The unimportant news thread

[T. D.]

This is a good one!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-31/mrbeast-sues-his-food-delivery-partner-over-inedible-burgers

Paywall may be avoidable via incognito window or the like.

[Karl Henning]

A family pocketed $7.6 million by taking cans and bottles from Arizona and recycling them in California. That's fraud, prosecutors say.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-family-pocketed-7-6-221318711.html

Fascinating.

[Karl Henning]

Putin believes in no other power than his own. His posturing as a devout defender of Orthodox Christianity is disgusting.

Indeed.

[Todd]

From PBS: The potential benefits and risks of fighting STIs with doxycycline

Using a broad-spectrum antibiotic to routinely treat STDs, what could go wrong?

[Pohjolas Daughter]

This is a good one!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-31/mrbeast-sues-his-food-delivery-partner-over-inedible-burgers

Paywall may be avoidable via incognito window or the like.

I hadn't heard of this guy before now...nor of "ghost kitchens".  I'm behind the times.

Sounds like big issues with quality control.

PD

[T. D.]

I hadn't heard of this guy before now...nor of "ghost kitchens".  I'm behind the times.

Sounds like big issues with quality control.

PD

I only heard of him ["Mr. Beast"] via a weird circuitous route.

I like chess, and the chess.com website periodically has an event called "PogChamps", currently in its 5th iteration, where "famous streamers" (whatever that means  ), who are mostly extremely weak chessplayers, compete in a knockout rapid/blitz tournament. Mr. Beast was in at least a couple of those.

I'm so out of touch with popular culture that the entire "streaming" phenomenon passed me by. I still don't understand why people would spend hours on end watching apparent nonentities on webcams. 

To Mr. Beast's credit, he seems to be highly charitably minded and donates the proceeds of many of his stunts (or whatever TF he does). So it's a shame he got hooked up with a fraudulent firm. Though not unusual in the Internet sphere (think crypto, for instance  ).

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I only heard of him ["Mr. Beast"] via a weird circuitous route.

I like chess, and the chess.com website periodically has an event called "PogChamps", currently in its 5th iteration, where "famous streamers" (whatever that means  ), who are mostly extremely weak chessplayers, compete in a knockout rapid/blitz tournament. Mr. Beast was in at least a couple of those.

I'm so out of touch with popular culture that the entire "streaming" phenomenon passed me by. I still don't understand why people would spend hours on end watching apparent nonentities on webcams. 

To Mr. Beast's credit, he seems to be highly charitably minded and donates the proceeds of many of his stunts (or whatever TF he does). So it's a shame he got hooked up with a fraudulent firm. Though not unusual in the Internet sphere (think crypto, for instance  ).

I was surprised to see that Mariah Carey partnered up with them (Mariah's Cookies).

PD

[Karl Henning]

Georgia Power Co. yesterday announced the commercial operation of the first new nuclear reactor built in the US in more than 30 years, powering utilities in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.


The reactor, known as Unit 3, is one of two that began construction in 2009 at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta, and can power 500,000 homes and businesses at full capacity. The reactor was initially expected to start generating power in 2016; however, the project faced delays and unexpected costs, which increased from $14B to $35B. The plant already has two reactors that have been operating since 1987 and 1989. Once all four units are operational—Unit 4 is expected early next year—the site will become the nation's largest generator of clean energy. Units 3 and 4 are expected to produce about 2,234 megawatts combined, enough to power more than 1 million homes and businesses.


Nuclear energy currently accounts for about 18% of US power generation, and more US states are looking to the power source for clean energy. Experts say the US would need 200 gigawatts of advanced nuclear energy to power about 160 million homes.

[Karl Henning]

"a quest to survey more than 1 billion galaxies" ... breathtakingly ambitious. I like it.

The first test images of stars and galaxies taken by the European Space Agency's Euclid Space Telescope were released yesterday. The milestone comes about a month after Euclid launched, reaching its final orbit roughly 1 million miles away from Earth, or four times as far from Earth as the moon. See the images here.


