Food, Security

BirdBeSafe: Scientific Study Explains Why Bright Colors on Cats is for the Birds

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A study back in 2015 apparently proved that color-vision prey (birds and reptiles) survive more easily when their predators wear bright colors (e.g. putting a large vivid safety color collar on a cat).

Source: “Birds be safe: Can a novel cat collar reduce avian mortality by domestic cats (Felis catus)?” Global Ecology and Conservation, Volume 3, January 2015, Pages 359-366

A second study then confirmed the findings about avian color perception.

Bird vision on the right. Source: Photography of the Invisible World, Dr. Klaus Schmitt

The concept of prey safety through color vision has an intriguing twist: predators struggle to learn and implement effective countermeasures. While a cat is known to overcome and bypass a jingle bell, it is currently believed that cats have not yet figured out this particular challenge of being made more visible.

Such reliability makes me think how avian (and lizard) vision research could help a subtle shift in communication dynamics, reminiscent of the impact from infrared vision technology advancements. Drawing inspiration from birds (and lizards), goggles could bring humans into light spectrums we usually miss.

Source: “What Birds See” by Timothy H. Goldsmith, Scientific American, 2006

Think of signals using patterns and colors visible only with avian (and lizard) lenses. With potential applications in many forms of observation, such lenses could subtly alter communications. Embracing nuances of avian (and lizard) perception, this technology offers a neutral, practical approach to broad ranges of signaling including threat differentiation, opening up possibilities for those tuned into the secrets of the natural world.

Source: U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, 1918
History, Security

South Africa Has Banned SpaceX

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It is noteworthy to acknowledge historical aspects related to Elon Musk’s grandfather, who expressed support for Hitler during World War II.

[Musk’s grandfather was] leader in a fringe political movement that called itself Technocracy Incorporated, which advocated an end to democracy and rule by a small tech-savvy elite. During World War II, the Canadian government banned the group, declaring it a risk to national security. Haldeman’s involvement with Technocracy continued, though, and he was arrested and convicted of three charges relating to it. Once he got to South Africa, he added Black Africans to his list of rhetorical targets.

During World War II, being associated with a hate group labeled as a “risk to national security” in Canada carries significant historical implications. Subsequently, Musk’s grandfather moved to South Africa, playing a role in the formation of the racially discriminatory Apartheid state. Moreover, reports suggest that Musk’s wealthy father leveraged the existing racism for unfair financial and political gains.

Musk has said that he bought Twitter to halt the advance of a “woke mind virus” spreading online. His grandfather wrote his tracts to raise an alarm about what he called “mind control,” on the radio and television, where “an unconditional propaganda warfare is carried on against the White man.”

Similarly, in the case of Peter Thiel, his parents reportedly served under Hitler before seeking refuge in South Africa to evade accountability for being Nazis and to benefit from the Apartheid system.

After the end of Apartheid in the mid-1990s, both Musk and Thiel immigrated to the United States, where they pursued success by engaging in an unregulated technology sector building payment exchange and digital financial systems. Here’s how their startup was self-described.

…the equivalent of a Swiss bank account in your pocket… governments can’t stop their citizens from moving money out of the country.

And here’s why that dog-whistle signaled so strongly, from two individuals with a history of benefiting from gains acquired under South African Apartheid and Nazi Germany, drawing attention from and for renegade white men.

Switzerland was the favorite haven for Nazi bank accounts and safe deposit boxes, which often contained property plundered from Jews. Swiss banks did a lucrative business with the German Reichsbank and with individual Nazi officials. Symbolically, even the royalties from Hitler’s Mein Kampf were deposited in a Swiss bank account. […] Right up until the end of the war, Switzerland laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets, including gold taken from the central banks of German-occupied Europe. At the war’s end Switzerland successfully resisted Allied calls to restitute these funds…

Why did Switzerland resist government calls to return stolen money to the victims, and instead send this money outside its borders? Allegedly the pivot was because after Switzerland was forced to stop being Hitler’s helper they fled into propping up investments in Apartheid.

…a Swiss research group published a study showing that Switzerland was a leading investor, financing loans, trade credits and public bonds for the cash-short apartheid regime.

It is important to approach these accounts of history with careful attention to accuracy and precision, revealing how Musk and Thiel came into their positions, recognizing the implications of wealth and power accumulation within systems of racist privilege.

In the present day, South Africa has raised serious concerns about perceived inequities in business practices at SpaceX, asserting the company is being unfair to historically disadvantaged groups within the country.

