Not The News

[Cipheron]

Now this is not something you expect to read on a mainstream news site

https://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...c37d45a38a3c5d

Adult entertainment icon Logan Long, who racked up more than 1000 credits in only six years, has died at a Los Angeles hospital after a battle with pneumonia. He was 34 years old.

Among many other tributes from industry colleagues, this one stood out:

Fellow porn performer Buttplug Betty tweeted, “I’ve watched the video of Logan Long peeing on me 5 times today. I’m so f**king sad he was such a great guy.”

[Starker]

An write-up on the whole Amber Heard/Johnny Depp domestic abuse thing that was suggested to me by someone:

https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/...pp-amber-heard

It's a bit long, but well worth the read IMO. It doesn't so much go into the specifics or focus on the more headline grabbing aspects, but talks more about patterns of behaviour in general.

I kept hearing about it here and there, but didn't pay much attention to it at the time, cause I had it pegged as a typical Hollywood scandal and as such quite worthless in the backdrop to what's happening in Ukraine and US politics and in world in general. Looks like it has some pretty serious implications, though, as a continuation of the post-Gamergate cultural milieu we're in.

[lowenz]

Now this is not something you expect to read on a mainstream news site

https://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...c37d45a38a3c5d



Among many other tributes from industry colleagues, this one stood out:

You know, porn is that kind of circus where people to survive start to take it seriously and passioANALy. Like politics, it works because fantasy is forced on reality so deep that it changes your perception.

[Cipheron]

This on CNN, today

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/02/u...age/index.html

A workgroup developing a second-grade social studies curriculum for the Texas State Board of Education last month suggested using the term "involuntary relocation" to describe people who were sold into slavery, the board's chair said, amid national debates on the role of critical race theory in classrooms.

The proposed phrase was part of the initial draft outlining the second-grade standards from a review committee that included a section titled "Enslaved Peoples in America."
"The board -- with unanimous consent -- directed the work group to revisit that specific language," Keven Ellis, chair of the Texas State Board of Education, said in a statement.

In the meantime, the board will continue working on the curriculum later in the summer, according to Aicha Davis, a member of the State Board of Education who represents parts of Dallas and Tarrant counties.

"I have a hard time seeing how it is acceptable to substitute the phrase 'slave trade' for the phrase 'involuntary relocation,'" Davis told CNN.

They're backpedaling already, but it's definitely a bad looking move. Apparently this is the first time they were going to introduce slavery as a topic at 2nd-grade level, and they decided the word "slavery" needed to be censored.

The head of the committee has tried to downplay the situation by saying that the committee rejected the term "involuntary relocation" already after the backlash, but the fact is that they want to whitewash the word "slavery" from the discussion while also introducing it to younger students. That really does smack of trying to indoctrinate the students.

[lowenz]

"If the libtards can play with words to create their own neolanguage why can't we?????"

It's just political trolling.

[Starker]

Twitter megathread on scientific literacy, critical thinking, memes, cognitive biases, woke brands, polarization, conspiracy theories, and so on:

https://twitter.com/steak_umm/status...48473713680385

Some of it is pretty basic info, but nevertheless good stuff to remind yourself every now and again.

[Starker]

In other olds, Republicans in the US really want to their veterans to suffer, apparently:

[Dia]

I was appalled when that bill was shot down. I did some research and found an article that names the 41 assholes who voted against providing this special healthcare to our veterans. I was surprised that I was not surprised to find that one of those assholes is from my state; Ron Johnson (R-WI), who never even tries to disguise the fact that he's an asshole. Guess who I'll try to vote the hell out of office this year. Johnson and Vos and their cronies have got to go.

https://www.newsweek.com/41-senate-r...h-care-1728613

[Starker]

If you're interested about topics like the nature of consciousness, Decoding the Gurus just had an episode as part of their "right to reply" policy with one of the gurus they had dissected. First part of the show is more about things they talked about in the original dissection episode, such as consciousness and the purpose of evolution, and the latter part of the show is about Ukraine and geopolitics between US and Russia.

