2022 - Wk 08 - Notes and Links
Wk 08
Hello, nice people!
The advertising agency that didn’t exist. Using facial recognition technology we were able to match Dave Stanfield's headshot to its actual owner - a Prague-based beehive maker named Michal Kalis. When we tracked Michal down, he confirmed he had never heard of Madbird, Ali Ayad or Dave Stanfield.
What could be more useful to China than a Russia isolated from the west? Russian energy and resources China needs, so the entente cordiale between them may benefit China rather than the cash-starved Putin.
It's the 25th anniversary of Slate.com, and writer William Saletan reflects on the last quarter century. "Print magazines that scorned internet journalism collapsed or faded (it's hard to believe now, but in the '90s, people thought your article wasn't real if it wasn't on paper), while new websites popped up to challenge us. In the struggle for survival, many outlets withered and died. But Slate adapted and grew..." But he also shares what worries him now about the online world we're living in.
Does anyone remember the kids show Zoom? We’re gonna Zoom Zoom Zooma Zoom!
Facebook: You definitely want to be using Instagram at least half an hour per day.
How Covid has changed medicine … in the future.
China’s Ukraine Crisis: What Xi Gains—and Loses—From Backing Putin
Someone notices UN-marked plane at a company that maintains planes for the UN, makes the only logical conclusion that elite illuminati shock troops have arrived to control Canada. Because if you want to send troops to Ottawa, the most convenient airport is in North Bay a half day’s drive away.
I want to have kids just to stick it to the CAQ.
This week in Finance
Wall Street institutions' growing connections to crypto markets could threaten financial stability and cause a credit crunch-style financial crisis, global regulators have warned. To the surprise of no-one, an unregulated investment instrument is ripe for abuse. “More money has been lost because of four words than at the point of a gun. Those words are 'this time is different’” the Economist once wrote.
The availability of non-bank financial trading in cryptocurrency may allow Russia to avoid the worst of the sanctions coming after their invasion of Ukraine this week
Ever wonder what’s in a secret Swiss bank account?
Not believing in human evolution is associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes, and support for discriminatory behaviours, according to eight studies from across the world.
A study reports that older adults who exercise thrice weekly are better at keeping their memories. And also their memories.
London produces a third more methane than expected. How much of that is from Number 10 Downing Street has yet to be determined.
America’s unvaccinated and current-smoker populations seem to match up rather well: Right now, the CDC pegs them at 13 percent and 14 percent of all U.S. adults, respectively, and both groups are likely to be poorer and less educated.
Belief in supernatural evil is a robust predictor of support for policies that expand gun rights.
Analysis of 60 billion tweets has shown that social media can form an echo chamber contributing to vaccine hesitancy
Russian government social media bots increase their activities when there are large street protests or when opposition activists increase their online activity. The bots are able to produce substantial shifts in the volume and sentiment of Russian political tweets by acting en masse.
Study suggests Trump’s false tweets were mostly intentional lies — not accidents
How much can dietary changes and food production practices help mitigate climate change?
100 Billion Face Photos? Clearview AI tells investors it's On Track to Identify 'Almost Everyone in the World'. At least it’s a Western company. The alternative is to leave this market mainly to Chinese and Russian companies. In fact, on a 2019 NIST test for one-to-one searches, Chinese and Russian companies scored higher than any Western competitors, occupying the top six positions. In December 2021, NIST again reported that Russian and Chinese companies dominated its rankings. The top-ranked U.S. company is Clearview AI, whose business practices have been widely for what ever reason sanctioned in Western countries.
By the way, about the bias of facial recognition software not doing well on women or minorities, the situation is more subtle than that.
They largest Olympic team China fielded during the winter games was not in the stadium.
Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin has said many crypto developers wouldn't be unhappy to see a continued slide in the price of digital currencies, as the slump could clear out less-viable projects. One article examines the toll on mental health experienced by people who invest a large portion of their net worth into volatile cryptocurrencies, it argues that the stress and anxiety that goes with funneling your life savings into a volatile market is no joke. And of course, Canada’s own bitcoin widow has her own story you can listen to on CBC radio or her’s an article where she makes it very clear she doesn’t know anything about missing millions..
The US is pointing the finger at Russian internet interference faster than ever.
Recordings of a surveillance firm's presentation show how much iCloud data Apple surrenders to law enforcement with a warrant -- though it's Google and Facebook that can track a suspect to within three feet. Jack Poulson of the Tech Inquiry watchdog secretly recorded the event.
