Tuesday — Calls To Me

I’m not sure when trash day is at my new digs. In a way, every day is trash day now. There’s a dumpster nearby. I feel like a Sesame Street character, or Redd Foxx or something. In any case, my bookmarks bucket is overflowing, and must be addressed. Why not read along with me, filled with wonder? Wondering why I put this stuff aside in the first place, mostly.

The Rise of the French Fry Cartel

After decades of consolidation, just four firms now control at least 97 percent of the $68 billion frozen potato market, the antitrust cases reveal. These four companies participate in the same trade associations and use a third-party data analytics platform — PotatoTrac — to share confidential business information. The lawsuits allege the firms’ collusion has driven french fries and hash browns to record-high prices.

That website is great, sorta, in a breathless Mother Upton Ida Sinclair Tarbell-Jones kinda way. And interestingly, French Fry Cartel is the name of my Haircut 100 tribute band. But I digress.

Engineer Eats Efficiently (for $2.50 a Day)

I love food and I love to cook. I love to study the science of cooking. I’m very lucky—I’m not in a position that I have to strongly limit my food expenses, but I have always wanted to see how well I could cook and eat on a limited budget. It would encourage me to think about new ingredients, new techniques, and new dishes. I love cooking competition shows like Iron Chef, and enjoy cooking with limited ingredients, or cooking with a lot of a specific ingredient that someone dumps in my lap.

This was published in 2016. Let’s see if all that inflation we’re having or not having, depending on what newspaper you read, has affected his findings. First day is tomato soup, toasted cheese sandwiches, and (egad) homemade kimchi. Here’s his graph on costs:

I priced the same ingredients locally, in the same amounts. We’ll take the homemade kimchi as the same price as 2016. I think it’s made from bagged mulch from the gardening aisle, which has no doubt gone up, but you can source if from any potted plant at the mall for free. At any rate, in 2024, the same ingredients in the same amount add up to $3.14. That’s about a 60% inflation, or 7.53% per year. That seems rather more than the Fed’s (science fiction) target rate of 2%, don’t it? The gold standard  for the gummint’s opinion of inflation is the COLA adjustment on Social Security benefits. I looked it up. They gave seniors 28.5% aggregate increases for the same period. They would have told grandma to eat dog food to adapt, I imagine, but dog food costs more than Campbell’s tomato soup, so it’s more homemade kimchi for you, grandma. Whoops, I meant 할머니.

How Sailor Poets Take Over U.S. Navy Deck Logs On New Year’s Day

The deck log of a commissioned U.S. Navy ship is generally not the place to mess around. In that humble book, a ship’s officer of the deck (OOD) meticulously notes vital information on weather, sea state, status of the engineering plant, the ship’s course and speed, along with other mission-critical factors.

But in the earliest hours of New Year’s Day, during the mid-watch from midnight to 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., the OOD can let their respective poetic prowess shine through, and write their deck log entry in poem form.

Young Blatz is on the sound gear,

And Bowles is on the phones,

Sheller’s on a machine gun

But his thoughts are on his home.

Fantastic.

An abandoned ship held a treasure for 30 years: 50 arcade machines of immense value to gamers

By the time explorers ventured onboard in 2009, the Duke of Lancaster had become an eerie monument to decay. But inside, they stumbled upon a treasure trove of arcade cabinets, some bearing the names of classics like Space Invaders, Galaxian, and Ground Shaker. These machines, once the stars of bustling arcades, had been stored and forgotten, their stories gathering dust for decades.

Well, my little brother once taught Richard Dreyfuss how to play Missile Command in an arcade in Westwood Village, near UCLA. Other than that, I got nothing.

Meet the man keeping hope, and 70-year-old pinball machines, alive

“The art is fantastic,” Young said, referencing a game called Knock Out, which dates from 1950. The machine depicts a boxing match, but there’s far more fighting happening in the crowd, stylized brawls of all sorts. A clown is being led out on a stretcher. Shake the game too much, and a little speech bubble above his head lights up and says, “Tilt!”

