it’d be funny if someone paid the government a lot of money for this one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang album and then Wu-Tang just put it on Spotify. You’d still have the certificate of authenticity, though; no one else has that. Obviously the thing that Martin Shkreli bought from the Wu-Tang Clan was a non-fungible token?

Trial begins for B.C. man accused of breaking quarantine to go to Flat Earth conference

The “Faithful and trustworthy” and the “Does well with my friends and family” factors, were associated with more years in a relationship.

How Google quietly funds Europe’s leading tech policy institutes

Hundreds of AI predictive tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped. — and some were potentially harmful.

In about a dozen years, ransomware has emerged as a major cyberproblem of our time. […] the problem will not be solved with patches, antivirus software or two-factor authentication […] Russia, according to the experts, is where the majority of attacks originate. Three other countries — China, Iran and North Korea — are also serious players, and the obvious commonality is that all are autocracies whose security apparatuses doubtlessly know full well who the hackers are and could shut them down in a minute. So the presumption is that the criminals are protected, either through bribes — which, given their apparent profits, they can distribute lavishly — or by doing pro bono work for the government or both. […] By no coincidence, there were few ransomware attacks before Bitcoin came into being a dozen years ago. [NY Times]

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010) Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the public by big business […] a marketing psychologist discussed one of the methods she used to increase sales. Her staff carried out a study on what effect the nagging of children had on their parents’ likelihood of buying a toy for them. They found out that 20% to 40% of the purchases of their toys would not have occurred if the child didn’t nag its parents. One in four visits to theme parks would not have taken place. They used these studies to market their products directly to children, encouraging them to nag their parents to buy.

English spelling is ridiculous. Sew and new don’t rhyme. Kernel and colonel do. When you see an ough, you might need to read it out as ‘aw’ (thought), ‘ow’ (drought), ‘uff’ (tough), ‘off’ (cough), ‘oo’ (through), or ‘oh’ (though). The ea vowel is usually pronounced ‘ee’ (weak, please, seal, beam) but can also be ‘eh’ (bread, head, wealth, feather). Those two options cover most of it – except for a handful of cases, where it’s ‘ay’ (break, steak, great). Oh wait, one more… there’s earth.

This paper in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis is a goldmine of wacky ideas. Just for starters, the author says his wife can cure autism.

“No six-foot social distancing rule unless you have a 6-foot dick.”

every day the same again | August 1st, 2021