Link. The coup theory made it to SCOTUS based on a motivated reading of ambiguous language in the US constitution.
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“Current and former U.S. officials said Mr. Prigozhin would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of power would come to his aid.”
Link. “American officials have an interest in pushing out information that undermines the standing of General Surovikin, whom they view as more competent and more ruthless than other members of the command.”
Betrayed by his fellow ravagers? Or an American ploy to further disunity?
“Facewatch which licenses facial recognition software made by Real Networks and Amazon is now inside nearly 400 stores across Britain. Trained on millions of pictures and videos the systems read the biometric information of a face as the person walks i
Link. Supposedly identifies people believed to have shoplifted. False positive rate not known. Legal proof of guilt not required, no appeal process but image said to be deleted after 1y. Motivated by shoplifting loss.
Minneapolis police have recorded 4328 motor vehicle thefts as of June 25 2023 compared to 2388 by this time in 2022
Link. “9 of 10 auto thefts in the state were Kia’s and Hyundai’s”. Mostly by a modest number of 15yo who cannot be held.
DHS office tasked with analyzing intelligence was reluctant to issue warnings related to Jan. 6 in part because of criticism the agency had received for its handling of intelligence related to protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd
Link. I suspected this at the time.
Perhaps a dozen Russian servicemen mostly pilots died at the hands of the Wagner mutineers more than died during the failed coup of 1991. Nobody seems particularly bothered about them.
Link. Putin does well in opinion polls. Very popular they say. But Russia’s revealed preference is they don’t give a shit.
I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation.
Link. Amazon is batshit crazy. An ambitious lawyer should make this a career building lawsuit.
The social science of American guns.
Link. Most gun deaths are suicide, a gun in the home increases risk of death.
Another Golden Age for Medicine?
Link. From 1994 to 2010 things felt slow to me. Buy after 2010 it got better.
iPhone Screen Distance in iOS 17: decreasing myopia in developing eyes.
Link. Helps keep screen at least 12” away.
I would like to see Mastodon thrive. But the platforms ideological zealotry is obviously holding it back and seemingly isnt going to change.
Link. It’s a narrow culture.
Joan Walsh on giving RFK Jr a platform many years ago: It was the worst mistake of my career. I probably should have been fired
Link. So many have enabled him. He must have great party invitations.
“In our many interactions, he was charming and funny. But gradually he became a charming bully…”
the system which has many checks and balances has a way of knocking back people who abuse their power
Link. The one and only summary of the pursuit of Hunter Biden that you need to read.
Why your spouse cant get chemo: The average net price of generic drugs fell by more than half between 2016 and 2022
Link. Monopsony buying has pushed manufacturing to India where law is flexible and monitoring expensive.
there is one other sort of cost asymmetry that I do think favors misinformation. Its about public vs. private goods.
Link. “Misinformation is a job; correcting misinformation is a hobby.”
Lies are free, WaPo is not.
Hunter Biden Deal: Plead Guilty to Misdemeanor Tax Charges.
Link. 1. Seems fair.
2. GOP has doubtless lost its shirt.
Biden riffs about Xi not knowing spy balloon was a thing.
Link. 1. Biden is probably not supposed to tell that story.
2. How stupid is Xi that he is so disconnected from China’s most important frenemy.
2018 three dozen people industry leaders deep-sea explorers and oceanographers sent a letter to Mr. Rush warning that the companys experimental approach could lead to potentially catastrophic problems.
Link. Headline: “catastrophic implosion”
Scientists shouldnt debate science with charlatans.
Link. “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
Charlie Stross on alien love: therefore seems likely that any sexy alien I meet will be an extremely intelligent venomous tree-dwelling crab. Or maybe a hypercastrating alien mind control endoparasite
Link. Space traveling aliens are probably all AIs.
Generative adversarial network processes language-like sound in way similar to human brains.
Link. Needs replication and expansion. Suggests Chomsky was wrong about innate language ability.
Corporate bureaucracy is worse than government bureaucracy.
Link. True. I’ve known both. “Government bureaucrats at least want to do the right thing. They often fail for a variety of reasons…”
Dyer compares the big 5 populists
Link. All in decline for now, save Berlusconi who is dead. Only one led an insurrection.
Womb-centric feminism in Britain: That said Harrington was radicalized by Mumsnet which she started reading more than a decade ago
Link. I suspect the majority of American women believe biology matters but is not deterministic. Men remain boys, Women grow up.
Anthropics Claude one of the three major foundational Large Language Models now has enough memory to hold a short book
Link. He tests Claude as author, editor, critic and more with very impressive results.
In Our Time: Once the rebellion had been suppressed the Shogun enforced a ban on Christianity and expelled nearly all foreigners from the country. Japan remained more or less completely sealed off from the rest of the world for the next 250 years.
