[The 49-sheet manuscript is] printed on maguey paper, a type made from pounded agave plants that is so rare that only 10 sheets were known to exist: four at the Library of Congress and six at the National Library of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.
The Newberry Library in question is not in Newberry, it's in Chicago.
The F-18 is known to cost somewhere between $50 million and $120 million when bought new. Used F-18 models will cost significantly less, although it will be hard to find one below the price of $20 million.]
No word about the missile,
The F-18 aircraft carries a two-person crew. Both bailed out safely, one incurring "minor injuries."
The cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason had to cancel a concert in Toronto last week after an airline refused to let him board with his instrument, even though he had bought a ticket for it.And no, it wasn't TSA.
“Rather than have us reprint everything, I just would like to correct the description,” she said.
In the Live Free or Die state it's been a confounding year.
To friends, Broccoli has characterized her thoughts on Amazon this way: “These people are f— idiots.”
Bond, this WSJ story claims, has dodged more than 4,000 bullets so far…
“We have these industry, military, law enforcement professionals that are directly conflicting the message that is coming from the White House,” [a New Jersey assemblywoman named Dawn Fantasia] says. Speaking of Rep. Pallone’s comments after being briefed, Fantasia said: “Now, are we in a situation that our [federal] elected officials are in the know but the state of New Jersey is still not in the know? I mean, this is getting silly.”
Getting silly, that is.
And so, since everyone's entitled (I think it's in the Constitution somewhere) to have an opinion, I'm going with mine.
It's somebody (or somebodies) training an AI, much like everyone from Tesla and Google to Uber and Lyft are training automobiles.
Most likely it's a U.S. government entity and nobody's talking about it because…wait for it…it's a secret.
Now we can talk about the wisdom of secrets.
The worries [about tariff threats] are concentrated among heads of larger companies, according to the survey: 13% of those CEOs thought tariffs would have a positive effect on their businesses, compared with 80% of CEOs of the smaller companies surveyed.Well, well.
Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Members of an Indian martial arts collective broke a bizarre Guinness World Record: Most slices of a cucumber held in a person's mouth with a chainsaw while blindfolded in one minute.First we had kids writing and drinking sake while swimming in armor; then the World Excel Championship; and now seeing how close you can get to a guy's nose with a chainsaw. Wearing a blindfold.
Dec. 16 (UPI) -- A municipality in the Philippines broke a Guinness World Record by gathering more than 2,000 people dressed as angels.
At a press briefing last week Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon, said that the reported objects were not drones operated by the U.S. military and that officials did not believe they were “coming from a foreign entity or adversary.”
Which was immediately interpreted on X(Twitter), of course, as they're from outer space.
But no. It's just Santa's elves, a little bit behind schedule this year on checking it twice. Which, nevertheless, absolutely needs to be done before Christmas.
Especially in New Jersey.
If you were home in New England [yesterday], forced to watch Patriots-Cardinals ahead of the true Game of the Week, too bad. Instead of a possible prelude to this year’s Super Bowl, you were hostage to the Dumpster Fire In The Desert.
-Boston Globe
Imagine.
[In the true Game of the Week the Bills beat the Lions 48-42. As if you didn't already know.]
Brooklyn Seltzer Museum
474 Hemlock St, Brooklyn
An interactive museum and factory tour run in partnership with the city’s oldest seltzer works, a family business now in its fourth generation. The museum, inside Brooklyn Seltzer Boys’ active factory, is “dedicated to preserving and promoting the effervescent history of seltzer water,” and celebrates “the manufacturing of seltzer, the science of seltzer, and seltzer as a cultural force in New York City and the world beyond.”
Not to mention, guests can spritz each other with seltzer.
Michael Jarman defeated 11 other finalists, including three-time world champion Andrew "The Annihilator" Ngai of Australia, at the spreadsheet-managing sport and took home a $5,000 prize and the wrestling-style championship belt.
This spirited gathering is part of a massive global phenomenon, with parallel events unfolding in cities spanning multiple continents.
In Australia, Adelaide hosted its own congregation of Santas, while across North America, celebrations stretched from Vancouver to Fort Lauderdale. Major metropolitan areas including London, Phoenix, San Francisco, Dallas, and Los Angeles joined the festivities, each putting their local spin on the holiday tradition.
…put out some black coffee and a couple of asprin instead.
