• Union for FAA’s safety engineers urges more changes to Boeing 737 MAX before it can fly again (The Seattle Times)  This is in addition to the BALPA condemnation of the FAA half measures.
• When coffee makers are demanding a ransom, you know IoT is screwed (Ars Technica) The Internet of sh%$.
• Crows possess higher intelligence long thought primarily human (STAT) Not sure how this qualifies as news.
• Revenge of the Money Launderers (Matt Taibbi) No consequences for repeat offenders if the banks are big enough
• People expect technology to suck because it actually sucks (@ tonsky.me) The incentives of the whole tech system are fakakta, to use a technical term.

All your coffee are belong to us:

• The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Confirms a Pattern of Age Discrimination at IBM (ProPublica) So, the obscenely paid senior execs at IBM broke the law, and did so in a way where it was on the permanent record, and where IBM would be liable for punitive damages and fines, because, they are so smart that they deserve the money.
• The pandemic paused the US school-to-prison pipeline: potential lessons learned (The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health) Fewer children are getting expelled, arrested, and beat up by school resource officers, and there is no increase in crime.  Imagine that.
• Europe’s Refugee Disaster: Merkel Losing Her Patience with Lack of EU Solidarity (DER SPIEGEL) What she calls a, “Lack of EU Solidarity,” I call, “An unwillingness to capitulate to German hegemony.”
• North Carolina Nurses Win Union in Landslide After Bitter Opposition (The Intercept) I’m not sure why labor has become more militant and more effective over the past year, but it is a welcome change.

From The Who’s latest album. Not my favorite song of theirs, but definitely The Who, and not just Pete Townshend:

• The FBI’s ‘Civil Liberties Training’ is a Farce (The American Conservative) It’s supposed to be a failure.  Internal efforts on such things don’t work.  What does work is consequences.
• Expensive pregnancy testing sticks turn out to have very analogue internals when it comes to getting results (The Register) It detects pregnancy with a paper test strip.  They put on an LCD panel to boost the price.
• The lie of Monsanto’s genetically modified cotton in Burkina Faso (Quartz Africa) It was overpriced and underperformed.
• AT&T’s current 5G is slower than 4G in nearly every city tested (Ars Technica) Phone companies lie, and AT&T lies the most.
• Exeter woman votes topless after anti-Trump shirt disallowed (Sea Coast Online) While it is clear that you cannot wear campaign shirts into a voting place, Trump was not on the ballot.
• Journalism’s Gates keepers (Columbia Journalism Review) Bill Gates has used his money to buy favorable press coverage, just like Michael Bloomberg did.

How Netflix Manages to Have So Many Shows – Alternatino:

• White Supremacists Are Invading American Cities To Incite a Civil War (Washington Monthly) Stating the obvious.
• Ice Sheet Melting on Track With Worst-Case Scenario (Treehugger) We are unbelievably screwed.
• Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens. It monitors and harasses families. (Tampa Bay Times) A feature, not a bug.  Law enforcement frequently functions as a predator, generating  revenue through fines.
• I Witnessed Labour Staff Working to Undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership (Novara Media) Corbyn’s mistake was not sacking the all of the senior staffers when he got in.
• The 450 Movement. I do peer review and I want you to pay… (James Heathers) Makes the point that professionals should be paid by businesses when doing  peer reviews, whether it is the for-profit journals, or the corporatized academic world.
• Larry Flynt: My Final Farewell to the Falwells (The Daily Beast) Very kind to the senior Falwell, but as to the rest, “If there were ever to be a Second Coming of Jesus Christ, I have no doubt that his first order of business would be picking up a whip and banishing forever all the hucksters and false prophets who have perverted his message.” 
• Endurance Racing With Cars That Belong in a Demolition Derby (New York Times) A 24 hour race for cars with a purchase price under $500.  The 24-hours of lemons.
• If There Was No Florida Democratic Party, It Would Be Easier For Democrats To Win (DownWithTyranny) The Iron Law of Institutions writ small.   Control of the party trumps success of the party.

F%$# You, Pay Me: How to get paid as a consultant.

