Canadian B.C. Supreme Court rules power company can deny juice to crypto firm!

Sometimes government has the people's best interest at heart. From the article: "B.C. Hydro CEO Christopher O'Riley had told the court in an affidavit that the data centers proposed by Conifex would have consumed 2.5 million megawatt-hours of electricity a year. That's enough to power and heat more than 570,000 apartments, according to data on the power provider's website."

Almost 600,000 apartments! And with very few jobs created. Lovely. By the way, a number of crypto mining operations are dropping crypto and turning to AI generation. Same rigs, running different software. Still consuming huge gobs of energy.

https://vancouversun.com/business/local-business/crypto-mining-company-loses-bid-to-force-bc-hydro-power

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/02/06/221230/crypto-mining-company-loses-bid-to-force-canadian-utility-company-to-provide-power

NTSB Preliminary report on door plug blowout: bolts were not there

Not much to say, really. If something had caused the door to pop out and the bolts were in-place, these stop fittings are supposed to arrest the bolts' vertical movement. There would be evidence in those fittings of stopping the movement, either scratches or deformation or something.

And 'tweren't there.

"Overall, the observed damage patterns and absence of contact damage or deformation around holes associated with the vertical movement arrestor bolts and upper guide track bolts in the upper guide fittings, hinge fittings, and recovered aft lower hinge guide fitting indicate that the four bolts that prevent upward movement of the MED [mid exit door] plug were missing before the MED plug moved upward off the stop pads."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/four-bolts-were-missing-from-boeing-737-before-door-plug-blew-off-ntsb-says/

Anti-abortion group’s studies retracted before Supreme Court mifepristone case

Mifepristone is a home abortion drug that is widely regarded as safe to use. Unless you're a Texas judge or any number of people who really like to control women and want to use safe abortion methods as a tool to do so.

A case will be going before the Supreme Court for them to decide whether or not mifepristone is safe. The contention is that the FDA did not go through a proper study and trial to determine whether or not the drug was safe before authorizing it to be used as an abortificant. The Texas judge ruled that the FDA was derelict in this and that the drug could not be prescribed for this purpose. It was immediately appealed and bounced up to the SCOTUS and the judge's ruling put on hold pending this review.

At least there's a few women on the Supreme Court (thank you Sandra!), and not just a bunch of old white guys, though there's several of those there too.

So today's news!

Publisher of scientific journals, Sage, has retracted three papers that question the safety of mifepristone, two of which are kind of key to the case about to come up in the Supreme Court - Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA. Multiple problems were cited, amongst which: flawed statistics, the authors claiming to have no bias when they worked for the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization, etc. Two of the three papers, by the same primary researcher, pulled from the same study pool which was not well-organized. When the statistics were re-evaluated, it was found that the morbidity rate was 0.3%, about the same as studies evaluating the safety of the drug that are of an unbiased nature.

The hearing before the Supreme Court is scheduled for March 26. It'll be interesting to see if they can make much of an argument with three major papers knocked out from under them.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/anti-abortion-groups-studies-retracted-before-supreme-court-mifepristone-case/

RIP: Mojo Nixon

The band upstairs gains a truly outrageous vocalist and writer extraordinaire, and we lose an icon. Mojo passed today at the age of 66. The statement from his family does a great encapsulation of the core of Mojo:

“August 2, 1957 — February 7, 2024 Mojo Nixon. How you live is how you should die. Mojo Nixon was full-tilt, wide-open rock hard, root hog, corner on two wheels + on fire…,” his family shared in a statement to Rolling Stone. “Passing after a blazing show, a raging night, closing the bar, taking no prisoners + a good breakfast with bandmates and friends.

“A cardiac event on the Outlaw Country Cruise is about right… & that’s just how he did it, Mojo has left the building,” his family’s statement continued. “Since Elvis is everywhere, we know he was waiting for him in the alley out back. Heaven help us all.”

He is perhaps best known for two songs in particular: Don Henley Must Die, and his first big hit alluded to in the above paragraph, Elvis Is Everywhere. Don Henley's known for being kinda thin-skinned and performed the song with Mojo live!

I have one album by Mojo at the moment: Horny Holidays. And it is wonderful. It includes a cover of Santa Clause Go Straight To The Ghetto among lots of other good stuff. I'm definitely going to acquire some more, he was a heck of a rocker.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said “I don’t want to be taken seriously. I’m a cult artist.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mojo-nixon-dead-obituary-1234964257/