“Even if you buy all female chicks, they don’t sex them very well, so you’re going to get one or two roosters,” Leonard said. “One more thing, female chickens can decide to crow.”
And it's a new, new world.
In Louisa, an unbearable social crisis has become the main source of economic opportunity.
The story's from this morning's New York Times: It's nothing new.
In 2009 Canadian author Naomi Klein published The Shock Doctrine, describing a cycle of breaking things to make a whole lot of money putting them back together again. It's a seminal read.
(And, speaking of books, it's a continuation of the story told by Barbara Kingsolver in her prize-winning novel, Demon Copperhead.)
They showed off the skill during a ceremony to dedicate the results of their swimming practice to the spirit of their previous swimming masters. The swimmers, who had rehearsed since July, followed the ritual by taking turns performing Japanese calligraphy or drinking sake* while swimming.
They also swam in samurai armor and helmets that weighed more than 10 kilograms in total and introduced a number of different swimming styles to the audience, who applauded enthusiastically.
[Emphasis mine.]
{H/T Shawn.]
*For our international readers: I don't know what the rule is where you live but in the U.S. one must be 18 to drink. Legally, that is.
Homo sapiens inherited Neanderthal genes related to skin pigmentation, metabolism and immune functions that likely helped members of our species who left Africa for Eurasia adapt to a new continent.
Neanderthals just keep coming back into fashion, and in a good way.
And they really got around.
Neanderthal-derived DNA is highest in East Asians, intermediate in Europeans, and lower in Southeast Asians.[5] According to some research, it is also lower in Melanesians and Polynesians compared to both East Asians and Europeans.[5]However, other research finds higher Neanderthal admixture in Melanesians, as well as in Native Americans, than in Europeans (though not higher than in East Asians).[6]
[Emphasis mine.]
"I personally conducted research on the use of drones to do illicit contraband drops into prisons which were always conducted at night, and occasionally included multiple drones," she said. "So, it is also very possible that all this activity is tied to drugs or some other contraband."Naww.
Retailers are offering products in colors called “Bone,” “Moss,” “Haze,” “Dusk,” “Fawn,” “Laurel Clay,” “Dune,” and “Fog.”Pantone, called the Grand Poobah of color here, has named Mocha Mousse Color of the Year.
The question (literally):
There was a novel about soldiers at a Dallas Cowboys football game. It was called Billy something, last something. What was the actual title of the book?
The answer:
The novel you are referring to is Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. It tells the story of a group of soldiers, including the protagonist Billy Lynn, who are celebrated as heroes after a firefight in Iraq and attend a Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day football game as part of a victory tour. The narrative explores themes of war, celebrity, and the disconnect between soldiers’ experiences and public perception
[Including links to a half-dozen web pages with more information about the book.]
Pretty impressive, IMO.
The AI is in a search engine called Perplexity (Pro). I'm not selling it…I may not even be buying it. But I've somehow scored a free trial and I'm seeing what it will do.
Raleigh resident Alphonzo Oates told North Carolina Education Lottery officials he didn't realize he was actually playing when he scored the top-level "Epic Jackpot" in the Wheel of Bonuses online game.
And just in time for the holidays.
To increase the chance that the robot rodent was socially accepted, the researchers also coated it in rat urine.
Given the seasonal flurry of fragrance commercials presently on TV, we came perilously close to the word, gifting.
That’s according to experts who warn against listening to music with a high rate of beats per minute, or BPMs, while headed over the river and through the woods this holiday season.
And there are at least nine other tunes equally bad (list enclosed).
A new set of Dietary Guidelines must be produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Human Health Services (HHS) every five years at least, according to a law from 1990.
[Emphisis mine.]
Dispiriting, perhaps.The emphasis on length over complexity reflects decades of research showing longer passwords are significantly harder to crack. “A truly randomly chosen 24-character password is not going to be broken,” says Stuart Schechter, an associate at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “That’s long enough that it’s not likely to be broken in the lifespan of the universe.”
But better yet, passkeys.
The pie heist is the latest theft of artisanal edibles to rock the U.K. food trade. In October, nearly 1,000 wheels of cloth-wrapped artisanal cheddar weighing 22 metric tons (48,488 pounds) and valued at 300,000 pounds ($390,000) were swiped from London’s Neal’s Yard Dairy by a con artist posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer.