Summarizes terms of service and rates them for privacy
Use this to send emails to the future you.
Bypasses paywalls and removes all ads. Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder. No install, just copy and paste your link.
This website has nearly every single pc game from the 70's,80's,90's till the early 2000’s.
Terry Jones of Monty Python fame reads the Douglas Adams comedy science fiction novel Starship Titanic.
A radio play: Tina and Turner are a great couple, until they decide to delete the app that manages every aspect of their relationship. Tom Wainwright's near-future comedy about data and dating.
Wow, Carol Off is leaving CBC Radio One’s As It Happens after hosting since 2006. Here she is giving an interview this week on Q on Thursday morning. Also, the show had its 50th anniversary three years ago and she reflected on the show’s history. Here she discusses her worst interview. Her last episode is Monday.
Who doesn’t love a great dating story? Whether it’s true romance or a night gone horribly wrong, this series offers real dating stories — told by the people who lived them. These jaw-dropping stories, accompanied by comedic re-enactments, will make you laugh, cry, and quite possibly swear off dating altogether.
The fear in Ukraine of a war with Russia has its roots in what happened in the 1930’s. IDEAS producer Philip Coulter visited Ukraine to look the Holodomor, the extermination by famine of 90 years ago of millions of Ukranians. This documentary originally aired in 2009.
I’m not married so I’ve never had this conversation.
If people talked about storms like they do about Covid
Louis Theroux's Forbidden America: Extreme and Online (2022) - Louis Theroux meets the latest incarnation of the American far right: a political movement born out of the internet and increasingly making its presence felt on the political stage.
Steve Berkoff is a great actor - I think he’s kind of out there as a person mind you.
It's All Gone a Bit Third Reichy
Send this to your graphic designer.
Carol Off talks about who gets to belong?
At the end of the Cold War Russia inherited not only a massive air fleet but also a reputation for a powerful air force. After more than a decade of limited funds, where do the Russian Aerospace forces stand in 2021.
Fringe theories stack: Believe in the Loch Ness monster and you’re more likely to believe the Apollo missions were fake. How do weird beliefs work?
Corn-based ethanol, which for years has been mixed in huge quantities into gasoline sold at U.S. pumps, is likely a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline, according to a study.
This antiregulation politician may not have thought this statement through completely.
The 1997 hit Men In Black that has three sequels — lost money last year. Yep. You read that correctly. This is Hollywood accounting.
Dumb Criminals
If you’ve stolen a car, don’t hide it here.
"Oh, man, that thing kind of goes fast."
Strange Headlines
This headline needed work: It’s not such a good safety plan if there are stabbings after it.
A Tepid Dystopia
Virginia school library puts up banned books display with a sign ‘Stuff some adults don't want you to read’ and naturally uppity snowflake parents trying to ban books are outraged
When they can get the taxpayer to pay for the teardown and reconstruction this problem can be taken care of. You can't have the people who did it pay for it themselves. Or corporations. Corporations are people. Rich people. Therefore the corporations that built it can't pay for it either. The ONLY solution is taxypayer money.
If only there had been a good guy with a gun.
A UK man says he went to an appointment to have his fertility checked out. This was the room in which he was expected to ‘provide his sample’.
This week’s nincompoop is from Alberta
‘In his testimony, he said he flew to Ottawa on Feb. 2 on a private jet at a cost of $5,000, paid for by a "nice gentleman" named Joseph that he'd only recently met.’ Nothing suspicious about that at all. Rich people you’ve just met handing out private jet rides is exactly what grass roots movements are like. Also, the US First Amendment doesn’t apply in Canada.
Were Hieronymus Bosch’s visions of hell driven in part by bad weather and moldy bread?
Egg freezing has become an instrument employed in the service of slow-love. It promises to loosen the tight grip of biological necessity, allowing women’s dating lives to stay on their proper course, one that aims for romance and compatibility, and that is allowed to take however long it might require.
Matthew Schmidt is an associate professor and national security expert at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. He said the emphasis NATO allies place on geopolitics and the rules-based international order may mean very little to Putin - who may be looking at the current standoff through a quasi-religious lens. It's not enough, Schmidt said, to say Putin wants to reassemble the old Soviet Union. Putin is a subscriber to an early 20th century philosophical and political movement called Eurasianism, he said - a creed that rejects Russia's integration with Europe. A similar thought is in this article sent to me by one of you except it’s explicitly about the Russian Orthodox religion which, by the way, is separate from the Ukranian Orthodox religion.