• Blockchain, the amazing solution for almost nothing (The Correspondent) Lots of hoopla, but nobody seems to doing anything with it, even on the down low, probably because it’s not really a solution for anything.
• The Broken Algorithm That Poisoned American Transportation (Vice) Travel Demand Modeling (TDM) appears to be snake oil, but everyone makes money off of new highways, so who cares?
• AT&T reportedly trying to sell DirecTV after massive customer losses (Ars Technica) AT&T’s Underpants Gnome strategy, “Treat your customers poorly and raise their rates, ?????, profit,” did not work, and now they will sell at a loss.
• The architecture of heat: how we built before air-con (Financial Times) We have abandoned the architectur that was used to deal with extreme heat.
• Pinterest cancels huge SF office lease in unbuilt project, citing work-from-home shift (SF Chronicle) Commercial real estate is not even near close to seeing the bottom.
• Why Isn’t Modern Monetary Theory Common Knowledge? (Economics from the Top Down) Seriously, this sh%$ ain’t rocket science.
• Andrew Sullivan: The ‘polite’ fascist is a fascist nonetheless. (Conquest of the Useless) And a bigot too, and honestly not to bright.

 

The making of Rush’s Wye, Wye, Zed.  remarkable:

• Hangover Cure Successfully Tested on Drunk Subjects in Finland (Bloomberg) Something that might make the mornings after long winter nights in Finland more bearable.
• Workers Blow the Whistle on Mass Death (In These Times) Private equity has been stripping the hospitals that it buys for parts.
• Tardigrades Have DNA Armour, And We Just Got Closer to Understanding How It Works  (Science Alert) These are profoundly weird creatures.
• Monopolization as a Challenge for Both Parties (American Compass) Why Robert Bork’s shallow, corrupt, and hypocritical view of antitrust law fails.
• Bird deaths down 70 percent after painting wind turbine blades (Ars Technica) Paint one blade black.
• Why Police Unions Are Not Part of the American Labor Movement (Consortiumnews) Over 100 years as the foot-soldiers of anti-labor capital, a quick historical primer.
• How to Make Thermite: 11 Steps (with Pictures) (wikiHow) Seriously, this is nasty sh%$.  If you want to do it, start small, do it outside, and make sure that you have some seriously fire-proof material, probably ceramic, for the test. 

Breaking Ancient and Forgotten British laws (The Fish Runner):

• Severely Injured Woman Heroically Fights Off Paramedics Trying To Force Her Into Medical Debt (The Onion) America’s finest news source. (“Broadcast” below)
• It’s Not Symbolism; It’s Our Vanity (Medium) “Yet Obama abrogated ownership of the entire Black liberation struggle and then sold it to White liberals for the price of his election. And White liberals loved it because they got off so cheap. They got racial justice on sale.” Brutal. Must Read.
• Sh%$ty Waterfall In Dumbass Game Doesn’t Even Have Stupid Cave Behind It (Hard Times) I have so been there.
• Researchers Can Duplicate Keys from the Sounds They Make in Locks (Kottke.org) You don’t need a good microphone. The crappy ones in the eminently hackable Ring and its ilk works.
• Cloth Masks Do Protect the Wearer – Breathing in Less Coronavirus Means You Get Less Sick | naked capitalism (Naked Capitalism) Basic virology: If you start with a lower viral load, your immune system has more time to respond.
• Cellphone Data Shows How Las Vegas Is “Gambling With Lives” Across the Country (ProPublica) As anyone who has seen a pretty girl blow on someone’s dice for luck, this is no surprise, and perhaps even more stupid than the Sturgis rally.

• A Picture of Change for a World in Constant Motion (New York Times) How Japanese wood prints that were, “Considered vulgar, commercial images,” became high art.  (Album of pictures below)
• Painting Eyes on The Butts of Cattle Can Protect Them From Lions, Research Shows (Science Alert) Classic dazzle camouflage.
• HUD Report Finds Racial Disparities in Alabama Subsidized Housing (The Root) Housing authority thought that, “Basically called older Black people porch monkeys who are afraid of height(s).”
• A Database of 5,000 Historical Cookbooks Is Now Online, and You Can Help Improve It (Gastro Obscura) Not a collection of recipes, but an extensive index. Tremendously useful.
• “All These Rich People Can’t Stop Themselves”: The Luxe Quarantine Lives of Silicon Valley’s Elite (Vanity Fair) Rich pig parties. Not enough bullets.
• 25% in U.S. Say Neither Candidate Would Be a Good President (Gallup Polls) Don’t blame me, I voted Kodos.
• California wildfire spawns ‘firenado’ as tornado warning issued amid heatwave (The Guardian) as if 2020 wasn’t apocalyptic enough.