Turkey and butternut squash pies, in case you're wondering. Or else a good argument for the Oxford comma.
“Live free or die, unless you’re hanging artwork,” said Young, referring to the state motto.
Is bakery-themed art a sign?
Over two nights in May, a total of up to 32 people will learn the art of gladiator fighting at the ancient arena, taught by Roman history buffs who specialize in historical re-enactments.
So how bad can it be, Romans?
[The gladiators didn't use hand grenades, did they?]
Airbnb is involved in this caper. Airbnb is also running a TV commercial currently claiming you won't get a Christmas present if you stay in a hotel. Something about no chimney for Santa (all Airbnbs are of course suitably equipped) and malfunctioning keycards (?).
Airbnb said its creative team hand-picked every detail on Santa Claus, from the buckle on his shoes to his glasses…
America’s wealthiest people have urged each other to give away more of their money since at least 1889.
…and we are now free to worry about more important things.
US District Court Judge Indira Talwani determined this fall that a Rockland piano store owner does not have rights to the glitzy piano and it does, in fact, belong to the charitable arm of a guitar company that sued him in 2019, according to court documents.
The 10,000-square-foot abode worth approximately $2.8 million had been hosting close to 25 people for the holiday when the blaze occurred, the outlet reported.
More than two feet of snow blanketed western New York and Pennsylvania on Saturday, with some parts getting more than three feet, as a lake-effect snowstorm disrupted post-Thanksgiving travel and stranded dozens of vehicles on highways. The storm threatened to bring up to six feet of snow to some areas by Tuesday morning.
What's the point of being Great if you can't do Great things?
[When the NYTimes says Northeast it generally means upstate New York. The easter (but not really norther) Northeast I live in is not expecting snow until the middle of the week — an then, not so much. It is, however, December.]
This is the first time they've donned the bizarre headgear since the summer of 1987, when a trendsetting female West Coast orca kickstarted the behavior for no apparent reason.
No, wait…
No, just…
Must be something.
“Google had this seemingly insurmountable position in search, until AI came around, and now AI is to search what e-commerce was to Walmart,” says Melissa Schilling, a professor of management at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
"With globalism collapsing under its own contradictions, all serious politics is now populist in one way or another."Either way…
“They were telling me that a squirrel for dinner did not split very far between three people,” Keim recalled. “At that moment, I thought ... ‘I’m going to airdrop them a turkey.’”
Squirrel?
The former and incoming president has combined television personalities, former Democrats, a wrestling executive and traditional elected Republicans into a mix that makes clear his intentions to impose tariffs on imported goods and crack down on illegal immigration but leaves open a range of possibilities on other policy pursuits.
…this is a good thing?
The volume of secondhand clothing sent to Africa has led to complaints of the continent being used as a dumping ground. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on such imports in defiance of U.S. pressure, citing concerns the West’s refuse undermined efforts to strengthen the domestic textile industry
We're going to be hearing a lot about them in months to come.
Tariffs, according to this Wikipedia article about the history of tariffs in the U.S., "allow for import substitution industrialization (industrialization of a nation by replacing imports with domestic production) by acting as a protective barrier around infant industries."
It may seem incongruous to consider U.S. industries infant, but in some cases they definitely need to be reborn.
Campbell’s is far from the first to attempt such as makeover. From Dunkin’ to KFC, a handful of other food companies have also rebranded themselves over the years
As far as we can tell there is no truth to the rumor that U.S. Steel will be calling itself U.S. (But Nippon seems to be in the running.)
…which, as I'm looking at it right now is just a live picture of an empty bird nest…but who knows what might be going on there when you look?
Webcams are a much under-appreciated feature of the internet. Here, for example, you can keep an eye on the front gate of Chicago's Wrigley Field, live, and in HD.
There’s little Western research on the risks and efficacy of the oil, but an article published in 2020 in an Azerbaijani science journal reported that the oil has been found to work as an antiseptic and to have a “peculiar hormone-like effect on the function of sex hormones.”
Maybe, if you put it that way. But…ick.
A sale of Chrome “will permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet,” Justice Department lawyers argued in their filing.Or…crazy idea here…a person could google the best alternatives to Google search and find stuff like this.
