Wk 49 - Notes and Links
Wk 49 - Notes and Links
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Ten things in the news
Since at least 2017, a mysterious threat actor has run thousands of malicious servers in entry, middle, and exit positions of the Tor network in what a security researcher has described as an attempt to deanonymize Tor users.
Bereaved families demand investigation of gambling-linked suicides.
Videos and GIFs of cute animals — usually cats — have gone viral online for almost as long as the internet has been around..." writes the New York Times. "Now, it is becoming increasingly clear how widely the old-school internet trick is being used by people and organizations peddling false information online, misinformation researchers say.
Remember in the 70s and 80s how big corporations took over the studios? That may happen again thanks to streaming.
Recent bottlenecks and price surges have underscored the risks that come with sprawling global supply chains supposedly built around the principle of economic efficiency. But beyond these glaring issues, supply chains impose additional social costs that warrant policymakers' attention.
Newspapers all over the US have been quietly filing antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook for the past year, alleging the two firms monopolized the digital ad market for revenue that would otherwise go to local news.
Americans' health hasn't improved much in those 12 years, especially compared with people in peer countries, and some have argued the agency hasn't done enough to try to turn these trends around. One recently retired NIH division director has quipped that one way to increase funding for this line of research would be if "out of every $100, $1 would be put into the 'Hey, how come nobody's healthy?' fund." In a wide-ranging conversation, Collins answers NPR's questions as to why -- for all the taxpayer dollars going to NIH research -- there haven't been more gains when it comes to Americans' overall health. He also talks about how tribalism in American culture has fueled vaccine hesitancy, and he advises his successor on how to persevere on research of politically charged topics -- like guns and obesity and maternal health -- even if powerful lobbies might want that research not to get done.
‘We’re losing IQ points’: the lead poisoning crisis unfolding among US children
Dozens of camels barred from Saudi beauty contest over Botox
Amazing Obit
Lina Wertmüller, First Female Best Director Nominee, 93
This week in data
What are the best credit cards in Canada courtesy of one of our subscribers.
The Economist built a model that estimates the death toll of the pandemic, corrected for underreporting.
Eight years ago, a team of researchers launched a project to carefully repeat early but influential lab experiments in cancer research. They recreated 50 experiments, the type of preliminary research with mice and test tubes that sets the stage for new cancer drugs. The results reported Tuesday: About half the scientific claims didn't hold up
Why can't your fitness tracker tell you if you have coronavirus?
Crime prediction software claimed to be free of biases. Guess what?
A systematic review of 12 qualitative and 6 quantitative investigations finds many chronic pain patients feel guilty partly because they cannot fulfill their roles and because they feel others (incl. doctors) assume they are faking their condition or are not managing their condition well enough.
More than 40 million Americans had their personal health information exposed in data breaches this year, a significant jump from 2020 and a continuation of a trend toward more and more health data hacks and leaks.
Apple has told developers they "may not derive data from a device for the purpose of uniquely identifying it." This means they can observe "signals" from an iPhone at a group level, enabling ads that can still be tailored to "cohorts" aligning with certain behaviour but not associated with unique IDs. This type of tracking is becoming the norm.
This week in science and tech
Accusing this journalist of hacking for simply reporting a vulnerability is like accusing someone of trying to break into your house when all they do is tell you that the screws to your deadbolt are on the outside of the door and anyone could actually remove the lock. Emails show what happened before Missouri governor falsely called journalist a “hacker” Officials drafted statement thanking reporter, then threatened to prosecute him. Missouri is the same state, with the same governor, who commissioned a study to see if mask mandates work. The study showed yes, wearing a mask does reduce infections. The governor or Missouri quashed the study, never revealing it to the public. To top things off, the AG of Missouri has now ordered schools and health departments to cease all covid orders or face prosecution
Scientists say they may have understood the cause of Alzheimer’s. And also Alzheimer’s.
U.S. Space Force's General David Thompson, the service's second in command, said last week that Russia and China are launching "reversible attacks," such as electronic warfare jamming, temporarily blinding optics with lasers, and cyber attacks, on U.S. satellites "every single day." Thompson, who is Vice Chief of Space Operations, disclosed these details in an interview on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum, which ran from Nov. 19 to 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada.
Pfizer said it will be able to manufacture and distribute an updated version of its COVID-19 vaccine within 100 days if the new variant Omicron is found to be resistant to its current vaccine... "Pfizer and BioNTech have taken actions months ago to be able to adapt the mRNA vaccine within six weeks and ship initial batches within 100 days in the event of an escape variant," the company said in a statement...
Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are also preparing to respond to the Omicron's possible threat. Moderna last Friday said it plans to test a variant-specific booster in the event that its current vaccine is found to be ineffective against the Omicron.
This week in listening pleasure
There’s a great Christmas story about a pilot. This short story is worth a listen as it’s narrated by the late Alan Maitland of CBC Radio.
The Decadence Movement: The influence of Baudelaire and Walter Pater on writers and artists in Britain in the 1890s, pursuing art for its own sake and not with moral aims.
