Wk 45 - Notes and Links
Wk 45 - Notes and Links
Ten things in the news
While they wrestle with the immediate danger posed by hackers today, US government officials are preparing for another, longer-term threat: attackers who are collecting sensitive, encrypted data now in the hope that they'll be able to unlock it at some point in the future. Also, ”Suspected foreign hackers have breached nine organizations in the defense, energy, health care, technology and education sectors," reports CNN, citing their exclusive glimpse at findings from security firm Palo Alto Networks.
A modified consumer drone was used in an attack on an electrical substation in the US last year, according to a report from the FBI.
‘Under cross-examination, Mosley told the court that he had no real way to investigate the company’s claims and that he relied on the work of others to vet the company.’
Japan has an aircraft carrier again. They have had helicopter carrying destroyers (like Canada should have IMHO) but not aircraft carriers. At last not aircraft carriers on paper. This has been due to a promise after WW2 not to project force. Well, things have changed: namely China. In related news, the German and Japanese navies are buddies again. Okay but behave yourselves this time. By the way, keep an eye on this because it reminds me of this mock up of Pearl Harbour made by the Imperial Japanese Navy to train pilots.
UK’s Brexit losses more than 178 times bigger than gains made by the string of tiny trade deals made since leaving the EU. No electrical consequences eh? Amazing.
‘There’s a pattern of trying to bend the guardrails designed to keep our democracy clean and undermine independent scrutiny of the government’s conduct.’
General Electric will split into three separate companies in a stunning breakup of the iconic manufacturer founded by Thomas Edison whose sprawling businesses once made it the world's most valuable company.
Reuters unmasks Trump supporters who terrified U.S. election officials.
The world created about eighgt million tons of pandemic plastic waste, and much of it is now in the ocean. At least it’s all clean.
Is someone chopping onions in here? Photos of people saying goodbye to their aged dogs.
Amazing Obits
Paris Texas actor Dean Stockwell, 85. He always elevated material. Here he is as Cavil, revealing his motivations in Battlestar Galactica. Here is is in an 1995 interview recalling his 70 year career.
The founder of Something Awful, a web site that’s sorta hard to explain, has died. It’s the web site that launched a million memes.
This week in data
Facebook researchers have found that 1 in 8 of its users report engaging in compulsive use of social media that impacts their sleep, work, parenting or relationships, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced a companion to a Senate bill that would let people use algorithm-free versions of tech platforms, according to a copy of the text shared exclusively with Axios. From the report: Recent revelations about Facebook's internal research findings have renewed lawmaker interest in bills that seek to give people more of a say in how algorithms shape their online experiences. The bill shows that anger over how platforms use their algorithms to target users with specialized content is a bipartisan issue with momentum on Capitol Hill. The algorithms that personalize content on social networks and other apps can make services addictive, violate users' privacy and promote extremism, critics and many lawmakers argue. Conservatives have also claimed that services deliberately censor their speech.
Dating websites have changed the way couples meet. Research indicates it is influencing levels of interracial marriage and even the stability of marriage itself.
Behavioral characteristics and self-reported health status among 2029 adults consuming a “carnivore diet”
Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake - Not really from tyhis week as it’s from 2019, but still interesting.
'Trump counties' had over 3 times more COVID deaths than 'Biden counties' in October.
This week in science and tech
The researcher who in invented mRNA medicine is Glamour Magazine’s woman of the year.
These parents built a school app. Then the city called the cops.
A change to the iPhone's repairability that has been long prophesied and feared has finally come to pass: The iPhone 13's screen cannot be replaced without special software controlled by Apple. This is a devastating blow to independent repair shops, who make the vast majority of their money doing screen replacements, and, specifically, make the vast majority of their money doing iPhone screen replacements.
Breathless headlines of artificial intelligence discovering or restoring lost works of art ignore that these machines rarely, if ever, reveal one secret or solve a single mystery.
Research suggests that chronic loneliness may be as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. But do we know what loneliness actually is?