Whatever the future, the decentralized nature of some clean energies, in particular wind and solar, has allowed Ukraine to quickly restore power in ways that would be impossible with Ukraine’s more traditional energy sources, such as coal-fired power plants.
…and that wind turbine on the back 40 turn out to be a national security asset in more ways than one.
“This sort of information sharing capacity on this scale across all these agencies. tapping into everything from local utility records and DMV records to school records has the potential to be deployed in any number of chilling scenarios.”
From Wired, an explanation of how fusion centers, established by the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 to counter terrorism, already give ICE access to local data from schools and abortion clinics, license plate location data, databases of photos, and a lot more.
Ben Franklin famously said “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
And here we go. Again.
“It’s a complicated picture,” said Lauren Fry, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.
One complication (not suggested in the photo here) is that Lake Michigan's not just Chicago — it's also a whole lot of Wisconsin and Michigan. Another is, it's a Great Lake that actually has sandy beaches, unlike some others I could name.
A bigger beach is good.
He likes to talk about vitamins and has been known to post videos of himself lifting weights, shirtless. He has also been linked to a lot of dead animals, so the question seems like fair game, so to speak.NYTimes ("All the News That's Fit to Print,' even just barely) fearlessly investigates ("conversations with people familiar with his eating habits") Kennedy's plate.
Also from this morning's Times…
How Do I Decide What Socks to Wear?Germans have long sat comfortably atop the world of competitive forklift driving, a point of national pride. There are songs, tattoos and fully functioning kid’s models dedicated to the humble industrial vehicle. The best drivers are treated like rockstars.
The scammers have found a particularly American security hole: our reliance on paper checks. On average, there were some 30 checks per person written in the U.S. in 2021, nearly twice as many as the French, the world’s second-biggest check users, according to the Federal Reserve. In many European countries, electronic payment networks have completely replaced paper checks.
Among the suspects: volatile organic compounds and substances not removed by wastewater treatment plants, such as pharmaceuticals.
Maybe there really is a silver lining in everything — unless you're a silver carp.
“I’m so flipping excited,” said Paul Preston, founder of New California State, which has declared all the counties outside of Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Sacramento as independent and named him governor pro tempore.
And welcome to "New Illinois."
“The idea that someplace in Illinois wants to kick out another place in Illinois should not be on the ballot,” said Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a news briefing before the election.History and, well, the Constitution seem to agree.
“What you buy when you buy Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’ is not the banana itself, but a certificate of authenticity that grants the owner the permission and authority to reproduce this banana and duct tape on their wall as an original artwork by Maurizio Cattelan,” Galperin said.
Wait. Let's review.
You provide your own wall, your own tape, and your own banana, and then you pay $1 million for permission to tape the banana to the wall and call it art.
Of course after not-many-days the banana will turn to mush and then do you have to pay another million to tape another banana to the wall? Do you have to use the same tape? Can you use the same wall?
Can you still call it art?
What about, say, a grapefruit?
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled plans to triple the nation’s nuclear power supply by midcentury. While support for most clean energy projects is threatened by Republican control of Washington, this one might stick. A Pew Research poll from August shows Republicans are more likely than Democrats to favor expanding nuclear power generation.
Burgeoning demand for electricity to power computer centers, the automotive fleet, other endeavors make nuclear power a "green" necessity.
Currently, Illinois produces substantially more nuclear power than any other U.S. state.
Soon it will be impossible for anyone to escape. Amazon is programming its Alexa devices to answer queries in the voice of Elphaba or Glinda. The film’s costume designer created a line of cardigans, skirts and other apparel for Target, which has already seen increased foot traffic in stores since some merchandise hit shelves. The Green Elixir, a combination of cold brew, peppermint syrup, matcha cream cold foam and candy sprinkles, is one of two new Starbucks drinks themed to the movie’s release—a first for the chain.As the definition of "just short" becomes vanishing small.
To manage the overwhelming number of tourists visiting the fountain, Rome City officials are devising a plan to block off the area around the fountain. Visitors will be required to book online and then pay a fee of 2 euros ($2.20) to get in. Once inside, they will have 30 minutes to enjoy the fountain.In normal times, when the wishes are presumably real, the fountain nets an estimated 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million) per year.
Thirty years ago, Americans with a college degree accounted for roughly 20% of the population and held the same percentage of household wealth as those without a degree, according to the census and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Today, Americans with a college degree account for 38% of the population and 73% of household wealth.Everywhere: What went wrong?
