Wk 39 - Notes and Links
Wk 39 - Notes and Links
Ten things in the news
Engineers cook 3D-printed chicken with lasers
American newspaper announces bold initiative to cover technology, or as most people who don't subscribe to newspapers call it, ‘current events’. Next, they’ll dive into this rock’n’roll thing the youngsters are listening to…
It's investors who are driving up house prices in Canada.
Oregonian lawmakers: These wildfires have been devastating, and they're not going to stop. We need to start requiring that all homes be built from fire-resistant materials. Homebuilders: But...but...but MAH FREEDUMBS
The worst career advice you'll see all day.
A museum says they gave an artist $84,000 in cash to use in artwork. He delivered blank canvases and titled them "Take the Money and Run."
The election showed we don’t know how to cover Canada’s far right
Zuckerberg: guys, we need new ideas to make money, but they have to be grotesque and harm society. Some guy: has anyone done Megan's Law, but in reverse? Zuck: brilliant, also, let's refer to kids as "untapped". In related news, tobacco giants don't get to decide who does research on smoking. Why does Facebook get to dictate studies? Speaking of which, there are strange new surveys appearing on Facebook. Here's why...
Whoopsie! Is posting photos of secret military aircraft on the Chinese-owned Tik-Tok a violation of some kind? Just asking.
This week in China
Okay, so now China will be government’s pal and buddy again, right?
A growing power supply crunch in China is triggering blackouts for households and forcing factories to cut production, threatening to slow the country's vast economy and place even more strain on global supply chains. Companies in the country's industrial heartlands have been told to limit their energy consumption in order to reduce demand for power, state media has reported. In other words your new MacBook will be late.
This week in data
Corona may be hitting GOP leaning counties hard.
The 44th Canadian Federal Election by the numbers
Air pollution is likely to have been responsible for up to 6 million premature births and 3 million underweight babies worldwide every year, research shows.
CDC director claims the US has the most gun-related deaths in the world, but didn't specify whether she meant by the raw numbers or the percentage. Let's just check those numbers, okay? By the raw numbers: Nope. By percentage: Not even close.
When London's National Gallery bought the masterpiece Samson and Delilah in 1980, it became the third most expensive artwork (PDF) ever purchased at auction. But the British may now be searching for their receipt. According to a new AI analysis, their prized possession is almost certainly a fake.
Use people’s hesitation to spot a bad choice, study finds
US Fish and Wildlife Service want to remove twenty three species from the Endangered Species Act because these are extinct
This week in science and tech
The US National Security Agency (NSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have published today technical guidance on properly securing VPN servers used by organizations to allow employees remote access to internal networks.
About that lab grown meat that’s going to change everything…
According to multiple databases, researchers, and cybersecurity companies who spoke to MIT Technology Review, 2021 has had the highest number of zero-day exploits on record. "At least 66 zero-days have been found in use this year, according to databases such as the 0-day tracking project -- almost double the total for 2020, and more than in any other year on record," the report says.
Right to Repair Gains Momentum - Legislative momentum is increasing with pressure from farmers, soldiers, the open source community, and independent repair shops for a Right to Repair devices and machines to make them easier and cheaper to repair, less likely to be tossed in a heap of e-waste.
Geologists discover human footprints in North America from waaaaaaaaaay back.
Mr Bezos: your decision to screw around does not constitute a lack of process on our part. Good day.
This week in listening pleasure
We all think we know what will make us happy: more money. A better job. Love. But psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky says happiness doesn't necessarily work like that. This week, we explore why happiness often slips through our fingers, and how to savor — and stretch out — our joys. Where happiness hides.
Canadian criminal defence lawyer Marie Henein says she felt compelled to write her new memoir, Nothing But The Truth, because her “two-dimensional” public image isn’t the whole story. She tells Matt Galloway about her career, and how the public can sometimes misunderstand the work of a defence lawyer.
In 1934, Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, theorized a strange kind of matter — a crystal made from electrons called Wigner crystals. Physicists have now directly imaged these elusive ‘Wigner crystals’ for the first time.
Theranos
The Dropout is a podcast about the company/Elizabeth Holmes. The second "season" of the podcast is covering the trial too. (The first is all about the lead up from company start to then upcoming trial.)
Bad Blood is also doing an update podcast on all the new info called Bad Blood - The Final Chapter.
One of the weirdest things about the Theranos saga is that it wasn't even a particularly original scam. A decade earlier, LabNOW pulled the same crapola, promising that their battery-powered tiny box could perform innumerable blood tests on single drops of blood for the third-world market, Doctors Without Borders, and such-like. They even conned George Soros into investing. Internet archive of LabNow's 2010 home page
This week in viewing pleasure
This painting tells the wonderfully ironic story of how the French attempted to build the most beautiful fleet in the world.