One of the crowning achievements of my young life was getting my name under the glass for the high score in Airborne Avenger. It was still there many years later. Back in the day, when you got paid on Friday, you’d go to the bank, cash the check, and ask for twenties, tens, a five, five ones… and a roll of quarters.

The Evaporative Cooling Effect in Social Networks

The Evaporative Cooling Effect describes the phenomenon that high value contributors leave a community because they cannot gain something from it, which leads to the decrease of the quality of the community. Since the people most likely to join a community are those whose quality is below the average quality of the community, these newcomers are very likely to harm the quality of the community. With the expansion of community, it is very hard to maintain the quality of the community.

If this is true, I fear the participants in this little corner of the internet will become degraded to simply fantastic, from their current awesome level. And if anyone’s going to harm the quality around here, it’ll be me, thank you very much.

Mark Zuckerberg: Meta Will End Fact-Checking Program, Says It’s “Too Politically Biased”

“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” Zuckerberg added. “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech. So we’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”

Someone’s been looking for facts on Facebook?

China is the world’s sole manufacturing superpower

The US is the world’s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined. China is now the world’s sole manufacturing superpower. Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined. This column uses the recently released 2023 update of the OECD TiVA database to paint an eight-chart portrait of China’s journey to superpower status and the asymmetric impact that its dominance has had on global supply chains.

Saying the US is the world’s sole military superpower because it spends more on its military than a bunch of Burkina Fasos is kinda silly. Guess what else those factories in China could make in a pinch? My dad flew in a Ford B-24, for example.

Disney to Merge Hulu + Live TV With Fubo, Taking on YouTube TV and Ending Venu Lawsuit

The deal will do a couple of big things if and when it is completed (execs say it could take 12-18 months): For starters, it will create a much bigger player in the virtual multichannel video provider (vMVPD) space, one that can more aggressively take on the market leader YouTube TV. YouTube TV said a year ago that it had 8 million subscribers, while Hulu + Live TV had 4.6 million subscribers and Fubo had 1.6 million subscribers, giving a combined offering 6.2 million subs.

I’m not sure which of these businesses are the drunks, and which is the lampost.

In 2025, People Will Try Living in This Underwater Habitat

Deep’s agenda has a major milestone this year—the development and testing of a small, modular habitat called Vanguard. This transportable, pressurized underwater shelter, capable of housing up to three divers for periods ranging up to a week or so, will be a stepping stone to a more permanent modular habitat system—known as Sentinel—that is set to launch in 2027. “By 2030, we hope to see a permanent human presence in the ocean,” says Krack. All of this is now possible thanks to an advanced 3D printing-welding approach that can print these large habitation structures.

First guy who says, “Pull my finger,” goes out the hatch without a scuba suit.

Tuesday on Tuesday for a Change

My wife announced that it’s Tuesday.

This sort of information is always news to me. I don’t know what day it is, generally, or care what time it is, for the most part. I can occasionally be relied upon to identify the current month, if you put three or four months into a police lineup and let me choose. Other than that, I’m blissfully unaware of much of anything. My stomach is my sundial, and the cat can always be relied on to tell me it’s AM-ish with a swat on my nose. What else can a man need?

But you fine folks deserve a trash day roundup on trash day for a change. Here’s one now:

Making a mechanical watch

Greetings from Canada, self taught watchmaker here. Just finished making my first watch and wanted to share. An original design, made from scratch, by one person. The jewels, sapphire crystals, hairspring, mainspring and the strap were all that were purchased. Everything else was hand made.

I used to consider myself a fairly handy person. I’ve made lots of stuff. Holey moley I’ve never made anything like that.

MIT study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style

“We thought it was plausible that what happens is you start with an initial draft that’s simple, and then later you think of all these other conditions that you want to include. And the idea is that once you’ve started, it’s much easier to center-embed that into the existing provision,” says Martinez, who is now a fellow and instructor at the University of Chicago Law School. However, the findings ended up pointing toward a different hypothesis, the so-called “magic spell hypothesis.” Just as magic spells are written with a distinctive style that sets them apart from everyday language, the convoluted style of legal language appears to signal a special kind of authority, the researchers say.