"For the purposes of the record, a paper rocket is defined as a toy made entirely of paper that fits onto a straw, and when the straw is blown through, the rocket flies into the air," the science center said in a news release.
It's Saturday the 16th. Hustle on down to Orlando. Don't forget the straw.
Gaetz’s appointment has raised concerns among conservative legal scholars and former White House officials.
Didn't take much I for that.
By the way, DNI (Director of National Intelligence) oversees the activities of 18 US intelligence agencies. Here they are.
Over the past four years, illegal miners have built an underground network so vast that Zijin engineers said the mountain has started to resemble Swiss cheese, crisscrossed with makeshift passageways and tunnels leading from an estimated 380 aboveground entryways. The Gulf Clan provides bunks, kitchens, bathrooms and security
…until your kid goes to Harvard ($50,000+/yr) to start shelling out in Massachusetts.
A child care center in Massachusetts costs an average of $19,961 annually for a toddler, and family- or home-based care costs $13,344, according to a 2023 report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Both were the highest of any state in the US.Sez this story in the Boston Globe.
There are now more deer in England than at any other time in the last 1,000 years, according to the Forestry Commission, the government department looking after England’s public woodland.[The outlaw Robin Hood and his men lived in Sherwood Forest. They had no other means of getting food, and so they illegally poached the king’s deer. The hunting skill of Robin Hood and his band, however, enabled them to poach deer without being apprehended. – encyclopedia.com]
"When we kept seeing social media posts about the similarity between frying chicken and rain, we decided to make the absolute best version of that audio" said Eric Pallotta, CMO at Hatch.
And so the idea was hatched (get it?)
Hatch is the company that makes the fairly pricey gadget that plays the sound, and if you play it all night you will wake up starving in the morning. At least I would.
[H/T Lynn C Dot]
Apparently, the problem was that certain packages listed cream as an ingredient but did not also have the required allergy statement "contains milk" visible on the label.
[Emphasis mine.]
Butter is made from cream is made from…
Come to think of it, I just bought some milk from Walgreens and it doesn't say "contains milk" either.
[The recall was ordered by the FDA. Let's just hope those guys who want to disband federal agencies don't find out.]
Many sites favor Vice President-elect JD Vance—Bookies.com oddsmaker Adam Thompson gives Vance a 40 percent chance of being elected in four years. According to SportsBettingDime's William Hill, Vance has a 25 percent chance.
No odds posted on never having to have another one.
Otherwise, of course, the state is still reliably blue — although a bit unsettled this morning, it seems:
A new peer-reviewed study led by Sydney-based researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta has found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe.
Not to mention all the monkeys are working for AI startups now. (Wait, you thought it was computers writing all that stuff?)
“Moo Deng? Who deng?” the Scottish zoo playfully posted Monday on the social media platform X as it introduced its infant hippo to the world.
For the past two years, battle lines have been drawn in this coastal town of some 13,000 people. In one camp is a family-owned business—Wiggly Bridge Distillery—which wants to age its whiskey for longer in hopes of improving its flavor. In the other are hundreds of residents worried about the implications of whiskey fungus, in which ethanol vapors turbocharge a species of fungus called Baudoinia, leaving black stains on buildings and plants.
Wiggly Bridge. Really.
Why is this concerning? Generation Z are AI power users, with up to 75 percent using the technology to plan meals, create workouts, and assist with job applications. They already use AI daily to help them make decisions, so it is not difficult to assume they could use these platforms to decide how to voteSeventy-five percent? Planning meals?
Ahead of the 1948 election, Democratic president Truman, who had stepped up from vice-president after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, was not expected to remain in office. Opinion polls unanimously favored New York governor Dewey, the Republican nominee, to beat his less charismatic opponent. Per the Associated Press, indeed, Dewey was forecast to prevail over Truman by a margin of between five and 15 percentage points.
Truman, of course, won.
Except in Chicago, where the Trib famously jumped the gun and got it wrong.
When butter cooks long enough for its dairy solids to separate and darken from gold to copper, it develops a savory nuttiness. …The scent is as warming as a wood fire and lingers nearly as long.
Me, I could settle for something a little less rhapsodic (I know where I can pick up some leftover Halloween stuff, cheap) but baking cookies does sound like a good way to ease the pain of it all.