https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate...-robert-wright

Decoding the Gurus is a podcast where two liberal centrist scientists discuss various personalities who have guru-like tendencies or characteristics. These are often people like Bret Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ibram Kendi, Joe Rogan, etc, but also some outright cult leaders. The hosts are an Australian psychologist, Matthew Browne, and and Irish anthropologist, Chris Kavanagh and since neither of them is from the US, they frequently talk about things from the point of view of countries like Australia, Ireland, Japan, etc. It's generally quite good natured and science oriented and a bit tongue-in-cheek, though it frequently delves into controversial topics like religion and politics and cultural issues, due to the nature of the subject.

[Cipheron]

Climate-related, with the UK heatwave really hitting hard, people uncovered this TV host mocking a meteorologist who was trying to get people to take the hot weather seriously:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...sons-dont-look

An exchange between BBC meteorologist John Hammond and a news broadcaster went viral Wednesday
...
In the July 14 interview on GB News, Hammond spoke with news anchor Bev Turner about the forecasted extreme heat in the U.K. and other parts of Europe, which ended up breaking previous temperature records by huge margins, sparking dozens of fires across London, and killing more than 1,900 people in Spain and Portugal.

Turner immediately pushed Hammond for a sunny weather report, asking, "It's not too hot, is it?"

At the time of the interview Hammond was enjoying mild weather in Buckinghamshire, but emphasized that Britons must prepare for temperatures that could top 104°F (40°C).

Turner's insistence that Hammond be "happy about the weather" seemed ripped from the screenplay of Don't Look Up ...
[...]
Hammond warned that as temperatures reach into the hundreds, the U.K. could see "hundreds, if not thousands, of excess deaths."

"This will be potentially lethal weather for a couple of days," he added. "It will be brief but it will be brutal."

Turner quickly tried to tamp down Hammond's warning, asking if "something's happened to meteorologists to make you all a little fatalistic and harbingers of doom."

"I want us to be happy about the weather... [every time I’ve turned on, anyone’s talking about the weather, they’re saying that there’s going to be tons of fatalities, but] Haven't we always had hot weather?" she asked, mentioning the summer of 1976 in the U.K., when temperatures reached nearly 90°F for more than two weeks.

Hammond explained that while the 1976 heatwave was an outlier event, the extreme heat seen across Europe in recent days was part of an established pattern in recent years.

This interview was about 3 days before the news hit about the 2000 heath deaths in Spain

Here's the actual video. Her tone makes it even more infuriating

[faetal]

That's GB News, it's basically kids TV for adults (hence the popular nickname Gbeebies, after UK Kids TV program Cbeebies) not to be taken seriously at all.
The viewing figures are very low, as the nation is not (yet) collectively stupid enough to have its Fox News.

[Cipheron]

That's GB News, it's basically kids TV for adults (hence the popular nickname Gbeebies, after UK Kids TV program Cbeebies) not to be taken seriously at all.

The viewing figures are very low, as the nation is not (yet) collectively stupid enough to have its Fox News.

Ok got that then.

That sounds similar to Sky News Australia then. EDIT: "The CEO of GB News is Angelos Frangopoulos who formerly ran Sky News Australia."

As I mentioned in the other thread, Sky News Australia is Murdoch-owned and available on his FoxTel pay TV subscription. They only get 50,000 viewers across cable, broadcast and internet. So it's clearly propped up purely by Murdoch Dollars and wishful thinking that Australia needs it's own Fox News. A die-hard 0.2% of Australians tune into Sky News every night for their news.

Compare that to 1.4 million viewers for the most popular nightly news show on normal TV.

EDIT: I read that the main rival to GB News is "TalkTV" (also created by Murdoch) which provided us with this gem:



Btw "Since [TalkTV] launch ratings have been very low with some shows, especially those broadcast in the evening, recording few viewers, if any."