Lawyers write laws that require lawyers to interpret them for you. It’s a pothole industry. If you’ve ever seen four guys leaning on shovels while a fifth slowly dumps crumbly asphalt into a hole in the road, you’ll understand how it works. “Don’t kill the job.”

LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced)

I can’t afford what is likely tens of thousand to go through all the legal and technical hoops over a prolonged period of time, the site itself barely gets a few hundred in donations each month and costs a little more to run… this is not a venture that can afford compliance costs… and if we did, what remains is a disproportionately high personal liability for me, and one that could easily be weaponised by disgruntled people (trolls) who are banned for their egregious behaviour (in the years running fora I’ve been signed up to porn sites, stalked IRL and online, subject to death threats, had fake copyright takedown notices, an attempt to delete the domain name with ICANN… all from those whom I’ve moderated to protect community members)… I do not see an alternative to shuttering it.

It’s a bulletin board site. The fellow that runs it is in No-Longer-Merry-Olde, so he’s understandably wary about the potential liability that would be heaped on his shoulders if he continued. You might wonder if LFGSS is some sort of sketchy site that allows people to upload bomb recipes or directions to CEO’s shoulder blades and so forth, and so make sense of the law’s effect on guys like this. I looked up the acronym LFGSS: London Fixed Gear and Single Speed. People post pictures of their fixie bicycles. Paging Eric Blair. Eric Blair to the white phone!

World’s oldest mammalian ancestor discovered in Mallorca

They were warm-blooded animals like modern mammals, but, unlike most of them, they laid eggs. They were carnivorous and were the first animals to develop the characteristic saber teeth. They were often the superpredators of the ecosystems in which they lived, and their appearance would be similar to a dog, but without ears or fur.

When I read the headline ancient mammals, and saw Mallorca mentioned, I must admit I expected to find a terrifying picture of Cher in a bathing suit when I clicked through.

Argentina exited recession as Milei eyes growth before midterms

Signs of recovery are underway heading into 2025. Beyond the third-quarter growth, wages have surpassed inflation since April, job growth is slowly picking up and private estimates indicated poverty is gradually declining after spiking once Milei took office. Argentines also deposited over US$20 billion in the financial system this year as part of Milei’s tax amnesty programme, a robust sign of confidence in the libertarian president.

Another successful politician with hair that looks like it was rescued from the shower drain.

Factory Farming is Better Than Organic Farming

Another narrative that is based entirely on propaganda meant to favor one industry and demonize its competition is the notion that organic farming is better for health and better for the environment. Actually, there is no evidence of any nutritional or health advantage from consuming organic produce. Further – and most people I talk to find this claim shocking – organic farming is worse for the environment than conventional or even “factory” farming.

A category error in the headline. All farms are factory farms. Some are just smaller than others. Otherwise, you’re just gardening, and trying to give away twenty pounds of zucchini in October.

Why Dumb TVs Deserve a Comeback

One major area for improvement is display quality. If you’re shopping for a dumb TV, you may have noticed that many dumb TVs are limited to older resolutions like 720p, which can’t compete with the 4K and even 8K displays offered by smart TVs. For a comeback to succeed, dumb TVs need crisp, vibrant visuals that cater to today’s high-definition content standards.

Um, you’re describing monitors, which cost way more, but are plenty dumb. The real problem is that you “want to watch tv.” I’ve heard tales of people with large hard drives that hold thousands of movies and tv shows that can be watched on a monitor, or even a smart tv that’s never hooked up to the internet. I’ve heard these tales, because I tell them, and my ear is right next door to my mouth.

The Famous Bering Land Bridge Was More Like a Swamp, Geologists Say

Geologists suggest that between 36,000 and 11,000 years ago, the Bering Land Bridge may have been less an arid steppe grassland and more a boggy ecosystem crisscrossed by rivers. This complicates scientists’ understanding of the iconic landmass and how its landscape would have facilitated or impeded the spread of different species. The scientists presented their work at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting last week.