Bird poo is usually coloured white—because of the way birds excrete excess nitrogen. But the poo can sometimes be a different colour—because of their diet. Creatures have evolved three main ways of getting rid of excess nitrogen.
What if we’re wired for religious feelings?
How about we stiff rural districts by putting wind farms there now that we took all their oil? All agreed?
Think classical sculptures were all white marble? Think again!
This week in viewing pleasure
When Kevin Hearn of the Canadian pop band the Barenaked Ladies buys a painting purported to be the work of an iconic Indigenous artist, he takes a foray into the vicious world of art forgery, addiction, sex abuse, and murder in Canada's Far North
Choose a lens for its character, not its performance
YouTube is deleting comments from creators who criticize their hiding of the dislike count
Spitfire evolution Mk1 to Mk24. What made the it special?
God's Country or Home to Religious Extremism? Christianity in America Documentary
Tales of the Unexpected
Unintended Consequences
Far right is using Twitter’s new rule against anti-extremism researchers
Viagra is associated with dramatically reduced incidence of Alzheimer's disease
Instagram makes it easy to find your local friendly neighbourhood drugs dealer.
Unintended Correlations
Older people who have cataract surgery to improve their eyesight are less likely to develop dementia afterwards.
This week's weird news
Dumb Criminals
Trammel, police reported, would not offer a further “explanation for how the sink was damaged.”
Former Berkeley mayoral candidate convicted of stealing newborn baby goat. And then it gets weird.
Strange Headlines
Bomb squad called to hospital after man gets WWII mortar stuck in his rectum
According to the police chief, all animals at Cultivate Care Farms are comfort animals, which makes the death of the volunteer after being attacked by a sheep somewhat unusual.
There’s practicing medicine without a licence and then there’s this guy.
A Tepid Distopia
Huge 20-Year Study Shows Trickle-Down Is a Myth. a new report shows just how stark the divide is between the richest and poorest people on the planet. Broadly, the number of billionaires rose to a record-number in 2020, with Wealth-X finding that there are now over 3,000 members of the three-comma club. Billionaire gains are a well-documented trend: The left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness found that Americans added $2.1 trillion to their wealth during the pandemic, a 70% increase.
Texas pulls books from school libraries because … reasons.
The US crackdown on Chinese economic espionage is a mess.
It’s hard to believe de Gaulle of these guys. Also, why do they need a security detail in France if they’re on vacation with their wives? Oh, it was a business trip? So why are their spouses there?
The Republicans Have Become the Party of Organized Violence: "Right now, the GOP views threats of violence as offering a political advantage with no real downside.
The boss of a US mortgage company, who fired hundreds of his staff in a Zoom meeting has said he is "deeply sorry" for the way the lay-offs were handled.
People watching
The music of Jerry Goldsmith.
What is something women misunderstand the most about men?
A Gynecologist Asked Women How To Design His New Office.
Tiny flamethrowers, real growing trees and 53,000 Swarovski crystals: Secrets of hit stage musical shows
When did the American and British accents diverge?
Post of the week
Average urination time for a mammal is 21 seconds and 6-7 times per day: 21x6.5= 136.5 s/day
Life expectancy of a male in the US is 76.3 years, so 76.3x365.25= 27,868.575 days of life.
27,868.575 days x 136.5 seconds of urination per day = 3,804,060.49 seconds of weeing.
Reduced, that makes for 1,056 hours and 41 minutes of your life spent peeing, or a little over 44 days. Numbers are higher for women.
Quotes found on-line
He (Bob Dole) was the last republican presidential candidate who tried getting by on raw sexual magnetism.
My wife is still trying to tame me and I refuse to be tamed! Although I have learned to make sourdough bread, lately.
Nearly called someone a "kind retard" in an email. Deleted it before sending. Sent the email. Double checked afterwards and noticed I'd wished them a "good afterboob”.
Hang on in there guys. It's only a few weeks until Christmas and you get your new underwear.
If you can’t maintain your culture during the down times, then you don’t really have a culture. It’s just dependent on winning. The culture has to survive losing stretches.
So, I had to arrest my marriage therapist yesterday.
There’s very little incentive for an average person to run a Tor exit node. It eats up your bandwidth and there’s a good likelihood you’ll have to answer nastygrams from your ISP (and they’re generally not all that understanding either, since people use “..but I’m running a Tor exit node!” as a plausible deniability excuse for their own illegal actions - piracy, spam, etc.) So yeah, naturally the network is going to have a problem with nodes run as government honeypots, since they have the resources and an agenda (de-anonymize criminals and catch ‘em). Same thing basically happened to Bitcoin - it was supposed to be a peer-to-peer network of just regular people running their machines to help secure the network, but then greed took over and now there’s really no reason (or profit) for an average person to mine Bitcoin on a single machine.
Ladies, why are you obsessed with "6 ft" guys? when are you gonna give regular guys with 2 feet a chance?
Why isn’t everybody following the script I made up in my mind?
