Stories you might have missed: JDragon's stories of the week

[JDragon]

NOTE: This is a redacted thread. Feel free to discuss here, but if you want to share your own links here, send me a PM and I will credit you if I use them.

In this thread, I will share the stories I stumbled across during the week but did not see in the forums and did not manage to make a thread about. I will try to avoid stories that have been extensively discussed in the forums already, unless I feel my chosen source adds something new or interesting.

Feel free to use any of the stories to create your own threads or discuss right in this thread. However, please try to avoid posting your own links in here. If you have something that you feel should be featured in this thread, feel free to drop me a PM. I will credit you when posting.

 

[JDragon]

Edition of October 22nd, 2018


International Politics

In a move of major assholery, the Saudi King and Prince have called Kashoggi's son to extend their "condolences".

Link to story:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...hone-khashoggi-son-condolences-turkey-killing

Julian Assange wants to bring legal action against the government of Ecuador- because he's not satisfied with his treatment in the Embassy. That doesn't strike me as the smartest of actions.

Link to story:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45915017


US Domestic

Donald Trump is considering changing the definition of "gender" to include only biological sexes.

Link to story:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/us/politics/transgender-trump-administration-sex-definition.html

Europe

Hungary is increasing pressure on homeless people, now threatening prison time. At the same time, public emergency shelters only cover about 50% of the need in the country.

Link to story (German):

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/obdachlose-gericht-ungarn-101.html

A couple of days ago, the Cum-Ex-Files have been published. See: https://cumex-files.com/ So-called "Tax Deals" involve illegal tax reimbursements. The damage is in excess of at least 55 billion Euros.

Link to story (German):

https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/cum-ex-files-101.html


Social / Religious topics

A new study of political attitudes in the United States offers stunning evidence that most Americans censor themselves, except among people they regard as like-minded, on a bundle of sensitive topics: immigration and immigrants; race and racism; gay, lesbian and gender issues; and Islam and Muslims. At the same time, two thirds of the electorate agree with the statement "People I agree with politically need to be willing to listen to others and compromise" - but they do not feel represented by the political system.

Ideologues on both sides are screaming the loudest and heard the most.

Link to story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...0440fa-d090-11e8-83d6-291fcead2ab1_story.html



Tech & Science

A 40-year-study shows a massive loss of insect biomass in the Americas. Researchers found that for five out of six studied population, the decrease is most likeley to have been caused by temparature increases.

Link to story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarming-study-shows-massive-insect-loss/

Oil droplets guided by “pilot waves” have failed to reproduce the results of the quantum double-slit experiment, crushing a century-old dream that there exists a single, concrete reality. A pretty mind-bending read.

Link to story:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/famo...ve-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011/

Walmart has patented a cart that reads your pulse and temperature.

Link to story:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...-a-cart-that-reads-your-pulse-and-temperature

 

[JDragon]

Edition of November 6th, 2018

International politics

Turkey is threatening an attack on the adversaries of ISIS in Syria. Things have only temporarily calmed down due to U.S. intervention.

Link to story (English, original source is in German but I found no direct equivalent):

https://thedefensepost.com/2018/11/04/us-forces-patrol-syria-northeast-turkey-border/

New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France, has voted to stay with France in a referendum.

Link to story:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...dependence-france-south-pacific-a8617571.html

Belgian-based financial firm SWIFT bows to Trump’s Iran sanctions and excludes Iranian banks.

Link to story:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/business/dealbook/swift-iran-sanctions.html

US Domestic

A new attack ad funded by national Republicans alleges that a Florida Dem House candidate isn’t doing enough on climate change and is funded by “dirty coal money”:

Link to story:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/florida-midterms-climate-change-red-tide/

Europe

A pilot involving Greece, Hungary and Latvia is testing an automated AI lie detector test at the EU external borders.

Link to story:

https://gizmodo.com/an-ai-lie-detector-is-going-to-start-questioning-travel-1830126881


Social / Religious topics

“I could kill you and no one would stop me”, a chilling report on the weak state response to domestic violence in Russia and dozens of case examples.

One example: Jana, 36 years old, from Orjol in Western Russia. She called the police for help against her husband when he was beating her up. The female cop told her, “Don’t call again, we’re not coming anyway.” When Jana kept insisting that her husband was about to kill her, the sarcastic answer was “Don’t worry, if he kills you, we will come and examine your body.” 40 minutes later, Jana was dead.

Link to the report:

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/russia1018_web3.pdf


Tech & Science

A machine learning algorithm trained to recognize flawed news sources doesn’t really work well so far. This is something similar that Facebook et al. might use to highlight questionable sources. It’s possible that the reason is the relatively low number of news items (2500) that the algorithm has been trained with so far.

Link to story (German):

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/mel...t-KI-liefert-maessige-Ergebnisse-4208806.html