Daily Shaarli
May 25, 2021
I love fussing with wifi, but when I’m building the backbone of my network in a new location—a house, apartment, or wherever—I tend to go wired as much as I can. Wireless bridges and tri-band mesh/extender setups are great and convenient, but I always appreciate the stability and speed of an Ethernet cable. //
When I recently offered to help my friends set up their house with a wired backbone, I came across a fun problem: No Ethernet connections in any of their rooms. //
The ingenious solution to this problem? MoCA, or “Multimedia over Coaxial.” I’ve known about the technology for a long time, but never had the time (or need) to play with it until now. My friends’ house was wired with coaxial cables in every room, which made this an ideal solution. I could just use MoCA instead of Ethernet—MoCA 2.0, technically, which gives up to a full gigabit worth of speed and should be more than adequate //
I got my hands on a two-pack of TrendNET TMO-311C2K adapters and got to work, which took all of five minutes because I was acting the fool. It should come as little surprise that plugging in the MoCA adapters to various coaxial ports around the house achieved absolutely nothing. //
That’s just one big way to say that I wasn’t too surprised to find that many of the coaxial cables around my friends’ house simply weren’t connected to anything. I was eventually able to confirm this by tracing the wires to the outside of the house, where I found where all the disconnected cables terminated. I then went and picked up one of these to test which cable went to which room in the house:
https://www.trendnet.com/support/support-detail.asp?prod=105_TMO-311C2K
There was a time when booting Linux from a floppy disk was the norm, but of course, those days are long gone. Even if you still had a working 3.5 inch drive, surely the size of the modern kernel alone would far exceed the 1.44 MB capacity of the disks, to say nothing of all the support software required to create a usable operating system. Well that’s what we thought, anyway.
But then [Krzysztof Krystian Jankowski] dropped Floppinux, a live Linux OS that boots from just a single floppy. There’s even a few hundred KB left over on the disk, allowing the user to tuck a few of their own programs and scripts onboard before booting it up. But most impressively, the project doesn’t rely on ancient software releases like so many other embedded systems do. Every component of Floppinux is pulled directly from the cutting edge, including version 5.13.0-rc2 of the Linux kernel which is literally just a few days old.
Southern China Morning Post noted on May 23 that the CCP has been focusing on funding and building government buildings for African countries, which has aroused suspicion from the international community.
Currently, the $80 million new headquarters for the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is funded by China, is under construction in the south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Despite the U.S. government’s warning in February 2020 that a China-funded and constructed CDC will be used by the regime to steal “African genetic data,” construction started in December 2020.
According to The Heritage Foundation, China was involved in the building of more than 186 government buildings across 40 of 54 African countries. Even the African Union (AU) headquarters, located in Ethiopia, was fully financed and built by China.
In 2018, French newspaper Le Monde first revealed that AU technicians discovered that between 2012 and 2017, the Chinese-built African Union headquarters had been transmitting AU’s confidential data to Shanghai daily through the building’s IT network using servers provided by Chinese company Huawei.
Back in 2016, then candidate Hillary Clinton got almost 3 million more popular votes than the Electoral College winner, Donald Trump.
In 2020, Trump gained more popular votes as a sitting president than any of his predecessors. Trump also received the highest percentage of non-white votes than any GOP candidate since Richard Nixon in 1960.
Despite those statistics, Trump (allegedly) still lost to Biden by a little over 7 million votes.
Or did he?
As the graphic at the top reveals, Biden's nearly 4.2 million vote improvement in Margin of Victory (MOV) appears to be remarkably similar to the decrease (4.3 million) in WIMP over the same period.
Is this just another one of many numerical coincidences that keep popping up in the 2020 election results that points to tabulation (adjudication) problems in the election system -- or did Libertarians, Greens, and others just decide to vote for Biden?