Ten books that cluttered the used bookstores when I was a kid.
Why students persist in studying English lit in a tech world from our very own Montreal Gazette.
Does anyone fart in the Bible?
Possibly Judges 1:14. Possibly.
Almost all modern translations render that as something like "she got off her donkey", "she dismounted from her donkey", or something similar.
But older translations use an odd (and somewhat untraceable) word for 'dismount' that is doesn't match any other verbs. Some scholars have noted that the word used is awfully similar to the Akkadian word ṣanāḥu (to fart), and "she farted on her donkey" actually makes a little more sense in the context of the larger passage.
It's possible (though disputed) that early translators thought "she farted on her donkey" was a little too rude, and softened it to say the "she dismounted from her donkey". The woman dismounting from her donkey makes less sense in context, but it's a little more polite.
I’m down for electoral reform but not to the point of majority rule
I wonder if my dog has named me?
Anyone else re-reading Flashman at the Charge for no particular reason this week?
Zelensky should do one of those shirtless horseback riding pics that Putin loves so dearly
Is a mullet too unprofessional?
Justice Bourgeois just let out the longest and loudest sigh in the history of the Ontario Court of Justice, because Me. Lich compared the occupation to a “traffic jam.
There are 1,013,913 words in the English alphabet but I can’t string any of them together to explain how frustrated I am
The real exposure of NATO will come when he decides it's time for the Baltic States to resume their historic fraternal destiny as part of Russia.
Crypto is only going to tank once the banks have taken peoples' money, cashed out and left the losses to be handled by bailouts and the individual account holders, big-short style. It's the latest unregulated investment they can get bailed out on and leave us all holding the bag, even if your investment plan specifically has $0 in crypto.
Anyone who says they like shower sex, has not had shower sex. Sandy beach sex, and small boat sex are both much worse.
I'm re-imagining Harry Potter without it's current fandom.
If the ones above you are corrupted then you are corrupted by default, since you are the ones who chose them to be above you”
One night in jail and then told to go home to wait for a court date to show up in the mail? Canada’s authoritarian government is getting out of hand
Losing weight is fine as long as you are unhappy about it
I spend a lot on bras but I cheap out on underwear. I buy my knickers by the hundred on line from China.
Putin cannot let any country near him work. Work in a way that may indicate to the Russian people that they too ought to expect their country and their government to work for them
So, we’re all learning Ukranian swear words this week.
What is the difference between a dollar and a ruble? A dollar.
I'd highly advice against getting absolutely hammered and falling asleep besides the track only have a top fuel dragster act as an alarm clock.
Sometimes I listen to new music and I think it's utter shite, but then I just think it's cos I'm becoming an old fart and my parents said the same thing about my music. But then I hear stuff like this and think, "No, I was right, this is utter shite".
Conservatives lost their damn minds when BLM activists dared to march on streets and highways in the summer of 2020. Laws were enacted, felonies were created, society was ending because traffic could not flow unimpeded. The "Freedom Convoy" shuts down international crossings and major city downtowns for weeks, and suddenly conservatives are up in arms about an emergencies act being invoked to clear their butts off the street with minimal arrests. Tell me the difference has nothing to do with the skin shade of the protesters in the respective instances. I dare you.
I'm a foreigner and I just got in a relationship with a British girl. I'm wondering, what are the common and informal ways to call penis and vagina?
I still don't get why Russia is doing this, and it's still a few days until John Oliver explains it to me.
So, you have an anecdote and a shitty selection of what i assume are friends.
For folks so lacking in flexibility, they sure are good at sucking their own peckers.
Yearly Call of Duty video game releases since 2003 that depict America as an unbeatable force have really poisoned a lot of minds over there
Got my first shingles shot. Ready for the blahs tomorrow and sore shoulder but I won't have to worry about my roof leaking.
Okay, let’s start memes among the right that physical check ups and cancer screenings are bad for you.
Why is this lady dressed like a 13 year old girl from 1995?
James Dean was a “boring, tacky little boy” who shamelessly copied technique from Marlon Brando.
Why can I smell it with my eyes?
Is now a good time to point out that Trump's first impeachment was for holding back security aid to Ukraine in the hopes of a political kickback?
The short answer is No. The long answer is Noooooooooo.
Ukrainian appears to be a great language for swearing.