Euclid is on a quest to survey more than 1 billion galaxies—each with roughly 100 billion stars—as it investigates the nature of dark energy and dark matter, which constitute 95% of the universe but remain poorly understood. The term "dark" refers to the properties known about each—dark matter exerts a gravitational pull on objects but doesn't interact with light, while dark energy remains hypothetical and is needed to account for the expansion of the universe.


The test images were taken to verify and review the operation of the instruments on the Euclid spacecraft. The images are largely unprocessed, meaning they contain unwanted distortions, such as cosmic rays that streak across the captured visual. More detailed and sharper images are expected in October.

[Karl Henning]

Chuckling over a phrase in a news item reporting on the removal of an X from some San Francisco real estate: "the Company formerly known as Twitter."

[Todd]

The Harsh Truth: We're Using More Oil Than Ever

[BWV 1080]

Purported room-temp superconductor LK-99 either is the most ununimportant science news story of the decade or it isn't

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-diy-race-to-replicate-lk-99/

[Karl Henning]

Tickling rats reveals brain regions tied to laughter and play.

[Karl Henning]

"Barbie" hauls in $93M in its second weekend at US box office, one of the best second weekends ever; the film's total international box office is now at $744M

[greg]

The Harsh Truth: We're Using More Oil Than Ever

I can't read the article, but I'm guessing there is probably no mention of multiple countries (US and India, in particular) making people work from office again when it's not needed, and calls for people to sacrifice their own energy expenditure for some moral reasons or something?

[Todd]

I can't read the article, but I'm guessing there is probably no mention of multiple countries (US and India, in particular) making people work from office again when it's not needed, and calls for people to sacrifice their own energy expenditure for some moral reasons or something?

Not really.  It's more a cold-blooded assessment of the reality that environmentalists and fellow travelers who lie to themselves about the topic keep trying to pretend isn't true.

No matter what happens next with autos, what's clear is that under current trends, global oil demand will increase a further 3 percent to 4 percent the next five years, before settling at a high plateau. For now, there's no sign that consumption will drop off a cliff any time soon.I'd like to be proved wrong, but currently there's no chance that the world will reduce oil consumption by 2030 nearly as much as needed to meet its net-zero emissions targets. And that's why many Western governments, while preaching green in public, in private tell oil executives to keep investing in more production.

Economic systems premised on economic growth - that is, the industrial era frameworks known as Capitalism and Socialism - are inherently incompatible with ecological stability and environmental equity.  The cold, hard truth is that in order to hit stated targets, advanced economies would have to materially reduce the average income of their residents.  That is, rich societies would have to become poorer.  No politician will try to sell that.  So rich societies will continue to disproportionately exploit limited resources and people in poor countries will suffer for it.  Since I reside in a rich country, I am fine with tradeoff.

[AnotherSpin]

[..] So rich societies will continue to disproportionately exploit limited resources and people in poor countries will suffer for it.  Since I reside in a rich country, I am fine with tradeoff.

The question is where people suffer more, in so-called "rich" countries, or so-called "poor" countries.

[Todd]

A local tale of decades of wanton waste of public resources to save the fishies that failed: Billions in conservation spending fail to improve wild fish stocks in Columbia Basin

Since economic interests are now involved, if spending changes, it will increase.  The programs really aren't about the fish. 

[Todd]

From the AP: After helping prevent extinctions for 50 years, the Endangered Species Act itself may be in peril

[T. D.]

Today's entry in the H. L. Mencken* series:

https://www.bloomberg.com/en/news/thp/2023-08-04/urgent-crowd-overwhelms-new-york-city-s-union-square-tosses-chairs-climbs-on-vehicles

NEW YORK (AP) — Police in New York City are struggling to control a crowd of thousands of people who gathered in Manhattan's Union Square for an internet personality's supposed videogame console giveaway that got out of hand.

Aerial TV news footage Friday showed a surging, tightly packed crowd climbing on vehicles, hurling chairs, throwing punches and scaling structures in the park. Shouting teenagers swung objects at car windows and ran through the streets.

*Apparently Mencken never published the famous Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, but he should have!