» 2021 » August Epicene Cyborg

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August 19, 2021

What’s going out to eat for, anyway? To feel the joy of being human. You just made all the lockdown lifers wail and hide even deeper under the bed.

Not-a-Linux distro review: SerenityOS is a Unix-y love letter to the ’90s. Although it’s nowhere near ready for prime time, there’s a lot to love here.

Why You Should Use Multiple Web Browsers. Ain’t nobody use as many web browsers as I do.

The Ides of August.

August 18, 2021

A Minimum Wage Can Create Jobs.

Win–win denial: The psychological underpinnings of zero-sum thinking.

Do Rational People Exist?

Surviving America’s pandemic death cult.

Saturn’s core is a big, diffuse, rocky slushball.

Tree by Tree, Scientists Try to Resurrect a Fire-Scarred Forest.

The anatomy of pain and suffering in the brain and its clinical implications.

Biggest US reservoir declares historic shortage, forcing water cuts across west.

Betting on nuclear: Poland’s plan to kick its coal habit. Poland doing it right.

Protective heterologous T cell immunity in COVID-19 induced by the trivalent Measles-Mumps-Rubella and Tetanus-Diptheria-Pertussis vaccine antigens.

Americans are creating their own vaccine mandates by cutting ties with the unvaccinated.

Biden Is Bringing Financial Crisis Guys from the New York Fed’s Markets Group to His Administration: Should We Worry?

August 17, 2021

Evidence of Cosmic Impact at Abu Hureyra, Syria at the Younger Dryas Onset (~12.8 ka): High-temperature melting at >2200 °C.

Many of our country’s problems are reducible, in one way or another, to the fact that we have lost the imperative to transform the physical world.

Red Ventures, the Biggest Digital Media Company You’ve Never Heard Of.

Inflation wiped out America’s pay raises.

USDA to permanently boost food stamp benefits by 25 percent.

Apple and Google Are Gearing Up to Fight a New App Store Bill.

There is no “authentic” culture.

The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk.” So-called rationalists have created a disturbing secular religion that looks like it addresses humanity’s deepest problems, but actually justifies pursuing the social preferences of elites.

The laughably unjustified hubris of the foreign policy/military blob.

Behold Barack Antoinette.

Children’s mental health badly harmed by pandemic.

The Great Washington Ponzi Scheme in Afghanistan comes Crashing Down.

Flying is not a right, and the case for restricting it to vaccinated people is straightforward.

If You Build It, They Will Come: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship Around the World.

Barack Obama’s Fall from Grace.

How the Economy Has to Radically Transform to End Fossil Fuels in 20 Years.

For a Clean Ocean, Just Add Oysters.

August 16, 2021

Afghanistan Meant Nothing.

Antitrust Bombshells in the Fine Print: Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy.

More US cities requiring proof of vaccination to go places. Excellent.

America Runs on ‘Dirty Work’ and Moral Inequality.

$1 Trillion Isn’t as Much as It Sounds. A trillion here, a trillion there — it can really add up.

Acres of Money Laundering: Why U.S. Real Estate is a Kleptocrat’s Dream.

The Lucrative Business of Stoking Vaccine Skepticism.

The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama.

It’s now or never: Scientists warn time of reckoning has come for the planet.

Nearly 25% of Dow Companies Have Mandated Vaccines for Workers. Should be 100%, to the extent that we are letting private companies decide this at all (should be government mandate)

Vast Stretches of America Are Shrinking. Almost All of Them Voted for Trump.

Lobster Gangs and Debunking “The Tragedy of the Commons.”

Meet the Censored: Hitler. Can history itself violate community standards?

Incrementalism For All Who Can Survive It.

August 15, 2021

Culture shock: how loss of animals’ shared knowledge threatens their survival.

Battle of the not-milks. Almond milk is a vile abomination.

Facebook is obstructing our work on disinformation. Other researchers could be next.

How to Stop Apple from Scanning Your iPhone Photos. That will work for now. Expect scope creep soon.

He predicted the dark side of the Internet 30 years ago. Why did no one listen? Philip Agre, a computer scientist turned humanities professor, was prescient about many of the ways technology would impact the world.

Why Perseverance’s first Mars drilling test came up empty.

