HYDROGEN STORAGE: Pilot plant demonstrates iron-based hydrogen storage feasibility.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
September 2, 2024
SECURITY: Harmful “nudify” websites used Google, Apple, and Discord sign-on systems. “Major technology companies, including Google, Apple, and Discord, have been enabling people to quickly sign up to harmful ‘undress’ websites, which use AI to remove clothes from real photos to make victims appear to be ‘nude’ without their consent. More than a dozen of these deepfake websites have been using login buttons from the tech companies for months.”
WE NEED NEW AND BETTER ANTIBIOTICS: Antibiotic overuse in nursing homes might foster ‘superbugs.’
LOL:
JUST IN: Kamala Harris is completely avoiding the press by wearing headphones pic.twitter.com/aZbWSis3Qq
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 2, 2024
What you do when you can’t speak coherently.
INDOCTRINATION CALLS: Climate change classes should be ‘mandatory’ in med school, doctor says.
AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE AND THE K-12 IMPLOSION: Harvard to offer course on ‘Queering Education,’ focuses on ‘young people’s schooling experiences’.
MAUREEN DOWD IS CAPABLE OF DOING SERIOUS WORK WHEN SHE WANTS TO, and this profile of Palantir founder Alex Karp is an example. It’s interesting and straightforward. And I like the cut of his jib:
Mr. Karp does not believe in appeasement. “You scare the crap out of your adversaries,” he said. He brims with American chauvinism, boasting that we are leagues ahead of China and Russia on software.
“The tech scene in America is like the jazz scene in the 1950s,” he said in one forum. He told me: “I’m constantly telling people 86 percent of the top 50 tech companies in the world just by market cap are American — and people fall out of their chair. It’s hard for us to understand how dominant we are in certain industries.” . . .
Palantir does not do business with China, Russia or other countries that are opposed to the West. Mr. Thiel said the company tries to work with “more allied” and “less corrupt” governments, noting dryly that aside from their ideological stances, “with corrupt countries, you never get paid.”
“We have a consistently pro-Western view that the West has a superior way of living and organizing itself, especially if we live up to our aspirations,” Mr. Karp said. “It’s interesting how radical that is, considering it’s not, in my view, that radical.”
He added: “If you believe we should appease Iran, Russia and China by saying we’re going to be nicer and nicer and nicer, of course you’ll look at Palantir negatively. Some of these places want you to do the apology show for what you believe in, and we don’t apologize for what we believe in. I’m not going to apologize for defending the U.S. government on the border, defending the Special Ops, bringing the people home. I’m not apologizing for giving our product to Ukraine or Israel or lots of other places.”
As one Karp acquaintance put it: “Alex is principled. You just may not like his principles.”
They sound okay to me. Plus:
“I think there’s a huge dichotomy between how the elite sees Ukraine and Israel,” Mr. Karp said. “If you go into any elite circle, pushing back against Russia is obvious, and Israel is complicated. If you go outside elite circles, it’s exactly the opposite.”
Exactly right.
EVEN A FLATWORM IS SMART ENOUGH TO TURN AWAY FROM PAIN:
Harvard profs in January vs. Stanford profs yesterday.
The lasting impact of the encampments will be their contribution to undoing DEI. pic.twitter.com/njMAEsJ2bc
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) August 31, 2024
HMM: Aviation Week Believes Secret SR-72 Plane is in Production at Lockheed Martin. “The SR72 is believed to be a Mach 6+ aircraft, this new platform was slated from the start as an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) asset with strike capabilities. This meant the aircraft would be capable of carrying a variety of payloads, including munitions to engage ground targets.”
INFLATION RAISES QUESTIONS: Abolish the Penny?
If you are reading this and live in America, or used to live in America, or maybe just went to America one time many years ago, then you are almost certainly performing unpaid labor for the U.S. government and have been for years. How? By storing some of the billions of pennies the U.S. Mint makes every year that virtually no one uses.
Why are we still making tons (many thousands of tons) of pennies if no one uses them? That’s a sensible question with a psychotic answer: We have to keep making all these pennies — over $45 million worth last year — because no one uses them. In fact, it could be very bad if we did.