Well, some of my ancestors used to burn mud for heat. I won’t cast aspersions on the real estate value of the Bering land bridge.

The Unsure of Trash Day Trash Day Roundup

I’m not stateless. I’m sorta homeless, though. On the loose. We are sleeping indoors, however, which is nice, because it was 15 this morning when I woke up. I don’t miss my old house all that much, but I’m starting to miss trash day.

The town we lived in had something you could call a dump. They didn’t call it that, of course, because calling anything or anybody something straightforward instead of a euphemism is verboten these days. Man, we put that dump through its paces before we moved. They picked up the trash on the curb once a week, so you didn’t need to visit their mother ship if you didn’t want to. You could put as many bags of trash out as you cared to, and cardboard and other stuff. Once a year, you could even plop a big pile of most anything out there, and they come around with a dump truck and a loader and take that, too.

The dump itself was open six days a week, for long hours, too. You could dump wood, or metal, or plastic, or electronics, or whatever into designated spots, or anything random into a big pit with a rail car in the bottom of it. It was glorious, but it’s over. I can’t nail Tuesday morning on the calendar anymore, to measure the passage of time in trash-weeks any longer. My trash sun sets in the east or north or south or wherever now. I’m still a raccoon at heart, but the world has strapped bungie cords over the lid of my galvanized life.

So let’s clean out the bookmarks sidebar, and pour one out for trash day.

How the 1955 Le Mans disaster changed motorsport forever

Levegh’s Mercedes collided with the sloping rear of the Austin-Healey at 150 mph and launched into the air. Macklin remembered feeling the “searing heat” of its exhaust on his face as it sailed over him, and seeing Levegh hunched over the wheel as his Mercedes flew off the track. It landed on an earth embankment, crashed into a concrete stairwell, and exploded like a grenade, sending shards of hot metal hurtling into an open public enclosure next to the grandstand.

The internet used to be full of interesting, good writing like this. Antisocial media killed it dead, dead, dead.

18th-century dentist Thomas Berdmore revealed the agonies his patients endured before, during and after treatment.

He fixed his instrument, and with a sudden exertion of all his strength, he brought away the affected Tooth, together with a piece of the jaw-bone, as big as a walnut, and three neighbouring Molares.

A dentist is a prestidigitator who puts metal in your mouth and pulls coins from your pocket.

Nearly half of US teens are online ‘constantly,’ Pew report finds

There was a slight downward trend in several popular apps teens used. For instance, 63% of teens said they used TikTok, down from 67% and Snapchat slipped to 55% from 59%. This small decline could be due to pandemic-era restrictions easing up and kids having more time to see friends in person, but it’s not enough to be truly meaningful.

Half were online constantly, the other half were too busy texting to answer the question.

Are Social Media Platforms the Next Dying Malls?

My home town is just one example of many. And there are also many “dying malls”—defined as enclosed shopping centers with less than 40% occupancy.

Not long ago, we hoped that these artificial gathering places could be robust, vital replacements for the neighborhoods we tore down. But what I’ve learned is that you pay a heavy price for replacing a real community with a fake one.

And that brings me to the subject of social media platforms—which increasingly resemble these old, decrepit malls.

They are the ultimate fake community centers. This makes them vulnerable, despite all the current visitors and lurkers and noise.

Sure. I guess no one goes there anymore because they’re too crowded.

Why conversations are better with four people

“You very rarely get more than four people in a conversation. In the normal run of things, when a fifth person joins a group, it’ll become two conversations within about 20 seconds.” Alternatively, a “lecture” situation develops in which one person holds court and the others act as an audience.

I’ll make small talk with three people, I guess, but I dispute only with God. I require a worthy adversary.

Mysterious tablet with unknown language unearthed in Georgia

The symbols, created using a conical drill and smoothed with rounded tools, reflect a high degree of craftsmanship. Archaeologists have speculated that the writing may have recorded military spoils, construction projects, or offerings to deities, though definitive interpretations remain elusive. “Generally, the Bashplemi inscription does not repeat any script known to us; however, most of the symbols used therein resemble ones found in the scripts of the Middle East, as well as those of geographically remote countries such as India, Egypt, and West Iberia,” noted researchers in the Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology.