Crinewave: The Disaster That Almost Ruined Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and The Coen Brothers
How you treat 'shadow people' in your life matters.
A terrible movie from 1957: The Giant Claw. When electronics engineer Mitch MacAfee spots a UFO as "big as a battleship," from his plane, the Air Force scrambles planes to investigate. However, nothing shows up on radar, and one of the jets is lost during the action. MacAfee is regarded as a dangerous crackpot until other incidents and disappearances convince the authorities that the threat is real. Some believe it is a French-Canadian folk legend come to life, but it turns out to be an extraterrestrial giant bird composed of anti-matter whose disregard for human life and architecture threatens the world.
Weird News
Dumb criminals
Tough-on-crime Republican DA charged with rape, indecent assault, assault, strangulation, and criminal trespass. Good job, voters in Somerset County, PA. His photo looks exactly like you’d imagine.
Bad: filing a false police report. Worse: to cover up a theft that you made. Even worse: Of a parrot
Covidiots
These people are like that drunk guy at the bar, you try to take his keys but he says no and the crashes into a tree.
20-year-old: I'm too healthy to need a COVID vaccine. Why is this story sad? The kid and his family have had over two years of data telling us that this thing is deadly, this thing is contagious, this thing can be controlled and prevented with vaccines that have been given out over six billion times. Anyone who makes the claim that their healthy immune system will protect them from a disease that no human immune system had ever seen before late 2019 has no idea how immune systems work.
Rural hospitals are worried that Biden's vaccine mandate is going to cost them staff who would rather quit than get the shot. Because jackasses too stupid to understand how vaccines work are exactly the people who should be working in hospitals. Narrator: They won’t
Headlines we’d rather not have read
A Tepid Distopia
Time’s Up had decided to address low pay for Latina workers by partnering with luxury brand.
Sorry about your house but, ah, enjoy the new sewer!
Short answer: No. Long answer: Nooooooooo.
People watching
Being texted by your ex? Here are some witty comebacks you can use.
Looking back at Malaysian Flight 310. We know a lot more than is generally understood.
Friendships can be difficult, and lockdowns have made them even harder to maintain.
What mysteries would you like solved before you die?
Move over Grumpy Cat. We now have Startled Cat!
On Ian Fleming as craftsman over eggs the pudding a bit but, yes he could nail together a book. He definitely made missteps (No, the FBI does not need the UK’s secret service’s help busting US gangsters) but wrote commercial fiction well. Personally I liked his more experimental 007 writings even if the reviews were unkind.
Post of the week
Embarrassment has to be measured by your country’s means and status on the world’s stage, not just its situation.
North Korea was bombed to crap in the 50s and has existed in a state of frenzied paranoid hatred ever since. It has a totalitarian regime in power so the terrorised populace couldn’t choose better even if they wanted to. It’s been isolated and sanctioned for decades.
Whereas Britain is a former global superpower, is one of the world”s strongest economies, and is ostensibly a democracy. And yet we chose to throw away a good deal of our economy and international standing on a pathetic jingoistic fantasy, and we choose (again, democracy, people, voted for this) to be led by a government of incompetents and embezzlers.
Laughing at North Korea, Venezuela and Belarus is like laughing at a drug-addled tramp who’s been knocked down one too many times and can’t get back up.
It’s just mean-spirited.
Laughing at Britain is like laughing at a millionaire who gave away his entire fortune to a fraudster for youth pills. It’s just objectively funnier.
Quotes found on-line
Let's say your job is to place orange cones to divert traffic. What do you bring to the job that makes you the best damned orange cone placing person ever?
I told work that my mother had a heart attack so I could go home and sleep off my hangover
That’s not a kink, that’s a felony.
I’m offended that you aren’t offended
Please, enlighten me. I have never been more eager to read the first result of a Google search.
Okay, I read everything you just said but… are you a penguin?
I hate the whole “show me your papers” comparison. Yeah, having to show identity to avoid being shipped off to a death camp is exactly like a private business refusing to let you eat a cheeseburger indoors unless you can show you’ve taken medicine that can prevent killing people around you.
I've seen darker skinned people be members of white supremacist prison gangs than this clown.
I want you to know that your username officially pushed me to go make a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.
They look like high school freshman hearing a teacher say damn for the first time.
One day your parents will need your help from getting older and they likely won't tell you. One day you show up for a visit and it hits like a ton of bricks that they need help.
Cults always save their most poisonous venom for the true believers who try to leave. As an ex cult member, it’s a long process of recovery, and these feelings are commonly experienced along the path. The hardest part of recovery is coming to terms with the harm done to others—recruiting others, for example. A pseudo personality has to be identified and dismantled. It is difficult but possible.
Nurses kept missing my IV placement, and I kept apologizing
Teaching is a calling and my phone is not ringing
Cheating is not just a single mistake, it's a series of small mistakes that turns into one huge mistake.
