Interesting News, Articles & Stuff

[Perfect_Speed4069]

Could be in the 2400's...

Terraforming Mars

Compete with rival CEOs to make Mars habitable and build your corporate empire.

boardgamegeek.com

At the risk of annoying Frederic Jameson fans (via Zizek/Fisher), it's easier to imagine the end of capitalism than what comes after 2339.

 

[florduh]

Could be in the 2400's...

Terraforming Mars

Compete with rival CEOs to make Mars habitable and build your corporate empire.

boardgamegeek.com

2400 is at least a more realistic timeline than anything Elon Musk is talking about.

If I was in charge of our space program, I'd focus on two things. One, a space elevator. Because launches are expensive and bad for the environment.

Is a Space Elevator Possible? Stairway to Heaven Is Coming Soon! - Orbital Today

What is a space lift? Let’s explore the concept of space elevator construction and whether the technology can replace orbital launches.

orbitaltoday.com

Second: robotic mining of asteroids. As an alternative to strip mining the Earth. This would be a benefit to all humans, rather than only billionaires and their dumb slaves.

 

[vapviking]

Testing the question, "Did Diddy Do It or Didn't Diddy Do It?"
I'm speculating that he probably Did Do It. A lot of it.
It might all be clearer if someone can please tell me what Diddy-Wah-Diddy means?

Sean 'Diddy' Combs Arrested In Manhattan After Indictment

Sean 'Diddy' Combs Pleads Not Guilty To Sex Trafficking, Racketeering Charges

The rapper will remain in detention while awaiting trial on federal charges after being denied bail.

www.huffpost.com

 

[macbill]

Ex-MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe Pleads Guilty to Securities Fraud Conspiracy After Taking Plea Deal

He was one of the architect's of the company's monthly subscription plan in which subscribers could see unlimited movies in theaters with no blackout dates for a flat monthly fee of $9.95.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[florduh]

I think there's a market for running a populist political campaign on a platform of locking corporate executives up. Americans love that "tough on crime" bullshit. The CEO and board of Boar's Head shouldn't be treated differently than any other murderer, for example.

Boar's Head listeria outbreak timeline: When it started, deaths, lawsuits, factory closure

Illnesses, deaths, lawsuits and now a factory closure have impacted Boar's Head and customers since a listeria outbreak was first announced in July.

www.usatoday.com

Home Depot to pay $2 million settlement for overcharging customers

Home Depot will pay nearly $2 million to settle a civil enforcement claim from California district attorneys that the home improvement company was engaging in false advertising and unfair competition.

abc7.com

People who love jerking off to crime stats always seem to ignore the biggest criminals

 

[CANtalk]

More Than Half of Trump Voters Believe Haitians Are Eating Pets: Poll​

More than half of Trump voters believe Haitians are eating pets: poll

Officials have discredited the claims made by Donald Trump at last week's presidential debate.

www.newsweek.com

Almost half of Republicans say they won’t accept election results if their candidate loses: Study​

Almost half of Republicans say they won’t accept election results if their candidate loses: Study

A new report shows that 46 percent of Republicans would not accept the election results as legitimate if the Democratic nominee wins, and 14 percent of all Republican respondents said they would take action to overturn the outcome if the opposing party won. On the Democratic side, 27 percent...

www.yahoo.com

We Helped John Roberts Construct His Image as a Centrist. We Were So Wrong.​

We Helped John Roberts Construct His Image as a Centrist. We Were So Wrong.

Roberts was the aggressive conservative maximalist. And he created majority opinions in his own image.

slate.com

Video of Conservative editor of National Review calling Haitian Immigrants the N word on Megyn Kelly's show.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/1ficpuk

 

[florduh]

Video of Conservative editor of National Review calling Haitian Immigrants the N word on Megyn Kelly's show.