Evidence points to the former
Despite an increase in nationwide voter turnout of over 30 million in 2020, there were three times fewer write-in votes than in 2016. The numbers don't make sense, especially when you consider that Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Wisconsin relegated the Green Party to write-in status in the Presidential contest. To be clear, we should have seen an increase in write-in votes.
It’s hard to write about battery research around these parts without hearing certain comments echo before they’re even posted: It’ll never see the market. Cold fusion is eternally 20 years away, and new battery technology is eternally five years away.
That skepticism is understandable when a new battery design promises a revolution, but it risks missing the fact that batteries have gotten better. Lithium-ion batteries have reigned for a while now—that’s true. But “lithium-ion” is a category of batteries that includes a wide variety of technologies, both in terms of batteries in service today and the ones we've used previously. A lot can be done—and a lot has been done—to make a better lithium-ion battery. In fact, gains in the amount of energy they can store have been on the order of five percent per year. That means that the capacity of your current batteries is over 1.5 times what they would have held a decade ago. //
Energy density has a prominent trend. The original commercial lithium-ion battery, produced by Sony in the early 1990s, had an energy density of under 100 watt-hours per kilogram. That number has climbed over time, with the familiar cylindrical 18650 cells on the market hitting 200 watt-hours per kilogram by 2010. According to BloombergNEF, batteries used in electric vehicles have gotten as high as 300 watt-hours per kilogram in the last couple of years. //
The cost of lithium-ion batteries has fallen dramatically—with huge effects on electric vehicles. A recent study noted that “the real price of lithium-ion cells, scaled by their energy capacity, has declined by about 97 percent since their commercial introduction in 1991.” The early lithium-ion cells in the 1990s were around $3,000 per kilowatt-hour. By the early 2000s, that was nearer to $500 per kilowatt-hour.
In terms of electric vehicles, BloombergNEF estimates that the average price of a complete battery pack was about $1,180 per kilowatt-hour in 2010. By 2020, it was down to around $130 per kilowatt-hour. Ultimately, this is what makes it possible to produce a car with 300-mile range that someone not named “Jeff Bezos” can plausibly afford.
Starting a conversation with a complete stranger can be a little intimidating, and sometimes you don't know what to say. Use the FORD technique the next time you meet someone to avoid those awkward silences.
Family
Occupation
Recreation
Dreams
Think of a couple questions for each category, keep them saved in your memory bank, and you should be able to start up a lasting conversation with anyone you meet. You could even think of a few follow-up questions or sentences that can help move things along and show you're actively listening. Hit the link below to read more.
So if I’m reading all of that correctly, it looks like the mainstream media approached the entire issue with deep skepticism from the start, not necessarily because they didn’t believe it was possible, but because they didn’t like the guy making the claims. And every bit of their reporting and fact-checking on the claim from that point forward was framed around that belief and was clouded by their hostile, mistrustful feelings towards Trump.
While a healthy dose of media skepticism towards claims made by politicians is always warranted, it’s not an excuse to slack off of doing exhaustive due diligence when it comes to investigative reporting and fact-checking, especially on a topic as important as this one. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened here. Also unfortunate is that this visceral anti-Trump mindset was pervasive in other reporting on the administration as well on issues that had nothing to do with the coronavirus.
We honor God when we acknowledge all members of the human race have equal worth. We dishonor Him when we ascribe certain sins to people based on skin color. //
Critical race theory is the most discussed and debated academic theory in America today. Its advocates believe it is a tool for understanding the pervasiveness of systemic racism ever since the country was founded. Its detractors have called it a Marxist framework that causes racism and teaches people to judge each other based on skin color.
One institution that has been particularly damaged by the spread of critical race theory is American evangelicalism. A recent book entitled “Fault Lines,” by Dr. Voddie Baucham Jr., pastor and dean at the African Christian University, directly addresses the social justice movement and how it threatens the unity of Christian believers. //
A critical social justice worldview is not simply a set of beliefs. It is a way of viewing the world that is built on assumptions about, among other things, humanity, authority, evil, and justice. The theories Baucham presents in “Fault Lines” can be thought of as a stone wall that is supported by an arch. Critical social justice is the keystone theory that holds the arch together and critical race theory is the capstone that sits on top of the wall.