"if any". i.e. some of their shows literally get zero viewers

[Cipheron]

This was a while back, but it's just coming to a head now:

https://apnews.com/article/crime-tre...1e5b47b1be50f0

Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.”

In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care.

Ciavarella ordered children as young as 8 to detention, many of them first-time offenders deemed delinquent for petty theft, jaywalking, truancy, smoking on school grounds and other minor infractions. The judge often ordered youths he had found delinquent to be immediately shackled, handcuffed and taken away without giving them a chance to put up a defense or even say goodbye to their families.
[...]
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 kids after the scheme was uncovered.
[...]
“They recounted his harsh and arbitrary nature, his disdain for due process, his extraordinary abruptness, and his cavalier and boorish behavior in the courtroom,” Conner wrote.
[...]
Several of the childhood victims who were part of the lawsuit when it began in 2009 have since died from overdoses or suicide, Conner said.

[Starker]

Behind the Bastards podcast did an entire episode on this not too long ago:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-b...kids-92013545/

[Cipheron]

Behind the Bastards podcast did an entire episode on this not too long ago:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-b...kids-92013545/

Thanks, I gave that a listen. Had heard of their podcast a few times via QAnonAnonymous, I think they had one of those guys as a guest once or twice.

Current news is that OAN is being kicked off Verizon, now one of the hosts is begging *liberals* to bail them out.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/s...X1C8MOv3-BiiSg

For anyone who didn't know, there's a bit of a deep dive, in that the board of AT&T apparently orchestrated the creation of OAN. Keep in mind that AT&T also own CNN and HBO.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates...neamerica-att/

OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.

“They told us they wanted a conservative network,” Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters. “They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.”

Since then, AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant.

What I think's actually happened is that after AT&T was exposed for creating and propping up OAN, they've bailed on the network. Now OAN is spinning that as "dark forces" are coming for OAN so liberals need to band with OAN for survival. *gets popcorn*

[Starker]

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/s...X1C8MOv3-BiiSg

When you don't even realise that you are the horrifying danger that lies ahead.

[Cipheron]

You won't believe this one:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/...ashes_laptops/

The music video for Janet Jackson's 1989 pop hit Rhythm Nation has been recognized as an exploit for a cybersecurity vulnerability after Microsoft reported it can crash old laptop computers.

...

Further investigation revealed that multiple manufacturers' machines also crashed. Sometimes playing the video on one laptop would crash another nearby laptop. This is mysterious because the song isn't actually that bad.

Investigation revealed that all the crashing laptops shared the same 5400 RPM hard disk drive.

"It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 RPM laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used," Chen wrote.

[demagogue]

Something Nikola Tesla taught us.
Don't f**k with resonance. XD

[PigLick]

Also Half Life

[Cipheron]

https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/...-maps-trolling

A new, convoluted conspiracy theory called “Aquariumgate” is spreading on 4chan in which people are theorizing that fake aquariums in Texas are somehow tied to child trafficking, satanic rituals or “(covens) of satanic witches,” tunnel systems, or something else entirely. The conspiracy theory is, according to experts, a low-effort Google Maps trolljob that has actively been cleaned up by Google over the last few days.
...
A 4chan user posted that they had found these Google Maps listings, and posters on 4chan began looking for coded messages in the reviews for the aquariums (very few of them had any reviews at all), in StreetView images of the areas, in their names, the descriptions of the locations, or, seemingly, in the reviews and listings for other, real aquariums in Texas. Users began suggesting that these locations or codes they found were intended to direct people to child trafficking services, or witch covens, or “gang safehouses.”

Many of the listings were eventually deleted by Google because they are obviously fake, and discussion of the conspiracy was deleted by Reddit moderators on r/conspiracy, all of which, of course, led people to believe the conspiracy was being hidden (the Reddit posts were deleted because they contained addresses, some of which seemingly corresponded to people’s houses.)