“I think every witch in the world has done magic against Donald Trump, but you cannot fight something if you don’t know what it is,” she said. “When I think of him, I think of that scene in ‘Men in Black’ where this robot human dies and they find a tiny alien inside controlling him.
I've heard some pretty scary stuff about Halloween but this…
“If the polls are off this year, chances are they’re going to be off in a similar direction, at least that’s what we saw in 2016 and 2020. Polls really had the same weakness. So we shouldn’t have a false hope that averaging is going to miraculously fix it"…
…“But it’s not the case that like, ‘Oh, we’ve figured out the silver bullet. Everybody’s fixed it, and we’re good to go.’ Instead, you have pollsters trying an array of different fixes, and we’re hopeful that in the aggregate, that will result in greater accuracy.”
Here's an idea: Let's just count the votes and find out.
Since the war between Hamas and Israel began last year, U.S. ships have launched more than $1.8 billion worth of interceptors to stop Iran and its proxies from attacking Israel and ships traveling through the Red Sea, according to the Navy.
And when does a bunch of little wars become a big one?
{"Little Wars," by the way, is the title of a book by H.G. Wells that set forth the rules for war games still widely played today. The author described it as being "for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books." The book is available from gutenberg.org.]
Tensions are rising in society over how some prominent figures, including state prosecutors, evade the draft through medical exemptions, leading President Volodymyr Zelensky’s attorney general to resign last week.
Russia has about four times the population of Ukraine, this WSJ article notes, and is known to be deploying troops from North Korea as well. That's a distinct advantage in a war of attrition.
There's a limit to how far this can go. Or should.
“If the deal seems too gouda to be true, it probably is! Let’s find these cheese stealers,” Oliver wrote.
For more cheese news, courtesy of jasperfforde.com, click here.
You likely have never heard of Babel Street or Location X, but chances are good that they know a lot about you and anyone else you know who keeps a phone nearby around the clock.
Sometimes its useful for you — like when making a 911 call, for example, or plotting a route on a map.
Other times it's just useful for them,
"If you think you’re going to open a witch shop in Salem and sell only to witches, you’ll be out of business quickly.”…when tourists, mostly muggles, mob Salem, MA.
Financial-technology firms…tend to have in-depth data on your transactions and shopping habits. Banks typically don’t, though they can piece together your financial life across products like credit cards, checking accounts and mortgages. Federal law allows all of them to share vast amounts of customer data with outside parties for marketing, as long as they disclose the practice and give customers the ability to opt out.*
According to Forbes magazine, 17 of the 20 highest paying occupations in the U.S. are medical.
The three exceptions are athletes (9), chief executives (15), and airline pilots (17).
“We think there’s $30 billion in remodeling spending just sitting on the sidelines today, waiting to be spent,” said Matthew Saunders, senior vice president of building products research at John Burns.
Or sell construction supplies?
[Someone once said a successful society needs both good philosophers and good plumbers, or neither their theories nor their pipes will hold water.]
Mr. Gates’s donation went specifically to Future Forward’s nonprofit arm, Future Forward USA Action, which as a 501(c)(4) “dark money” organization does not disclose its donors, according to the people briefed. So any contribution by Mr. Gates will never appear on any public filing.“I support candidates who demonstrate a clear commitment to improving health care, reducing poverty and fighting climate change in the U.S. and around the world,” [Gates] told The New York Times.
A CBP spokesperson acknowledged that the Remote Video Surveillance Systems used along the border are outdated, requiring significant maintenance and upgrades after more than 15 years of use. The systems, which the agency is working to replace, are also expensive to operate because they require manpower to monitor the images.
Ooops.
Ukraine drones bombed four different distilleries in Russia early Tuesday, in what has been reported by a Telegram outlet as the largest attack on alcohol production lines that are now potentially being used to fuel Moscow's war effort."Alcohol factories in Russia are being used to make fuel for military needs…as well as for the production of alcohol," Newsweek redundantly reports.
It's about spltting them up into ever more specific groups.
Both campaigns are digging through troves of data to find these crucial Americans. They both think many are younger, Black or Latino. The Harris team is also eyeing white, college-educated women.
(Meanwhile, at least as far as race is concerned, real people are becoming more "mixed".)
