Favorites March 7th 2024
This graph is quite striking, although it's probably over-counting a bit, because the forms we use to handle these cases aren't clear enough about what they're asking.
TikTok is pushing their users to contact their representatives to oppose legislation aimed to stop TikTok from influencing US politics.The bill to force ByteDance to divest TikTok passed it's comittee unanimously, so this strategy appears to have backfired. Overall, it seems bad to have a major media platform in the US that considers it optional to follow US law, not to mention the propoganda angle. Trump, as always, can be depended on to be very pliable with campaign contributions, and is suddenly in favor of Chinese ownership of TikTok, his beliefs are so easily changed.
I had read the 'wet putty' article when it first came out, but I still enjoyed Hank's video.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Biden says the key to his marriage is 'good sex' (src)(cached)
– Russian FSB has been attempting to foment anti-semitism in Paris (src)(cached)
– Nate Silver calls Gemini the worst launch by a major corporation since New Coke. (src)(cached)
– A sting operation in the UK with a bait bike lead to a 90% reduction in bike theft (src)(cached)
– Big drop in driverless cars blocking emergency vehicles, although I'm not sure if Cruise was operating more cars in SF than Waymo, is this just a matter of fewer AVs out there? (src)
– Road and Track hired Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell to cover an F1 race. The editor in chief pulled the story a few hours after it was published, many enjoyed it, here's an archived version, it's quite long. But Wagner is quite pleased to have been called a 'socialist writer' by WaPo. (src)
– "people who are the worst at forming wise and coherent political opinions (swing voters) are the most electorally powerful group", advantage of parliamentary systems is that this can be done between politicians after the election. (src)(cached)
– Microplastics present in 100% of placental samples, seems bad. (src)(cached)
– Monthly jobs growth by president, even when you separate out the pandemic, is quite something. (src)(cached)
– NYC has removed phones in schools, they're showing very good results, this seems like a pretty obvious (src)(cached)
– Does Musk really believe the insane stuff he's saying, or is he just lying, it really is hard to say. I can’t believe that he is unclear how statistical sampling works. (src)(cached)
– While we continue to run into 'environmental' review roadblocks for building housing, the FCC has absolutely steamrolled NIMBYs opposed to cell towers. We need some of that over on the housing side. Electrical transmission too ideally. (src)(cached)
– The only way to get people to favor police and prison reform is for there to be low crime. (src)(cached)