The wall itself is built on four cornerstones: Karl Marx’s conflict theory, Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, the Frankfurt School’s critical theory, and Derrick Bell’s critical legal studies. These theories, some of which go back more than 150 years, describe society as a struggle between social classes competing for finite resources. The dominant class uses politics, law, and culture to impose norms on society that maintain the status quo and perpetuate societal inequities.
The Christian faith is built on a different foundation. The Bible states Jesus is the chief cornerstone of the church, the collection of genuine believers in the past, present, and future who are described as a holy temple for the Lord.
A Christian worldview uses scripture as the basis for absolute moral truth as well as the standard by which good, evil, equity, and justice are defined. Critical race theory sees oppression based on skin color as society’s main problem and the transformation of structures and systems as solutions. The scriptures, by contrast, see sin as humanity’s main problem and faith in Jesus Christ as the only solution. The tension between these two competing worldviews is a central theme of the book. //
“Fault Lines” shows that the weapons Christians need for this ideological battle are spiritual, not physical. Christians should be a shining example to the rest of the world of what it looks like to have unity across ethnicity, tribe, and nation.
We honor God when we acknowledge all members of the human race have equal dignity and worth. We dishonor Him when we ascribe certain sins to people based on ancestry and mistreat others because of their skin color.
The sin of racism, whether expressed through ethnic hatred or partiality, is a problem of the human heart. Its solution is the gospel of Jesus Christ, not the work of antiracism.
It’s been just over a decade since the fourth most powerful earthquake of the modern era triggered a tsunami that struck Fukushima on the eastern coastline of Japan, causing thousands of deaths and leaving hundreds of thousands unable to return home. That tsunami was also responsible for the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster.
When the 14-metre wave flooded the Fukushima Daiichi plant, it shut down emergency generators, triggering a series of heat-induced meltdowns. Now, the Japanese government’s decision to allow the release of more than one million tonnes of radioactive water from the plant into the ocean has divided opinion. //
But since the tsunami hit in 2011, authorities have used more than a million tonnes of water to try and cool the plant’s disabled reactors, which are still hot thanks to the long-term release of energy from the nuclear power source. All that radioactive water – which is more contaminated than standard waste water – has to go somewhere. The decision to release it into the oceans is – some would argue – the most pragmatic long-term solution. //
The process of filtering and diluting the huge amounts of water to meet safety standards will take a few years to complete. Then, we’d usually expect the water to be released gradually in small volumes through coastal pipelines. That way, any potential effects of releasing the radioactive waste will be minimised. However, the fact is that we don’t know exactly what those effects will be on marine – or human – life, given the sheer volume of water set to be released from the Fukushima plant.
Our own research has shown that a number of marine species could have their DNA damaged through extended exposure to radionuclides in seawater. It’s important to note that our conclusions are mostly drawn from studies in the lab, rather than in the real world; when a nuclear accident takes place, human safety takes priority and biological assessment often takes place decades after the original event.
During Monday’s press conference, Psaki was asked about the mass shootings that have occurred over the past year with 4,000 people shot and killed by a gun. The journalist asked if there was a “crime problem” in the U.S., setting up an almost too perfect alley-oop for Psaki to talk about Biden’s continued action on gun control.
