No, a New “Study” Doesn’t Prove COVID Vaccines are Unsafe. by Rebecca Watson

The white rural reckoning Trump is betraying the very voters who put him back in power. by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman

On The Question of Rebranding by driftglass

Their Bionic Eyes Are Now Obsolete and Unsupported. Second Sight left users of its retinal implants in the dark by Eliza Strickl and Mark Harris

The Party Should Throw Them a Party. A proposal for how to build a more durable Democratic coalition. by Ned Resnikoff

Another unheeded warning from Cassandra Krugman by Xpostfactoid

Fake Jobs and Fake Facts. By Misrepresenting Constitutional Law, Muskawamy Prove Brandolini’s Law by Don Moynihan

Miss Fire Rocket Kit, $250. Level 1 and Level 2 certification kit.

Fringe science, Junk science
A Short History of Psi Research by Robert Todd Carroll
The Telepathy Tapes by Ky Dickens. Credulous podcaster touts telepathy.

The 19th-Century Fight Against Bacteria-Ridden Milk Preserved With Embalming Fluid In an unpublished excerpt from her new book The Poison Squad, Deborah Blum chronicles the public health campaign against tainted dairy products. by Deborah Blum

How I Get The News. The Firehose Is Your Friend. by Oliver Willis

Could this famous conman be lying about his story? A new book suggests he is. Frank W. Abagnale Jr. is famous for cons documented in the blockbuster “Catch Me If You Can.” But science writer Alan Logan says the real grift is Abagnale’s entire story. by Xavier Lopez

Exclusive: A Stronger Playbook For House Resistance. An internal memo shows Senate Democrats aren’t the only ones who can gum up the works. by Brian Beutler

Roche SBX deep dive into the real specs. What is hidden behind the numbers presented by Roche?

Clear ice with directional freezing
Making Flow – Interview with director Gints Zilbalodis

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” -Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” -Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism

Measles outbreak in low tax, low government capacity Texas, link

Facilitate Insight by Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation
“insight problem solving task while receiving transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the anterior temporal lobes (ATL). Only 20% of participants solved an insight problem with sham stimulation (control), whereas 3 times as many participants did so (p = 0.011) with cathodal stimulation (decreased excitability) of the left ATL together with anodal stimulation (increased excitability) of the right ATL.”

Layoff announcement tracker

Beck Weathers (Mt Everest 1996 disaster) general session speech at 2015 NADA Convention

Violations of Power, Adaptive Blindness and Betrayal Trauma Theory by Jennifer J. Freyd
“DARVO—deny, attack, reverse victim and offender”

Ubuntu 24.04 was going to sleep by default. Turning it off, link.

101 American Fossil Sites You’ve Gotta See by Albert B Dickas

From the FOX propaganda channel: Misleading Rumor Claims Trump Admin Found 75K-80K ‘Missing’ Migrant Children

Sterilizing seeds
“My recommendation is 10% Calcium hypochloride or 5% Sodium hypochloride for 30 minutes, and for complex surfaces of bigger seeds, it is essential to add 2% Tween 20 as detergent (a small drop for 1mL bleach in an Eppendorf tube with seeds).”
“Sodium hypochlorite (1-5%) or 10% Calcium hypochlorite are most common. Mercuric chloride 1% is also probably the best, but use of 3 compounds: Sodium hypochlorite, KMnO4 and H2O2 with washing by water after each one gave best results for nuts and beans.”
“Glass container, clean. Place seeds into it and pour hydrogen peroxide 3%. Soak for five minutes. Drain, pour distilled water and soak for five minutes.”
Growing Seed Sprouts at Home, link.

Rictors Seeds

Map of obscure islands

Musk’s Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government. Imagining how we’d cover overseas what’s happening to the U.S. right now. by Garrett Graff

So many unmarried men. For Mary Midgley, the Western philosophical tradition is shaped by the fact that its greatest practitioners were bachelors. by Ellie Robson

Build a Simple 3D Printed CNC Plotter Machine by MertArduino

Try these Filament Combinations for Multi-Material and Supports

Little Red State Fundy sez…

Science Is a Word Game by Jamie Zvirzdin

Piping tip size charts (cake, decorating), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Free/open-source sites for the preparation of scientific illustrations: bioicons.com, scidraw.io, bioart.niaid.nih.gov, inkscape.org, biogdp.com, reactome.org/icon-lib

History for GRANITE. Exploring the pyramids of Ancient Egypt

Jan 6 Capital attack video, link.