On August 14th 2023, South Africa banned the import of Starlink kits. South Africa’s telecommunications regulator has demanded that a local Internet Service Provider (ISP) stop acquiring, distributing and facilitating the sale of any Starlink products in South Africa, that will in any form provide satellite access to Starlink services.

The ban is due to a legal requirement imposed by the Electronics Communications Act (ECA). This act mandates that historically disadvantaged groups (HDGs) must own 30% of a company before it can get the necessary telecoms licences to operate a broadband service locally.

HDGs include black people, youth, women, and people with disabilities. Since Starlink has not met this requirement it could not get the necessary telecommunications licenses to operate.

Simply put, SpaceX did not achieve the government requirements that had been established to protect historically disadvantaged groups. It seems clear why Elon Musk, let alone his family, would never really try:

Related

  • August 20, 2014: SpaceX Workers Launch 3rd Suit, Allege Racist Policies
  • June 20, 2020: Elon Musk’s Juneteenth Problem at SpaceX and Tesla
  • November 14, 2021: Former SpaceX engineer accuses company of racial discrimination
  • November 20, 2022: SpaceX accused of age discrimination by former employee
  • August 24, 2023: Justice Department Sues SpaceX for Discriminating Against Asylees and Refugees in Hiring
  • October 6, 2023: SpaceX sued for discrimination, again. Female former engineer alleges systemic pay discrimination against women and minorities
  • November 10, 2023: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar… [due to the] chaotic workplace where often under-trained and overtired staff routinely skipped basic safety
  • November 20, 2023: International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Condemns SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Endorsement of Antisemitic and Racist Propaganda
Security

Did SpaceX Hire a NASA Safety Official to Hush Drug Abuse Reports?

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The buried lede comes at the end of a new investigation.

Gerstenmaier, the NASA administrator who requested the review, left the agency several months after the conclusion of the probe. Less than a year later, he got a job at SpaceX, where he’s now the vice president of build and flight reliability.

News flash: SpaceX flight reliability has been very poor.

Earlier in the investigative reporting, a point was made that SpaceX would be more competitive if NASA didn’t reveal what it has found.

The probe spanned SpaceX facilities in California, Texas and Florida, the records show. Investigators interviewed 296 SpaceX employees “at all levels of personnel,” half of whom worked on the commercial crew program that shuttles astronauts to the International Space Station.

Despite the assessment’s hefty price tag and NASA’s insistence that it was “essential to the United States space program,” the agency covered the results of the probe in black ink, citing a public records exemption that allows it to withhold documents if they “could harm the competitive posture or business interests of a company.”

Look I’m not saying a top guy at NASA cut a deal to take a job and loads of “competitive” pay and stock after he came up with a safety report that paid SpaceX $5m and they wanted it hushed. That seems far, far too “paperclip” to be true.

Besides, the report is somehow still being hidden. Wouldn’t NASA staff left behind just open it to the public?

The space agency initially responded to BI’s request by claiming it didn’t have any records of the assessment’s results. Public records request logs, and emails provided by NASA, show that the agency told a Wall Street Journal reporter the same thing in 2022.

But after Business Insider reminded the agency that it had paid SpaceX $5 million in taxpayer dollars to conduct the investigation, NASA coughed up the letter initiating the probe, a scope of work, and the final report.

I really just don’t understand the series of “safety” steps here, let alone using huge amounts of taxpayer money for a contractor to investigate drug use after a very public display of drug use. Seems backwards.

A SpaceX top executive smokes drugs in public, a NASA official pays SpaceX $5 million to look around and report any evidence of drug use, and then SpaceX hires that official to lead its reliability program, afterwards denying any such report even existed… while rockets are so unreliable they keep going up in smoke.

Security

CA Tesla Kills One in “Veered” Crash Into Tree

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The report seems to indicate the driver wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, or the belt design failed, when the Tesla suddenly veered off a road into a tree and he was thrown to his death.

San Diego Police Department officers were called Thursday at 5:40 p.m. to the 10400 block of Scripps Poway Parkway where they learned after the victim failed to maneuver around the bend in the parkway, the Tesla crashed into the roadway’s center island and continued onto the island, striking multiple trees.

The driver was ejected and died at the scene, said Officer Robert Heims.

Source: Google Maps

Not much of a bend to “maneuver” here.

Once again police find a “veered” Tesla crashed into trees, instead of into oncoming traffic. And yet again the Tesla trees and seatbelts question comes up.

Update: Video from a following car shows Tesla’s hallmark sudden dangerous acceleration, drift right and then a sudden left veer into a tree. It does not appear related to a notable bend in the road, as was reported.

See comment below.