Tesla Co-Founder JB Straubel Building “Reverse Gigafactory” to Recycle Used Batteries
September 3rd, 2020Via: Electrive:
So far there has been much speculation, but little official information about Redwood Materials, the recycling start-up founded by ex-Tesla CTO JB Straubel. Now Straubel has given more details about the plans of Redwood Materials in an interview.
Straubel told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s goal is a “reverse gigafactory”. In the recycling factory, the startup wants to make expensive cell materials such as nickel, cobalt and lithium available again and thus lower the price. Straubel points out that the entire market for electric cars and their batteries is still dominated by the cost of the raw materials required for battery cells.
Redwood’s planned recycling should make the materials so cheap that “the whole equation changes” and the industry really gets going. According to Straubel, 50 to 75 per cent of battery costs are still accounted for by raw materials. That’s why he sees the greater potential for reducing costs there.
Florida: Pasco County Sheriff Terrorizes Citizens
September 3rd, 2020Via: Tampa Bay Times:
Deputies gave the mother of one teenage target a $2,500 fine because she had five chickens in her backyard. They arrested another target’s father after peering through a window in his house and noticing a 17-year-old friend of his son smoking a cigarette inside.
As they make checks, deputies feed information back into the system, not just on the people they target, but on family members, friends and anyone else in the target’s orbit.
In the past two years alone, two of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies have scrapped similar programs following public outcries and reports documenting serious flaws.
In Pasco, however, the initiative has expanded. Last summer, the Sheriff’s Office announced plans to begin keeping tabs on people who have been repeatedly committed to psychiatric hospitals.
Mass Surveillance Program Exposed by Snowden Was Illegal
September 3rd, 2020
Via: Reuters:
Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful – and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans’ telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.
U.S. Debt Is Set to Exceed Size of the Economy Next Year, a First Since World War II
September 2nd, 2020Via: Wall Street Journal:
U.S. government debt is on track to exceed the size of the economy for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, a milestone not hit since World War II that has been brought into reach by a giant fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Russia’s ‘Slow-Motion Chernobyl’ at Sea
September 2nd, 2020Via: BBC:
Beneath some of the world’s busiest fisheries, radioactive submarines from the Soviet era lie disintegrating on the seafloor. Decades later, Russia is preparing to retrieve them.
Fauci Says Coronavirus Vaccine Trials Could be Stopped Early if They Produce Good Results
September 2nd, 2020Via: CBS:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said clinical trials on a coronavirus vaccine could be stopped early if they provide positive results that show it is safe and effective.
In an interview with Kaiser Health News published Tuesday, Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said a Data and Safety Monitoring Board, which is composed of research experts that review data from clinical trials, has the power to end the trials early.
The independent board, Fauci said, could decide “the data is so good right now that you can say it’s safe and effective.” If the clinical trials were to produce results that are overwhelmingly positive, scientists would have a “moral obligation” to stop the trial early and make the vaccine available to all participants in the study, speeding up the process to make it more widely available.
Australia: Pregnant Woman Arrested and Handcuffed in Front of Her Two Children Over a Facebook Post About Lockdown Protest
September 2nd, 2020Via: Daily Mail:
A pregnant woman has been arrested in her own home over a Facebook post allegedly inciting anti-lockdown protest in Victoria.
Zoe Buhler, 28, was handcuffed in her lounge room in front of her children and partner on Wednesday afternoon and charged with incitement.
Several officers entered the house in Miners Rest, Ballarat, northwest of Melbourne, with a search warrant and began reading the young mother her rights.
‘Excuse me, incitement for what, what on Earth? I’m in my pyjamas, my two kids are here,’ she said, clearly confused.
‘I have an ultrasound in an hour because I’m pregnant.’
Ms Buhler’s alleged offending post linked to a since-deleted ‘Freedom Day Ballarat’ event she created for 11am on Saturday on Sturt Street.
‘Anyone from Ballarat please join us in our fight for freedom and human rights!’ she wrote on Sunday with a link to the event page.
The increasingly distressed mother insisted she wasn’t breaking any laws by creating and then promoting the event.
‘Actually you are, that’s why we’re arresting you in relation to incitement,’ police replied.
Colgate’s Formerly Made in Switzerland Toothbrushes Now Made in China
September 2nd, 2020I’ve never used a Chinese made toothbrush and I never will. It’s one of those things where I’ve just drawn a line in the sand. I don’t know how many dozens of toothbrushes are available at my local store, but they are mostly from China. I think I found one that was made in Germany once and another one that was made in Thailand. However, for the last couple of years, I’ve been buying Colgate’s Ultra Soft Toothbrush because it was made in Switzerland.
Unfortunately, these toothbrushes are now made in China.
Maybe they thought we wouldn’t notice???
I’ll be going back to Luxident. I used to buy them from the local chemist (what people call a pharmacy here), but they were often out of stock. I see there’s an online store so, Colgate-Palmolive, you bastards, your megabillion dollar money sacks are going to be feeling a lot lighter now! haha
Here’s the letter I wrote to them:
Hello,
As I was about replace my family’s six Ultra Soft Toothbrushes with new ones, I noticed that they are now made in China!
I’m not buying any toothbrushes that are made in China. Not for me. Not for my family. Enough already.
You had a unique thing going with the Swiss made ones. Now you’re just selling Chinese toothbrushes like all the other ones at the grocery store.
I noticed that you proudly displayed a Swiss flag on the Swiss made toothbrushes. Why don’t you put a Chinese flag on the Chinese made ones?
Hmm?
Total Media Freakout Over CDC COVID-19 Death Statistics
September 1st, 2020Via: Ron Paul:
Over the weekend the Centers for Disease Control dropped a bombshell report on coronavirus/Covid deaths: of the approximately 165,000 “Covid deaths” less than ten thousand died from Covid. The rest – a vast majority – had on average 2.6 serious additional diseases, with the addition in most cases of extreme advanced age.
More: AwakenwithJP: New Revelations on the COVID Death Count:
Amazon Drivers Are Hanging Smartphones in Trees to Get More Work [???]
September 1st, 2020Via: Bloomberg:
A strange phenomenon has emerged near Amazon.com Inc. delivery stations and Whole Foods stores in the Chicago suburbs: smartphones dangling from trees. Contract delivery drivers are putting them there to get a jump on rivals seeking orders, according to people familiar with the matter.
Someone places several devices in a tree located close to the station where deliveries originate. Drivers in on the plot then sync their own phones with the ones in the tree and wait nearby for an order pickup. The reason for the odd placement, according to experts and people with direct knowledge of Amazon’s operations, is to take advantage of the handsets’ proximity to the station, combined with software that constantly monitors Amazon’s dispatch network, to get a split-second jump on competing drivers.
That drivers resort to such extreme methods is emblematic of the ferocious competition for work in a pandemic-ravaged U.S. economy suffering from double-digit unemployment. Much the way milliseconds can mean millions to hedge funds using robotraders, a smartphone perched in a tree can be the key to getting a $15 delivery route before someone else.
