Leftovers

• David Revoy ☛ Kicking Erwin Schrödinger out of my idols.

  
  

  Not because he chose a cat for his thought experiment, but because of one thing I learnt: he sexually abused children and kept a diary about it. 🤮 Src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger#Sexual_abuse

  Artwork source here

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Robot Goes To Summer Camp

    There are a lot of hobby and educational robots that have a similar form factor: a low, wide body with either wheels or tracks for locomotion. When [Alexander Kirilov] wanted to teach a summer robot camp, he looked at several different commercial offerings and found all of them somewhat lacking. His wish list was a neat-looking compact robot that was easy to extend, had various sensors, and would work with Python. Finding nothing to his liking, he set out to make his own, and Yozh robot was born.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Stanford University ☛ AATP’s ‘410[GONE]’: Authentic Asian American experience or misused mythology?

    The beauty of a complex magical-realist theater production is in the eye of the beholder. Kubota and Liu present their different impressions of the show's mental health and cultural themes.

  • Project Censored ☛ Activism Targets Outdated State Laws That Criminalize HIV

    The overall number of people arrested under HIV criminalization laws in the United States is not officially tracked, according to the Guardian, but the HIV Justice Network had counted 2,936 such cases at the time of the Guardian’s report, a figure that likely underestimated the actual number of arrests. As Truthout and The Appeal reported, not all states require transmission of the virus or intent to transmit it for convictions.

  • Project Censored ☛ Derailment Reveals Frequency of Toxic Chemical Spills

    Citing research by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, Carey Gillam reported for the Guardian that 470 toxic chemical releases occurred in the United States between April 2020 and February 2023, roughly one incident every two days. Although the incidents the CPCD tallied varied in severity, in each case they involved “the accidental release of chemicals deemed to pose potential threats to human and environmental health.”

  • Project Censored ☛ Public Health at Risk from Beef Suppliers’ Antibiotic Use

    The spread of drug-resistant bacteria “represents a huge public health challenge,” the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported. The World Health Organization has warned that antibiotics essential to human medicine should not be used in livestock because bacteria can develop resistance that reduces the drugs’ effectiveness for humans. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antibiotic resistance causes more than thirty-five thousand deaths in the United States each year and 1.3 million deaths globally. [Note: For Project Censored’s previous coverage of this neglected news topic, see Yadira Martinez et al., “Antibiotic Resistant ‘Superbugs’ Threaten Health and Foundations of Modern Medicine,” and Allison Rott and Steve Macek, “Antibiotic Abuse: Pharmaceutical Profiteering Accelerates Superbugs.”]

  • Project Censored ☛ Forever Chemicals in Rainwater Pose Global Threat

    To reach this conclusion, the researchers compared levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) in rainwater from around the world with the drinking water guidelines established by environmental agencies in the United States and Denmark, “which are the most stringent advisories known globally,” the researchers reported. Based on the latest US guidelines for PFOA in drinking water, “rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink,” the lead author of the study, Ian Cousins, stated in a post on the Stockholm University website. Cousins drew even more dire conclusions in an August 2022 interview: “We have crossed a planetary boundary,” the researcher told Agence France-Presse, “We have made the planet inhospitable to human life . . . [N]othing is clean anymore.”

  • Project Censored ☛ Accidents Reveal US Biolab Vulnerabilities

    According to Hvistendahl, the graduate student contracted the virus when her syringe slipped and pricked through her gloves. Seeing no blood, she did not initially report the incident. She became ill several days later and tested positive for Chikungunya. Because she did not report the incident immediately, no safety measures were put into place following her possible exposure. Her supervisor did ultimately report the accident to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “but until now, the event has remained out of public view. So have hundreds of other incidents in US labs,” Hvistendahl reported.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Powerful Activists and Lawmakers Have Blocked Post-Roe Abortion Ban Exceptions

    State Rep. Taylor Rehfeldt was speaking on the floor of the South Dakota Capitol, four months pregnant with her third child, begging her Republican colleagues to care about her life.