I imagine thousands of researchers will spend ages analyzing them and eventually find out it’s a lost dry cleaning ticket.

A room temperature rechargeable Li2O-based lithium-air battery enabled by a solid electrolyte

A lithium-air battery based on lithium oxide (Li2O) formation can theoretically deliver an energy density that is comparable to that of gasoline. Lithium oxide formation involves a four-electron reaction that is more difficult to achieve than the one- and two-electron reaction processes that result in lithium superoxide (LiO2) and lithium peroxide (Li2O2), respectively. By using a composite polymer electrolyte based on Li10GeP2S12 nanoparticles embedded in a modified polyethylene oxide polymer matrix, we found that Li2O is the main product in a room temperature solid-state lithium-air battery. The battery is rechargeable for 1000 cycles with a low polarization gap and can operate at high rates.

When big batteries morph into big capacitors with slow discharge rates, electric cars will make a lot of sense.

Sionic Energy Unveils 100-Percent Silicon Anode Battery

Group14 plans to open a factory in Moses Lake, Wash. in the first quarter of 2025 with annual capacity for 4,000 tons of its nanostructured silicon-carbon material, called SCC55. That black powder could supply 20 gigawatt hours of cells, enough to power 100,000 to 200,000 EVs, or millions of consumer devices like phones. The two companies say silicon anodes can boost energy density by up to 50 percent versus today’s best nickel-rich batteries, and reduce EV charging times to 10 minutes or less.

Baby steps, I guess. But I don’t know why people think electric cars aren’t reliable. I heard that 95 percent of all the electric cars sold in America are still on the road. The other 5 percent made it home.

Well, that cleared up the bookmarks a bit. Enjoy. And if you see a forlorn man wandering the streets aimlessly, toting a half-full Hefty bag, make sure you wave. I promise I’ll wave back.

Tuesday Refuse Roundup

[Many thanks to Murch for their generous hit on our Ko-Fi tip jar. It is greatly appreciated, and helps keep this place going]

Chemists create world’s thinnest spaghetti

Co-author Professor Gareth Williams (UCL School of Pharmacy) said, “Nanofibers, such as those made of starch, show potential for use in wound dressings as they are very porous. In addition, nanofibers are being explored for use as a scaffold to regrow tissue, as they mimic the extra-cellular matrix—a network of proteins and other molecules that cells build to support themselves.”

Will spaghetti bandages with a neosporin sauce require a red wine, or a white wine IV drip?

The secret history of the world’s first suburb

Samual [sic] Brooks was the first to break ranks, converting his Moseley Street house into a warehouse and building a new suburban villa for his family far enough away from the smog and dirt of the city but near enough to be able to travel to work in his carriage every day. But he did not just build a house for himself, he built an entire neighbourhood where his fellow merchants (horrified that one of their neighbours was now a warehouse) could live permanently. Whalley Range, the world’s first suburb, was born.

Cities seem to have an interesting life cycle. First the posh people want to live there, and then they don’t, and then they do again. I’ve saved myself a lot of trouble by simply avoiding them.

Imagine a land in which Big Tech can’t send you down online rabbit holes or use algorithms to overcharge you

Internet echo chambers and nasty e-commerce tricks that analyze your behavior to milk you for more cash are set to be banned – in China.

Beijing’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), on Sunday launched a campaign to crack down on such practices and the recommendation algorithms that power them.

What many refer to as echo chambers, the CAC has called “information cocoons.” It wants to force tech providers into coming up with ways to prevent them, and has called for a ban on pushing “highly homogeneous content.”

Highly homogeneous content has never been a problem on this site. Having the attention span of a goldfish helps.

YouTube users report their recommendations are suddenly a total mess

More recently, YouTube and other platforms like TikTok have faced scrutiny from the European Commission under the Digital Services Act for not being transparent about how their recommendation systems work. This includes concerns about promoting harmful content or amplifying misinformation. Regulators are now pressuring these platforms to reveal more about how their algorithms mitigate risks like election manipulation and mental health issues for minors.

