» 2024 » February Epicene Cyborg

How the Pentagon Learned to Use Targeted Ads to Find Its Targets—and Vladimir Putin. Meet the guy who taught US intelligence agencies how to make the most of the ad tech ecosystem, “the largest information-gathering enterprise ever conceived by man.” I thought the future would be cooler.

Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat.

We are barely two months into the republic’s year from hell. In 2024, US politics is hitting a perfect storm of partisan loathing in a society where algorithms become ever more skilled at generating outrage among the exhausted majority.

Inside the miracle of modern chip manufacturing.

Millennials Didn’t Kill the Economy. The Economy Killed Millennials.

A bad day at the office.

What’s Behind the Evolution of Neanderthal Portraits.

Prices of New Houses v. Prices of Existing Houses: Why Sales of New Houses Hang in there as Sales of Existing Houses Plunge.

It has a plug – IT owns it.

A Vote for Trump Is a Vote for Putin—and a World in Danger.

Florida’s Public Health Function Has Gone to the Zoo. While Ron DeSantis was wandering around Iowa, diseases like measles and syphilis have been surging in his state.

Macron says sending western troops to Ukraine cannot be ruled out.

Peak Office – Why Return-to-Office mandates will fail and their role in the Trillion-Dollar Real Estate Debt Crisis.

Kellogg’s faces a backlash after encouraging cash-strapped shoppers to eat cereal for dinner: ‘What the hell kind of dystopian hellscape is this?’

Scientists Are Freaking Out About Ocean Temperatures.

After a decade of stops and starts, Apple kills its electric car project.

The EU must accept that threats to economic security come from all directions.

Civil War II. As Southern states again assert their dubious right to countermand federal law and the national Constitution, Biden needs to be as resolute as Lincoln.

What Is a Species, Anyway? Some of the best known species on Earth may not be what they seem.

No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on.

Africa’s Tropical Glaciers Have Shrunk by 90 Percent, Study Finds.

The longer I live here, the more I realize that you actually don’t need to be particularly observant or insightful to figure out why things in America are as fucked up as they are.

Putin, Trump, production capacity: the defence challenges facing Europe.

FTC Sues to Block $25 Billion Kroger-Albertsons Merger.

Biden brokers $1 billion deal with Oregon, Washington, 4 Columbia River tribes to revive Northwest salmon population.

Sweden to join NATO in historic move as Hungary ratifies bid.

Public Housing is Good Development Policy.

She Confessed to Killing Amish Children in a Crash. Then the Mystery Began. Don’t do meth, people.

Boeing Efforts to Improve Safety Fall Short, FAA Panel Says.

It’s Official: “Entry-Level” Isn’t About Experience, It’s About Crappy Pay.

The saga of Gemini also demonstrates some things about how educated professional Americans are trying to fight racism in the 2020s. I think what it shows is that there’s a hunger for quick shortcuts that ultimately turn out not to be effective.

‘Starship Troopers’ Illustrates Just How Susceptible Audiences Are to Propaganda.

When Eyes in the Sky Start Looking Right at You. New satellites that orbit the Earth at very low altitudes may result in a world where nothing is really off limits.

The horrors of modern “pleasure” arise from the fact that every kind of organized distraction tends to become progressively more and more imbecile.

Profiteering Hampers U.S. Grid Expansion.

America’s Richest Men Ask the Courts to Make Unions Illegal.

Leisure is not the cessation of work but a contemplative disposition that puts work in its proper place. This leisure ontology has gradually dissipated from everyday life, with a working ontology capturing more of our “time,” instrumentalizing everything toward work.

Zero-rupee note.

New Law Requires SNAP Recipients To Balance Food On Nose Until Receiving Command To Eat It.

U.S. workers are employed but unhappy and many need multiple jobs to stay afloat.

RTO doesn’t improve company value, but does make employees miserable: Study.

The Supreme Court Is on the Verge of Criminalizing Homelessness.

Alabama Supreme Court Rules That Frozen Burritos Are Children.

Fed-Favored Inflation Gauge Seen Rising Most in a Year. “Transitory.”

Food hasn’t been this much of your budget since the ’90s.