    “With the current law in place, I will tell you, I wake up fearful of my pregnancy and what it would mean for my children, my husband and my parents if something happened to me and the doctor cannot perform lifesaving measures,” she told her fellow lawmakers last February, her voice faltering as tears threatened.

  • Project Censored ☛ Toxic Chemicals Unregulated in US

    Michal Freedhoff, the EPA’s head of chemical regulation, conceded to decades of regulatory failure, blaming the agency’s inaction on barriers created by the Trump administration, including funding and staffing shortages. However, ProPublica’s investigation revealed broader issues at play. Through interviews with environmental experts and analysis of a half century’s worth of legislation, lawsuits, EPA documents, oral histories, chemical databases, and regulatory records, ProPublica uncovered the longstanding institutional failure to protect Americans from toxic chemicals.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Ghacks ☛ iPhone NameDrop warning: MDP warns parents - gHacks Tech News

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ Google Drive users angry over losing months of stored data

  • Apple's brain drain problem is to Google's advantage, report shows

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Paris mayor quits X, calling social media site a ‘gigantic global sewer’ | Paris | The Guardian

    Anne Hidalgo, whose opponents have used the platform to criticise her, cited disinformation and antisemitism as reasons for leaving

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Project Censored ☛ Big Tech Hires Former CIA and Ex-Israeli Agents

      Google has hired former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employees to fill sensitive positions, affording them significant influence over the operation of the world’s most used search engine and other Google products that encompass online communication, commerce, and information gathering. As MacLeod reported in July 2022, based on his analysis of employment websites and databases, a former CIA employee is working in almost every department at Google.

    • Stanford University ☛ 240 new security cameras on campus raise privacy concerns

      In 2022, a $2.35 million project to boost safety on campus began, bringing 240 new security camera installations per year, including at student residences and dining halls. With two years of installation to go, students expressed privacy concerns.

    • Project Censored ☛ Stalkerware Could Incriminate People Violating Abortion Bans

      Citron explained that cyberstalking software provides users with “real-time access to everything that we do and say with our phones. To do this, they only need our phones (and passwords) for a few minutes. Once installed, cyberstalking apps silently record and upload phones’ activities to their servers. They enable privacy invaders to see our photos, videos, texts, calls, voice mails, searches, social media activities, locations—nothing is out of reach. From anywhere, individuals can activate a phone’s mic to listen to conversations within 15 feet of the phone.”

• Defence/Aggression

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Families of Chinese victims of vanished Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight in Beijing court to seek compensation

    By Ludovic Ehret in Beijing, China A Beijing court on Monday began hearing compensation cases filed by the families of dozens of Chinese people who died on board a Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared almost 10 years ago.

  • RFA ☛ S Korea, Japan, China fail to set summit date, condemn N Korea

    The lack of consensus shows widening gaps between the three neighbors.

  • France24 ☛ Sierra Leone declares nationwide curfew after attack on Freetown army barracks

    Sierra Leone's government said it was in full control on Sunday evening after reporting a security breach by unidentified attackers at a military armoury in the capital Freetown that sparked armed clashes.

  • Reason ☛ Brickbat: Hero Citizen, Racist Cop

    A San Jose police officer, who shot a football player credited with stopping a shooting last summer, sent racist texts about the shooting to colleagues.

  • JURIST ☛ 10 Syria civilians killed in government attack on rebel-held village

    Syria’s opposition government said Saturday that government forces shelled the northwestern village of Qaqfin, located in Idlib, Syria. The shelling resulted in the death of ten civilians, drawing further attention to allegations of human rights violations committed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government. 

  • Project Censored ☛ Economic Impact of US Gun Violence Underestimated

    As NPR journalist Eric Westervelt detailed in his report, the $557 billion figure—roughly 2.6 percent of the US gross domestic product—includes the “immediate costs of a shooting, such as the police response, investigations and ambulance services all the way to the long-term health care costs. The analysis also includes estimates for [victims’] lost earnings, costs incurred by the criminal justice system, the price of mental health care and more.”

