CYBERINSECURITY: Students scramble after security breach wipes 13,000 devices.
Archive for 2024
August 8, 2024
THE COUNTRY IS IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Illegal Who Tried to Breach Base Was on Terror Watch List.
SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: New evidence casts doubt on a much-hyped blood test for early cancer detection.
HERE WE GO AGAIN? Will Frivolous Lawsuits Create Another Baby Formula Shortage?
In the U.S., only two companies are permitted to manufacture specialized formulas that meet the very specific needs of premature newborn babies. According to the Wall Street Journal, “These formulas are administered by doctors in the neonatal intensive care units because breast milk alone often doesn’t contain sufficient nutrients to sustain infants with low birth weights.”
And these companies are currently under relentless attack.
Plaintiff attorneys have filed hundreds of lawsuits against Abbott Laboratories and Reckitt Benckiser, claiming their fortifying products increase the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and should come with a warning label.
But these companies cannot add any such label to their products, because the science doesn’t support the claims made in these lawsuits.
Read the whole thing.
RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: This is How Close Taylor Swift’s Vienna Concert Came to Unspeakable Tragedy.
Related:
America's cool youth vote: "From the river to the sea!"
Islamists: "Let's blow up Taylor Swift."
— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) August 7, 2024
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Our Crisis of Institutional Competence: Why things don’t work anymore.
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THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Pro-Israel group struggling to gain permit to rally at DNC — while pro-Palestinian groups got green light.
THIS WAS A KNOWN PROBLEM BUT THE SPEED OF IT MIGHT BE NEWS: Cannibal AIs Could Risk Digital ‘Mad Cow Disease’ Without Fresh Data.
A new study by researchers from Rice University and Stanford University in the US offers evidence that when AI engines are trained on synthetic, machine-made input rather than text and images made by actual people, the quality of their output starts to suffer.
The researchers are calling this effect Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD). The AI effectively consumes itself, which means there are parallels for mad cow disease – a neurological disorder in cows that are fed the infected remains of other cattle.
Without fresh, real-world data, content produced by AI declines in its level of quality, in its level of diversity, or both, the study shows. It’s a warning about a future of AI slop from these models.
“Our theoretical and empirical analyses have enabled us to extrapolate what might happen as generative models become ubiquitous and train future models in self-consuming loops,” says computer engineer Richard Baraniuk, from Rice University.
“Some ramifications are clear: without enough fresh real data, future generative models are doomed to MADness.”
The solution is simple, comrades — we must generate more content, faster for our digital overlords to consume.
PELOSI ON BIDEN: ‘Never been that impressed with his political operation.’
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she was long dissatisfied with President Joe Biden’s campaign before he dropped out — not to mention his prospects for winning in November.
“I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation,” she told The New Yorker in an interview published Thursday. “They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The President has to make the decision for that to happen.”
In her interview, the 84-year-old former speaker signaled her personal frustration with the strength of Biden’s campaign operation, which she suggested was not up to the task of beating former President Donald Trump despite doing so successfully in 2020. And she reiterated her public stance that the president’s decision to get out of the race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement at the top of the ticket was Biden’s and Biden’s alone.
While Pelosi privately voiced concerns to Biden about the dire polling of June and July which suggested a widening battleground map, she has only just begun to publicly reflect on her view that the Biden campaign was not in a winning position. The San Francisco Democrat was still hesitant to admit playing a singular role in the push to bring Biden down.
“I really wanted him to make a decision for a better campaign, because they were not facing the fact of what was happening,” Pelosi said after praising Biden’s accomplishments. “We couldn’t see it go down the drain, because Trump was going to be president and then he was going to take the House. Imagine! Imagine how that would be! Well, we don’t have to imagine. We saw.”
Yes, prior to 2020, we saw the booming stock market, low inflation, and low unemployment. Can’t have that! But perhaps the real buried lede here is that New Yorker proved it’s actually possible to have blue-on-blue journalism:
Because, ordinarily both sides of the equation are perfectly comfortable with calculated silence:
MAN BITES DOG ALERT! Even the Liberal Media Is Acknowledging Tim Walz’s Stolen Valor.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why Wasn’t ‘Scranton Joe’ at the Harris-Walz Launch Rally?
Democrats packed into Temple University’s Liacouras Center in Philadelphia for the new Democratic ticket’s first rally. Earlier that morning, news broke that Vice President Kamala Harris had picked Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. The choice simultaneously carried undertones of 2008, when the younger Barack Obama chose an older, white, generic politician in Senator Joe Biden, and 2016, when Hillary Clinton picked the low-name-ID Senator Tim Kaine to appear moderate. Notably absent from this rally, however, was the now-President Joe Biden, known for playing up his Pennsylvania roots.