You know you're the reason why shampoos have instructions right?
That's not a family tree, that's a hedge.
He has bootstraps. I’m sure he will be fine.
I just lost my pervert card.
Antivaxxers seem to think it is better give your money to Big Casket instead of Big Pharma.
This nonsense makes my cortisol levels rise.
The guy makes hundreds of post with exactly zero tact or respect for people who mask up and get their shots and then there is a demand for tact and respect when the Sars-Covid roulette ball lands on his number?
Sounds like you've fallen into a rabbit hole and the algorithms are keeping you there. A negative echo chamber of sorts.
Hearing that Stalin had died one cheered up no end.
If you were any smarter, you’d have an inferiority complex.
Mom bought a massive fur blanket made exclusively from roadkill.
When I was little I thought Jimmy Fallon was Jimmy Kimmel so when I tried searching for photos of him I thought he looked different because he developed down syndrome.
The position of stars has had a massive effect on my life. More specifically the positions have cause annoying and gullible people to spew nonsense at me.
I’ve had numerous Flat Earthers misrepresent their credentials during online debates. From professions to degrees held it happens frequently. I even had a “gentleman” claim he was a PhD and Professor of Astrophysics during one of these debates. He wasn’t a very good liar however as he forgot to turn off his online profile which listed him as a Fry Cook for a popular fast food chain. The thing that clued me into his lie is when he mistakenly referred to the Van Allen radiation belts which surround the Earth, as the “Van Halen belts”. He seemed confused when I asked if these “belts” also doubled as guitar straps or if they were solely dedicated to holding Mr Halen’s pants up.
I can't wait for him to be my next state representative.
I love that look of shock she has when she learns about Newton's Third Law
I've never seen this much stupid in one place. And I've been to Phoenix.
When Trump dies true believers will not accept it. They’ll think he’s alive somewhere aboard a UFO planning his comeback.
What is the plural of too late?
If I gave you a penny for your thoughts, I’d have change coming
Everyone should rub a hedgehog's tummy at least once in their life. I firmly believe this.
I occasionally eat a box of a dozen powdered donuts. What kind of salsa goes best with them?
With Trump gone, Britain is now the world’s leading international embarrassment
Asked a flat earth women if she'd like to dance. She said no because she refused to believe we were at the ball.
I'm starting a new diet. How many calories are in vodka?
Trudeau is like an RPG who spent all his skill stats on his appearance.
Ban space aliens from working for the government, or ruling over the government, without everyone knowing about it. If alien wants to be president, he has to run for office like anyone else.
One of the problems with how politics is covered is many have forgotten that the purpose of politics is policy, as in solving problems. It's not about scoring points in a game of inside baseball.
Can we be ENTIRELY sure that Greek Mythology wasn’t just some dudes with a time machine fucking around?
Please speak your mind… we could use the silence….
Wait, is there a way to make GIFs without using VHS tapes?
Cheese comes from a cycle of violence. Mayonnaise comes from a cycle of violence.
Notice of Correction: The original version of this headline inaccurately referred to butt holes. The correction, black holes, was updated on Sept 25.
If I were in charge of the Tories, I’d make deleting one’s Twitter account mandatory.
Privacy isn't a product you can install
As a scientist, I can never accept anything as dumb as astrology. I'm a Taurus, and we're very stubborn.
Most people have the illusion of control. They think they'll be able to rationally respond and correctly in any situation, like middle schoolers doing mock battles in slow motion. They aren't aware of how they'll actually behave when forced into a survival situation.
I envy the people that do not know you.
Please receive, sir, my most sincere indifference.
You are not the brightest bulb but you are the sharpest.
Funny how this guy puts up a post about personal responsibility and then after he makes his choice to not be vaccinated, a Gofundme shows up and starts asking for people to bail him out for his bad choices
I promised to never tell another soul the rumours I heard today, but if any soulless beings want some juicy gossip hit me up
I hate seeing how so many people are so easily swayed by what they see on TV or the internet. But I have nothing but bluish-white-hot schadenfreude for those who actively make things worse
Life without pants is so satisfying
Why is it the same music from herpes commercials?
Working on a deliverable for a client and, well, I changed the speed of light just to make some of the math work out and now there's all this f***ing drama.
This person’s career leaves a debris field
Keep your Bible in your fucking pants.
It’s my civic duty to look out for #1, and no one else.
The sensible end of the Trans lobby don’t even believe “Trans women are women” they believe “trans women are trans women” and fair enough. Nothing to argue with there. This is a Protestant country, not a Catholic one. We don’t go in for transubstantiation. When our vicars say “this is the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ” we all nod and go “Mm hmm”, knowing full well it isn’t. But it’s not incumbent on us to believe that it is. (See also: Henry V by Shakespeare.) As it is in church, so might it be in politics.
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