National Review Is Trying to Rewrite Its Own Racist History

The magazine invested extraordinary amounts of time and resources into building an intellectual edifice for segregation.

theintercept.com

 

[macbill]

The Pokémon Company Wins $15 Million Copyright Lawsuit Against Game That Copied Pokémon Characters - IGN

The Pokémon Company has won around $15 million in a copyright lawsuit against a Chinese company that appeared to blatantly use Pokémon characters in its game.

www.ign.com

 

[CANtalk]

Florida “Ghost Candidates” Scandal Puts the Entire Utility Sector on Trial​

Election meddling, dark money, pseudonyms, surveillance—hardly the best look for a state-sanctioned monopoly.​

Florida “ghost candidates” scandal puts the entire utility sector on trial

Election meddling, dark money, pseudonyms, surveillance—hardly the best look for a state-sanctioned monopoly.

www.motherjones.com

 

[macbill]

Russian ammo depot 1.8 kiloton blast may be 'biggest single event' in war

The Russian town of Toropets has been rocked by a massive explosion following a drone attack and part of its population has been evacuated.

www.newsweek.com

 

[florduh]

Bibi is working overtime to give Trump his October Surprise (a horrific reginal war with its accompanying skyrocketing gas prices).

Israeli military strikes Hezbollah as its chief responds to wave of device blasts in Lebanon

The attack on southern Lebanon on Thursday involved airstrikes and artillery, an Israeli official said, after two days of explosions that killed at least 37 people and injured thousands .

www.nbcnews.com

Mr. "America First" accepted $100 million from Mirian Adelson in return for allowing Israel to annex the West Bank.

Dallas Mavericks owner Miriam Adelson to donate up as much as $100 million to Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, reports say

The New York Times reports that the casino magnate has had half a dozen dinners with Trump across 2023 and 2024, during which they talked Israel and their families.

www.wfaa.com

Pro-Israel mogul wants 'West Bank annexed' after Trump donation

Miriam Adelson, who has previously donated millions to Trump, has been involved over the years in Israeli settlement programmes in the occupied West Bank.

www.newarab.com

Also, fun fact about that medal. Trump says it's better than the Medal of Honor we give to veterans because Miriam didn't have to die or get shot at. All she had to do was give her husband's money to Republicans, so they write policy to benefit a foreign country.

Trump says presidential civilian award is 'better' than top military honor whose recipients are 'dead' or 'hit' by bullets

Trump praised Republican donor Miriam Adelson for having received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a top civilian award.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[CANtalk]

Kentucky judge shot and killed in chambers, sheriff charged with murder: Officials​

Kentucky judge shot and killed in chambers, sheriff charged with murder: Officials

Investigators are searching for a motive after a Kentucky sheriff was arrested for allegedly gunning down a judge in his chambers, officials said.

abcnews.go.com

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump​

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump

A new Homeland Security report details orders to connect protesters arrested in Portland to one another in service of the Trump's imaginary antifa plot.

gizmodo.com

 

[cybrguy]

Rachel Maddow's documentary about Lev Parnas and the criminal efforts by Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani (called "From Russia with Lev") to fraudulently fake illegal behavior on the part of President Biden and Hunter Biden is playing tonight on MSNBC at 8:00 PM.

 

[florduh]

Lev Parnas

That's some deepcut Russiagate. Brings me back to a simpler time.

Microsoft wants Three Mile Island to fuel its AI power needs

Microsoft’s 20-year deal is a first of its kind for the software maker.

www.theverge.com

I'm not anti-nuclear. Quite the opposite. If we have magic rocks that provide emission-free energy, we should probably figure out ways to safely use them. But isn't there something kinda dark about rebooting Three Mile Island so dummies can make garbage like this?

 

[macbill]

Trump Media skids to new low on the first day the former president can sell his shares

Shares of Trump Media have slumped to new lows on the first trading day that its biggest shareholder, former President Donald Trump, is free to sell his stake in the company behind the Truth Social platform

abcnews.go.com

 

[Radwin Bodnic]

magic rocks that provide emission-free energy

Tell me how you get the rocks out of the ground ?

 

[florduh]

Tell me how you get the rocks out of the ground ?

I know. But the alternative isn't we simply do without the energy from the magic rocks. We're still using the energy. We're just gonna get it from coal, and slowly cook the planet until we all die.