• Environment

  • Project Censored ☛ Certified Rainforest Carbon Offsets Mostly Worthless

    Overall, the investigative reports found that where Verra claimed to have certified 94.9 million credits—each of which is supposed to represent a one-metric ton reduction of carbon emissions—the actual benefits of the projects validated by Verra amounted to a much more modest 5.5 million credits. To assess the efficacy of Verra’s carbon offset certification program, investigative journalists from the Guardian, SourceMaterial, and Die Zeit analyzed the only three scientific studies to use robust, scientifically sound methods to assess the impact of carbon offsets on deforestation. The journalists also consulted with indigenous communities, industry insiders, and scientists.

  • Project Censored ☛ Fossil Fuel Investors Block Climate Regulations

    One case featuring Vermilion, a Canadian oil and gas company, demonstrates how investor threats are making it difficult for countries to act against climate change. As described in Pardikar’s article, in 2017, France’s environmental minister at the time, Nicolas Hulot, drafted a law to end fossil fuel extraction by 2040. In response, the Canadian oil company threatened to use an “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) to sue the French government, thus taking advantage of a provision that allows investors to sue governments for treaty violations. Due to the ISDS, Hulot’s climate change bill was diluted, enabling oil and gas companies to continue extraction after the originally approved 2040 deadline.

  • Project Censored ☛ Deadly Decade for Environmental Activists

    The killing of environmental activists has been concentrated in the Global South, with 68 percent occurring in Latin America. Three-hundred-forty-two killings occurred in Brazil, 322 in Colombia, 154 in Mexico, 177 in Honduras, and eighty in Guatemala. Outside Latin America, the Philippines accounted for 270 killings and India accounted for seventy-nine.

  • Project Censored ☛ Fossil Fuel Money Skews Climate and Energy Research

    Even as Princeton University announced in September 2022 that it would divest from fossil fuels, dozens of universities in the United States continue to accept millions of dollars from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and allied interests, such as Koch Industries, to fund climate and energy research. Based on its examination of twenty-seven universities that together received more than $667 million in fossil fuel donations or pledges between 2010 and 2020, Data for Progress reported that the top recipients of fossil fuel funding were the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; George Mason University; Stanford; the University of Texas at Austin; MIT; Princeton; Rice; Texas A&M; and Harvard. UC Berkeley alone accepted $154 million during the 2010s.

  • Project Censored ☛ Tribal Towns Forced to Relocate Due to Climate Crisis

    Managed retreats are disruptive and relocating communities must overcome a host of challenges, from choosing new locations to securing funds from the Interior Department and other federal agencies. Unfortunately, such relocations are likely to become more common as flooding and erosion affect a growing number of coastal Indigenous communities.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Project Censored ☛ Municipalities in Puerto Rico Sue Fossil Fuel Giants

      Although dozens of US municipalities and states have attempted to sue fossil fuel corporations for climate change-related damages, the class action suit filed by Puerto Rican municipalities is the first to do so under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, established in 1970, to enhance the control of organized crime.

    • BIA Net ☛ SOHR: Turkish airstrikes on Rojava limit electricity acces for over 2 million people

      Turkey carried out airstikes targeting Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria’s north in response to a PKK bomb attack in Ankara.

• Finance

  • Project Censored ☛ Debt Crisis Looms for World's Poorest Nations

    Poor countries are facing mounting difficulties repaying their debts due to soaring interest rates and the rise in the dollar’s value since 2019, severely limiting their ability to finance their debts. Moreover, the World Bank expressed concern that debt payments by these countries consume funds needed for vital social services such as education and health care.

  • Project Censored ☛ Nearly Half of Unhoused People Are Employed

    Unhoused people in shelters earned more than those who were unsheltered. In 2015, the mean pre-tax income for the former group was $8,169, while the mean income for the latter was $6,934. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, one would need to make approximately $21.25 per hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment. “Even if people are working full time, they would not be able to afford housing earning minimum wage,” Pagaduan reported.

