Chill Links

Why Are Some Octopuses So Smart? The Answer Might Lie in a Never-Before-Seen Mutation That Helps Them Accurately Build Proteins.

World’s oceans hit highest temperature on record as El Niño grows.

The hidden crisis of overqualified Americans who can’t get jobs.

US set for largest mass visa revocation in history targeting up to 200,000 foreigners, officials say.

Tiny Air-To-Air Missile In Development For Stealthy U.S. Navy Combat Aircraft.

Misogynistic views are biggest red flag for violent extremism, report finds.

Did climate change cause this heat wave? Most likely, and here’s why.

With a Heart for Any Fate: Early Notes from the Oregon Trail.

The kill switch for harmful genes.

Artists Want to Prove Their Work Was Stolen by AI. A New Study Says That’s Impossible. “Stolen.” Fucking clownish.

US Army attack helicopters crashing at historically high rate amid mechanical issues.

So much makes sense in light of the Tocqueville Effect. As problems get smaller, the attention given to them must grow.

Brougham

Chill Cool

Very cool! But deleting the emissions stuff wouldn’t get you much. The problems are more related to the low compression ratio, very conservative cam and restrictive exhaust. Fixing those is where the real gains would come from with a car like that. Could get it from the anemic 190HP of its era (assuming it’s not the new-for-1975 Bendix EFI version that gave you 215HP) to maybe 250HP or so without risking anything. But it’s gonna reduce that glorious 11mpg you’d get even more, to probably around 9mpg or so.

I’d never want to own it, but I love that 5,300 pound absurd car.

Chill Links

Iran-linked hackers behind cyber attack that shut down power plant, reports say.

Forsaking Industrialism: The Most Expensive Thing You Didn’t Buy.

I spent 4 months and $2000 making myself a sweater from scratch, starting with shearing a sheep.

NASA’s New Space Telescope Is Poised to Discover Hidden Facets of the Universe.

Ads and tracking infiltrated TVs. Now they’re coming for monitors. Very evil.

Employers Are Hiring Recent Grads and Then Saying “Oops, Never Mind”.

Just as the world appears to be losing its appetite for books, William T. Vollmann pens a 3,000‑page novel.

Recuerda el verano de 1936.

Lab leaks are not unusua.

Microsoft Paint and Photos Embed Server-Issued GUIDs as Invisible Watermarks in Locally-Generated Images. Evil.

How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs.

Failing Acad

Chill Clowns

It’s an extremely bad path that academia is following of evaluating the validity of truth claims based solely on who makes the claim.

If they think that’s going to go well for them…well, I guess delusions are all many of us have left these days. The whole edifice probably needs to be brought down and replaced with something less insular and better-prepared to deal with the world as is.

Definitely French

Chill Amusing, Annoying

As someone who has learned significant amounts of both languages, French is far easier. The grammar of French is simpler to handle. It’s more similar to English and just in general faster to learn. Meanwhile, German has grammatical gender plus a case system. This alone makes it 2-3x as complex. And then the travesties it commits on verbs and word order…best not speak of it.

Also, the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute rates French as easier. And that’s pretty authoritative.

Fit Cheat

Chill Annoying, Clowns

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@Noahpinion) / X

So-called pickup artists were hated because their techniques and training worked, not because they were misogynists. Women viewed the movement as unauthorized and undesirable men getting an unfair advantage, similar to how many liberals see working out and staying fit as cheating. It’s the same mindset. Idiotic, yes, but I’m just describing, not condoning.

Buffeting

Chill Political Economy

I think something both rightists and leftists miss about CEOs is that a high-quality CEO unless they are truly exceptional like Jobs doesn’t help all that much, but a low-quality CEO is corporate suicide.

So (and empirical studies demonstrate this) avoiding having a terrible CEO is a lot more important for long-term company health than having someone really amazing.