Link. I want to listen to this one.
CDC depression survey: West Virginia where 26.4% of respondents reported suffering from depression Arkansas and Alabama (23.5% each) Kentucky (24.2%) and Tennessee (24.1%)
Link. Income and maybe education.
Betelgeuse might supernova in next thousand-million years. No risk to Earth.
Link. 500 ly distant, if it were 30ly we’d have problems. Not impossible that it blows tomorrow but more likely 1 millions years from now.
Industrial chemistry: The Ibuprofen story
Link. Failure is an orphan, but success has a thousand fathers. Never trust the story an ambitious executive tells of their success; I have seen similar narrative invention in my own career.
Find Any File is a program for Apple’s macOS that lets you search for files on your disks.
Link. Tsai endorses it. Bad sign: I can’t find price on the mobile site. It’s not free. I like that the site lists alternatives like EasyFind (free).
department has been involved in two chases with 14-year-old drivers one of which involved a 12-year-old passenger. Underthun said that all three had history of auto theft and had been released from the juvenile detention center days before.
Link. Auto theft in MSP has doubled over past year, often involves guns, and is mostly by a small number of teens who are repeatedly arrested and released.
Unclear if there’s much money earned.
“Old magazines are cheap time machines archaeologies of collective desire.”
Link. Anything over 20y old. LIFE magazine especially. Some things are unchanged, others have changed beyond memory.
How to Turn Off Daily Cash Notifications on Your iPhone
Link. Wallet:ellipsis:notifications.
Google Domains (registrar services) shutting down migration to Squarespace
Link. I kind of hate Google now.
High calorie foods to prevent exercise/training associated weight loss
Link. Suggestions welcome.
Long Covid Hints – 8% prevalence at day 300 but a weird metformin effect.
Link. I *hate* the use of “Long Covid” as a diagnostic entity. I can’t believe we’re still using that term. Still, good discussion here.
XBB sublineages comprise nearly 99% of circulating coronavirus in the U.S.
Link. Doesn’t say why. Next vaccine to focus on XBB.
“From October through early June, about 75,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported nationally. That’s more than double the average annual number of flu deaths in the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic.”
COVID less lethal than flu but far more common.
Moral Injury in corporate medicine fueled by private equity.
Link. Primary care physicians (I am one) are basically broken. Unionization is the only response.
Oregon Town supplies Idaho cannabis demand: ” … tax revenues that have paid for new police positions emergency response vehicles and park and trail improvements.”
Link. Small town has 11 dispensaries — all for Idaho customers.
Biden: “… four months after he called out junk fees in his State of the Union and nine months after he first called for action to crack down on hidden fees …”
Link. The GOP is now forced to defend hidden fees and price concealment. Because of course they must. (NYT article covering this was so inane I refuse to link to it. Instead Gov PR.)
White Starbucks manager fired over racist claims: The federal jury found that race was a factor in Phillipss termination and awarded her $600000 in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages for violations to her rights under state an
Link. Likely to be reduced on appeal but Starbucks used her as a scapegoat.
Mainstream macroeconomics correctly predicted the recent inflation and gave us the tools that looked to have solved much of the problem
Link. Noah overstates his case, but does have a point.
The deputies who are White also waterboarded Jenkins and Parker pelted them with eggs and attempted to sexually assault them with a sex toy
Link. Mississippi. Even by American standards this is … noteworthy.
“The FBI Jackson Field Office, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office opened a federal civil rights investigation into the incident in February”
apply AI to chip design building custom chip design models to iterate into existing simulators and refine new designs that actually have a pretty good chance of being novel.
Link. Suddenly my Cringely RSS feed lights up. Sounds like he’s had a rough time but fun to read.
Extended rant against $4K eBike for 10yo trail riders.
Link. It’s a good rant.
molecules are 1.6 billion years old and hint that eukaryotes were abundant and widespread much longer ago than earlier biochemical evidence had suggested
Link. Much more time for multicellular organisms to evolve.
The United States needs a government-funded-and-directed AI program to develop widely reusable models in the public interest.
Link. It would need to be independent of party control (fed model).
Pratchett Philosophy: absurdity and duty.
Link. Fundamentally secular. I have read almost everything he published including his earliest books.
flies that had seen corpses were avoided by other flies as if theyd been marked by death
Link. “a specific set of serotonin-receptor-possessing neurons are used” by living flies to perceive dead ones”.
Activate these and the fly ages faster. A suicide switch.
“The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free” – 2020 reference.
Link. Current Affairs is still paywall free. Has a few examples that remind me of Project Xanadu payment schemes. (Via a Mastodon referral – @joe@appdot.net).
See Docuverse: https://bit.ly/3Cq8vgj. I think there was a micropayment transaction tracking scheme. From 1960s?