Japanese Prints in the New York Times

• 2 2 Never Equals 5 (New Discourses) Literally arguing for 2+2 = 5 in post modernist critical studies.  I guess that they have never George Orwell.
• The Battle to Invent the Automatic Rice Cooker (Gastro Obscura) I lurves me some history of technology.
• Joe Arpaio loses sheriff’s race in 2nd failed comeback bid (AP) A cancer on law enforcement loses the Republican primary.
• Are New York’s Real Estate Agents Perpetuating Inequality? (Bloomberg) It’s a feature not a bug.  Agents earn their commissions by promoting, not just perpetuating, inequality, and they have since the days of redlining.
• The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free (Current Affairs) Depressing.
• The Biggest Trump Financial Mystery? Where He Came Up With the Cash for His Scottish Resorts. (Mother Jones) I’ve always said that Trump was mobbed up.
• You swine! German nudist chases wild boar that stole laptop (The Guardian) What, you thought that 2020 was done with the weird?
• My Solution for Turkey, Syria, and the Kurds (Jacobin) From Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the PKK, and designated a terrorist by Ankara and the US. Interesting for its author.

Using an old poll lathe: (I love old tools)

• We’re Publishing Thousands of Police Discipline Records That New York Kept Secret for Decades (ProPublica) The judge issued a restraining order against a number of parties, but neglected to include the indispensable Pro Publica.
• Homeland Security Was Destined to Become a Secret Police Force (The New Yorker) Russian expat Masha Gessen speaks from personal experience.
• The Rot Of The St. Louis Elite Goes Far Deeper Than The “Gun Couple” (Current Affairs) Not just racist nutjobs, but profligate and reckless Covid spreaders.
• I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible. (The New York Times) Make them utilities, or break them up, or both.
• Kentucky town hires social workers instead of more officers – and the results are surprising (WAVE Channel 3) Not a surprise
• Kansas Should Go F— Itself (Matt Taibbi) A review of Thomas Frank’s latest book, and its insight into the contempt that the “Technocratic Class” has for ordinary people.
• Gaddafi’s prophecy comes true as foreign powers battle for Libya’s oil (The Guardian) This is a feature, not a bug.
• On Sex with Demons (Going Medieval)  On Trump’s current favorite Covid expert doctor, and their fascination with demonic semen. As Anna Russel would say, “I’m not making this up, you know.”

The Karen Meme Channel on Youtube.  Yet another sign that our society is in decline. Cannot watch more than about 15 seconds of any of these:

• Germany bans Tesla from claiming its Autopilot software is potentially autonomous (The Register) The Germans aren’t cutting the delusional billionaire any slack.
• Ending Corporate Tax Avoidance and Tax Competition: A Plan to Collect the Tax Deficit of Multinationals (SSRN) An interesting proposal, and it has tactics for tax shelter nations.
• UK’s proposed Espionage Act will treat journalists like spies (Committee to Protect Journalists) Not a surprise.  The UK regulatory regime on secrets and the press with things like the Official Secrets Act for some time.
• Tearing Down Black America (Boston Review) The conscious policy of destruction of Black wealth through urban renewal and highway programs.
• Erfurt latrine disaster (Wikipedia) Excuse me, Waiter? There is an Aristocrat in my poop!

Yes, the Erfurt latrine disaster actually happened:

• This device keeps Alexa and other voice assistants from snooping on you (Ars Technica) This is a useful technique to see how they spy on you.
• How ancient cats lived on the brink of domestication (Ars Technica) I dunno.  I think that they are still on the brink of domestication.
• I’m a black doctor. I wear my scrubs everywhere now. (Washington Post) He has to wear scrubs to avoid police harassment.
• Defunding Police Requires Public Control Over External Revenue Sources (Shadow Proof) Police get a lot of funding through asset forfeiture.  That money creates corrupt behavior and needs to be redirected.
• How much does the F-35 actually cost? (Speaking Security) DoD Claims less than $80 million. Basic math shows more than  $144 million for a weapon with an availability below 50%.
• The Double Horseshoe Theory of Class Politics (The Bellows) I am not sure if I agree with everything here, but it’s still a thoughtful analysis of class politics that deserves consideration.