Steroid abuse now the default look for the male body
Engineers have been trying to solve the problem of why tea drops from the spout as an amusing conundrum for years. It’s a basic and knotty problem of low liquids behave. Well, they think they have an answer.
UK aims for 'openness and fairness' in its AI Strategy – unless we're talking about favoured contractors.
This week in listening pleasure
A piano version of the 1979 theme song to Buck Rogers.
Canary P.I. is an audio drama about a private investigator that comes across cases on the peculiar side in a noir setting. Anthology stories with a horror twist, taking inspiration from Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Tales of the Unexpected.
The White Saviors: "Kids in 17,000 schools have been encouraged to take the WE Pledge, join the WE movement, and 'Live WE.' But what does that really mean? In practice, it has meant fundraising for WE, paying the Kielburgers' private company for a 'voluntourism' trip, going to work for WE, and living in communal WE housing. According to many of those who lived WE, it meant joining an organization very much like a 'cult.'"
What everyone gets wrong about Facebook, privacy policies and ad tech. You may want to skip the first ten minutes.
Kathleen Stock on her resignation as a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex.
This week in viewing pleasure
An educational cartoon about vaccination.
Why contemporary films suck - these are apparently written by children.
A train announcer is bored and having a bit of fun.
Lorraine Daston – The Rule of Rules, or How Reason Became Rationality
Sex and the City 2 reviewed by Mark Kermode 11 years ago. An amusing movie critic rant that starts calmly and ends with him pounding the table singing the International communist national anthem.
This week's unintended consequences
As demand for green energy grows, solar farms face local resistance
In 2016 a lawmaker decided to get rid of pasteurized milk requirements, drink raw milk and guess what happened?
After the shooting at Sandy Hook, people bought more guns than ever before. These additional guns then led to an increase in domestic homicides.
Drug dealers are using their own video cameras against the police
This week's uncomfortable correlations
Active-duty police in major U.S. cities appear on purported Oath Keepers rosters.
Vaccine refusals in intelligence agencies. That’s not so smart. Also, covid is the leading cause of death police officers right now despite them having some of the earliest access to vaccines. In this context ‘blue’ is from the lack of oxygen.
This CDC Obesity map corresponds very well with a vaccine resistance map.
Conservatives and liberals have different braaaaaaaains!
U.S. Inflation Hit 30-Year High in October as Consumer Prices Jump 6.2 per cent.
This week's weird news
This week in crime
A metallurgist in Washington state pleaded guilty to fraud Monday after she spent decades faking the results of strength tests on steel that was being used to make U.S. Navy submarines.
It's corrupt as fuck. Starts off at bike thief level and goes all the way up to the monachy. Everyone's getting a slice of the pie sorry you didn't get the memo.
Strange Headlines
A Tepid Distopia
Libertarian propaganda for grade schoolers. Yep. It’s as awful as you might imagine. Giving these books to kids should be child abuse.
Republican politicians lobbying to release restrictions so citizens can get access to medications. Yes, horse de-wormer
I'm sure he can still get work as a consultant. It's not like that work had anything to do with him being an MP.
Unsealed emails reveal the role baby-powder maker Johnson & Johnson played in a report that an industry group submitted to U.S. regulators deciding whether to keep warnings off talc-based products linked to cancer. The emails -- unsealed in the state of Mississippi's lawsuit against J&J over its refusal to add a safety warning -- show J&J and its talc supplier chose the scientists hired by their trade association, the Personal Care Products Council, to write the 2009 report assessing talc-based powders' health risks. They also show the researchers changed the final version of their report at the companies' behest. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it relied in part on the report in its decision to forgo a warning for the product.
On Friday, a transparency activist group known as Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) posted a 1.8-terabyte trove of police helicopter footage to its website. Techdirt reports: The DDoS release shows law enforcement agencies aren't just deploying choppers to keep an eye on suspects because of probable cause or in the course of an investigation. They're also using them to engage in extended surveillance of people suspected of nothing, hovering over large gatherings and deploying infrared cameras to peer inside of buildings and backyards just for the fuck of it.
The Afghan military didn’t actually exist, and that’s why it collapsed so rapidly: ex-finance minister.