What flavor government internet intervention do you prefer? Ramen or spaghetti?

How Did You Do On The AI Art Turing Test?

The median score on the test was 60%, only a little above chance. The mean was 60.6%. Participants said the task was harder than expected (median difficulty 4 on a 1-5 scale).

How meaningful is this? I tried to make the test as fair as possible by including only the best works from each category; on the human side, that meant taking prestigious works that had survived the test of time; on the AI side, it meant tossing the many submissions that had garbled text, misshapen hands, or some similar deformity. But this makes it unrepresentative of a world where many AI images will have these errors.

The author cheats a bit by favoring really bad human artists. What difference would it make if a machine or Basquiat painted something?

‘I have no money’: Thousands of Americans see their savings vanish in Synapse fintech crisis

Morris, like thousands of other customers, was snared in the collapse of a behind-the-scenes fintech firm called Synapse and has been locked out of her account for six months as of November. She held out hope that her money was still secure. Then she learned how much Evolve Bank & Trust, the lender where her funds were supposed to be held, was prepared to return to her.

“We were informed last Monday that Evolve was only going to pay us $500 out of that $280,000,” Morris said during a court hearing last week, her voice wavering. “It’s just devastating.”

I went to the Yotta website. It’s a ridiculous lottery website. The apotheosis of “stupid games.”

Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation

On the last day of 1945, with World War II finally behind it, Finland’s government announced a new and very strange policy.

All Finns were required to take out a pair of scissors and snip their banknotes in half. This was known in Finland as setelinleikkaus, or banknote cutting. Anyone who owned any of the three largest denomination Finnish banknotes — the 5000 markka note, the 1000, or the 500 — was required to perform this operation immediately. The left side of the note could still be used to buy things, but at only half its value. So if a Finn had a 1000 markka note in their wallet, henceforth he or she could now only buy 500 markka worth of items at stores. As for the right side, it could no longer be spent and effectively became a bond

I’m sure the average Finn would have preferred to cut all the bankers in half instead, but they probably weren’t consulted on the matter.

Oldest US firearm unearthed in Arizona, a bronze cannon linked to Coronado expedition

Independent researchers in Arizona have unearthed a bronze cannon linked to the Vázquez de Coronado expedition, making it the oldest firearm ever found in the continental United States. The discovery sheds new light on the artillery used during the 1539–1542 expedition into the American Southwest.

I can’t imagine what the local dudes wielding bows and arrows and stone clubs thought when the conquistadors touched off that bad boy.

Tuesday Trash Day Links on Tuesday for a Change

This $8,000 Suzuki From India Received A 5-Star Crash Test Rating

The model tested is called the Suzuki Dzire. Starting at the equivalent of $8,000, buyers can get a 1.2-liter 80 horsepower engine or go the CNG route and make do with just 69 hp 75 pounds-feet of torque. Despite the cheap price and lower power, the Dzire aced Global NCAP crash tests, receiving five stars for adult impact safety and four stars for child impact safety.

The rest of the world drives small, inexpensive cars. The US has seven-year mortgages on freight train pickup trucks never used for any work.

The World Has a New Most Powerful Supercomputer. It’s Going to Build Nukes

The system was built by the lab, along with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and AMD, for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which will use it to model and simulate capabilities for nuclear weapons, helping to ensure the agency doesn’t need to actually explode bombs to test them.

Simulate capabilities for nuclear weapons? The booms are already pretty big, don’t you think? Why not use the computer to figure out why I always hit every red light on the way to the supermarket? That would be useful.

How people spent their time in the 1930’s

In 1937, primarily young, working women, a typical week consisted of a strict allotment of responsibilities and enjoyment. They spent 48 hours working, 56 hours sleeping, 31 hours on home obligations, and 24 hours eating or running errands. What remained, a rather precarious 9 hours per week, was time spent in the pursuit of what could generously be called pleasure. This pleasure time was parsed among automobile rides, movies, social activities, and a small smattering of reading or passive activities like listening to music.