I wish rich people went back to keeping artists as pets.
It’s not sexism that is drafting men in Ukraine. It’s that sperm is cheap and eggs are expensive.
China has lifted all import fees on at least all Russian agricultural products, and they are looking to integrate their non-SWIFT banking alternatives (CIPS and SPFS). Pakistan and Iran are already fully plugged into the Chinese system. If true I wonder what they got in exchange, I hope it's not Taiwan.
I'm not going into anymore details, I'm scared of the Old Gods.
The reason why the first Amendment doesn’t apply in the Court of Ontario is because we won the War of 1812.
In retrospect, the stripper coming out of the cake at the funeral was funny but I can understand the complaints.
That really warmed the cockles of my heart… Maybe even the sub-cockular area
I had a one night stand. It led to a 10 year and counting marriage, a mortgage, and children. I can’t figure out how people have more than one of these.
Pat King has the unmistakable mannerisms of someone who loves to hear themselves talk. He also has the unmistakeable mannerisms of someone who didn’t think he’d get arrested. Something about having to strip naked, lift your balls, squat and cough must be a bit worse than wearing a mask in the store. Maybe he realized he actually had freedom all along.
It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a sick society
It's a double reverse false flag.
I bet there’s a real shortage of trans women in Ukraine right now. ‘Hey buddy in the dress. Nice try. Back in line.’
The problem I have is that nobody is going to do a thing. Just like when southeast Iraq rebelled, we let them die. When Syria rebelled, we let them die. Now it's Ukraine's turn. We will listen and watch as they die.
It’ not a criticism but why would you wear underwear as a hat?
Even my brilliance and wit is hardly worth getting physically ill over.
This is Putin’s mindset. He wants to build back the glory and expanse and influence of the Glorious Soviet Union and go down in the history books as the guy who did it, cost and lives be damned. That's what he'll be remembered for in Mother Russia, even as the West knows the truth.
Hmmmm, let me guess. Another Chinese study with no peer review
I believe I went to high school with Reason's editor. If she is who I remember, I can assure you she's using harsher language to describe Musk than I am.
Am I the only one thinking that Musk might have an underlying neurological or psychological issue?
I'm freaking out. Got any cheese, spring steel, or ideological constructs?
I'm about to watch Dumb and Dumber whilst gorging on a rather large egg salad sandwich and generic cream of mushroom soup infused with deveined garlic and frozen brussel sprouts. I'd say FIGHT ME but my evening is already mapped out.
Here's a thought: Is all or most of trump's money in Russian banks?
When perverted men dance too close to me at the club, I try to fart so they have a terrible experience and regret being too close to me
Your name is Unicorn Sparkles AND you are wondering why no-one takes you seriously?
In all this mess, it's rather refreshing to see an immediate, prepared response to the topic rather than having to wait threee days for a half-baked tweet that somehow manages to incorporate inauguration crowd size.
Police have confirmed that the man who fell from the roof of an 18th-floor nightclub was not a bouncer.
This spokesman for the truckers is so fucking dumb it’s almost impressive.
Capitalism is not the first economic system under which lots of people have lived miserable lives
Big Pharma doesn't make it, Slightly Smaller Pharma does. That mean it's better.
Finally worked out that successful father/son bonding is all about doing stuff that my wife wouldn’t approve of.
I'm a huge supporter of Musk's efforts of sending himself to Mars.
If they had just packed up and left a few days early no one would have been arrested and the net result of the protest would have been EXACTLY the same.
Meanwhile Pat King is telling truckers the OPS has said they will let truckers leave. He recommends taking their white shirts or underwear off to hold a white flag because the cops "cannot touch you if you are holding a white flag. That is international law." Um…no. That’s not how this works, pal.
I am convinced that she was an alien who wanted my semen for science.
I’m pointing out sexist language you silly cunt
If someone tells you they don’t want anyone to have power it’s because they want it to be them.
Science does work on consensus, but a consensus which is supported by evidence derived through the scientific method, however, you don’t get to just state something and claim it’s the consensus and think that that’s the debate winning argument. Even if all the scientists agree on something, if it’s not backed by evidence derived through the scientific method, then it’s just a religious belief. So even if all the scientists in the world supported TWAW, if they couldn’t produce the evidence to support their position, it would just be a dogma and therefore nothing to do with science (so wouldn’t be the scientific consensus). Essentially, THE scientific consensus is more than just all the relevant scientists agreeing on something.