“Well, I would say certainly there is a gun problem,” said Psaki. //
Psaki continued to discuss the “hundreds, thousands of people who lose their lives” via gun violence, and that Biden is working with the Senate to push universal background checks and working with states with the “greatest level of activism.” //
Dana Loesch
@DLoesch
We have record gun sales and new gun owners but not the crime to match. What we have is a judicial problem, lowered deterrents for repeat offenders via her party's policies, reduced police morale, and criminals emboldened by "defund cops" talk from her party. //
the presence of a gun doesn’t result in the elevation of violence either. An armed community is oftentimes a safer one as various studies have found time and again. For instance, 98 percent of mass shootings that occurred since the 1950s happened in gun-free zones? Did you know that over a million people in Texas are licensed to carry a firearm and that 0.4 per 100,000 have committed a homicide? Compare that to the .99 per 100,000 homicide rate in jolly ol’ Britain where guns are banned. //
Biden’s pandering to those shouting “defund the police” and his party’s subsequent obedience to these radicals is also a massive contributor to the rise in crime. As Fox News pointed out, major cities that leaned into the narrative that funds should be allocated away from their respective police departments are experiencing crime surges.
The police officers that do remain no longer feel safe doing their jobs and become less likely to do the necessary proactive policing that stops so many crimes before they happen. A study by Harvard Professor Roland Fryer found that proactive policing is necessary for the safety of any community, but that when the public turns on the police, crime goes up. //
"A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from all who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
- George Washington //
edintexas
9 hours ago
The Socialist/Communists can't explain why they are so adamant that semi-automatic rifles which may look somewhat like military weapons are high on their list of firearms they want to eliminate from public possession. They aren't challenged on this by the MSM (no surprise) and yet the Bureau's annual Homicide statistics by type of weapon consistently show the number of homicides in the category "Personal Weapons (hands, feet, elbows, etc.) exceed the number of homicides by rifle (any type of rifle, not just those they claim would reduce crime if banned). For that matter most, if not all, years both rifles and shotguns total fewer homicides than Personal Weapons.
No matter how much advice you get before getting married, nothing can quite prepare you for what it’s really like. Over the years I’ve been married, I’ve learned a few things I didn’t expect about what life after the wedding would be like. Here are the things I think everyone should consider before they get married.
A pilot aboard a Ryanair jetliner forced to land in Belarus over the weekend repeatedly questioned air-traffic controllers about their request to reroute the plane to Minsk amid a purported bomb threat, according to a partial transcript released Tuesday by Belarus’ government aviation agency.
The transcript hasn’t been independently verified. . Several pilots and security experts asked to review the accounting by The Wall Street Journal said it appeared to be genuine, based on the terminology and back-and-forth typical of such conversations. Some said the Ryanair pilots, who repeatedly asked for clarification about the airport at which they were being asked to land, seemed surprised by the request to divert to Minsk.
“They definitely hesitated,“ said Ben Berman, a retired U.S. airline captain and former accident investigator who is now an airline safety consultant. ”They didn’t just accept the statement of the controller.”//
European officials have called a bomb threat improbable, and the European Union has restricted its carriers from flying over Belarus. European and U.S. officials have condemned the detour as a brazen act of interference in commercial aviation and have called for an investigation. Air industry and aviation safety officials say if the bomb threat was faked, it represents a dangerous precedent that could erode trust between commercial airlines and the countries they fly over.
Belarus has said it acted according to international protocols after receiving correspondence from Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, that a bomb aboard was set to detonate over Vilnius. Hamas hasn’t responded to requests for comment.
May 24, 2021 By Christopher Bedford
President Joe Biden launched an unprecedented purge of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts Monday, according to a letter reviewed by The Federalist demanding resignation letters by 6 p.m. from four of the seven members, including the chairman.
Those members include sculptor Chas Fagan, architect Steven Spandle, landscape architect Perry Guillot, and Chairman Justin Shubow, a writer and expert on architecture and civic beauty. //
The commission is an independent federal agency established by Congress that advises Congress and the White House on public (civic) architecture on federal lands and in the District of Columbia. Established in 1910, its seven members are chosen from “disciplines including art, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design,” and are appointed by the president to serve four-year terms. No commission member has ever been asked to tender their resignation before their term was up.While classical architecture remains the hands-down favorite of the American public, its opponents are powerful in academia, elite architecture circles, and, it seems, in the Biden White House.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-14/classical-buildings-beat-modern-ones-in-u-s-poll
To PB or not to PB, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler to endure the pings and knock of inadequate octane in our airplanes’ engines or to rise up and add lead to suppress them. //
In 2021, the only fuels with lead are avgas and racing fuels. In a recent report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, researchers used all of the correct buzz phrases, such as avgas is the biggest polluter of lead, can be inhaled, etc. But they still have no data to back up their suppositions. They just know that it sounds bad.
