Well, as you know, Tuesday is trash day around here. Except when it ain’t. Yesterday was a holiday, so the trash gods don’t descend from their Olympus of offal and visit our shack ’til Wednesday. But we stick to the old ways, here. Tuesday it is. Let’s clean out our bookmarks, shall we, and see what the world has been up to while I was hitting my thumb with a hammer up on the roof.

Robot Dog Highlighted at China-Cambodia Joint Military Exercise

Dystopian movies about the future are almost always way off. Blade Runner always cracks me up. It’s always raining in Los Angeles. Yeah, right. Well, Ahnold could barely speak the lines, but it looks like the Terminator movies were pretty much right on the money, and the timetable.

Delft-based Ore Energy exits stealth mode with €10M; unveils battery based on only iron, water and air

Led by Dr. Ir. Aytac Yilmaz, Ore Energy‘s batteries have the potential to reduce the cost of long-duration energy storage by 10 times compared to currently used lithium batteries.

The battery technology has been developed using the process of rusting and unrusting of metallic iron to store energy. This technology relies solely on abundant materials such as iron, water, and air.

Maybe we can turn all the lithium we save into pill form, and put it into the drinking water supply. Everyone at the local Walmart looks mentally ill. It couldn’t hurt.

Egypt is building a $1-billion mega-museum. Will it bring Egyptology home?

“We’ve managed to keep the collection of Tutankhamun, but still colonialism stripped us of the agency to produce knowledge about our past,” says Hanna. Western archaeologists framed the narrative of ancient Egyptian history in a way that was barely accessible to Egyptians, because most publications were in European languages. Even the term Egyptology — which covers a period of history that excludes the country’s Christian and Islamic eras — was coined by scholars from Europe.

Home? I guess if you go by Google Maps. The people who built the pyramids have as little to do with today’s Egyptians as any curator in England. And Cleopatra and her ilk were Macedonian Greek.

California launching pilot program to charge drivers for miles driven

In theory, drivers would be able to choose how the state tracks their mileage. They could hook up an electronic device to their car, use the car’s built-in tracking system or send Caltrans a picture of the odometer. “Everyone has different levels of comfort when we’re managing our data between efficiency and privacy, and that’s why it’s really important to have options from low tech to high tech,” Prehoda told ABC7.

(If you drive a car, car) I’ll tax the street
(If you try to sit) I’ll tax your seat
(If you get too cold) I’ll tax the heat
(If you take a walk) I’ll tax your feet

-George Nostradamus Harrison

YouTube videos are skipping to the end for users with adblockers

This week, many have noticed that YouTube videos are suddenly skipping straight to the end of the video. Even if the video is just replayed, it skips straight to the end almost immediately. It’s a strange phenomenon and one that only appears to be happening for users with an adblocker installed. When the blocker is disabled, everything works as normal.

Funny, I’ve been skipping to the end of YouTub videos nearly forever, mostly by not starting them in the first place. And UBlock Origin browser extension blocks all the ads anyway. Here’s another approach: You can download YT DLG through this GitHub page. It’s available for free in the Windows store. The program launches from a desktop icon, just like the good old days. You paste in the URL of the YouTub video you want to see, press “Add” and then the “Download” button, and the video magically appears as an MP4 on your desktop or download folder. No ads, and even if a video is pulled from YouTub, you’ll still have it. Stream it on Jellyfin and leave the Goog out of it completely.

Former FTX Executive Ryan Salame Sentenced to 7.5 Years in Prison

“Ryan Salame agreed to advance the interests of FTX, Alameda Research, and his co-conspirators through an unlawful political influence campaign and through an unlicensed money transmitting business, which helped FTX grow faster and larger by operating outside of the law,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “Salame’s involvement in two serious federal crimes undermined public trust in American elections and the integrity of the financial system.”

Everyone on the receiving end of the unlawful political influence campaign just gets to keep the money they got and the offices they hold. It’s a funny old world, ain’t it?

Google’s AI really is that stupid, feeds people answers from The Onion

Asked “how many rocks should I eat each day,” Overview said that geologists recommend eating “at least one small rock a day.” That language was of course pulled almost word-for-word from a 2021 Onion headline. Another search, “what color highlighters do the CIA use,” prompted Overview to answer “black,” which was an Onion joke from 2005.

The Onion? Google should really be feeding people answers from the Rumford Meteor. They’re infinitely more truthy.

Possible association between tattoos and lymphoma revealed

After taking into account other relevant factors, such as smoking and age, we found that the risk of developing lymphoma was 21 percent higher among those who were tattooed. It is important to remember that lymphoma is a rare disease and that our results apply at the group level. The results now need to be verified and investigated further in other studies and such research is ongoing”, says Christel Nielsen.

I’ve noticed a possible association between a girlfriend with a lot of tattoos and humping a deck of cards.

Have a great trash day, everyone, even if it isn’t.