If a Waffle House stays open in town, even in a limited capacity, neighbors are reassured that the coming storm is unlikely to cause devastation. A closed location of the dependable diner chain has come to indicate impending disaster.
The rookies’ device was developed in the backyard of one of the student’s parents, using an old car speaker.
Apparently the device works in the parents' living room but maybe not so well in the field…yet.
Still, the invention was worth a $270,000 prize, which Boeing will probably not miss…yet.
A couple of other big defense industry players were also runners-up.
"It was a normal day, just like any other. I was picking up groceries at Jewel and on my way out the door, I decided to buy a lottery ticket," the man said.
For those not conversant in Illinoisan, Jewel is the grocery store.
"Today marks a significant step on the path towards returning humans to the surface of the moon," Russell Ralston, executive vice president of extravehicular activity at Axiom, told reporters.…I guess it's not. All they need now is one of those rocket things.
The agents searched her heavy duffle bag and found 29 live eastern box turtles individually wrapped in socks.
No word on what kind of socks.
(Eastern box turtles apparently sell for up to $1,000 each in China.)
When I ask whether we should be afraid that AIs will soon grow so powerful that they pose a hazard to us, he quips: “You’re going to have to pardon my French, but that’s complete B.S.”
…the sci-fi is still fi.
Way back in the 1970s there was a flurry of excitement for something called expert systems. It was an attempt to make a database of questions and answers so that, for example, a washing machine repairman who encountered a problem on the job could describe that problem to a computer and get advice on fixing it.
I was doing some work for an office machine manufacturer at the time. They thought it would revolutionize their repair service. It didn't. They gave up. Everybody else gave up too.
Today's AI is basically the same thing but with an order of magnitude more answers. And not all of them, by any measure, from experts. It seems to work a little better. But take over the world?
Bet on the cat.
The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.
And more.
Maybe just some crazy hobbyist, ya think?Last month alone, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said a Chinese state-linked firm hacked 260,000 internet-connected devices, including cameras and routers, in the U.S., Britain, France, Romania and elsewhere. A Congressional probe said Chinese cargo cranes used at U.S. seaports had embedded technology that could allow Beijing to secretly control them. The U.S. government alleged that a former top aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was a Chinese agent.
But maybe it shouldn't. Happen. Or seem.
The sport’s origin story isn’t exactly politically correct.
The outcome of the election could have profound consequences for both conflicts given the broad disagreements between Trump and Harris on how they should be resolved.
CBS said the need to make the “60 Minutes” interview segment concise prompted the editing. The full interview with Harris took 45 minutes, and it was fit into a 20-minute slot on the broadcast.
OK so far, if "concise" means "short." But neither of Harris's two answers presented by CBS was especially concise if concise means, well, concise, in my redoubtable opinion. They kinda blew this one.
But.
We all know that newspaper stories are edited, right? Edited for clarity, edited for available space, blah blah. TV news stores are edited too, for much the same reasons. I've participated in doing that myself from both sides of the camera.
There's something about TV and actually seeing people talking that makes a story seem more real than the same story in print. But it's not. Unless it's live. And live means televised directly as it happens. (And there's still some wizardry to contend with, but it's managable.)
If it's live, it's real. If it's not, it's Memorex.*
If wind can be owned, it can also be stolen. Wind theft occurs when one entity, typically a nation, builds a wind farm close to and upwind of an existing wind farm. Those new turbines, especially when built offshore, can slow wind speeds and decrease power generation at the old turbines.Also if wind can be owned…I'm just wondering here…can the owner of such wind be sued for damages if the wind gets out of hand?
Two decades, hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of cameras later, an Illinois Answers Project and Chicago Tribune investigation has found that reality has fallen far short of those early promises. While installing thousands of police surveillance cameras has undoubtedly helped catch criminals and solve crimes, Chicago’s ever-growing system has yet to become the crime-fighting panacea Daley predicted.
Increasingly it appears surveillance technologies employed by law enforcement are not worth the price of the privacy they invade and the mistrust they breed.
…we really need to be doing something about this rickety electric grid.
PowerOutage.us reports, at the moment, 63,000 customers still without power in North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene and more than 3,000,000 in Florida due to Milton.
And wait…NOAA reports a strong solar radiation storm in progress now which may disrupt communications and the power grid. (Also possibly produce Northern Lights as far south as Alabama.)