  • Project Censored ☛ Corporate Profits Hit Record High, 0.1% Earnings Skyrocket

    One reason profits are booming is that companies have been using inflation as cover to raise prices and gouge consumers. In late 2022, inflation in the United States was the highest it had been in forty years. According to Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, “Astronomical corporate profits confirm what corporate executives have been telling us on earning calls over and over again: They’re making a lot of money by charging people more, and they don’t plan on bringing prices down anytime soon.”

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong to monitor, debunk misinformation on day of ‘patriots’ District Council race

      The Hong Kong government will set up a special taskforce to monitor and debunk misinformation on the day of the “patriots-only” District Council race.

    • Project Censored ☛ Homeland Security Plans to Regulate Disinformation Online

      Records seized in a lawsuit filed by Missouri’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, show how the US government uses its power and influence to shape discourse online. Leaked records from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency’s (CISA) Cybersecurity Advisory Committee contain various discussions concerning the range and limits of US influence over online discourse and conversations surrounding strategies to successfully remove false or intentionally misleading information from social media platforms.

    • Project Censored ☛ Study Exposes Electric Utilities’ Climate Disinformation

      Nevertheless, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have analyzed nearly two hundred utility industry documents spanning five decades—from 1968 to 2019—which reveal that companies such as PG&E and Commonwealth Edison were perfectly aware of the threats posed by climate change but disregarded them. In fact, electric utility representatives went so far as to dismiss action to reduce carbon emissions as “premature at best.” For this reason, one of the study’s authors, Leah Stokes, said, “Utilities hold partial responsibility for today’s climate crisis, and for the pushback against policies to address it.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFA ☛ 'We want to amplify the voices that have been censored in China'

    One year after the 'white paper' protests swept China, overseas activists say they are keeping the flame alive.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • JURIST ☛ Prominent Kashmir journalist granted bail after two years in detention over ‘anti-national content’ charges

    Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah, who endured nearly 21 months in jail on charges of “anti-national content” and “glorifying terrorism” in Kashmir, secured bail on Friday from Indian authorities. Shah’s release came three months after the authorities blocked the Kashmir Walla, a publication he founded and leads. 

  • Press Gazette ☛ Facebook subscriptions: Could Meta still be a friend for publishers?

    One publisher trying out subscriptions on the platform thinks it could benefit others too.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Project Censored ☛ “Informal Removal” Hinders Disabled Students' Opportunities

    Kolodner and Ma explained that informal removal is defined by the Department of Education as “an action taken by school staff in response to a child’s behavior that excludes the child for part or all of the school day—or even indefinitely.” Excessive use of informal removals, they reported, “amounts to a form of off-the-books discipline—a de facto denial of education that evades accountability.”

  • Project Censored ☛ Black Americans More Likely to be Wrongfully Convicted

    The NRE study analyzed 3,200 exonerations for the above crimes, dating back to 1989. Fifty-three percent of those exonerated were Black, even though Black Americans make up only 13.6 percent of the general population. Only 33 percent of those exonerated were White. Black Americans were 7.5 times more likely than Whites to be wrongly convicted of murder, eight times more likely to be wrongly convicted of sexual crimes, and nineteen times more likely to be wrongly convicted of drug crimes, the Innocence Project reported.

  • Project Censored ☛ Unions Won More Than 70 Percent of Their Elections in 2022

    As Marick Masters explained in his January 2023 article for The Conversation, one business that saw large-scale union activity was Starbucks, with workers holding union elections at 354 stores nationwide, more than a quarter of all US union elections held in 2022. Workers at Starbucks prevailed in four out of every five elections. Workers at Chipotle, Trader Joe’s, and Apple unionized for the first time, while workers at Microsoft and Wells Fargo also had wins.

  • LRT ☛ Teachers’ union suspends strike in Lithuania until budget adoption

    The Lithuanian Education Workers’ Trade Union (LŠDPS) has on Monday suspended its strike until the adoption of the state budget on December 5.

