Category Archives: News

Monsanto Led Dicamba Enthusiasm Raises Tensions Among Farmers

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The debut of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready Xtend Crop System(TM)(R)" is raising tensions among soybean and cotton farmers who have and have not adopted the seed component of the system, especially in the American Mid South (archived). This year's combination of weather and desperate tillage has lead to ideal conditions for Palmer's Amaranth to flourish in soybean fields threatening to greatly reduce yields by shading soybean plants and consuming soil nitrogen1 far more aggressively than the soybeans can.

Glyphosate resistant Palmer's Amaranth after its debut in 2006 has swiftly spread across the country and this year's proliferation of the weed has forced farmers who planted "Roundup Ready Xtend Crop System(TM)(R)" cotton and soybeans to spray their fields with Dicamba. The twist is that Monsanto isn't done bringing the herbicide portion of "Roundup Ready Xtend" to market so farmers who planted seeds from this Monsanto crop system are just spraying and dumping Dicamba on their fields out of desperation. Farmers who lack these seeds are watching their soybeans curl up and suffer, because Dicamba is especially effective on legumes.

The fallout from this year's soybean season will likely include the consumption of immense amounts of various EPA and Department of Agriculture functionaries time, substantial monetary penalties and torts against the farmers who manage to harvest soybeans this year, and pain for Monsanto as restrictions on applying Dicamba increase and diminish the point of marketing Dicamba resistant soybeans. Sorry for your loss.

  1. Most plants take soil nitrogen and pump it into growing above the soil. Palmer's Amaranth isn't content with that. It takes soil nitrogen for growth and then takes still more soil nitrogen and stores it as nitrates. At one point Palmer's Amaranth was grown as a staple grain, but in the contemporary farm environment the level of nitrates accumulated turn the plant toxic.  ↩

Royal Dutch Shell Shocked! Losses!

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Declining oil prices significantly impacted the profits of Royal Dutch Shell, which reported the lowest earnings in over a decade. Reported profits sank 72 percent, for a total reported profit of $1.05 billion. Company leadership cites low oil prices, which traded around $44 per barrel last week which is up from $35.21 earlier this year, and $63.50 a year ago. The oil industry has shown no signs of recovery. Sorry for your loss.

Cow Hospitalizes Police Officer And Damages Patrol Vehicles

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An eight hundred pound cow competing at the Cowlitz County Fairgrounds in Longview, Washington managed to escape its captors initiating a police chase that lead to the hospitalization of one officer and damage to several police patrol vehicles (archived). Police tazered the 2/5th ton contender for "most spirited" animal before fatally shooting it. Local media reports the cow's owner was injured declining to discuss circumstances of the farmer's injuries. Last November police in neighboring Idaho killed a bull and its owner after the bull was mauled by a Subaru that failed to yield to the bull as required by law. Peace in our time.

John Hinckley Junior Released From Psychiatric Hospital

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John Hinckley Junior, (WOT:nonperson) the man who shot Ronald Reagan (WOT:deceased), is being released from the psychiatric hospital where the United States government has held him for reprogramming since he was found not criminally responsible for the March 30th, 1981 shooting. In addition to Reagan, Hinckley wounded a police officer, a secret service agent, and crippled press secretary James Brady (WOT:deceased). For political reasons Brady's 2014 death was ruled a homicide resulting from his being shot 33 years earlier.

EU Trying A Bitcoin Registry Seeing How Regulation Fails

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The EU supposes that if they can't actually regulate Bitcoin, they can make a registry for it. The proposed central registry would be fed data through all cyrptocurrency wallet providers and exchanges operating within European Union member nations. Law enforcement agencies across the Europe Union would have access to the registry under the pretense anti-terrorism.1 Sorry for your laws.

  1. You know terrorism like #Brexit, Italeave, and Departugal.  ↩

Coinbase Fumbling Through Ether Huffing Fork Experience

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Early this morning on Twitter, Coinbase's "exchange" GDAX announced they will temporarily maintain sole custody of the Classic portion of their Ether huffers' forked tokens for several weeks. The exchange released an announcement:

100% of ETC associated with ETH balances at the time of the hard fork are secured in GDAX cold storage.

We plan to allow withdrawal of an amount of ETC that corresponds to ETH balances at the time of the hard fork. We'll be working on this feature over the coming weeks and will provide updates via this Twitter account.

The freeze has some users on social media wondering if early post fork shenanigans at Coinbase might have threatened the firm's solvency. Sorry fork, your loss.

Ether Huffing Ecosystem Loses 10% Mining Interest Overnight, Hashrate On Bailout Free Chain Climbing

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Since Ethereum "Time Travel" hard forked away from Ethereum "Classic" the total mining interest in the two chains is down ten percent. Similarly ten twenty percent of the mining interest in the Buterin blessed1 chain featuring a time-travel hard fork attack to "undo" the whole DAO episode appears to have moved to the Classic chain. Mircea Popescu published a guide to pricing the various forks of the original Ethereum scam coin this morning.

At the point Ethereum forked it was still very much like its predecessors Dogecoin and Litecoin in being of little utility beyond service as a vehicle for disposing of actual forms of money. Like those two, Ethereum has Buterin while Litecoin had Charles Lee and the Dogecoin had Jackson Palmer and Alex Green/Moolah.io serving as their chiefs of inviting the herd to tour the woodchipper. Thanks to the passage of time blessing it with a history, Bitcoin is unlike its alternatives in many ways2 that make projecting their fork experience on to Bitcoin untenable. Sorry fork, your loss.

  1. This is the other reason why you can't have Altcoins. Any Altcoin is going to be far too new to develop the adversarial relationships between various interests that protect the chain.   ↩

  2. Gresham's law is a thing.  ↩

US Standards Institute Prepares To "Ban" SMS 2 Factor Authentication

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Following their brief foray into the clandestine manufacture of methamphetamine, the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology is prepared to "ban" SMS based 2nd factor authentication schemes. What will replace it in their next guidance is yet to be determined, but almost certainly biometrics, more Google-esque one time password schemes, or both. With the IRS completely having to scrap their system which failed in authenticating tax filers, the United States is forced to Microsoft their own systems iterating their holes to be more selectively exploited.

Japan Mass Stabbing: 19 Killed 25 Injured

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Twenty six year old Satoshi Uematsu (WOT:nonperson) allegedly stabbed 44 of his former coworkers and clients today killing 19 and injuring 25 at a residential facility for the disabled west of Tokyo. Police allege that Uematsu gained entry to the facility by breaking a window and that when he left he was able to make it to the police station to surrender peacefully. Notably Uematsu managed to kill 10 more people than the German aspie whose solo Munich shopping mall putsch has renewed security cooperation between France and Germany. Local media attribute to Uematsu an utterance that approximately translates to "All disabled should cease to exist." The strict knife control laws suffered by the Japanese people failed to prevent this incident. Peace in our time.

Florida Money Laundering Case Against Espinoza Dismissed

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Michell Espinoza, arrested in an undercover sting for selling $1,500 worth of bitcoin had his case dismissed today. Surprisingly Espinoza's legal defense strategy was the same exact one Pascal Reid attempted to use to before being lowered into pederasty.  Espinoza's case was dismissed on the ground that Bitcoin wasn't money under Florida law. Judge Teresa Mary Pooler wrote in her ruling:

The court is not an expert in economics, however, it is very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, the Bitcoin has a long way to go before it is the equivalent of money.

This may haven given Pascal Reid ample ground for an appeal to void his plea bargain, if he wasn't so eager to turn rat.