» 2022 » December Epicene Cyborg

35-year Southwest Airlines pilot: Bean-counter CEO and COO responsible for massive problems after not upgrading 90s technology at the core of the business. As I said: management problem, not a tech problem.

The Blue State Exodus Continues.

Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics. Western conservatives are at risk from generations of voters who are no longer moving to the right as they age.

The Brutal Alternate World in Which the U.S. Abandoned Ukraine. Ukrainian resistance and American support prevented a wide range of horrors. Ian Welsh’s preferred world. Fuck that guy.

New rockets, more spacecraft to take flight in 2023 from Space Coast.

New measurements of galaxy rotation lean toward modified gravity as an explanation for dark matter.

War, inflation and tumbling markets: the year in 11 charts.

Second Russian Defense Sector Bigwig Dies in Two Days.

Reid Blackman’s The Signal App and the Danger of Privacy at All Costs (in the NYTimes, forsooth) is not just wrong but dangerously misleading.

State Officials Warned Buttigieg About Airline Mess.

I Lived the #VanLife. It Wasn’t Pretty.

Southwest’s meltdown was born in America’s cheapskate corporate culture.

Fuck Puritanism.

A resolution for 2023: Time to say no to the “woke wars.” “Cancel culture” hysterics and social justice bullies share the same contagious disorder: Way too much time online.

If your raise this year was less than 7.1%, it didn’t keep up with inflation — and you effectively got a pay cut.

Australia to extradite Marine vet who allegedly trained Chinese pilots.

Vladimir Putin’s 2022 Has Really Not Gone to Plan.

Stop Spazzing Out About ‘Spaz.’ Social media, streaming, and a new era of digital self-censorship.

Why hundreds of thousands of kids in the US dread their 21st birthdays. I don’t believe we should classify 21-year-olds as “kids,” but still this sucks.

Brief tour of the PDP-11, the most influential minicomputer of all time.

The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America, December Update: Now Dallas, Las Vegas, Phoenix Plunge Fastest. San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego Down Most from Peak.

A closer look at Acorn, our open source precision farming rover.

The rise and fall of peer review. Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that’s a great thing.

Southwest Airlines spent $5.6B on shareholder gifts ahead of mass cancellation crisis.

Egg prices have doubled over the last year.

How Southwest Airlines Melted Down. Software is blamed here, but this was actually caused by terrible management.

Europe Is Rushing Arms to Ukraine but Running Out of Ammo.

Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech’s billion dollar curse of the free.

When Algorithms Rule, Values Can Wither.

Antiquated computers are common in science, from geochemistry and linguistics to biochemistry and microscopy.

This Year Was the Beginning of a Green Transition.

Our security auditor is an idiot.

Hackers stole data from multiple electric utilities in recent ransomware attack.

The predatory prison phone call industry is finally about to be fixed.

Perfect conditions this morning for rare “frost flowers” in North Florida.

Growing vaccine hesitancy fuels measles, chickenpox resurgence in U.S. I live in a country chock full of idiots.

Facts on the Ground.

A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate.

How the pandemic altered the restaurant industry forever.

Drugs killed 8 friends, one by one, in a tragedy seen across the U.S.

Escape from McKinseyland. How the consulting firm’s cost-cutting logic devoured America.

The year woke broke: a brief history of a contested word.

Plant-based diets (healthful and unhealthful) were associated with subsequently reduced incidences of asthma symptoms over time, partly or almost totally mediated by BMI according to their nutritional quality.

Psychology researchers find that a simple “talking to strangers” intervention is surprisingly effective.

Blue States Want Red States to Face Consequences, but Travel Bans Are Harmful.

The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now.

balter.

The Price of Easy Money Now Coming Due.

An incomplete guide to this very weird year, in charts.

Shifting gears: why US cities are falling out of love with the parking lot.

Ukrainians struggle to find and reclaim children taken by Russia.

The F.D.A. Now Says It Plainly: Morning-After Pills Are Not Abortion Pills.

Consumer Spending on Services Blows Past Inflation, Fuels Services Inflation Further. Spending on Goods Fizzles.

How We Slowed the Subway Down.

Stanford hates fun. Most PMC libs hate fun, so not too shocking?

California’s population shrinks for third straight year as high costs stress household.

El Niño Is Coming—and the World Isn’t Prepared.

Google and HTTP.

Britain’s winter of discontent is the inevitable result of austerity.

I miss when VCRs were common, and the attitude they fostered.

How NIMBYism Is Driving Energy Prices Higher In The U.S.

Like Groundhog Day: the Mammogram Story That Won’t Die.

Police seize on COVID-19 tech to expand global surveillance. Shocking. Ok, not.

US consumer spending stalls even as inflation eases.

Why the U.S. middle class is feeling squeezed.

Home Sales Melt Down Nationally to Depths of Housing Bust 1. Prices -10% in 5 Months. Cash Buyers, Investors Massively Pull Bac.

40 Years of PCMag: An Illustrated Guide. Used to love that mag when it was actually printed.

This cross-sectional study of 129 826 young adult men living in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, and Los Angeles in 2020 and 2021 found that young adult males from zip codes with the most violence in Chicago and Philadelphia had a notably higher risk of firearm-related death than US military personnel who served during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Password requirements: myths and madness.

Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift. Good.

Body Talk. Reading tattoos and clothing in sixteenth-century Roanoke.

Wells Fargo to Pay $3.7 Billion for Mistreating Customers.

A collection of Soviet control rooms.

In praise of MIDI.

Progressive In Year 2180 Blasts Gender Discrimination In Conscription Practices Of Nabisco’s Corporate Military.

Fed Tightening Reduces Horrendous Wealth Disparity that QE and Interest Rate Repression Have Wrought: Fed Data.

The Cost of Being Poor: Why It Costs So Much to Be Poor in America.

Humans continue to evolve with the emergence of new genes.

EPA enacts tougher pollution rule for trucks, vans and buses.

C10k problem.

Two Years of U.S. COVID-19 Vaccines Have Prevented Millions of Hospitalizations and Deaths.

The Homeownership Society Was a Mistake. Real estate should be treated as consumption, not investment.

A new generation of police robots faces backlash.

Some employers are posting artificially low salary ranges to keep wages from ballooning and to avoid alienating existing workers, but it could easily backfire.

How Much Electricity Did Clark Griswold’s Christmas Vacation Display Use?

The war on ‘Happy Holidays’ isn’t about Christmas.

Geopolitics and geostrategic competition in 2023.

Decades of Jupiter Observations Have Revealed Something Strange.

The USPS now says it will buy 66,000 EVs by 2028.

January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to all.

The children featured here are 12 of the thousands killed this year by what has become the leading cause of death for American kids: gun violence.

Why Do Anti-Woke ‘Free Thinkers’ All Have the Same Opinions?

Pollution cleanup method destroys toxic “forever chemicals.”

SpaceX Pulls off 3 Orbital Launches in 34 Hours, Smashing Its Record.

Isotopic signatures in Ryugu suggest it formed close to comets along with some unique minerals.

Horror stories of cryonics: The gruesome fates of futurists hoping for immortality.

The biggest risk of large language models is that they may bury us in lies.

The human cost of neurotechnology failure. When the makers of electronic implants abandon their projects, people who rely on the devices have everything to lose.

Car repossessions are on the rise in warning sign for the economy.

Home and the birdsong. In the dark, sylvan villages of medieval England, people named places after the birds that filled the night with music.

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