Media Matters breaks it down in more detail to show how the chan ecosystem works to gestate these theories then sprout off variants into other right-wing sites:

https://www.mediamatters.org/4chan/4...king-operation

On August 19, a user on “/pol/” — 4chan’s “politically incorrect” message board — posted an image from Google Maps showing places in Texas listed on the platform as aquariums with combinations of two letters in front of them, asking, “WTF did I stumble on?” Fellow users in response baselessly claimed that the Google Maps locations showed some kind of trafficking ring, along with suggesting a tunnel network connecting them.

Over the following days, users created dozens of threads called “Texas Aquarium General,” where users would look into other locations listed on Google Maps as aquariums with two letters in their name, posting screenshots and addresses. According to a Media Matters review of internal data, the term “aquarium” was used more than 1,700 times on “/pol/” between August 19 and 25. Users also expanded their conspiracy theory research to places apparently listed on Google Maps as other types of businesses with two letter names and locations in other states, encouraging each other to “keep digging.”

Going even further, users also shared documents listing locations in other states around the country that were supposedly tied to the conspiracy theory.

Some users also claimed to have visited the locations in person or promised to go investigate for themselves. One user claimed to have “had to hop a gate to get here” and attached blurry images to argue the location was not in fact an aquarium, while another user wrote about a location in North Carolina and promised to “check it out tomorrow, record it and upload my experience.”

The conspiracy theory has since moved from 4chan to other far-right message boards and online communities. Users on the far-right forum TheDonald cited 4chan to look into the conspiracy theory as well and visit locations supposedly tied to it. Users on the “r/conspiracy” subreddit also posted the conspiracy theory, which moderators removed, resulting in users creating a separate subreddit and Discord dedicated to the conspiracy theory, according to online misinformation and extremism researcher Ben Decker.

Some supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory (which also originated on “/pol/”) have shared the conspiracy theory, citing 4chan and asking for “help” to look into it, and the conspiracy theory has been shared by users on right-wing social media platforms including Truth Social and Gab. And, as noted by Decker, the conspiracy theory has also spread on more mainstream platforms such as Facebook.

I had a look at their subreddit, so far this conspiracy isn't linked to any name, place, person, organization or purpose. What they do have is that sometimes on google maps there have occassionally been listings of the form <AZ> <Type of business> where they can't locate the business, and AZ can be any two letters.

[Cipheron]

Oh here's a new one:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...tist-rcna44951

A Florida man has been convicted of a hate crime for a road rage incident last year in which he tried to run a Black man driving with his family off the road and assault him — only to find the victim was a mixed-martial artist who fought back and put him in a chokehold.
...
In the road attack, Leahy came upon J.T. headed to Clearwater, Florida, with his girlfriend and 4-year-old daughter, court documents show.

Leahy pulled alongside J.T., yelled racial slurs and pretended to “shoot” at J.T.’s vehicle with hand gestures, according to trial evidence.

He then used his car to try and force the victim’s car off the road, prosecutors said. Leahy allegedly followed the victim for nearly a mile and a half before he sideswiped J.T's car and fled the scene.

J.T. caught up with Leahy, pulling up behind him at a red light, officials said.

Leahy then "got out of his car, stormed at J.T., and tried to assault him, again yelling racial slur," the release said.

Leahy attempted to strike J.T., but he didn’t know J.T. is a practicing mixed-martial artist, who was able to swiftly put Leahy in a chokehold until he was unconscious and restrained him until police could arrive, court documents show.

That's gotta hurt the racist's feelings. Hand to hand, and the black guy was just better than you.

[Cipheron]

Texas government extortion racket holding the economy to ransom:

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintel...icies-71842914

Texas is banning 10 large banks and 348 investment funds for allegedly boycotting fossil fuel-based energy companies critical to the state's economy, a move critics said could cost taxpayers in the Lone Star State hundreds of millions annually in higher interest costs.