Why wasn’t Joe there? Because it very likely wasn’t his decision to voluntarily pass the baton, and because of intense fears there would be a moment like this, as Jim Treacher writes:
CBS “journalist”: Are you confident that there will be a peaceful transfer of power, January 2025?
Joe: If Trump wins, no, I’m not confident at all. [EXCRUCIATING PAUSE AS HE REALIZES WHAT HE JUST SAID IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE WORLD] I mean, if Trump loses, I’m not confident at all.
Oh. Whew!
Good thing he remembered the difference between “win” and “lose.” A lot of people get those two things mixed up, right?
His initial thought was: “If Trump wins, we riot.” Which is what happened in 2016. But then he realized he’s not supposed to say that out loud.
It’s especially galling, given the past four years of outright lies about Biden’s senility. If he hadn’t botched that debate so badly, all these “journalists” and their fellow Democrats would still be lying to you.
“He’s as sharp as ever, we can barely keep up with him,” etc.
It’s 89 days until the election, and they just need to keep the old man breathing. And keep Kamala and her new running mate away from pesky reporters.
Can Kamala & Co. run out the clock by staying silent? Possibly, given that anything Trump says in a press conference will be dissected for auras and penumbras of partying like it’s 1939: Daily Show Claims Trump Is Invoking Themes From Mein Kampf.
IMMINENT STUDENT LOAN DISASTER: MORE THAN HALF OF BORROWERS NOT PAYING. The sooner we can put an end to the current student loan system, the better. The incentives for every party are just dead wrong.
READER FAVORITE: The Backyard Bug Book for Kids: Storybook, Insect Facts, and Activities. #CommissionEarned
THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: Arctic fossils indicate ice shelf is not as stable as previously thought, scientists say.
Researchers recently analyzed fossils taken from the center of the Greenland ice sheet, widely considered to be the largest annual contributor of water into the ocean. The fossils were found to have organic matter, indicating an ice-free period during the Pleistocene Epoch, about 400,000 years ago, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The soil samples contained fragments of willow and wood, as well as insect parts, spike moss megaspores, fungi and poppy seeds, Halley Mastro, a graduate research assistant at the University of Vermont and co-author of the paper, told ABC News.
Paul Bierman, professor of natural resources and environmental science at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study, added: “There’s just no way around the fact that the ice must have been gone or otherwise you couldn’t have had these plants.”
The world seems to have done just fine.
MORE SECRET SERVICE ROT EXPOSED: It’s easy to forget or not even be aware of the significant role of the United States Secret Service (USSS) in the events of Jan. 6, 2021. And like the Butler fiasco that nearly cost former President Donald Trump his life and the still unexplained cocaine found in the White House, there are multiple questions about the Secret Service’s work prior to and on the day of the riot.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) was finally able earlier this week to force disclosure by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of a damning Inspector General (IG) report.
Based on the evidence uncovered by the IG, a strong case can be made that now-former Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle should have been summarily fired rather than allowed to resign and slink away with no accountability.
And there are a bunch of other senior execs at the Secret Service who should be facing unpleasant consequences for their actions, as described by the IG. Find out why in my latest PJ Media column.
THEY’VE LOST THEIR TOUCH: There’s Lame and Then There’s This Attempted WaPo Hit Piece on Trump.
NOT ALL CHANGE IS PROGRESS:
Left: Britain 🇬🇧
Right: Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦Sorry for the mix up, Saudi Arabia is on the left and Britain on the right. pic.twitter.com/WT56Fz18Gc
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) August 7, 2024
RIP, MATE: Jack Karlson, Mr. “Democracy Manifest” is off to a succulent Chinese meal in the sky:
Mr. Democracy Manifest, the Australian man whose 1991 arrest went viral around the world, has died. Jack Karlson was 82 pic.twitter.com/JCpdAqcQmT
— BNO News (@BNONews) August 7, 2024
Background at Wikipedia, and an update on Karlson’s life in this recent Australian TV clip:
I BELIEVE IT: Poll: 30% of Americans over 50 are now caregivers.
WAIT, HE HAS STANDARDS? Ibram Kendi’s ‘Antiracist Book Festival’ is racist, by his own standards.
WELL, IT’S TRUE:
BOOM 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/uhLGwTuiXK
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) August 8, 2024
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: GOP Should Send Kamala Harris a ‘Thank You’ Card for Picking Walz. “Tim Walz is a target rich candidate for mockery. The more that undecided voters learn about him, the less there is to like. The coastal Democrats don’t care about stolen valor — Dick Blumenthal is the senior senator from Connecticut, after all.”
SO I’M A BIT MORE THAN HALFWAY THROUGH S.M. STIRLING’S TO TURN THE TIDE, a time travel novel in the vein of H. Beam Piper or L. Sprague de Camp. It’s a delightful page turner and I recommend it. I like that another American time-traveler, whom some of you may remember from Harry Turtledove’s Household Gods, makes an appearance too.