June 2009

June 6, 2009 by yorksranter 0 comments

Bob’s yer uncle, and Tess is your aunt..

Well, Blears and Smith were good, but Geoff Hoon walking the plank? Klasse. Apparently there is talk of making him a European commissioner again; God knows why. Alan Sugar is some sort of minister and a peer of the realm. Peter Mandelson is turning into Michael Heseltine before our boggling eyes. Better get some cardio…

June 3, 2009 by yorksranter 3 comments

giant symbol crashes and overturns, killing billions of dollars

You thought the Hummer being put on the block was symbolism? This is symbolism: the bloated, militaristic, fuel-guzzling cultural trope itself is being sold to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery. Yes; an unheralded outfit from the deep west, not even Shenzhen or Shanghai. Seeing as its core business is making construction gear, tankers, and off-road…

June 3, 2009 by yorksranter 0 comments

thank you very much!

I saw the Ettes play last night; the first band on my list based on SCIENCE! that I’ve actually seen. They absolutely nailed No Home and made Soizick dance. A lot. (RSW weren’t wrong, were they.) But before that, a story. Getting to the place, we found a closed speakeasy-like door and no sign of…

June 3, 2009 by yorksranter 2 comments

twittering the home front

This is interesting; the US Army in Afghanistan has an official Twitter account. The interesting thing is the explanation: If prevailing wisdom about “population-centric” counterinsurgency holds, why is the U.S. military using Twitter to post body counts? Apparently, it’s about maintaining the support of the population back at home. In a must-read article, Michael Phillips…

Marylin Hartman
Marilyn Hartman (born 1951 or 1952), known as the Serial Stowaway, is an American woman known for stowing away on at least 22 commercial airline flights since 2014.[2]...Hartman's attorneys said in 2021 that she is mentally ill and that her stowaway conduct is a compulsive behavior.[2] Hartman is homeless and believes a worldwide conspiracy, operating […]
The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system | Nature Ecology & Evolution
The absence of Cas1 and Cas2 may suggest LUCA encoded an early Cas system with the means to deliver an RNA-based immune response by cutting (Cas6/Cas3) and binding (CSM/Cas10) RNA, but lacking the full immune-system-site CRISPR. This supports the idea that the effector stage of CRISPR–Cas immunity evolved from RNA sensing for signal transduction, based […]
Saharan 'carpet of tools' is the earliest known man-made landscape | University of Cambridge
They estimate an average density of between 0.5 and 5 million stone artefacts per square kilometre of Africa. When converted into an estimate of volume, this is the equivalent of between 42 to 84 million Great Pyramids of Giza. Researchers say this would be the equivalent of finding between 1.3 and 2.7 Great Pyramids per […]
The Best GPUs for Deep Learning in 2023 — An In-depth Analysis
165 cycles (wait for async copy to finish) + 34 cycles (shared memory) + 1 cycle (Tensor Core) = 200 cycles....From these examples, it becomes clear why the next attribute, memory bandwidth, is so crucial for Tensor-Core-equipped GPUs.
Kamil Galeev on X: "I personally found it surprising how normalized is prison rape in the United States, culturally speaking. Seen almost as a normal, routine part of the punishment. Desirable, in fact In this particular regard, American punitive culture
I personally found it surprising how normalized is prison rape in the United States, culturally speaking. Seen almost as a normal, routine part of the punishment. Desirable, in fact In this particular regard, American punitive culture may be adjacent to the Russian/Soviet one
Aid officials recount violent looting in Gaza as criminal gangs thrive amid Israeli bombardment | Gaza | The Guardian
Central Gaza has emerged as a centre of resistance to the armed gangs who operate farther south, with multiple reports of fatal armed clashes between community groups and families based there and the gangs who steal aid before it reaches other parts of the territory. Some such violence has led to vendettas and a series […]
BBC release first pictures of crime thriller series Virdee | Bradford Telegraph and Argus
Diamond heiress, 96, accuses art dealer husband, 61, of domestic abuse
Branco was born in Mozambique where his older brother, Sergio, became a cabinet minister when the nation won independence from Portugal. A second cousin, Antonio Costa, 63, was Portugal’s prime minister for nine years until resigning last year in a corruption scandal.
The Secret DJ. on X: "A story that names no names, or places, or times - it is like a lock that only has three keys. One of the keys is held by the victim, one by the writer, and one by the attacker. They are the only 3 people who can read a series of eve
Except one. One bright spark read one of the fully anonymised stories of rape and went online and said “hey! That’s me!”. Yes, you are hearing that correctly, Steven John Proctor was so thick he actually publicly outed himself as a rapist // not even the most embarrassing moment.
Thread by @JominiW on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App
OTU Donetsk has effectively transitioned to conducting a Corps-sized delaying operation. OTU Donetsk does not have enough forces within its Area of Responsibility to defend Kurakhove and the Sukhi Yaly Riverline effectively. It is trading space for time in-depth to slow down OSVs Tsentr and Vostok momentum without becoming decisively engaged. While coordination between ZSU […]