The state's blacklist released Aug. 24 follows West Virginia's decision in July to ban five banks for the same reason. Such actions come as some Republican-led states are cracking down on corporate social and environmental policies the states perceive to be politically driven.

Banks that Texas put on notice earlier this year went to great lengths to show that they are, in fact, investing tens of millions in the fossil fuel industry, but some failed to convince the state. Texas and West Virginia have now banned BlackRock Inc., the world's largest asset manager, from doing business with the state.

Texas' exclusion list of so-called Annex I companies also includes BNP Paribas SA, Credit Suisse AG, Danske Bank A/S, Jupiter Fund Management PLC, Nordea Bank Abp, Schroders PLC, Svenska Handelsbanken AB (publ), Swedbank AB (publ) and UBS Group AG. The 348 investment funds belong to banks in the U.S. and Europe.

Large pension funds such as the Teacher Retirement System of Texas will now be required to divest from companies and funds on the list, as will a multibillion-dollar public school fund.

"A vibrant Texas oil and gas industry is a stabilizing force in today's economic and geopolitical environment," Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said in a statement. "My greatest concern is the false narrative that has been created by the environmental crusaders in Washington, D.C., and Wall Street that our economy can completely transition away from fossil fuels, when, in fact, they will be part of our everyday life into the foreseeable future."

A July study from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School estimated that municipalities and other public entities in Texas paid between $303 million and $532 million more in interest on the $32 billion they borrowed during the first eight months after the anti-ESG laws Texas enacted in 2021 took effect and some large banks had to cease bond underwriting.

[Azaran]

This sounds like an Onion article, but sadly it's real

BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month

The auto industry is racing towards a future full of microtransactions

BMW is now selling subscriptions for heated seats in a number of countries — the latest example of the company’s adoption of microtransactions for high-end car features.

A monthly subscription to heat your BMW’s front seats costs roughly $18, with options to subscribe for a year ($180), three years ($300), or pay for “unlimited” access for $415.

It’s not clear exactly when BMW started offering this feature as a subscription, or in which countries, but a number of outlets this week reported spotting its launch in South Korea.

BMW has slowly been putting features behind subscriptions since 2020, and heated seats subs are now available in BMW’s digital stores in countries including the UK, Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa. It doesn’t, however, seem to be an option in the US — yet.

We’ve asked BMW for the exact details of this roll-out, but it was unable to say when the subscriptions had been launched in which countries. It’s no surprise that BMW isn’t trumpeting the news, though. Since the company announced in 2020 that its cars’ operating system would allow for microtransactions on features like automatic high beams and adaptive cruise control, customers have decried the move as greedy and exploitative.

Carmakers have always charged customers more money for high-end features, of course, but the dynamic is very different when software, rather than hardware, is the limiting factor.

CHARGING MORE FOR HIGH-END FEATURES FEELS DIFFERENT WHEN YOU ALREADY OWN THEM
In the case of heated seats, for example, BMW owners already have all the necessary components, but BMW has simply placed a software block on their functionality that buyers then have to pay to remove. For some software features that might lead to ongoing expenses for the carmaker (like automated traffic camera alerts, for example), charging a subscription seems more reasonable. But that’s not an issue for heated seats.

Other features that BMW is locking behind subscriptions (as per the company’s digital UK store) include heated steering wheels, from $12 a month; the option to record footage from your car’s cameras, priced at $235 for “unlimited” use; and the “IconicSounds Sport package,” which lets you play engine sounds in your car for a one-time fee of $117.

In the latter case, BMW notes that “the hardware for this feature has already been installed in your vehicle during production, at no extra cost.” How generous.

[Cipheron]

This sounds like an Onion article, but sadly it's real

One of the main goals here is to destroy the second hand market for their cars.

