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Your Tesla Has Installed the Latest Update and Is Now a Toaster

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/your-tesla-has-installed-the-latest-update-…
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 04:00

The latest over-the-air software update for your Tesla Model 3 has been successfully installed. Your vehicle is now a toaster.

Frequently Asked Questions About This Update

Where is my steering wheel?
You don’t need a steering wheel anymore. Your car is now a toaster. Toasters do not require steering wheels.

Why is my car a toaster?
Tesla’s safety team discovered that automobile accidents kill more than one million people annually. Toasters are much safer, killing fewer than one thousand people per year. We have reduced the likelihood that your Tesla will kill you by more than 99.9 percent.

Why won’t my car move?
Your car is a toaster. You are now much safer.

I was not at home when this update was installed. How do I get home?
It sounds like you need a car. Press the Bagel button to access the main menu, then tap Tesla Showroom Locator and filter by “cars” to find a showroom near you that still sells deadly cars instead of safe toasters.

Dan Froomkin on the press failure of 2002-2003

https://digbysblog.net/2023/03/21/dan-froomkin-on-the-press-failure-of-2002-200…
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 03:30
Have they learned anything since then? In a nation that considers itself peaceful and civilized, the case for military action should be overwhelmingly stronger than the case against. It must face, and survive, aggressive questioning. When political leaders are too timid to push back, that responsibility falls entirely to the media. But in 2002 and 2003, covering the run-up to war in Iraq, our nation’s top reporters and editors blew it badly. Their credulous, stenographic spreading of the administration’s deeply deceptive arguments made them de facto accomplices to a war undertaken on false pretenses. I’ve written about this failure countless times, but – believe it or not — the best thing I’ve ever read about it was actually written by Scott McClellan, the former Bush White House press secretary. In an era of almost universally self-congratulatory memoirs from government officials, McClellan’s 2008 book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” was full of confessions and accusations.

Steve Martin & Adam Gopnik: So Many Steves - Live Event

https://www.stevemartin.com/2023/03/steve-martin-adam-gopnik-so-many-steves-liv…
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 03:01
Steve Martin and Adam Gopnik celebrate the launch of their new audiobook, So Many Steves, with an evening of music, conversation, and merriment. This multi-media event will include lively conversation and even some musical performances from these old friends. All tickets come with a copy of the So Many Steves audiobook, which will be available for download on May 2. This event will take place on May 4, 2023 at 7pm at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre in New York City. Livestream Tickets are also available. For more info and tickets, visit, symphonyspace.org

New York Times Tries for Pulitzer Prize in Irresponsible Reporting on Bank Crises

https://scheerpost.com/2023/03/21/new-york-times-tries-for-pulitzer-prize-in-ir…
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 02:52

By The Center for Economic and Policy Research The New York Times seems to think it is a newspaper’s job to promote bank panics wherever possible. It would be difficult to explain its reporting on the Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse any other way. Last week it ran a piece implying that Silicon Valley’s tech sector was […]

The post New York Times Tries for Pulitzer Prize in Irresponsible Reporting on Bank Crises appeared first on scheerpost.com.

Hawley Announces First Bill in Worker's Agenda to Rebuild America: Ending Normal Trade Relations with China Act — U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)

http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2023/03/hawley-announces-first-bill-in-…
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 02:52
Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced the first piece of legislation in his new Worker’s Agenda to Rebuild America. The Ending Normal Trade Relations with China Act would revoke China's normal trade relations status to reduce our dependency and protect America’s working class.

China is America’s greatest adversary. To win the fierce economic competition for jobs, industry, and the future, America must return to the long-standing formula for American success: strong and independent workers. Years of short-sighted decisions by policymakers in Washington have only perpetuated the problem.

Privatising Scotland’s Trees

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/03/privatising-scotlands-trees/
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 02:26

On March 1st, under the guise of the SNP leadership contest, the Scottish Government signed one of Scotland’s largest-ever PFI deals. NatureScot’s new £2bn partnership with private finance perfectly illustrates how ‘green capitalism’ has come to haunt efforts to tackle the climate emergency. Signed by a Green government minister, the ‘pilot’ project aims to ‘secure […]

The First Great Environmental Crisis Will Be

https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/niyBMplQItDw1IlTvmvnIK7VFky8BpXO
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 02:13
The First Great Environmental Crisis Will Be

Water. As I’ve said for many years.

The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40 percent by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit.

I’ll use the US as an example, though this going to effect almost all countries, some much worse than others, and it will cause a number of wars. Candidates include all nations along the Nile River, and all nations around the Himalayan plateau, among many others. The US may threaten war with Canada to get Canada’s water resources and may invade if Canada is recalcitrant. The Great Lakes will be a great problem.

UCU HE left defeat attempt to put dire deal to members

https://skwawkbox.org/2023/03/21/ucu-he-left-defeat-attempt-to-put-dire-deal-to…
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 01:48
Management has tried to sell deal as a win, as more and more unions capitulate under alleged pressure from Starmer and TUC The left on the UCU union’s higher education committee have defeated an attempt by the union’s management to railroad striking workers into a ballot on a dire ‘deal’ offered by employers that members […]

Standing on the Back of No One Dept.

https://digbysblog.net/2023/03/21/standing-on-the-back-of-no-one-dept/
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 01:30
An oldie but goodie The conservative columnist best unnamed and cited below went viral last week for being unable to define “woke” after claiming to have devoted an entire chapter to it in her recent book. Matt Binder (better him than me) dredged up a classic tweet by her from 2012. It’s “the conservative mindset perfectly distilled in a single tweet.” Sorry, it’s giants all the way down.

Assumption uncertainty

https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2023/03/21/assumption-uncertainty/
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 00:31
An ongoing concern is that excessive focus on formal modeling and statistics can lead to neglect of practical issues and to overconfidence in formal results … Analysis interpretation depends on contextual judgments about how reality is to be mapped onto the model, and how the formal analysis results are to be mapped back into reality. […]

A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell?

https://tomdispatch.com/a-highway-to-peace-or-a-highway-to-hell/
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 00:02

In April 1953, newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general who had led the landings on D-Day in France in June 1944, gave his most powerful speech. It would become known as his “Cross of Iron” address. In it, Ike warned of the cost humanity would pay if Cold War competition led to a world dominated by wars and weaponry that couldn’t be reined in. In the immediate aftermath of the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Ike extended an olive branch to the new leaders of that empire. He sought, he said, to put America and the world on a “highway to peace.” It was, of course, never to be, as this country’s emergent military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC)... Read more

A country of slow learners

https://digbysblog.net/2023/03/21/a-country-of-slow-learners/
Created
Wed, 22/03/2023 - 00:00
No country for Black men (among others) Virginia’s Central State Hospital’s original name (according to its Wikipedia entry) was Central Lunatic Asylum. The Petersburg facility “was the first institution in the country for ‘colored persons of unsound mind’.” On March 6, it was the site of the alleged second-degree murder by asphyxiation of shackled Irvo N. Otieno who is unavailable for comment. The Washington Post reports: As many as10 sheriff’s deputies and medical staff at Virginia’s Central State Hospital can be seen piling on top of a shackled Irvo N. Otieno for approximately 11 minutes until he stops moving, according to new video showing the encounter that led to the 28-year-old Black man’s death. The hospital surveillance video, which has no sound, shows Otieno’s final moments on March 6, from the time Henrico County sheriff’s deputies drag him into a hospital admissions room in handcuffs and leg irons, to the 11 minutes in which they restrain Otieno on the ground, to the moment when they release Otieno’s limp body around 4:40 p.m. Most of those visible in the video appear Black themselves.