privacy?

all illusion... of course
 

The Privacy Rabbit Hole

A good plain-language blog post on privacy. This feels relatable:

If you aren't trying to hide from the FBI, NSA, MI5 or some other 3 letter acronym agency then your “threat model” is probably quite similar to mine.

These are my key concerns:

• I never want to give a company a copy of my identity (passport, driving licence or ID card) unless it is strictly necessary. I can understand for banking to prevent money laundering or for accessing government or medical services, but I am not doing it to access social media or any other user forums or websites. If Netflix starts asking for my ID I will just take my money elsewhere.
• I don't want anyone reading my private messages or phone calls that I have with my wife, family, or friends. I expect that conversation to stay as private as if I had had it in person. The thought of the government or some corporate company reading or scanning my messages is just creepy.
• I don't want any of my files, emails, messages, or other personal information being used to train AI or used for advertising purposes. _. I don't want the government deciding what I can or cannot view as an adult on the internet (excluding illegal content). If I want to learn how to brew beer, I don't expect to be censored or blocked because it is not child appropriate.

all fake

 

X’s decision to show where accounts are based is, theoretically, a positive step in the direction of transparency for the platform, which has let troll and spam accounts proliferate since Musk’s purchase, in late 2022. And yet the scale of the deception—as revealed by the “About” feature—suggests that in his haste to turn X into a political weapon for the far right, Musk may have revealed that the platform he’s long called “the number 1 source of news on Earth” is really just a worthless, poisoned hall of mirrors. 

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/11/x-about-this-account/685042/?gift=aQyUJR7AIw1mJWdQ6Ed6yNCQTQ5Vv7a5JJp811uMNXE

REALLY REALLY BIG

 👀

REALLY BIG SUNSPOT ALERT: Yesterday, we issued a big sunspot alert. We were wrong. It's *really* big. This image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the behemoth emerging over the sun's southeastern limb on Nov. 30th:

NASA's Mars rover told us it was coming. Last week, Perserverance saw the giant sunspot through a cloud of dust in Jezero Crater. It was only days away from turning toward Earth--and now it is here.

From end to end, the sunspot group measures ~130,000 km, and at least four of the sunspot's primary dark cores are individually larger than Earth. These dimensions make it an easy target for safely-filtered backyard telescopes. If you don't have a solar filter, try this simple projection technique instead.

On Nov. 29th, amateur astronomer Andy Devey watched the sunspot's approach from his observatory near Mojácar, Spain:

"This is an almost three hour look at the active region rolling around the sun's eastern limb," says Devey. "It was sizzling with C-class solar flares."

On Nov. 28th, the sunspot produced an M6-class solar flare. However, the blast site was partially eclipsed by the edge of the sun. The flare's true intensity may have been X-class. Now that the sunspot is turning to face Earth, future flares will be geoeffective. Stay tuned!

more images: from David Wilson of Inverness, Scotland; from Shahrin Ahmad of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; from Astro Tafelberg of Austria; from Sylvain Weiller of Jerusalem, Israel;

what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society?

‘It Is No Measure of Health To Be Well-Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society’ is perhaps Krishnamurti’s best-known quote, shared widely across the internet and even in films. Although we cannot attribute these exact words to Krishnamurti, he made similar statements over the decades, and it is a theme he returned to repeatedly.

The nearest direct quote from Krishnamurti we have found, from Commentaries on Living Series 3 (1960), written in the early 1950s, is:

Is society healthy, that an individual should return to it? Has not society itself helped to make the individual unhealthy? Of course, the unhealthy must be made healthy, that goes without saying; but why should the individual adjust himself to an unhealthy society? If he is healthy, he will not be a part of it. Without first questioning the health of society, what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society?

Additionally:

To help the individual to fit into a society which is ever at war with itself – is this what psychologists and analysts are supposed to do? Is the individual to be healed only in order to kill or be killed? If one is not killed, or driven insane, then must one only fit into the structure of hate, envy, ambition and superstition which can be very scientific?

The origin of this quote being assigned to Krishnamurti is probably a book written by Mark Vonnegut (Kurt Vonnegut’s son) about his mental illness (The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity). The book was published in 1975 and attributes this phrase to Krishnamurti, without giving any source. Vonnegut might have paraphrased or misquoted it, and it must have spread from there.

X erupts after the platform reveals the locations where accounts are based

WHAT?  By Peter Gelling , Shubhangi Goel , and Robert Scammell 

Elon Musk's X now shows the location of many user accounts. Gonzalo Fuentes/REUTERS

• X announced that it will display the region in which an account is based.
• The information is visible under the new "About This Account" section.
• X removed the feature for some accounts on Saturday. Its head of product said an upgrade was coming Monday.

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INTENSE?

 🌍 AN INTENSE GROUND LEVEL EVENT--FIRST RESULTS:  

A week after the Veteran's Day solar storm, researchers in the UK are releasing their first measurements of the storm's intense radiation. According to an analysis from the Surrey Space Centre and the UK Met Office, radiation at aviation altitudes jumped to its highest level in two decades..

Above: The X5-class solar flare on Nov. 11, 2025, which caused the GLE

"This was the strongest Ground Level Event (GLE) since Dec. 13, 2006," says Professor Clive Dyer of the Surrey Space Centre. "Neutron monitors around the world detected it."

The event began with an X5-class solar flare on Nov. 11th. Dyer and colleagues rapidly organized balloon launches with radiation sensors over the UK. They found effective dose rates at 40,000 feet exceeding 55 μSv per hour, with some flight paths possibly reaching 80 μSv per hour. Certain high-latitude transatlantic flights may have received twice the normal cosmic-ray dose.

That's not enough radiation to cause a health emergency for passengers, but it was a concern for avionics. During the storm's peak, the researchers estimate that single-event upsets (bit-flips in computer memory) could have occurred at rates of ~60 errors per hour per gigabyte.

Significant GLEs occur once or twice every solar cycle. The largest of the modern era happened on Feb. 23, 1956. During that GLE, air travelers would have absorbed doses more than 100 times normal--potentially enough to ground flights. Researchers are still unsure what caused it because space-based solar observatories didn't exist at the time.

Last week's GLE was only 2% as large as the 1956 behemoth. This means much bigger events are possible. Indeed, tree rings and ice cores reveal that GLEs thousands of times more intense have happened in recent millennia. These are known as Miyake Events. Modern society simply hasn't experienced one yet.

"Bigger events are coming," says Dyer. "And we need to be ready."

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HEMP Ban? WHAT? GONE?

 

A Proposed Federal THC Ban Would ‘Wipe Out’ Hemp Products That Get People High

A provision in the federal spending bill that could end the US government shutdown would effectively destroy the hemp extracts industry by banning intoxicating hemp-based THC products, including gummies and drinks.

The provision, part of the funding bill passed by the US Senate Monday night, would ban the “unregulated sale of intoxicating hemp-based or hemp-derived products, including delta-8, from being sold online, in gas stations, and corner stores,” according to a Senate Appropriations Committee summary of the legislation. The bill, accounting for $26.65 billion in funds, is being voted on in the House of Representatives Wednesday. If passed, President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law.

According to a report from the Cannabis Business Times, sales for hemp-derived cannabinoids exceeded $2.7 billion in 2023.

“This will ultimately devastate the industry and devastate hemp farmers as well,” says attorney and hemp advocate Jonathan Miller, adding that it would “wipe out” 95 percent of hemp ingestibles.