Calling ‘liberal internationalism’ what it is: American primacy.

Apple Wants to Protect Children. But It’s Creating Serious Privacy Risks.

Apple Will Keep Clarifying This CSAM Mess Until Morale Improves.

What Does It Mean for a Whole Nation to Become Uninhabitable? It means no one can live there anymore. I said IT MEANS NO ONE CAN LIVE THERE ANYMORE. Dang.

How ‘both sides’ journalism has enabled far-right radicalism and led to the emergence of ‘faux left’ grifters.

Study: These ancient straight-shelled cephalopods lived the vertical life.

Fear of COVID-19 in Kids Is Getting Ahead of the Data. Shielding children from danger is a fundamental instinct. Tolerating risk for them is hard—but necessary—emotional work.

40 Years of MTV: the channel that shaped popular culture as we know it. MTV predicted and encouraged the globalization of media content and formats.

Red Storm Rising – by The Hunt for Tom Clancy.

August 14, 2021

Internet of Snitches.

The Pain Was Unbearable. So Why Did Doctors Turn Her Away? A sweeping drug addiction risk algorithm has become central to how the US handles the opioid crisis. It may only be making the crisis worse.

Suburban Dwelling. John Cheever was the bard of the backyard. I don’t care for Cheever that much, but this is a good piece.

A fourth globalisation. A new form of trade is reshaping our world, and it’s driven by the movement of bits and bytes, not goods, around the globe.

If You Skip the Vaccine, It Is My ‘Damn Business.’

short lease in a slick machine: a personal essay about apartments.

There’s new evidence of a large cold spot partly causing dimming of Betelgeuse.

Zillow, Other Tech Firms Are in an ‘Arms Race’ To Buy Up American Homes.

Ambition in capitalist society.

Technology fuels productivity growth but tight labour markets provide the spark for this growth because firms typically need to make better use of technology when hiring new employees is not possible.

August 13, 2021

Scarlett Johansson and Disney Legal Battle Is About More Than Black Widow. Fuck Disney. I hope Scarlett fucks them all up. They’ve been stealing money from creators for years.

Tall buildings: Good for the housing crisis, bad for the climate crisis. Tall buildings are just bad in general.

Too often, a popular consumer app unexpectedly gets worse: Some combination of harder to use, missing features, and slower. At a time in history where software is significantly eating the world, this is nonsensical.

Vaccine Refusers Risk Compassion Fatigue. After the horrors that health-care workers have endured during the pandemic, many are struggling to sympathize with people who won’t protect themselves. I absolutely do not sympathize in any way.

Welcome to Nestflix. The platform for your favorite nested films and shows.

See How Vaccines Can Make the Difference in Delta Variant’s Impact.

Guns in America: Foundations and Key Concepts.

A temporally convolutional DNN with five to eight layers was required to capture the I/O mapping of a realistic model of a layer 5 cortical pyramidal cell (L5PC).

August 12, 2021

The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance.

Siberia’s wildfires are bigger than all the world’s other blazes combined.

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.

Plant-Based Fish Is Rattling the Multibillion-Dollar Seafood Industry. No fucking thank you.

California beach dunes once teemed with plants and birds.

Woman Puts Off Going To Doctor Until Disease Bad Enough For Him To Believe Her.

Hit songs rely on increasing “harmonic surprise” to hook listeners, study finds.

There Are Spying Eyes Everywhere—and Now They Share a Brain. Security cameras. License plate readers. Smartphone trackers. Drones. We’re being watched 24/7. What happens when all those data streams fuse into one?

CDC urges pregnant women to get Covid vaccine, finding no increased risk of miscarriage.

Why ‘The Conventional Wisdom’ on Carbon No Longer Applies.

Forecast displays that emphasize uncertainty.

August 11, 2021

Top 5% Polluting Power Plants Account For 73% Of Global Emissions.

Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained.

Don’t judge Covid conditions by the current rate of Covid growth.

ESA – Why does it take so long to get to Mercury?

New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest.

Poor air quality in classrooms detrimental to kids’ wellbeing and learning.

Amid Clamoring of “Labor Shortages” as 13 Million People Claim Unemployment Benefits, Job Openings Spike Sky-High. Sector by Sector.

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