effects-long-after-getting-the-shot-

Quotes found on-line

• Looking at that face I can tell he's going to die early from alcoholism.

• How about a decade of free room and board at a federal facility?

• It's almost like the only people who give a fuck about this are the people who are on Facebook

• She forgot humble and rational on her bio.

• If Covid has taught me anything; we’re screwed. Climate change? How does one discuss something as serious and threatening as climate change with someone who believes the earth is flat?

• Does anyone else rotate their cups, plates & silverware periodically so the bottom/back ones don’t feel left out?

• If your definition of discrimination is "not everybody is willing to fuck me" you need to take a seat and work on your obvious problems

• Being "YouTube famous" is a fairly low bar, and theoretically any weirdo with enough time and inclination can at least attempt it. And two, most of these people are social media whores who think it's a good idea to air all of their weird shit in public. Back in the day, we wouldn't even use our real names or the cities we lived in online. Now every kid thinks they'll be the next Tik-Tok sensation when they do!

• I don't like gender identities and am not interested in anybody who has one.

• Don't marry the cow, when you already got the milk.........also, don't marry cows.

• ProTip: If you're a guy don't ever install an unshielded oscillating fan in your underwear.

• Nate Silver is the Elon Musk of Thomas Edisons.

• Can someone knock some sense into me? I’m resentful of a literal 2 year old.

• I'm a 39 year old straight male, married, 6'3" and around 270 lbs, big bushy beard. I work in a warehouse, building projects on the weekends. By all accounts I fit the role of a burly man's man. But....I f***ing love pumpkin spice. 

• I went from Hotshot Banker to Genderless Reptile.

• If you wear cowboy clothes, are you ranch dressing?

• I told my hairdresser to make me look sexy, so she put down the hair clippers and started drinking.

• I don't know why filmmakers seem to think female assassins have to bond with young girls to show their softer emotional side, but so be it.

• Why do people like sparkling water, it tastes like tv static

• Trustworthy people do exist, you're just admitting you're not one of them by gossiping. Which is always good to know.

• This is how Thomas the Tank Engine became sentient and now wanders the wasteland of railways looking for humans to eat.

• The one thing I miss about working Nightclubs, you could straight up tell customers to fuck off.

• I had to find a new therapist because, just as I do with everyone else, I made up a whole new personality with her

• This made me do that weird inhale laugh where I sound like some forest creature

• Willing to defend those principles too. That’s admirable, perhaps (if you look at things like the Hong Kong riots. But before you throw a tantrum with a hatchet you best be absolutely certain your principle is really important and not just an incredibly stupid opinion.

• I really like some of my stretch marks, they look like lightning. Free ‘tattoo’!

• There is no hate like Christian love

• In my last health & safety role, we handled a report that a manager broke his nose because he was in the windowless bathroom, when someone switched off the light while leaving. He panicked and ran right into a wall.

• It started as a virus and mutated into an IQ test.

• Shower sex is fucking awful. Every woman that I've ever met likes to have showers so fucking hot that it burns my skin. It's like having sex in the middle of a magma storm. For some reason, my wife can't stand being outside when it's 80 degrees but she turns the shower on to a molten lava level.

• Those medium sized truck drivers are the worst. They're not big enough to be work trucks, not small enough to be home trucks. They're just asshole trucks. I mean, except for my wife's.

• I used to teach at a really shitty school. Every day it was like I was watching a Joker origin story.

• It's not the motivations here that bothers me. It's that they can do this at all that bothers me.

• We don't produce 'clean' hydrogen because it costs 10 times more to produce than from natural gas and because it's stupid. You generate electricity and then you use the electricity to split water to produce hydrogen which you truck around the country to put in a car where it's used to generate electricity to propel the car. At which point you've used twice as much electricity than you would have if you'd just put it in the battery in the first place.

• My fake marriage ended in a fake divorce. I'm still upset over it.

• Somewhere along the line Tolerance was replaced by Acceptance. Those two words aren't interchangeable yet they slipped it in as if they were expecting no one to notice.

• People in the future are going to howl with laughter at all these articles with big obviously male mugshots labeled “woman” by the headline . Mark my words: in 20 years people will be looking back on this like we look back on the Satanic Panic today.

• “The media won't tell these stories.” True, they're too busy sharing the actual footage they captured to focus on the stuff you imagined.

• In the same way seatbelt usage tells airbag skeptics that airbags aren't effective. Why wear a seatbelt if your car has a perfectly good airbag? Are the airbags not effective? Clearly it's all just a conspiracy orchestrated by Big Seatbelt to sell more belt tensioners. Of course the answer is that both seatbelts and airbags are partially effective, and that using both is more effective than using either on its own. In car safety features as in pandemic mitigation strategies, the best approach is defense in depth.

• But every now and then, I remember. I remember back to when I first saw a pair of female breasts, live and in-person. And I remember that there is magic in this world.

• The number of ‘women’ committing crimes and suffering from male pattern baldness is going to explode in the next 5 years and the media will play dumb as to the cause. It’ll probably be blamed on climate change.

• Two of my ex-girlfriends are going canoeing together this weekend. We all still hang out and I jokingly asked if I could go with and one of them said "sure at least we won't have to worry about getting wet"

• "The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats." - Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

• Some of these people wouldn't recognize common sense if it held them down at a party and humped their leg.

• My wife is trying to buy a bra. We've spent twenty minutes looking at every bra they have, I'm not allowed to touch any knickers or put the bras on my head. My hands have to be in my pockets the whole time, no jiggling hands and no making eye contact with anyone. The queue has twenty people in it and is growing surly because the nice lady at the front is returning a dozen items and now the assistant is on the website on her phone showing the customer products that are not in stock here but can be ordered and no one will complain and the woman holding us up won't make eye contact and I get shhh'd every time I try to make a comment and I want the pub and its only 10 in the morning.

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