People watching
What's the dumbest thing you've done out of horniness?
What is it about Edgar Allan Poe that grips the popular imagination so?
When Dr. Joyce Brothers was a contestant on The $64,000 Question the show’s sponsor Revlon tried to get rid of her because she didn’t wear makeup on air. She was asked increasingly obscure questions but was able to answer them all correctly and became the show’s first woman to win the top prize.
What is romantic friendship? Deep and lasting connection comes in many forms: we need a new vocabulary to talk about love.
The 100 best film noir movies of all time.
How photographer Jeff Wall’s pictures duplicate ‘magic’ of large-scale paintings
The generation ‘chasm’: Young Canadians feel unlucky, unattached to the country.
Let’s Go Brandon means what exactly?
Post of the week
Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.
I wish I could say you get used to people dying.
I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.
As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
Quotes found on-line
Netflix has moved Idiocracy into the documentary section.
Never in the history of calming down has literally a woman ever calmed down because you asked her to. It's like farting on a lit candle- there's gonna be a fireball and you're gonna get burned in the most uncomfortable way.
Do strippers ever have bad dreams where they show up to work not naked?
If you think logically, yes. But that isn’t very pro-whateverthefuck of you.
That feeling when you’re walking alone down a dark street, see a figure, then realize it’s just a fellow woman.
What will I do?I’m going to make angry noises and drink tea.
Ouch. I think I just sprained my brain. I had to go back and read that several times, and it just made it worse.
Loyalty to your company only rewards your company. Hopping companies is the best way to increase your salary, don't sit there hoping for a raise. Apply to other jobs, get a better offer and use it to leverage a raise or jump ship.
It's got a plug on it, it's IT's responsibility.
As a man, I always found it deeply unfair that genetics would grant me a paucity of hair on my chin, but an abundance in my arsecrack
He had the full support of the Prime Minister, right up to the point he no longer had the full support of the Prime Minister.
Edward O. Wilson 1929– American sociobiologist: “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology."
She's a liar, a scammer and a cheat, but as I read the list of the awful, horrible people Holmes scammed, I don't know - I'm kinda starting to like her.
You should come check out the American rural south. Religion is everywhere down here. We have churches down here like a bad case of the pox.
Could we be so out of touch? No, it’s the voters who are wrong.
There's a reason why healthy adults have outgrown their punk or goth phases, and that's because they develop enough of an internal sense of self that they no longer need to cling to flamboyant subcultures to have a sense of identity.
Cadillac made Elvis-approved land yachts
I’m often alarmed at the speed with which I metabolize new shocks, skipping over grief and heading straight to acceptance.
My Senior Nurse Preceptor didn't so much take the "eat their young" approach to new grads, but more of the "leave them neglected to die in a dumpster" approach to orientation.
Instead of making up some nonsense words to describe yourself and bragging about it online, try finding something in life you're passionate about.
Accidentally typing “Retards” instead of “Regards” on a fairly important email.
These antivaxxers are like Pennywise - come down here patriots, you’ll all float!
I am not passive aggressive unlike some people
“Freedom” — why are the people whining hardly ever Black? MLK didn’t whine. Malcolm X didn’t whine. Frederick Douglass didn’t whine.
"I don't want to say i speak for everyone but..." Good, don't. If anyone else has an issue, they are welcome to approach me directly.
If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation - Arthur Eddington, 1915.
What's proven in study after study is that people are shit at self-reporting.
Today a colleague in the canteen was moaning about who keeps changing the radio stations in company vehicles to Absolute Country with others agreeing with him. Its me. Its always been me.
If nothing will convince you to change your mind, then your choice wasn’t based on reason.
The only thing worse than a parent disappointed in a child is a child disappointed in a parent.
As an embalmer, can confirm. Covid decedents who spent extensive amounts of time in the hospital are coming in 20-50 pounds heavier than their normal weight before hospitalization. Fortunately advances in embalming fluid technology have created fluids specifically to draw excess fluid out of the cells of the body. Additionally, formaldehyde is a natural desiccant which dehydrates and reduces edema in the body.