When you insert a quarter into a soda machine, that quarter eventually finds its way back to a bank, from which it can be redistributed to a store’s cash register and handed out as change — maybe even to you, who can put it into a soda machine again and start the whole process over. That’s beautiful. (Please be mindful of your soft drink consumption.)
But few of us ever spend pennies. We mostly just store them. The 1-cent coins are wherever you’ve left them: a glass jar, a winter purse, a RAV4 cup holder, a five-gallon water cooler dispenser, the couch. Many of them are simply on the ground. But take it from me, a former cashier: Cashiers don’t have time to scrounge on the sidewalk every time they need to make change. That is where the Mint comes in. Every year it makes a few billion more pennies to replace the ones everyone is thoughtlessly, indefinitely storing and scatters them like kudzu seeds across the nation.
You — a scientist of some kind, possibly — might think an obvious solution now presents itself: Why not encourage people to use the pennies they have lying around instead of manufacturing new ones every year? We can’t! Or, anyway, we’d better not. According to a Mint report, if even a modest share of our neglected pennies suddenly returned to circulation, the result would be a “logistically unmanageable” dilemma for Earth’s wealthiest nation. As in, the penny tsunami could overwhelm government vaults.
That’s not great, but at the end of the day we’re talking only about pennies. How much could a penny cost to make? A penny? If only we lived in such a paradise. Unfortunately, one penny costs more than three pennies (3.07 cents at last count) to make and distribute!
When I learned this, I lost my mind.
Pennies used to be worth enough to be useful. “Recall that when Roosevelt installed Lincoln on the cent, the coin was worth more than a quarter in today’s money.” They’re now worthless — except you want to keep a few so as to make correct change so you don’t get more pennies — because the money is worthless due to inflation. Copper, zinc, labor, etc. are not worthless so pennies are worth less than they cost to make.
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, so this is the fruit of government overspending for decades. But relax — it will soon get worse.
September 1, 2024
OPEN THREAD: It’s a three-day weekend, baby, so it’s not over yet.
#JOURNALISM:
He didn’t “die” – he was murdered by the terrorists who have held him since 10/7
Murdered shortly before IDF forces got to him. Rather than surrender, Gazans chose to murder. https://t.co/T3YL74kvim
— Louis vil LeGun 🍌 Notorious T.A.C.O. (@LouisvilleGun) September 1, 2024
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA selects Intuitive Machines for south pole lunar lander mission.
WELL, GOOD: Weight Loss Drug Reduces Diabetes Risk by 94 Percent in Clinical Trial. “Tirzepatide, the active ingredient in the popular weight loss drug Zepbound, has been shown to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in obese or overweight adults with pre-diabetes by a huge 94 percent.”
AS LAWYERS SAY, DON’T ASK A QUESTION IF YOU AREN’T SURE OF THE ANSWER: Billionaire Mark Cuban Asked His Followers If They’d Prefer Their Kids Be Like Trump or Harris — OOPS.
HMM: St. Thomas College of Law Reinstates Fired Tenured Professor, Will Start Termination Hearings. Sounds shady, basing a firing on something that happened as long ago as 2010.
I THINK THE COVID VACCINES ARE AN INCREASINGLY TOUGH SELL: FDA approves Novavax’s updated COVID-19 vaccine.
CARTEL GUNMEN EXEMPT, OF COURSE: Bonta-flation: Cali AG Wants to Jack Up Ammo “Background” Check Fee from $1 to $5. So cheesy.
HE’S NOT TRUSTWORTHY: Minnesota Gun Owners Tee Off on ‘Chameleon’ Tim Walz.
IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: 85% of the matter in the universe is missing: But scientists are getting closer to finding it.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Adult use of cannabis, hallucinogens remain at historically high levels, survey finds.
AN EPIDEMIC OF SENSE IS BREAKING OUT: Switzerland Reverses Course on Nuclear Power.
THE PRESS HAS MADE A BIG DEAL ABOUT MARY TRUMP OPPOSING DONALD, AND ABOUT THE KENNEDY CLAN CLOSING RANKS AGAINST RFK, JR. THIS WILL GET LESS ATTENTION: Tim Walz Loses the Support of… Tim Walz’s Brother.