Steel being made.  It gets my engineering geek on:

• Why blue lies matter: It is everyone’s business when police fail to tell the truth (New York Daily News) There is a culture of lying embedded in police departments, not just during interrogations, but as a part of sworn testimony. Testilying needs to end.
• McDonald’s get their scampi in a bunch over burger joint’s Effing Filet O’ Fish (The Guardian) “The restaurant recently announced a new – and trademarked – burger: the McEffing Fish Filet.”
• Media Needs To Cover Police Brutality Against Latinx And Indigenous People Too (Crooks and Liars) Too True.
• Hitting the Books: What astronauts can learn from nuclear submariners (Engadget) The environments are very similar in many ways.
• You Can Make Millions Selling Masks to the Government in Three Easy Steps (ProPublica) Corruption and the leveraging of personal relationships.  Business as usual.

Found in a Pastafarian group, and let us say, Ramen.

• VICE Is Suing The Government Over A Dog’s Genitals (Cracked) The government is concealing the gender of a hero dog.
• ‘My Little Pony’ Fans Confront Their Nazi Problem (The Atlantic) Stop the world, I want to get off.
• Crows are watching your language, literall (Covid Research) Crows are amazing.
• Elite media defines neutrality in terms of a white guy who doesn’t even exist (Press Watch) This is a fact frequently ignored by journalists who subscribe to the view from nowhere.
• The freedom of driving  (New Statesman) Buried under BS about driving equaling freedom, the point is made that this is yet another way that tech will profit by surveilling us.
• Corona in the Slaughterhouse: The High Price of Cheap Meat (DER SPIEGEL) Very similar to US meat packing plants, except that instead of abusing Latinos, German meat packers abuse Eastern Europeans.

Moar Cowbell!!

• Just Because They’ve Turned Against Humanity Doesn’t Mean We Should Defund the Terminator Program (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency) It’s a metaphor, and funny as hell.
• Over 500 Strikes in Last 3 Weeks as BLM Strikes Surge on Juneteenth (Payday Report) Hopefully, the start of a trend.
• House Republican leaders condemn GOP candidate who made racist videos (POLITICO) Republicans are appalled because she has revealed their branding plans.
• Chief Wiggum Is Legit The Most Realistic Portrayal of Modern Policing (Cracked) In Cracked, veritas.
• Warren Harding: Republican president calls for racial justice after Tulsa race massacre (The Washington Post) Read this.  This history surprised me.
• One Press Release on OSHA Violations Yields Compliance Equal to 210 Inspections (Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy) Sunlight is a disinfectant.

John Oliver finishes his ownership of corrupt coal baron Bob Murray’s SLAPP suit:

• Protesters, Here’s How To Set Up a Cheap Burner Phone (The Intercept) News you can use.
• Smartphones Have Transformed the Fight Against Police Violence (Jacobin) The near universal presence of connected cameras has revealed just how dysfunctional law enforcement is.
• The Fed’s Paycheck Protection Program Gave a Tiny NJ Bank $5.3 Billion – 9 Percent of all the Money It’s Spent Thus Far (Wall Street on Parade) What? Corruption and favoritism in the bailout? Pshaw!
• Why Policing Is Broken (Rolling Stone)  Matt Taibbi goes over the reasons, but does not go far enough, and state that one of the purposes is to terrorize the poor and minority.
• Amazon’s Private Government (The American Prospect) Amazon is attempting to use its monopoly powers to control vendors at every level.
• 30 Animals That Look Like They’re About To Drop The Hottest Albums Of The Year (Bored Panda) Your silly feel good galleray of the day.
• Black Officers Say Discrimination Abounds, Complicating Reform Efforts (Wall Street Journal) S
• Japanese Condom Maker Created A Bonkers Anime About Safe-Sex (Cracked) I have no words.  Also, if someone could translate it from the original Japanese, it would be appreciated.