The more Americans that take Ozempic, the faster the US economy will grow, Goldman Sachs says. This is, alas, probably correct.

This Ruinous Grocery Store Merger Must Be Stopped.

Even If You Hate Julian Assange, the U.S. Attempt to Extradite Him Should Worry You.

Webb telescope may have solved lingering mystery of 1987 supernova.

How everything became a ‘psyop’ for conservative media. It’s not just Taylor Swift. Right-wing pundits are branding everything from climate change to the Hunter Biden case a ‘psyop,’ though the conspiracy-tinged phrase is losing grip on an actual definition.

California lawmaker wants to ban companies from owning more than 1,000 homes in state. Good.

‘Facial recognition’ error message on vending machine sparks concern at University. I thought the future would be cooler.

Data will not tell you what to do.

This Housing Market is Still Frozen.

There’s a difference, though, between art that achieves a sublime universality and a product that is created to be benignly universal.

Amid high rents, eviction filings in major Texas cities soar above pre-pandemic levels. Everywhere is expensive now.

Boeing is a wake-up call. America’s businesses gambled that ‘greed is good.’ Now they’re losing that bet, big time.

Boomers Admit Younger People Have It Harder. Many of them absolutely do not admit this.

ISPs keep giving false broadband coverage data to the FCC, groups say.

Windows-as-a-nuisance: How I clean up a “clean install” of Windows 11 and Edge.

The Americans Who Need Chaos.

I spend a lot of time in the library. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not there for the books. Books are for table balancing and throwing at birds.

Mastering equity language is a discipline that requires effort and reflection, like learning a sacred foreign tongue—ancient Hebrew or Sanskrit.

Mortgage Rates Rise Back to 7%, Housing Market Re-Freezes, Buyers’ Strike Continues. Prices Are Just Too High.

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal.

Nuclear SMR welding breakthrough: A year’s work now takes a day.

Ukraine remains stronger than you might think. Kyiv continues to stymie Russia’s greatest ambitions to take over its country.

Do We Simply Not Care About Old People? The pandemic was a wake-up call on how we care for older adults.

MAGA’s Violent Threats Are Warping Life in America.

No, It’s Not “Inflation” — We’re Just Getting Ripped Off. Here’s Proof.

‘Snow drought’ eases as storms bring California near-average water supplies.

Here We Go Again: Sony Disappears Digital Content That Was Pitched To Customers As ‘Forever.’ Anyone who ever believed that was a cracksmoker.

Are We in a Productivity Boom? For Clues, Look to 1994.

Indeed job opening numbers. To those applying no you’re not crazy it’s bad.

Word inscribed on ancient bronze hand resembles modern Basque word.

New research reveals activation mechanism of Thoeris antiviral defense system.

What the Pentagon has learned from two years of war in Ukraine.

Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control.

Putin Has Already Lost. Mostly agreed.

Georgia Senate considers controls on school libraries and criminal charges for librarians.

If Architects had to work like Programmers.

Urban Surveillance Is More Menacing Than Ever. Cameras aren’t just monitoring us in public—now they’re actually yelling at us.

Deep learning models reveal replicable, generalizable, and behaviorally relevant sex differences in human functional brain organization.

There may be a ‘dark mirror’ universe within ours where atoms failed to form, new study suggests.

Court blocks $1 billion copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users’ piracy.

Attention deficits linked with proclivity to explore while foraging.

Weary but determined, women join Ukraine’s fight against Russia in historic numbers.

Listening to other people complain about their kids is the most effective birth control. It certainly is.

Alabama’s largest hospital says it is halting IVF treatments in wake of court ruling.

Study shows ‘catastrophic’ 10-year low for female representation in film.

This user thought we supplied their internet….

The majority of those who take weight loss medication and exercise regularly are able to maintain the beneficial effects a year after treatment termination.

Authoritarian technocracy.

Boeing ousts the head of its troubled 737 Max program after quality control concerns.

Astronomers discover universe’s brightest object – a quasar powered by a black hole that eats a sun a day.

Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep Ocean Off Costa Rica.

How Google is killing independent sites like ours. And why you shouldn’t trust product recommendations from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google.

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