My resting bitch face has become a full on sneer.
It's like if you ask someone if they fucked a sheep. Any answer other than "no" definitely means they've fucked a sheep.
Why is “calorie counting” a dirty word to some people? The same reason people don’t like budgeting for their finances. What gets measured gets managed.
Unfortunately, the core tenets of media literacy — don’t believe everything you read, do the research yourself, think for yourself — are also the watchwords of conspiracy theorists
The upper class does none of the work and pays none of the taxes. The middle class does all of the work and pays all of the taxes. The lower class is there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep them showing up at their jobs! - George Carlin
Taken 3 makes Taken 2 look like Taken.
Don’t wash a blanket with a fitted sheet. Still suffering from PTSD from the sound
The reason why Kissinger was one of the few people who was actually qualified to be on Theranos' board of directors. Not because he knows a damn thing about IVD; but because if you want to lie to Americans about how much blood will actually be required to do something(which was, as it turns out, their core business) he's probably the greatest living expert.
Two After Eight Mints equals one serving. I just read this as I finished the box in one go.
"I think the real heroes are the real heroes." - Norm MacDonald
Victor Goldschmidt, the founder of modern geochemistry, carried a Cyanide pill as a last resort if captured by Nazis. When a colleague asked him to create one for him, he stated, "Cyanide is for chemists; you, being a professor of mechanical engineering, will have to use the rope."
Cool we're doing RISC vs CISC again. Somehow I feel like it is 10 years ago, but also I feel 1,000 years older and more tired.
That’s a poorly camouflaged red flag
On the internet you’re what they call a micro-influencer
May i show you the way to the nearest mental institution?
Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
You just missed an amazing opportunity to stay quiet
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 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
His career leaves a debris field
You look like a sleep paralysis demon
Keep your Bible in your fucking pants.
Common misconception: studio audiences are actually a variety of trained seal that just look like people. They can clap, laugh, boo, but that’s about it.
I figured if their God was omnipotent and omniscient like they say He is, the best way for Him to communicate with mankind probably wasn't a billboard outside Brownsville.
You could say he died by his religion: He was a meme-inite, and Corona got him. Ideology and memes killed this man.
You go through their memes, and they post tough talking 98% survive stuff, then you get to the last few, which are pictures of them. A lo and behold, its a chubby out shape middle aged white guy.
Name me an army that has been defeated more treacherously in an 18 month campaign as the Prayer Warriors.
COVID is taking out more hunters than Dick Chaney.
I’m “Fuck-Off Gender” which is a gender where I think all the other “non-binary” gender IDs are superfluous bullshit for lazy, boring people with no fucking personality. My gender is literally incapable of actually recognizing all the other special genders so please respect my gender identity and go fuck yourself
If you're willing to drive a bit, setting your tinder location to near a military base is like putting the app on easy mode.
I assume your answer is correct. But i am now irrationally angry at the fact i can't process it
I've ceased to be ineffable; I don't know how to describe the feeling.
What colour does a Smurf turn when you strangle it?
Only two out of 330 million Americans died of ebola in the past decade. That's a 99.9999994% survival rate! Therefore ebola is harmless and we should do nothing to control the next outbreak.
This is more of a creepy confession he should be telling his parole officer instead of standing on stage thinking this is comedy.
I offered to prove I had not been playing with my breasts.
Sorry but momfluencer on Twitter is not a career.
"Boy Will Be Boys", to me, will always mean doing something stupid like tying a Roman candle to a drone and turning on the auto-track feature so you can be chased by a robot cannon.
Just moved back to the UK. Went into the chemist’s and asked a shop assistant where the Q-Tips were. She says, “what on earth are queue tips?” I replied, “errrrrrr”. Left without buying them. Remembered later they are called cotton wool buds over here. The truth is that I was mortified that I couldn’t remember the word. My wife and I have just returned to the UK after nine years Japan and all I could think was Q-tips and menbou. The assistant was looking at me like I was some sort of war criminal and so I fled.
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