Here is one of the aforementioned condom anime: (Trippy)

• Venture capital firms such as SoftBank and Andreessen Horowitz launch funds for black start-ups (Washington Post) It is, as the article hed notes, diversity theater.
• Snap CEO says in internal meeting he won’t release diversity numbers because it would reinforce the perception that Silicon Valley isn’t diverse (Business Insider) Sticking their fingers in their ears, and saying, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you.”
• Someone got so fed up with GE fridge DRM – yes, fridge DRM – they made a whole website on how to bypass it (The Register) DRM law needs to be fixed.
• Emails Reveal Chaos as Meatpacking Companies Fought Health Agencies Over COVID-19 Outbreaks in Their Plants (ProPublica) These folks are bad actors, and need to be pursued administratively and criminally.
• California prosecutors routinely strike Black and Latino people from juries, report says (Los Angeles Times) Clearly there is no racism in the criminal justice system.
• Why Expanding Highways Makes Traffic Worse (Gizmodo) This is the common knowledge in transportation planning.
• Elite CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing disclosure to WikiLeaks (Washington Post) TheVault 7 guys literally did not know of the leak for over a year.
• All-new Ford Bronco debut July 9 falls on O.J. Simpson’s birthday (Detroit Free Press) I’m not sure if this is an inspired branding choice, and awful branding choice, or an inside joke gone bad.

Paraphrasing Harry Belafonte, “That’s right, the Squirrels is, Smarter.”

National Organization for Women Members Say Racism Ran Rampant (Daily Beast) Karens Abide
John Maynard Keynes: “Newton, the Man” (MacTutor History of Mathematics) Isaac Newton was a complete nut case.
Revealing the Divisive History of Minneapolis (CityLab) Explains why the current round of Black Lives Matter protests started in Minneapolis, a city called the, “anti-Semitism capital of the United States” in 1947.
Top 16 Euphemisms US Headline Writers Used for Police Beating the Sh%$ Out of People (FAIR) The View from nowhere is antithetical to good journalism.
Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop (Medium) A former cop says that there are no good cops.
Pennsylvania just became the third state to ban child marriage (CBS) Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  It’s still legal in 47 states?
Unpacking the Left’s Cultural Baggage (The Bellows) Money quote, “Most people really like the substance of what the Left champions ……… but they really don’t like—and I mean really don’t like—are the many forms of cultural policing rooted in identitarian thinking.” (Is this self sabotage deliberate?)

Ask a Mortician makes Melville’s Moby Dick much more interesting:

• Someone taped Steve Carell’s picture over Space Force’s top officer at the USAF museum (Military Times) America’s real heroes.
• Full article: ‘Keeping seeds in our hands’: the rise of seed activism  (Taylor & Francis Online) About efforts to keep seeds open, available, and genetically diverse
• The Secret Language of Cairo’s Goldsmiths (Atlas Obscura) The patois of Cairo goldsmiths is largely Hebrew from the days when Egypt has a vibrant Jewish community.
• Black deaths at the hands of law enforcement are linked to historical lynchings: U.S. counties where lynchings were more prevalent from 1877 to 1950 have more officer-involved killings (Economic Policy Institute) Not really a surprise.
• Police Overwhelming Responsible for Attacking Journalists (The Intercept) Even less of a surprise.
• Freedom Rider: Black Misleaders Seek to End Protest (Black Agenda Report) They have sold themselves to moneyed interests, and the moneyed interest want the poor kept in line.
• Judge in Epstein case has ties to those with stake in outcome (Miami Herald) Even after his death, the coverup continues.

This making a pasta bowl video is the most lock-down thing ever:

• Scientists Find The First Animal That Doesn’t Need Oxygen to Survive (Science Alert) It resembles a little jellyfisn.
• Nearly 2 million chickens at Eastern Shore farms set to be destroyed because of coronavirus-related plant shortages (Baltimore Sun) A potential solution would be to break up the meat-packing monopolies and oligopolies.
• David Sirota Joins the Jacobin Team (Jacobin)  I look forward to this.
• Joe Biden’s Garbage Career: A Timeline (Rampant) Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of every major legislative initiative over the past 40 years.
• Biden Can’t Return Things To Normal, Because Trump Is A Normal US President. That’s The Problem. (Caitlin Johnstone) A rather dire, and depressingly accurate, take on the nature of the modern US presidency.
• Sears’ Headquarters Was Supposed to Turn a Sleepy Suburb Into a Boomtown. It Never Happened. (ProPublica) Tax incentives never EVER pay for themselves.
• This Guy Got Hit By Lightning and Became a Concert Pianist (VICE) The human brain is weird.

John Oliver on the US Post Office, and calls out Postal banking