The modern analysis is faulty. They entirely discount that people used to enjoy taking care of their homes and families, and cooking and eating. The idea that many hours of each day should be spent staring at Netflix and Instagram for “pleasure” is a category error.

More than half of U.S. adults could be candidates for Ozempic

More than half of all American adults, almost 137 million people, could be candidates for the blockbuster GLP-1 drug semaglutide, a new analysis finds. Sold as Ozempic for treating diabetes and Wegovy to spur weight loss, the medication could be indicated for those two purposes or to help prevent heart disease, explained a team led by Dr. Dhruv Kazi, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Americans are now paying 13.8 billion dollars for drugs that are simply bulimia in a tube. Use your finger instead, and you’ll have more dough for donuts.

Half of Young Norwegians Say Online Piracy Is an Acceptable Way to Save Money

A new survey from Norway reveals that 50% of young people under 30 believe that pirating content is an acceptable way to save money. The survey, conducted by Ipsos, highlights that the high cost of streaming services is a key driver behind this attitude. Links between piracy and organized crime or malware, appear to be of less concern.

Half say it’s acceptable, the other half are lying.

This fall, provinces from coast to coast confidently announced that they were banning phones in the classroom. It’s not going well.

Another student at Cathedral came to the same conclusion last school year, in Grade 9. She says that, during group projects, classmates failed to pull their weight because they spent all their time on their phones. She gets distracted as well, and at 15 years old experiences phone-induced eye and back pain from constant hunching and neck-craning. Most days she uses Instagram for at least four hours and TikTok for another two, plus a little time on Snapchat. That’s still less than most of her friends. “The way I see people using their phones in school, on the bus, when they go out, it’s alarming,” she says. “People don’t communicate.”

Yes, but how people spent their time in the 1930s made for a miserable hellscape.

Some people take up knitting in retirement. Annie the Hot Rod Granny has discovered the joys of burning rubber

Koehler emailed us out of the blue over the weekend with an irresistible opening line: “I think you might like to see me doing static burnouts in my Caddy.” She elaborated further by saying she has eight grandkids and while she’s relatively new to the car hobby, she’s “hooked” after winning a few burnout contests. What’s more, she asked us for a hand: “I am looking for more contests. If you know of any, please let me know. I can do rolling burnouts but prefer the standing still ones. I think the radical, moving ones might be too hard on my old Caddy.

A ’57 Caddy prolly weighs close to 5,000 pounds. You can burn rubber down to the rims just trying to get it to move.

The scary sound of Aztec skull whistles

Psychoacoustic and archeoacoustic nature of ancient Aztec skull whistles

Interestingly, “Aztec Skull Whistles” is the name of my Bad Company tribute band. But I digress.

Well this is it boys. I was just informed from my boss and HR that my entire profession is being automated away

For context I work production in local news. Recently there’s been developments in AI driven systems that can do 100% of the production side of things which is, direct, audio operate, and graphic operate -all of those jobs are all now gone in one swoop. This has apparently been developed by the company Q ai….

…There are people I work with in their 50’s, single, no college education, no family, and no other place to land a job once this kicks in. I have no idea what’s going to happen to them. This is it guys. This is what our future with AI looks like. This isn’t creating any new jobs this is knocking out entire industry level jobs without replacing them.

I guess AI tools can now decide who is Hitler without any human intervention needed.

An intact 80-million-year-old fossil is the ‘Rosetta Stone’ that promises to decipher bird evolution

In the evolutionary history of birds, there is a 70-million-year gap filled with questions. During this time, all the modern bird groups we know today emerged, but science has yet to fully explain how the transition from the ancient, more dinosaur-like birds to modern birds occurred. Now, an analysis of a fossil with an unprecedented degree of preservation — belonging to a previously unknown bird species that lived in what is now Brazil 80 million years ago — could help illuminate how this process occurred. The discovery is being hailed as a “Rosetta Stone” for the study of bird evolution, as it may unlock many of the mysteries surrounding their evolution.

They probably went extinct while flying around looking for a car to poop on.