Afternoon Tea 2.21.24 - Hell's Angels for Hire

Chlormequat, iOS viruses, and Musky Dittmann

February 21, 2024

Another week, another Afternoon Tea! The boring stuff: It’s working! FD breached double digits in subscribers, and we’re up to 11 (12?) paid subscribers as of yesterday! If you are thinking about it, and have the cash to spare, it’s the best way to encourage me to keep doing this.

 Adrian Dittmann is Elon’s John Barron pseudonym (Liam Nissan?) This is kind of a weird one, but stay with me. On X, Musk has a burner account named Adrian Dittmann, and tweets goofy affirmations and encouragement at…himself. There’s also audio of him (possibly?) calling into Alex Jones, using the identical pseudonym. Kind of like how Trump used the pseudonym “John Barron” to write into NYC papers about his amazingness. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Tesla stock while also being on Twitter. The LA Times had a great piece a few years back detailing how these waves of bots came to the aid of Tesla. Who knows, they might have been manned by “Dittman” himself.

The majority of traffic from Elon Musk's X may have been fake during the Super Bowl (Mashable) & Report Finds X May Be Inflating Its Ad Performance Results (Social Media Today) Stories like this could be in the Tea weekly, but no one wants spam in their inbox. So, I’ll just keep coming back to this again and again: Musk is destroying Twitter on purpose, with lies about metrics only accelerating the platform’s demise.

Libs of TikTok targeted a district, then a non-binary student was killed on campus (Daily Kos) & Grieving Nex Benedict: the Brutal Killing of 16 year old Nonbinary Student in an Oklahoma High School (PGH Lesbian Correspondents) Nex, a non-binary student was attacked by three girls in the restroom, beaten severely, couldn’t walk to the nurses office under their own power (police reported the contrary), sent home, then hospitalized & died the next day. This school district has been a focal point for anti-trans & queer hate, with Raichik (founder of Libs of TikTok, an anti-gay group noted for doxxing and repeatedly calling for violence) named to the library panel that oversaw this school district, by a far right superintendent, even though Raichik doesn’t live in Oklahoma, and doesn’t have children. Details are still coming out, but the police/admin cover-up is an old trick. Nex was bullied to death, with educators and administrators essentially cheering it on.

Mind-Blown

A pilot study of chlormequat in food and urine from adults in the United States from 2017 to 2023 (Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology) The next glycophosphate has been found! Chlormequat chloride is used to regulate growth in grains across North America. It also could be reducing fertility and threatening fetal health in much of the US population. Given this is the first study of the stuff, I assume this won’t be the last we hear about this stuff.

Iranian agent recruited Hells Angels in murder-for-hire plot (Task & Purpose) There’s a network of assassins led by someone named Naji Ibrahim Sharifi-Zindashti, a drug trafficker who works for Iran’s CIA. Someone in that network tried to hire Hell’s Angels bike gang members to kill two Maryland residents. You think the wild stuff in MD is going to come out of Baltimore, and then stories like this hit the wire.

'QR Code Shows He's Muslim’ — Online Platforms Leave Vendors, Workers Vulnerable (The Quint) If you don’t think this can be replicated & abused here, you might want to think again. Google “Project 2025” for more info.

'Zombie Fires' burning at an alarming rate in Canada (BBC News) Last year’s Canadian wildfires are still burning? Residents of British Columbia saw snowstorms mixed with acrid plumes of smoke over the last few months. Which is a very bad portend for summer 2024.

Rare Earths Discovery Near Wheatland So Big It Could Be World Leader (Cowboy State Daily) & Wyoming Hits the Rare-Earth Mother Lode (WSJ) So, we’re going to bring freedom to Wyoming you say? The smart money isn’t sure if this makes battery tech more achievable, or if it will make climate change prevention targets harder to hit. Either way, if you’re looking for a lullaby, here’s a ridiculously detailed report on the rise of battery tech. We might change the world for the better, but we’re probably going to destroy ourselves in the process.

First ever iOS trojan discovered — and it’s stealing facial recognition data to break into bank accounts (Tom’s Guide - Original Report) Good News Android fans! iPhones can get viruses now! More seriously, given the deep stock of FaceIDs, this is a wild front for cybercrime, as iOS users have never had to think about this. Until now.

As Hudson rents skyrocket, Weehawken devises plan to keep public employees in the township (NJ.com) This isn’t viable in high population counties that don’t have a tax base, but it’s still the most innovative solution to the “teachers can’t afford to live where they teach” problem the Northeast has been struggling with for years now.

The Loss of Things I Took for Granted (Slate) Parents know this is a complicated problem, so I’ll close with this quote instead of summarizing/mansplaining:

But I have to think that we can, at the very least, stop actively preventing young people from developing the ability to follow extended narratives and arguments in the classroom. Regardless of their profession or ultimate educational level, they will need those skills. The world is a complicated place. People—their histories and identities, their institutions and work processes, their fears and desires—are simply too complex to be captured in a worksheet with a paragraph and some reading comprehension questions. Large-scale prose writing is the best medium we have for capturing that complexity, and the education system should not be in the business of keeping students from learning how to engage effectively with it.

Quote of the week

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about. -Haruki Murakami,'

Poem of the week

Vibe of the week

Hard techno is muscling onto Gen Z dance floors, and this rework of the Prodigy classic is exceptional. Breathe wasn’t a popular track on Fat of the Land when it was released 25 years ago, so remixes at the time were trash. Not anymore.

Keep your head up,tn