Looking at extraction alone, I'm sure you need to mine way more coal to get an equivalent amount of energy from splitting uranium atoms. Hell, I bet getting an equivalent amount of energy from solar would involve strip mining way more rare earth metals.

While putting humanity on an energy diet would be nice, we are going so far in the opposite direction it's insane.

Using GPT-4 to generate 100 words consumes up to 3 bottles of water — AI data centers also raise power and water bills for nearby residents

Net-zero emission goals went out the window with AI.

www.tomshardware.com

The electric cost of GPT-4 is also quite high. If one out of 10 working Americans use GPT-4 once a week for a year (so, 52 queries total by 17 million people), the corresponding power demands of 121,517 MWh would be equal to the electricity consumed by every single household in Washington D.C. (an estimated 671,803 people) for twenty days. That's nothing to scoff at, especially since it's an unrealistically light use case for GPT-4's target audience.

It would be one thing if this "AI" was finding cures for cancer or something. But no, we're cooking the planet to make this:

 

[Radwin Bodnic]

While putting humanity on an energy diet would be nice, we are going so far in the opposite direction it's insane.

Not exactly...

(I can't find more recent data though...)

Energy consumption in western countries is stagnating at best. This is not a choice, GDP being directly correlated with energy consumption. If you want growth you need to consume more energy, so this is a suffered decrease in energy consumption.

Most increase in energy consumption worldwide is the fact of developing countries. But who are we to tell them they should not develop anymore because of their growing share in greenhouse gases emissions ?

It should be the responsibility of "developed" countries to reduce their climate change share and to allow others countries to level up. But this is not how you maintain an hegemony over the world. And it's always been a question of domination. Developed countries all are former colonial industries. They just transitioned from exploiting solely human power to exploiting mainly fossil fuels.

 

[macbill]

Voter registration is spiking, particularly among young adults

As Election Day nears, record numbers of young voters are registering, inspired in part by Taylor Swift.

www.usatoday.com

 

[florduh]

Steve Eisman Placed on Leave After Post ‘Celebrating’ Attack in Gaza

(Bloomberg) -- Neuberger Berman senior portfolio manager Steve Eisman was placed on a leave of absence after he posted remarks on social media indicating he was “celebrating” the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. Most Read from BloombergAOC Proposes $30 Billion Social Housing AuthorityThe Moonshot...

finance.yahoo.com

Steve Eisman is the guy Steve Carrell played in "The Big Short" (banger movie). We should be asking ourselves what conditions have led to a prominent person feeling comfortable making these comments in public. Because this is a symptom of a deeply unwell society.

 

[macbill]

Elon Musk reportedly surrenders to Brazil in battle over X ban

It seems Musk has caved.

mashable.com

 

[CANtalk]

Mark Robinson and the Republican Wackjob Problem

What happens when you stop trying to keep out the kooks.

nymag.com

 

[cybrguy]

A Russian warlord who seemingly put a machine gun on a Cybertruck says Elon Musk 'remotely disabled' the militarized EV

Ramzan Kadyrov previously claimed the pickup was a gift from Musk and suggested he might send it into war against Ukraine.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[macbill]

‘Emphasize abstinence’ in sex ed, Florida tells schools, skip lessons on contraception

Orange and Broward schools have now decided to abandon efforts to teach their own, more extensive sex education curriculum.

www.orlandosentinel.com

 

[florduh]

‘Emphasize abstinence’ in sex ed, Florida tells schools, skip lessons on contraception

Orange and Broward schools have now decided to abandon efforts to teach their own, more extensive sex education curriculum.

www.orlandosentinel.com

Something pretty dark about educators in public school having to pretend that contraception doesn't exist in 2024 in a State with a 6 week abortion ban. Congrats to all the dummies who moved from States with advanced economies over the past few years. You now live in a more expensive Alabama.

This graph shows the utter fucking stupidity of the Right Winger obsession with what schools are teaching.

These freaks believe that if their dumb kids ever hear that gay or trans people exist, they'll immediately become queer. Setting aside how insane that belief is. Virtually every single one of them buys their kid a smartphone. They have access to every book Republican legislatures have banned. Along with every pornographic video ever made.