By combining AI with smart eyeglasses and commonly used online databases, Harvard juniors AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio developed a fast, simple tool called I-XRAY that could potentially allow law enforcement agents, cyber criminals, or just a guy at the bar to obtain anybody’s vital information in just over a minute by capturing an image of their face.
…no privacy any more.
Or…packing a gun is OK but leave your glasses at the door.
Policies in hurricane-prone areas are now more likely to have higher deductibles for wind damage, reduced payouts for older roofs, limits on interior water damage and exclusions for damage from wind-driven rain, according to insurance agents.
…or…wait.
Shock, alright. But this has been happening to hurricane insurance for a long time. It's just that hurricanes haven't been happening where this one happened.
And, by the way…where do you live?
(I've never been much of a prepper myself. I'm more of an I'll-get-througher. But sometimes…)
Also "the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct in the early 1980s, would take “just weeks” to revive, and the dodo bird, last seen in the 1600s, would require about one month, according to the bio boss.
“Not everybody gets 100 years on this earth, and when somebody does, and when they use that time to do so much good for so many people, it’s worth celebrating,” Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson and chair of The Carter Center governing board, said in an interview.
Trade groups representing hundreds of retailers and manufacturers from Walmart and Target to Caterpillar and General Motors have appealed to the Biden administration to intervene, warning a shutdown could hobble businesses and trigger renewed inflation during the busy holiday shopping season.
Also, it goes (apparently) without saying, a busy election season.
International Longshoremen’s Association wants a 77% pay increase.[Meta Platforms] announced deals with actors Awkwafina, John Cena, Judi Dench, Kristen Bell and Keegan-Michael Key on Wednesday that will allow it to use their voices in a new AI assistant. Meta is paying stars millions of dollars for use of their likeness, people familiar with the negotiations said.
Tech companies are already the biggest purchasers of wind and solar power, but it isn’t enough to meet the round-the-clock needs of data centers. A search on a generative AI platform like ChatGPT uses at least 10 times the energy as a standard one on Google. Emissions from the global build-out of data centers between now and 2030 could equal about 40% of the entire U.S. economy’s annual emissions, Morgan Stanley estimates.
Mr. Adams has exacted a high price from New York, in reputation and morale, for what seem to be petty acts of greed and disregard for democratic principles. It raises questions of how America’s largest, wealthiest city, with its reservoir of talent in everything from the arts to finance, ended up with someone accused of being an incessant petty grifter as mayor.
The same way the entire country, with its reservoir of talent…
Well, you can take it from there.
[Emphasis mine]
This flow of students to Southern colleges promises to impact the region’s economy for years. About two-thirds of college graduates go on to work in the same state where they graduate, according to a recent study from researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and others. The transplants are well-educated, motivated young workers at the least expensive points in their careers.
And it's warmer, too.
Officials have repeatedly said that what the private sector and government agencies know about Chinese intrusions into critical infrastructure is likely the “tip of the iceberg” because of how stealthy and sophisticated the hackers have been.
Somehow Sun Tzu comes to mind.
"Use tactics to overpower opponents by dispiriting them rather than by battling with them; take their cities by strategy. Destroy their countries artfully, do not die in protracted warfare."
Snudge
Definition: a miser; a sneaking fellow
Useful for describing: anyone you don’t like
Snudge is a lovely little word: it’s obscure, yet readily understood (few people will think you are complimenting them if you say ‘stop being such a snudge!’). It can also be used as a verb, with a further variety of uncomplimentary meanings: “to be stingy,” “to cheat, especially in competition,” and “to go about hunched over or as if in deep thought.”
Chris Chmiel, who owns and operates a small farm in Albany, Ohio, about 90 minutes southeast of Columbus, said he used to have several hundred pawpaw trees but is down to about 100 this year thanks to erratic weather patterns, including extremely wet weather some years followed by severe drought.
Can't say I've ever tasted one — North America's largest native fruit — although I do remember my mother talking about them. She spent a lot of her growing-up years in Indiana. I have, however, eaten mangos and bananas — haven't we all? — so I doubt I'm missing much.
“In extreme situations, a foreign adversary could shut down or take control of all their vehicles operating in the United States, all at the same time, causing crashes (or) blocking roads,” she said.
In the wake of the pagers and the walkie-talkies…as we were saying the other day…