In an interview in 2018, the economist Thomas Sowell had a concise answer when podcaster and commentator Dave Rubin asked what awakened him to the failures of Marxism, an ideology he had espoused in his youth.
“Facts!” Sowell replied.
In his decadeslong career, Sowell’s commitment to the facts at the expense of popular approval and, sometimes, career advancement has captured audiences young and old, black and white, rich and poor.
But Sowell isn’t much concerned with his fame, even if it is an encouraging indicator of how well his ideas have been received. //
To be a conservative who is black is to expose oneself to undue amounts of absurd criticism, and Sowell’s experience was no exception.
Riley writes that Sowell and the late economist Walter Williams, a protegee and friend of Sowell’s, used to joke that “they never flew together, because if the plane went down there would be no black conservatives left.”
But Sowell had “felt the pain and humiliation of racism firsthand throughout his life,” and “needed no lectures from anyone on the evils of Jim Crow,” Riley writes.
For instance, many claimed that Sowell’s book “Ethnic America: A History” argued that discrimination against blacks did not exist. But Sowell actually was arguing that “discrimination alone was an insufficient explanation of social inequality.”
Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution since 1980, certainly was not a pawn of white economists, even the ones he admired and learned from.
Milton Friedman, a friend and mentor, said that Sowell “has a mind of his own, insists on making it up for himself, and on getting the evidence necessary to form a valid judgment.” In fact, Sowell saw his views on racial matters as entirely in line with that of black civil rights leaders of the past.
“If anything,” Riley writes, “Sowell’s analyses are in the tradition of his fellow black forebearers, not his white contemporaries.” Black leaders of the past such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, he writes, “shared Sowell’s deep skepticism of government benevolence and the lowering of standards to facilitate black advancement.”
Between 2007 and 2011 the European Space Agency worked with Russia to simulate the conditions of a trip to Mars, particularly as a psychological isolation experiment. Called Mars500, the longest part of this study ran between 2010 and 2011, and revealed a significant degradation of the simulacral explorers’ sleep patterns. While on wide-body airliners a business class cocoon seat can deliver comfort (and even luxury) during an overnight flight, such ergonomic palliatives won’t be as easy for a year-long journey. Space travel to Mars is supposed to be a bold and daring adventure. But what if it ends up feeling more like a super long red-eye flight? //
If the dream of space travel involves new horizons and feelings of unbound freedom—to explore, to discover, to spread humanity—a nightmare lurks just around the corner of consciousness. There will be no real “arrival” on this fantasy trip: It’s enclosures and pressurized chambers all the way down. When it comes to human space travel, the destination really is the journey. And the journey will be long, and claustrophobic. As far as “quarantine” goes, spacefaring may feel familiar to those who lived through the COVID pandemic—and certain survival tactics may crossover. //
The wish image of habitations on other planets is for simulated environments that feel as good as—if not better than—our home planet. The reality is bound to be precarious and highly contingent—no matter how awesome and intact space settlements might appear in artistic renderings. The motivation for spacefaring is, at least for Musk, premised on a desire to escape a planet in limbo; but the alternative is hardly a safe haven. This is the paradox of spacefaring: it’s a lose-lose proposition.
As anthropologist Lisa Messeri has found in her research on planetary scientists, ideas about inhabiting outer space can tend to revert back to making sense of our place on Earth. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; in fact, one of the arguments for space exploration is to improve life back home.