Process your own JWST images at home

In Five Years, Chicago Has Barely Made Progress on Its Court-Ordered Police Reforms. Here’s Why. by Heather Cherone, WTTW News, and Vernal Coleman, ProPublica.

Fake Jobs and Fake Facts. By Misrepresenting Constitutional Law, Muskawamy Prove Brandolini’s Law. by Don Moynihan

Federal Pell Grants

How an Interracial Marriage Sparked One of the Most Scandalous Trials of the Roaring Twenties

Malcolm Gladwell. “Malcolm Gladwell began as a college right-wing Reagan supporter, was trained by the tobacco-funded far-right National Journalism Center, and throughout his career has inserted pro-tobacco, pro-banking industry and pro-PHARMA messages into his books and articles.”

Kveik. A family of strains of brewing yeast that has been used in Norwegian farmhouse brewing for generations.

STORM. Wikipedia-like report on your topic with AI

Project 2025 Annotation: A Summary

Bezos, Trump, and the Failure of Democracy. We are witnessing a watershed moment. Democracy is failing because the rule of law has been broken. And everyone is about to realize it. All at once.

FDA Publishes Final Rule on Laboratory-Developed Test (LDT) Regulation
“Laboratories must then submit a premarket approval application or a 510(k) submission to the FDA, including evidence of the test’s clinical validity and utility.”

CJ Cherryh, Alliance-Union book timeline, link2

A Q&A with David Neiwert, America’s foremost writer and thinker on far-right extremism, on what might happen if Trump wins—or loses. by Rick Perlstein

Red Book of Westmarch

Free and OpenSource Photo Libraries comparison
Many developers + multiuser support: Immich, Librephotos. Immich had multiuser tagging support.

Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars by Albert Burneko

Millennials, Gen Xers lead jump in “religiously unaffiliated”, survey

The Charlottesville Hoax Hoax by David Corn

The Best Linux Apps for Chess

Behind the Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex. From Russell Brand to JD Vance to Candace Owens, what happens when the Catholic Church chases influencers—and their legions of followers—down the rabbit hole of the right? by Kathryn Joyce

AP Anatomy and Physiology course plan (source unclear)

Making Meaningful Difference: A Q&A with Philanthropist Laura Gutierrez

How the Republican War on Women Extends to Voting Rights. Most women vote Democratic. And most still change their name when they marry. And that’s where the GOP sees an Achilles’ heel.

How many helium balloons to lift a person? 39 weather balloons, link

Tiny tools, link2

The psychology of conspiracy theory believers, linked article.

HPV vaccine study finds zero cases of cervical cancer among women vaccinated before age 14

Surface anatomy

Fresnel Lens Manufacturing – 2018 Michigan Lighthouse Alliance Conference

Butterflies fly using efficient propulsive clap mechanism owing to flexible wings

Fast Fresnel Hack Embiggens The Smallest Of Heads

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9

Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500 by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler (2023)

Louis Wain “A Kittens’ Christmas Party”
Cats, Cats, Cats! The Incredible Life & Art of Louis Wain
Original Catfluencer: How a Victorian Artist’s Feline Fixation Gave Us the Internet Cat

How Colorful Ribbon Diagrams Became the Face of Proteins (Jane Richardson)

Dark Oxygen Is Changing the Calculus of Extraterrestrial Life

The discovery of oxygen production in the deep oceans has profound implications for the origins of life, both here and elsewhere in the universe.

Say It to My Face. How Democrats learned to tell the plain truth and like it by Rick Perlstein

SF writer M. John Harrison. Nova Swing (2006)

leaf sheep

Rubio Monocoat Oil Plus 2C is a hardwax oil wood finish, $180 / 1.3l, 300 – 500 ft²/l

READING: Isaac Asimov on Dominationist Ethnonationalism. It is for everyone, and everyone catches it… by Brad DeLong. From his autobiography.

Biden and Harris Broke the Suffocating “Washington Consensus” on Economics They put a stake through neoliberalism. Now, the vice president has to convince voters that her antitrust, trade, and public investment policies, unlike Trump’s, will improve their lives. by Phillip Longman

What the Russian Invasion Teaches Us About the Right. Contrarians aren’t critical thinkers. They’re gullible reactionaries, vulnerable to conspiracy theories. by David French

Mechanical Movements of the Cold War: How the Soviets Revolutionized Wristwatches. Shortly after the stock market crash of 1929, the Soviet Union purchased a bankrupt watch manufacturer in Ohio. They transformed it into one of the world’s top watchmaking centers.