• Monopolies

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Trade Policy Breaks With Tech Giants

    The Biden administration isn’t letting the tech giants write the rules of global trade. Good.

  • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Countering Criticisms to the Proposed EU SEPs Regulation [Ed: The EU has been pushing a whole solid number of illegal and unconstitutional things like UPC; at this point anything it does merit severe scepticism]

    The European Commission’s proposed Regulation to regulate standard essential patents (SEPs) in the EU has been a subject of much debate. Its explanatory memorandum sets forth its aim, including to ensure that “end users” (which includes small businesses and EU consumers) derive advantage from products that incorporate SEPs, at reasonable prices.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Bought myself a present

    Has some snowflake-looking spots on the main lens' perimeter, but I can't see anything wrong in the photos (maybe because the lens is full frame but my camera isn't?). I searched online and found it may be fungi, though the previous owner said they used it frequently. The autofocus doesn't work well but I rarely use it anyway; however, it seems harder to focus than with my EF-S 18-55mm. It doesn't have image stabilization either, but I haven't noticed any issues due to it yet -- time will tell.

  • Finally: I quit smoking and started vaping

    I've been a notorious and neurotic smoker for over three decades. But the last 3 month it became clear that I couldn't go on for much longer with it, because my lungs won't accept it any further. Don't feel sorry for me - I did know what comes from smoking. Fortunately I still don't have cancer (yet), I just can't inhalate anymore, which gives me continuous asthma attacks. Not to mention the coughing sessions of an hour every morning!

  • Poor Educated Consumers

    Today, sigh bear Monday, seems as good as any day to try out the hypothesis that "an educated populace would make for poor consumers".

    Some will reject this out of hand, perhaps on the claim that we do already have an educated populace, and since they are not poor consumers the hypothesis falls apart. The task here then is to show the populace as not educated. Another line of attack would be to claim that even if we achieve an educated populace—Erehwon, as some have it—these folks would still be good consumers. This will require poking at a hypothetical situation and wondering how folks in that different environment may consume.

• Rants

  • Re: On Transgender Athletes

    A more conservative approach would be to preserve the notion of binary biological sex and biological sex-defined sports leagues, but evaluate athlete eligibility on a case-by-case basis. So for example, a trans woman who went through puberty as a male and has a significant muscular advantage wouldn't be allowed to compete in women's leagues. Or a trans woman with the brain of your typical biological male would be disqualified from competing in women's chess tournaments.

    [...] [...]

    I would go further and say that trans people who participate in sports leagues without disclosing that they're trans are probably acting in bad faith

  • Why in bleeping heck does my spell-checker consider 'realtor' a misspelling?

    Whatever spell-checker is enabled in a vim session courtesy of ":set spell" doesn't like 'realtor'.

• Technology and Free Software

  • 👻 Statically Cross-Compiling Rust Projects Using Nix

    I spent some time recently figuring out how to cross compile a non-trivial rust project as a static binary to various operating systems and architectures. As is often the case with nix it was a frustrating experience of trying to find the exact perfect combination of inputs to make things come together.

  • Software Releases/Announcements

    • Rosy Crow 1.4.2

      I published version 1.4.2, which includes a handful of bug fixes.

    • Rosy Crow 1.4.3

      Another small update. Version 1.4.3 includes the following additions:

      * The context menus for links (with options such as Copy URL, etc.) will now include a header that displays the link's destination URL.

      * Links to non-Gemini URLs will now be annotated with the URL's schema (this can be disabled in Settings).

  • Programming/Web

    • Base64 everything!

      Only recently discovered another type of resource that you can embed in a web page to reduce requests; Font faces.

      Perhaps not the best practice if you are including a full font face but, when the decision is between embedding a small subset of a font face (~700 bytes) and 2 small SVGs (~2.5kB each) it is very tempteng to choose the smaller option. Ideally I would not include either but for content that has been agreed to be included whats the most sustainable choice?