The unimportant news thread

[DavidW]

Child genius gets advice from astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBPumrQlN58


Kid graduated high school at 9 years old lol. I wanted to hear the rest of his theory about the big bang, but they didn't have enough time.

Nothing was correct with the child's conjecture.  But Neil DeGrasse Tyson made it a teachable moment about the testability of claims (and also side stepped addressing the validity of the assertion).

Before that kid is even a teenager he will know enough to laugh at what he said in the interview!

[Todd]

Australia re-bans alcohol in some Aboriginal communities

History has demonstrated that Prohibition is an exceptionally good idea.

[SimonNZ]

Australia re-bans alcohol in some Aboriginal communities

History has demonstrated that Prohibition is an exceptionally good idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dry_communities_by_U.S._state

[Karl Henning]

Limited-edition, $500 sneakers now on the menu at Kowloon

[greg]

Nothing was correct with the child's conjecture.  But Neil DeGrasse Tyson made it a teachable moment about the testability of claims (and also side stepped addressing the validity of the assertion).

Before that kid is even a teenager he will know enough to laugh at what he said in the interview!

Maybe so, that's how it goes- but I have to say, I love that kid's willingness to not shy away from questioning fundamentals to possibly break boundaries... the spirit is there, so when he actually does know enough to do it correctly, that is a recipe for really huge leaps in future scientific thinking.

[Todd]

'Unspeakable botch': Spain spends €258 million on trains that are too big for its tunnels

[Karl Henning]

Arrest warrant issued for former Cohasset employee accused of running crypto mine out of school's crawlspace

[Todd]

Not zero: New report exposes greenwashing in climate plans of top global corporations

Misleadingly, half of the evaluated companies – including Apple, DHL, Google and Microsoft – are already making carbon neutrality claims, but these claims only cover 3% of those companies' emissions. More worryingly still, three-quarters of the corporations plan to offset or neutralise a significant portion of their emissions using carbon credits from forestry and other land use projects.

Not only do these solutions only store carbon temporarily and are vulnerable to reversals, we would need a second planet Earth to absorb global emissions if everyone decided to offset like these corporations," says CMW's Policy Director Sam Van den plas.

I'm shocked - shocked - to learn that greenwashing still occurs.  Tim Cook is such an honest man.

[Todd]

Cobalt, a crucial battery material, is suddenly superabundant

Whew.  The push for EVs can proceed apace.  Word is that the miners in Indonesia will enjoy working conditions superior to that in the West, where miners have historically been pampered, and also that China will stop using slave child labor in Congo.  It's all rainbows and unicorns from this point.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Chinese brands have replaced iPhones and Hyundai in Russia's war economy - CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/25/business/russia-chinese-brands-sales-surge-ukraine-war-intl-hnk

[Todd]

From The New Yorker: Can A.I. Treat Mental Illness?  New computer systems aim to peer inside our heads—and to help us fix what they find there.

[Todd]

Snopes is a Very Serious fact checking website.  Indeed, it bills itself as "[t]he definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation."  Heavy stuff.  Apparently, one of its intrepid fact-checkers, presumably with a Masters in Fact Checking from Harvard, took on the important task of fact checking some tweets.  Because Twitter.  The intrepid reporting appears here: Did Biden Say, 'Wait Until You See Our Plan for the Destruction of Taiwan'?

The conclusion:

Because the claim originated as a baseless tweet without any satire disclosure, we therefore rate this assertion as "False."

Um, "satire disclosure". 

One is forced to conclude that The Onion bought Snopes.

[Karl Henning]

Surprised? We ain't.
'The Good Life' apparently requires other people.

Spoiler alert: trolling doesn't count.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

BBC: Sake brewers toast big rise in global sales.


https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64797853

[Todd]

O.J. Simpson says there is reasonable doubt in Murdaugh murder case

[LKB]

Perusing the BBC, l found:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64831778

So in Florida, the infamous brain-eating amoeba now resides in some of the tap water... 

[Karl Henning]

Perusing the BBC, l found:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64831778

So in Florida, the infamous brain-eating amoeba now resides in some of the tap water... 

Especially in the Governor's residence. 

[Todd]

Popular artificial sweetener erythritol linked to higher risk for blood clots

Of special note is the fact that this study was not originally focused on erythritol. 

As always, correlation is not causation.

The main producers of erythritol in the US are Cargill and ADM, the two largest agricultural companies in the US and the first and third largest in the world.

[Todd]

From NPR: A new Ford patent imagines a future in which self-driving cars repossess themselves

"We don't have any plans to deploy this," said Wes Sherwood, a Ford spokesperson.

[Todd]

From AP: US sees China propaganda efforts becoming more like Russia's