Would you mind not shooting me while my wife is in the room?
Who needs healthcare when you've got a bottle of Canadian rye and a roll of duct tape?
Gambling ads need to go the same way as smoking ads.
I've just arrived for my prostate exam and they've told me my appointment has been changed to a phone call.
If you refuse to pronoun yourself, we will pronoun you
I’m seriously thinking about re-marrying my ex-wife, but I’m pretty sure she’ll figure out I’m just after my money.
Only time I’ll ever use “social construct” unironically is was when I’m bullshitting myself through an essay with garbage.
Losing your virginity to someone is usually a unique landmark moment. I'd hate for it to have happened with the single douchebag I used to be in my early 20s just looking to get laid.
If sex with three people is called threesome and sex with four people is called foursome. I guess now I know why people call me handsome
Anyone else here feel like life in Abu Dhabi was missold to them on exactly this basis? Not a chicken shawarma in sight
Canadians are reputable for being apologetic and I think it’s more a case of being tolerant to a fault. We just let the worst of people continue on as if they didn’t mean it
In the medical fields, the further you get away from the educated positions that require more schooling, the bat shit crazier you get. This is why I love it when I see articles on FOX that are like "healthcare professionals reject the vaccine." Then you read the story and find out it's a bunch of CNAs or Lab Techs saying it. Well, duh, they are barely educated of course they would reject it
I personally have been waiting for those hot MILFs in my area to finally reveal themselves.
I told the biggest lie to my husband: I ate the cheesecake. Not the kids.
If you were going to eat a sandwich, you would just enjoy it more if you knew no one had fucked it
Australia: 27 million people, 2,000 covid deaths. Texas: 29 million people, 75,000 covid deaths but I’m sure nothing could have been done.
After same-sex marriage LGB charities wanted their funding not to dry out and needed a new civil rights battle (in which they and other progressives disastrously decided to focus on transsexuals)
If Jesus died for our sins, then who died for our cos and tan?
All the medical technology and pills in the world will not fix your health if your lifestyle is disastrously unhealthy.
If there's a string of arsons in the suburbs there's like a 90% chance it's a volunteer fireman.
That's why it's always better to have a friend with a boat than to have a boat.
One of the advantages of podcasts is that they tend to offer a discount on whatever product they’re slinging, making it easy for listeners to acquire all the razors and mattresses they need to commit their own grizzly murders.
I can't believe I lost my virginity to a ghost
It’s hard to be a volunteer fire fighter. I failed the test because I threw up after 23 beers.
I am guilty of eating handfuls of cheese out the fridge when no one is looking like a little goblin rat creature and then complaining about not losing weight
Enlarged testicles are symptoms of injury, inflammation and/or infection. It's not something to brag about.
Otters are fucking savage, with big claws and teeth, and they will 100 per cent gang up on you in numbers that will surprise you.
I want to be sexually desired more than I actually want to have sex
Do dogs understand the concept of elevator? Or they just accept the fact they are entering a world changing machine?
Wanting to help the planet but randomly fancying a bit corned beef.
Give me time I can read and understand that [virology article] myself but I'm not bright enough to explain it to others or compare it to other research. I'm a health care professional with postgraduate degrees.
Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can't even get into my own pants.
People set boundaries because they want to keep you, not lose you.
What's the difference between an atheist and an evangelical Christian? The atheist is honest about not following the teachings of Christ.
I'm glad we have a seasoned moron to talk to.
It really is amazing how effective enthusiastic incompetence can be.
Most of us have a family tree -- I have a family cactus
I can only assume this middle aged man had his personality switched with that of a hyper aggressive girls' school bully.
We can’t stop here. This is CisHet country…
Maybe his denial of spending of campaign money at casinos is a problem.
Being misled is one thing. But knowing you are being misled and thinking like that somehow makes you a winner is mind blowingly stupid.
This comment was removed because users with no sense of humour were complaining, probably because they hadn’t thought of this bon mot themselves.
Sesame Street is commie gobblygook
Al Franken might have sort of touched a couple people maybe in a way during photo ops. Gone. Matt Gaetz has raped underage girls and broke into government facilities to gain access to more. Will be here forever.
He's caught chronic stupidity. And the only booster I want to see him get is a Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster right up the ass.
My dad said the Bible said "AI is the mark of the beast" i said "I can promise you NOWHERE in the Bible does it mention AI"
Sexual fetishes are a lot like potato chips - it's hard to just stop at one.
Stares motherfuckerly
Big Broccoli strikes again. That’s their master plan, get you hooked on veggies then once we’re all “healthy” and hooked on the stuff, they’ll jack the price up.
I have a BA in English, hence trusting medical professionals such as you. If you need assistance with literature, I'm your guy. Medicine, not so much (unless you count illicit drugs as medicine, in which case, I may also be your guy).
I've tried to research it before but I can't get a few minutes into reading before my head starts to hurt and my vision blurs.
In a way, he was a critical thinker. In that his thinking skills were in critical condition.
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