For example, say you purchase all the "permanent unlocks". That agreement only holds until you sell the car, then they get locked again.

They'll tell you that the "unlocked" version is the true value of the car, and that you're "saving money" by choosing to disable features. Aren't they kind?

However everything gets locked once resold, so the actual resale value is the one with no features.

I don't know how this will play out however. They might get more money every time these cars are sold second-hand, but the sale price of the cars will plummet by the exact same amount BMW gained, and people are going to notice that when deciding what a new BMW is worth.

[Cipheron]

Had someone on reddit post in one of the "Q survivor" boards about how their Q-believing dad went crazy and murdered the whole family. This was a few hours after the event was supposed to have happened.

This got spread to other related boards and some MAGA trolls started shredding the person as being a liar or troll or making up the story.

Then an early (scant) news report surfaced, so they shifted gears to saying how the person probably read that news story (which was only a couple of lines with very few details) then embellished the entire 6-paragraph tale from that, concocting major details whole-cloth. They were supposed to have done this maybe 30 minutes after the initial news article appeared on a local news website.

Naturally, more details kept emerging as the police updated the public about the event, all corroborating the original reddit poster's personal account. Now, it's on the Daily Beast, with a full interview with the person who clearly did the reddit post:

MAGA and QAnon people use "skepticism" as a weapon but like everything else, their grip on reality is so tenuous that they can't in fact separate when it's reasonable to be skeptical of an account vs when it makes sense to say "that's probably real".

https://www.thedailybeast.com/igor-l...le-family-says

A Michigan man’s obsession with the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory culminated in a Sunday incident in which he murdered his wife and badly injured one of his children, his daughter told The Daily Beast.

Igor Lanis, a 53-year-old resident of the Michigan city of Walled Lake, was killed Sunday by police after he started shooting at them with a shotgun, according to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that the injured child, a 25-year-old woman, managed to call police around 4:11 a.m. after being shot by her father. She couldn’t provide any information, like the location of the house, but dispatchers triangulated the call and officers arrived at the home about five minutes later.

Lanis came out the front and opened fire at them using a Remington 870 pump action shotgun, the statement said. Walled Lake cops and Oakland County Sheriff’s deputies fired back, killing Landis.

“Officers observed the 911 caller/victim, a 25-year-old female, at the front door... attempting to crawl from the home,” the statement said. “They dragged her to safety. She stated that her dad shot her and her mother.”

Inside the house, police found Lanis’ 56-year-old wife, Tina Lanis, dead after being shot multiple times in the back. “[I]t appears that she was also attempting to flee out of the front door,” the sheriff’s office said. The family dog has also been fatally shot.

The 25-year-old, Rachel Landis, was shot in the back and legs, and taken to the hospital in critical condition. Her condition was upgraded to stable after she underwent surgery, authorities said.

The sudden violence stunned Lanis’ other daughter, 21-year-old Rebecca Lanis, who was at a friend’s birthday party during the murder.

Rebecca Lanis told The Daily Beast that her father became obsessed with QAnon and other conspiracy theories in 2020, consuming huge amounts of online videos and following far-right figures like InfoWars’ Alex Jones.

So we now know the identity even of the reddit poster.

It's surreal to have actually seen the original post on reddit before there was news and see how people tried to gaslight others not to believe it was real using "being reasonable" as their excuse, jumping from one baseless excuse to dismiss the story to another.

I could write a lot more about all the logic errors, gaslighting, goalpost-shifting etc that occurred in these online discussions.

One I will point out is false-equivalency. Some of them said the story *could* be fake, therefore without further information, they were "one the fence, 50/50". Which of course is nonsense. Naturally, one of the possibilities is actually far more plausible than the other, so claiming "i can't be sure and neither can you" is just means of gaslighting. I mean, the queen *could* have been a lizard. I can't categorically rule that out. So I must be 50/50 on HRH Lizardbeth II according to that logic.